Information engineering

Information engineering (IE) or information engineering methodology (IEM) is a software engineering approach to designing and developing information systems. It can also be considered as the generation, distribution, analysis and use of information in systems.

Information engineering involves an architectural approach to planning, analyzing, designing, and implementing applications. It has been defined by Steven M Davis as: "An integrated and evolutionary set of tasks and techniques that enhance business communication throughout an enterprise enabling it to develop people, procedures and systems to achieve its vision". It is also defined as the generation, distribution, analysis and use of information in systems. This later definition involves the usage of machine learning, data mining and other computational methods to enhance the presentation and understanding of the high-throughput data that is generated by different systems. An example is bioinformatics, applying information engineering to biological data.

Information engineering has many purposes, including organization planning, business re-engineering, , information systems planning and systems re-engineering.

Information engineering has a somewhat chequered history that follows two very distinct threads. It originated in Australia between 1976 and 1980, and appears first in the literature in a series of Six InDepth articles by the same name published by US Computerworld in May - June 1981. Information engineering first provided data analysis and database design techniques that could be used by database administrators (DBAs) and by systems analysts to develop database designs and systems based upon an understanding of the operational processing needs of organizations for the 1980s.

Clive Finkelstein is acknowledged as the "Father" of Information Engineering (IE), having developed its concepts from 1976 to 1980 based on original work carried out by him to bridge from strategic business planning to information systems. He wrote the first publication on Information Engineering: a series of six InDepth articles by the same name published by US Computerworld in May - June 1981. He also co-authored with James Martin the influential Savant Institute Report titled: "Information Engineering", published in Nov 1981. The Finkelstein thread evolved from 1976 as the business driven variant of IE. The Martin thread evolved into the data processing-driven (DP) variant of IE. From 1983 till 1986 IE evolved further into a stronger business-driven variant of IE, which was intended to address a rapidly changing business environment. The then technical director, Charles M. Richter, from 1983 to 1987, guided by Clive Finkelstein, played a significant role by revamping the IE methodology as well as helping to design the IE software product (user-data) which helped automate the IE methodology, opening the way to next generation Information Architecture.

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