Chapter 6: Information Requirement Patterns

Overview

Information is the lifeblood of commercial systems: IT is Information Technology, after all. It used to be called Data Processing (DP), but information has more prestige than mere data; this book treats the two as synonymous. Both names reflect the central nature of the information-entering, storing, displaying, reporting, and so on-in the vast majority of systems, especially those that play a part in running a business. So requirements that specify data and how it's handled play a crucial role in defining a system, and patterns for them can help get them right.

Most of the requirement patterns in the information domain are for describing various aspects of the information the system needs. They relate to each other as shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1: Requirement patterns in the information domain