Preface for the Third Edition - Read

302 B. Concepts and Theories
TABLE B-18. Criteria for information quality a
level criterion opposite
community level accuracy inaccuracy
(relevance)
applicability uselessness
clarity obscurity
comprehensiveness incompleteness
a. Source: Eppler 2003, 68.
These activities can be institutionalized in the form of e.g., the role of a subject
matter specialist and the establishment of knowledge processes that are specifically
designed to improve the quality of documented knowledge.
7.3 Architectures and services
Architectures in general play an important role in MIS as blueprints or reference
models for corresponding implementations of information systems. The term architecture
as used in MIS origins in the scientific discipline architecture and is used in
a variety of ways, e.g., application architecture, system architecture, information
system architecture and especially software architecture 491 . The prevalent architectural
design recently has been impacted profoundly by the ideas marketed under
the term service-oriented architecture (SOA). The primary concept of this architectural
paradigm is discussed from the perspective of KM in section 7.3.1. Section
7.3.2 then reflects on some issues involved when designing a KM service infrastructure.
Finally, section 7.3.3 reviews a number of theory-driven, vendor-specific
and market-driven architectures of KMS and discusses their advantages and shortcomings.
7.3.1 Knowledge management service
Generally, a service is an abstract resource that represents a capability of performing
tasks that form a coherent functionality from the point of view of providers
entities and requesters entities (W3C 2004a, b). It consists of a contract, interfaces
as well as implementation and has a distinctive functional meaning typically
reflecting some high-level business concept covering data and business logic
(Krafzig et al. 2005, 57-59). The service concept has gained much popularity with
the advent of a set of standards that allow for open interaction between software
applications using Web services 492 . A Web service is a software system, identified
by a URI, whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using
XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems
may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition,
using XML-based messages conveyed by Internet-based protocols (W3C 2004a),
491. See Lehner et al. 1995, 58ff for a definition and overview of the term.