Annales Univ. Sci. Budapest., Sect. Comp.

42 (2014) nnnnn

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

A survey and opportunities for research
B
alint Moln
ar (Budapest, Hungary)
Dedicated to Prof. Andr
as Bencz
ur

Abstract. After brief introduction about hypergraphs and their specific

capabilities that make them apt to be applied in various field of research
within information systems, modeling and analytics. In the literature review, we survey the fields that fit to hypergraphs theory and the application of their capability to describe complex relationships. We outline our
research on modeling of information systems and architectures, and then
we propose a research agenda to exploit the rich representation ability of
hypergraphs in the context of various information and IT systems.

1.

Introduction

Hypergraphs are able to describe complex systems as their descriptive power

is fairly strong as they are one of the most general graph and mathematical
structure for representing relationships. The hypergraphs are generalization
and extension of concept graphs and finite sets. The mathematical theories of
hypergraphs were developed in the past decades; the generalizations of definitions as trees, cycles, and coloring for hypergraphs have been elaborated with
the accompanying theorems.
Key words and phrases: Information Systems, Hypergraph, Modelling, Enterprise Architecture, Process Algebra
2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 68U35, 68M99, 05C65, 97M99, 68Q85
This work was partially supported by the European Union and the European Social Fund
through project FuturICT.hu (grant no.: TAMOP-4.2.2.C-11/1/KONV-2012-0013).
We are very thankful to Prof. Andr
as Bencz
ur for raising the research issue and helpful
discussions.

B
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The surfacing of computational science and informatics brought composite

systems of large size. Several area of modeling and structuring of phenomena in
cyberspace required a flexible representational approach as traditional graphs.
The collection of complex relationships has made necessary the further generalization of original definition of hypergraph to provide a powerful descriptive
method. Thereby the hypergraphs have found new application areas and gotten a new impetus.
What the reason is that hypergraphs seem apt to depicting relations in
information systems, social networks, document centered information processing, Web information systems, relationships among services within a serviceoriented architecture. One of the basic problems is that the concepts that potentially may be mapped to vertices of graphs are heterogeneous. Consequently,
a theoretically and mathematically correct representation of the structure to be
dealt with cannot be achieved. For example, it seems to be a good idea to make
use of a bipartite graph for describing a system that contains two distinctive
set of things. Each single thing may be identified as a node of the graph, the
graph may contain two disjoint set of nodes. However, this approach loses at
the same time homogeneity and heterogeneity feature of the system. The two
separate disjoint sets represent two distinct groups of things that are definitely
different but homogeneous within their own group. Although the operations
that required to handle components of the system may need a uniform manipulation of elements in some cases in spite of their dissimilarity from some
viewpoints.
The hypergraph and generalized hypergraph as concepts of discrete mathematics is appropriate for describing such systems. The basic differences at
conceptual level between is that a specific edge links two nodes in a graph, in
spite of this, the edges in a hypergraph the so called hyperedges can group
together more than two vertices. The generalized hypergraph yields the opportunity that a hyperedge can be perceived as a vertex and be a component of
other hyperedges as a node. Consequently, the hypergraph is a generalization
several mathematical concepts as graphs, projective planes, affine planes [?].
Firstly, we will survey the application areas of hypergraphs in informatics
and information systems, and then we will present our research in the context Web information systems and their architecture. Finally, we will outline
a research agenda in the domain of information systems for further application
opportunities.
The structure of our paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we outline
applications of hypergraphs for social networks analysis. This is followed by

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

section 3 that describes hypergraph applications in a SOA and Cloud environment. We provide in section 4 a description about our research on modeling
and perceiving the architecture of information systems .Finally, conclusions
and future work directions will be shown in the last section.

2.

Social networks analysis

We have studied earlier the alternatives of software and system architectures

that fit to the investigation of social networks [?]. There are examinations on
structure and relationships within social networks as e.g. Twitter [?]. Within
the representation of On-line Social Networks (OSN) or Social Network Sites
(SNS) as graphs, the vertices designate individuals or group of persons. The
links among them represented as the edges of graphs and may describe friendship (with various granularity), cooperation, business relationships etc.
However, Twitter as social network has a fairly complex construction, namely
it has concepts of relationship as following, reply to and mention. That leads
to a more complex graph representation that requires directed, differentiated
edges between vertices that can be presented e.g. by coloring. The interdependencies between the various messages should be taken into account if any
semantically rich interpretation is required for the analysis, namely either the
topic of texts or the relationship among the messages or posts should be shown
in an appropriate representational way [?, ?].
Facebook basically and originally contained a friendship relation. On evolving of services at Facebook, the relationship of friendship has been refined
as close friends, friends, and friends except acquaintances, public. These attributes are used at sharing micro-blogs and posts. The basic relation between
people and groups became a more sophisticated system. There are solutions to
represents such structure by graphs but hypergraphs offer a uniform treatment
of above mentioned phenomena.
One of the specificity and area of interests of Twitter is that the Twitter data
are not only set of data items and texts but through the contained data items
a complex network can be built up. One of the structure is the follower graph
(tweeters that follows specific other users), the other relationship that is fairly
loose and ad hoc - is created by the mechanisms of re-tweet and hash-tag. The
previously mentioned network structures can be mapped to graph structures
but to discover the basic organizing principles of sub-graphs leads to challenging

B
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graph theoretic questions and empirical investigations. The various features of

relationships between individual entities can be reflected better by hypergraph
than traditional graph structure. The links displaying multi-faceted characteristics in the case of Twitter and Facebook as well can be mapped by hyperedges
more faithfully than other graph theoretical approaches.
A research question can be formulated as whether the relationship graphs
of two deeply differing SNSs as e.g. Twitter and Facebook provide some clues
about the evolution of networks, features of users behavior that can be spotted
by graph structures.
OSN contains frequently so called supra-dyadic relationships [?], i.e. the
dyadic relationships appear between pairs of actors. On investigation of tweets
within Twitter, the attributes of tweets that are worth analyzing not only the
actors playing a role in actual tweets but e.g. geographical positions of actors
through geo-tagging furthermore the applied language, date and time of tweets
etc. In database worlds or entity-relationship modeling, we may call these types
of relationship as ternary or quaternary relation among entities. When complex
social networks are represented by hypergraphs the supra-dyadic relationships
can be examined through the eigenvector centrality of hypergraph [?]. The
vertices may represent individuals that produce tweets, the nodes linked by
hyperedges manifesting follower, re-tweet, hash tag relationships extended by
geographical, time and other necessary information.

3.

Service-oriented architecture

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) turn into a popular software architecture as enterprise architecture that supports the business processes at conceptual, system analysis and logical design viewpoint. Service-oriented architecture provides a toolset to assist in application development and enterprise wide
application integration. The essential characteristic of SOA is that the computational resources are accessible in the form of services [?]. The past decade has
brought success for this architectural approach at several companies because
this solution is considered as a cost-effective and taking care about reusability.
The most recent development on architecture area led to the concept of
SaaS (Software as a Service) within a Cloud environment. The tenants of
Cloud use various services in the form of SaaS applications that are built up

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

from components out of SOA services. In a multi-tenant environment, the

services are shared among several customers. The multi-tenant applications
yield benefits both for customer and service provider since the multi-tenant
solution decreases service delivery costs for service provider and reduces the
subscription price for the customer or enterprise. Although, the multi tenant
environment leads issues to be solved. Namely, the Quality of Service (QoS)
is critical point how to assure a Service Level when multiple tenants share the
same set of applications [?]. The performance issues should be handled as e.g.
(virtual) servers housing specific services may be overloaded by tenants; the
service level for these services will be degraded as e.g. response time, transaction output, and availability and as a consequence of saturation reliability.
The service levels described in QoS should be mapped onto services consisting
of applications for each single tenant. The load balancing of (virtual) servers
is vital to keep the service levels at the pre-defined values in order to fulfill the
QoS for each single tenant. It is supposed that public clouds has a practically
infinite capacity and elasticity [?]. In the case of private and/or community
cloud, the statement mentioned before is not necessary valid therefore a model
for load balancing and sharing of services is needed.
The services in a cloud environment can be grouped into three collections
namely: business-independent, business-dependent and compound business services. The mutual dependencies between services could be functional, business and platform in the sense of logical and physical that primarily relates to
technology architecture level and the physical layer typically is hidden before
tenants. The services can be mapped bijectively on vertices of hypergraphs
whereby the vertices in the hypergraph can be placed into partitions of the hypergraph by their mutual dependencies, by their deployment on service centers
, and the requirement of algorithms dedicated to load balancing [?]. Elastic
Service Placement Problem (ESPP) applies a combinatorial auction problem
that may be formulated in a hypergraph terminology as well [?]. Hypergraph
partitioning is a very beneficial approach for load balancing purposes in the
case if data about dependencies and connectivity are obtainable. The general
opinion is that hypergraph partitioning provides a better and superior method
than the traditional graph partitioning in the case of load balancing. [?]. There
are concurrent approaches in the literature [?]. The hypergraph model fits to
describing concurrent, communicating processes as e.g. services in a SOA for
business processes. One approach is that the data or document objects can be
designated as vertices and then the communication demands can be specified
by hyperedges. The hypergraph can be represented by matrices by which the
communication cost and volume very precisely can be rendered.
The hypergraph model and partitioning well-suited to accurate description

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of communicating processes, their resource and capacity requirements, and the

sub-optimal but efficient algorithms can be designed to solve practical problems.

4.

Systems modelling

As the literature proves it, the graphs as a representational structure are

apt to system modeling, analysis and specification, especially information and
software systems [?, ?]. One of the opportunities is the use of the combination of graph and algebraic means [?]. In spite of their expressive power
and flexibility the challenge is to find an appropriate representation of systems
being investigated. The representation should accurately describe the states
of systems, i.e. system configurations, keeping up the isomorphism between
the structure of systems and representations through graphs. The isomorphic mapping between systems and graph representation has several rewards.
The graph theoretic approach yields a formalism that provides uniformity in
some sense and a normal form representation. The mathematically sound representation makes possible the reusability as well, moreover the exploitation
of mathematical tools for analysis and calculation as graph transformations,
matrix representations and calculations, specific features and consequences of
graphs that proved by theorems are available. For example, the correctness of
mapping can be checked by test algorithms for isomorphism. The validity of
transliteration of systems into graph representation is critical for exploiting the
available mathematical tool set to model both the dynamical and static facet
of systems as e.g. operational semantics, re-configurations, controls, security
and the model transformation in analysis, design and operation time.
The representation of systems characteristics as e.g. states, configurations
through algebraic methods and techniques can be transcribed into graph representations. The typical algebraic method can be one of the versions of process
calculi. The system representation appears in algebraic terms. The states and
system configurations formulated in process algebraic syntax can be mapped
into graph representation through inductive procedures. For Web Information
Systems, a combined method was developed that contained process algebraic
descriptive tools and methods of conceptual modeling that are especially suitable for designing information systems operating on the Web. The story algebra
provides a rich tool set that can capture the sides of processes and the use-cases
[?]. The processes within information system are derivatives of business pro-

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

cesses; the actual use of them is described by scenarios and scenes. The story
algebra offers the opportunity to treat with the Business process model and
workflow side and the end-user/ organization side of Information System Models [?]). Moreover, the story algebra makes possible to link the process and
end-user perspectives with the documents that are transporters of data and
information, the structure of documents has some correlation with the structure of organization. Conways thesis claims the correspondence between the
structure of development team and produced software architecture [?]. The
correlation.

5.

Modeling document intensive web information systems

The most recent information systems can be regarded as Web Information

Systems (WIS) as Web became ubiquitous and a lingua franca for man-machine
dialogues through various protocols that are used in the context of end-users.
The WIS decisively differs from a set of Web pages. The differentia specifica
between collection of Web pages and WIS can be perceived by the following
way; WIS supports business processes and typically strongly integrated to other
information systems within organizations.
The Service Oriented Computing (SOC), Cloud Computing creates a new
context in which the information systems modeling should be re-thought [?].
The other important aspect of changes is the emphasis on documents as medium
for information exchange, the documents can appear in the forma of HTML
pages, SOAP messages, semi-structured documents (XML), and unstructured
documents [?, ?, ?].
The information systems modeling is a challenging task, for this reason several modeling frameworks came into existence. To understand in a holistic way
and a top-down approach of information systems, the Enterprise Architecture
frameworks offered a comprehensive view as Zachman and TOGAF method
[?, ?]. Blokdijks Four Models in Three Views of Information Systems presents
principles for analyzing and designing information systems. The information
systems are inherently complex systems so that the modeling efforts should keep
an eye on following principles: graphical modeling languages provide the best
human interpretable description of applications; the model instances should be
transformed into the refined model instances. The documents in the form of
XML should be joined to some model instances that represent the significant

B
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business processes. The combination of Zachman Enterprise Architecture, the

axiomatic design, document object model (DOM) and the use of UML as visual
language form an approach that can be used for modeling WIS [?, ?, ?].

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

5.1.

A formal hypergraph model

Web Information System (WIS)

Node/vertex in a hypergaph

Edge in a hypergaph

Hyperedge

System graph

Sub-system

Interconnecting sub-systems hyperedges graph of the generalized hypergaph

We create an abstraction of WIS in the

form of a generalized hypergaph that
consists of vertices and hyperedges.
Each node (or vertex) corresponds to an
element within a WIS, e.g. documents,
elements of documents (constituting a
tree structure), business processes, processes in scenarios and scenes, workflows, layers of workflows, web services,
networks of web services, etc.
Edge is a specific hyperedge with cardinality equal to two. Edge denotes binary relationships between two nodes,
as e.g. free documents is consumed by
a certain Web service, a generic document is the ancestor of an intensional
documents, a free-document resulted in
a ground-document after binding, valuating of variables etc.
A hyperedge represents a relationship
among a subset of nodes as e.g. Web
services belonging to a specific workflow, Business Process containing workflows, nodes of a document tree structure composing a document etc.
A hypergaph that includes a disjoint
node dedicated to the modeling environment of the system, plus all the
nodes and hyperedges of the WIS.
A subset of nodes and their incident hyperedges. A node/vertex is incident to
a hyperedge if the hyperedge contains
the node/vertex. A sub-system may be
composed of documents, Web services
and related entities out of data model
etc.
Subsystem may be created by operations that conforms with graph theoretical concepts as:
Induced subhypergraph;
Subhypergraph;
Partial hypergraph;
A graph consisting of all the vertices
in sub-systems and all hyperedges connecting together subsystems along with
the disjoint, environment node.

Table 1: Mapping the Concepts of Web Information Systems onto the Notion
of Hypergaph.

10

B
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Firstly, we should bring to mind the basic definitions of hypergraphs in order to apply for modeling of WIS.
Definition 5.1 (Hypergraph). A hypergraph H is a pair (V, E) of a finite
set V = v1, .. ., vn and a set E of nonempty subsets of V. The elements of V
are called vertices, the elements of E edges. [?]
Definition 5.2 (Generalized hypergraph). The notion of hypergraph may
be extended so that the hyperedges can be represented in certain cases as
vertices, i.e. a hyperedge e may consist of both vertices and hyperedges as well.
The hyperedges that are contained within the hyperedge e should be different
from e.
5.2.

Hypergraphs and information system modeling

The proposal that we want to present is to make use of hypergraphs in the

Web Information Systems modelling in various viewpoint and perspectives of
Information Systems Architecture. We hope that the hypergraphs can provide
a unified and uniform framework to handle the complexities and diversity of
models that are employed during the analysis, design and operation of information systems. From theoretical viewpoints, the hypergraphs may provide better
understanding of organization of information systems and structuring principle. From practical viewpoints, it gives clues for designing and operational
principles and takes care of controlling and security mechanisms.
5.3.

Web Information System Architecture

Generally, the Information System Architecture describes the structure of

modules of information processing systems, the links among components, the
design and analysis principles at information system level of which the main
purpose is to buttress business processes.
The logical design of information systems in the sense of technology appears
in the form of software architecture and their building blocks. The Zachman
Framework [?] was one of the first attempts that stressed the fact that software architectures were not enough to capture the essential characteristics of
Information Systems Architecture. While software architectures describes details of systems structure (using, for example, E-R and DFD diagrams, Gang
of Four architecture pattern), Information System Architecture focuses on the
high-level business and information system processes [?]. Enterprise IT Architecture can be understood as the collection of strategic and architectural

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

11

principles that includes the Information, Business System, and Technical Architectures:

Business (systems) architecture The major constituents are the business

processes, the related roles and actors, furthermore, the structure and
information content and functional services of all business systems within
the organization.
Information (and Data) Architecture renders the data types, information
and containing documents that assist business processes; moreover the
interrelationships among pieces of information;
Technical Architecture contains the software and hardware technologies
in the form of logical and physical platforms used in application implementation in eh form of information systems. Technical architecture
sustains the integrity of the hardware, software, and infrastructure environment that is necessary to support the Business Systems Architecture
and Information Systems Architecture.
Each single architecture layer can be refined by viewpoints of stakeholders.
The Zachman framework demonstrates a solution for a higher granularity of
viewpoints and views that is able to express more accurately the complex relationships between the models of information systems.
Up to now, one of the best systematic structure of information models is
given by Blokdijks work [?]. The main parts of Blokdijks structuring framework are: organizational model that represents hierarchy of business units and
elements and the method of work; information model that contains information, structured, semi-structured, unstructured and other media format material, furthermore their origin and course of action for manipulation; data model
that represents things of the physical world about which information is stored
along with their links to each other , it lays the ground for the implementation
model of data; process model that yields a description about the structure of
business activities and the strongly coupled to the control structure.
The Zachman framework and the Blokdijks information systems model in
fact two orthogonal views of information systems. Thereby, a three dimensional
structure come into existence. Some components of Blokdijks information systems model are used in specific viewpoints and perspectives of Zachman Enterprise architecture. We can arrange that complex structure in a cube. The
interrelationships can be captured by the generalized hypergraph approach.

12

B
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J.
A.
Zachman
S.
H.
Spewak

Entities
=
what
Data
Architecture

Activities=
how
Applications
Architecture
List
of
Business
Processes
Process
=
Class of
Business
Process

Locations=
whereTechnology
Architecture

People =
who

Time=
when

Motivation
=why

Planner
Objectives
/
Scope
(Contextual)

List
of
Business
Objects
Class
=
Class of
Business
Thing

List
of
Business
Locations
Node
=
Major
Business
Location

List
of
Organizations
important
to
the
Business
People
= Major
Organizations

List
of
Events
Significant
to
the Bus.
Time
=
Major
Bus.
Events

Scope

Business
Process
Model
Proc.
=
Bus.
Process,
Web
Services
I/O
=
Bus. Resources,
Documents
Application
Architecture
Proc. =
Application
Function,
Web
Services,
Method
of Object
Class,
I/O
=
User
Views,
Semistructured
documents

Business
Logistics
System
Node
=
Busin.
Location
Link
=
Business
Linkage

Work
Flow
Model
People
= Organization
Unit
Work
=
Work
Product,
Documents

Master
Schedule
Time
=
Bus.
Event
Cycle
=
Bus.
Cycle

List
of
Bus.
Goals
/
Strategies Ends
/ Means
=
Maj.
Bus.
Goals
/
Crit,
Suc.
Factor
Business
Plan
Ends
=
Bus. Objective
Means
=
Bus.
Strategy

Owner
Enterprise
Model
(Conceptual)

Semantic
Model
Object
Class
=
Business
Entity
Association
=
Bus.
Relationship

Designer
Information
Systems
Model
(Logical)

Logical
Data
Model
Ent.
=
Data Entity Reln
=
Data
Relationship

System
Geographic
Deployment
Architecture
e.g. Distributed
System
Arch.
Node
=
I/S
Service.
(Processor,
Storage,
Logical
Application
Component.
etc.)
Link
=
Relationship
between
Logical
Appl.
Comp.
System
Architecture
/
Technology
Architecture
Physical
Application
Comp.
Node
=
Hardware
/
Systems
Software
Link
=
Line
Specifications
Network
Architecture
Node
=
Address
Link
=
Protocol

Human
Interface
Architecture
People
=
Role
Work
=
Deliverable,
Semistructured
documents

Processing
Structure
Time
=
System
Event,
Orchestration
Cycle
=
Processing
Cycle

Business
Rules
Ends
=
Structural
Assertion,
Means =
Action
Assertion,

System
Model

Builder
Technology
Model
(Physical)

Physical
Data
Model
Ent.
=
Segment
/
Table
/
etc
Reln
=
Pointer/
Key / etc

System
Design
Proc. =
I/S Services I/O
=
Data
Elements
/
Sets,
XML
/
HTML
documents

Presentation
Architecture
People
= Screen
Format,
HTML
/
XML
interface
Work
=
User

Control
Structure
Time
=
Execute,
Choreography
Cycle
= Component
Cycle

Rule
Design
Ends
=
Condition
Means =
Action

Technical
Model

Subcontractor
Detailed
Specifications
(Out-ofcontext)

Data
Definition
Repository Ent.
=
Field
Reln
=
Address

Functioning
Enterprise

Data

Programs
Supporting
Software
Components
Proc. =
Language
Statement I/O
=
Data
Item,
XML
Field
Function

Security
Architecture
People =
Identity,
Authentication,
Authorization,
Work
=
Job

Timing
Definition
Time
=
Interrupt
Cycle =
Machine
Cycle

Rule
Specification
Ends
=
Subcondition
Means =
Step

Components

Network

Organization Schedule

Enterprise
Model

Strategy

Table 2: A mapping schematically between Zachman architecture and WIS

component

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

13

The Blokdijks model differentiates between data and information model

that fact provides the opportunity to handle separately the documents as information resources. A document in itself is a tree structure that can be described by the document object model along with XML [?]. The structure of
the document can be represented by hyperedges, but at the same time, the set
of hyperedges manifests the document can be perceived as a vertex that belong
to other hyperedges that demonstrate the use of the document in other parts
of the model. For example, the document is used in business process within
workflows, the document may play the role of input and output for use cases in
the sense of UML. The use cases can be formalized in scenarios and scenes for
WIS. The scenarios contains processes that are formulated by process algebra.
The hypergraph is able to display the before-mentioned complex relationship.
5.4.

Hypergraphs and Systems Engineering

The hypergraph approach has the advantage to lessen the degree of complexity and variety of relationships between models thereby the WIS can adapt
to the changing environment better, and enhance the stability of system.
The hypergraph approach can be applied to the information and data model.
As we have discussed earlier, the hypergraph is capable to represent even the
complex document structure. The document object model (DOM) can be
rewritten in hypergraph structure and this way the document-centric feature
of WIS can be represented by a better way, the structure of interrelationships
among process, organization, core data structure and document elements can be
expressed [?]. The evolution of documents and the related data can be tracked
more easily both in design and operation time [?]. The clash between the inherent nature of documents and disciplined data structure (as e.g. database) can
be resolved through hypergraphs. The data structure in e.g. relation format
can not be divided into parts that map the organization structure, in spite of
this the document structure follow more or less the structure of organization
and the roles within it. Utilizing the hypergraph approach, the dual nature and
behaviour of documents can be handled i.e. the structure of documents aligned
with the organization and the data structure being a definite part of database
and contained in documents can be reconciled into a unified framework.
The design artifacts of WIS can be perceived as the set of certain documents
and the strongly coupled set of processes incorporated in the form of scenarios
and scenes in the sense of story algebra approach citeschewe2004reasoning.
The generalized hypergraph approach makes possible to build-up structures
that are orthogonal to each other although the complex of structures can express the systems of relationships in a disciplined way. The information space

14

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consists of documents, data contained in documents, and the information bases

manifesting in traditional structured and semi-structured databases.
The documents as input and output media and the elements of story algebra
compose together the design artifacts of WIS. The basic concepts of story algebra can be represented in a hypergraph by the following way:

Story space, is the information space of WIS. The elements of information

space as e.g. documents and group of relevant data appear as nodes of
hypergraph.
Story board, can be perceived as directed, generalized hypergraph. Hyperarc (directed hyperedge) represents the evolutionary development that
happens between documents or document types that are represented by
the document vertices that are indeed hyperedges that reflect the internal
structure of the documents.
Scenario, is a subdirhypergraph (directed subhypergraph) of the story
board that describes the transformation of inputs in the form of documents and data through steps of processes.
Story, is a directed path within the story board. The story board is a
directed hypergraph (dirhypergraph). The starting point of the path is
an instance of document type that contains a collection of free variables;
the end-point is a document that contains all variables in fully evaluated
form, moreover linked to the underlying databases.
A scene can be represented as hyperedges and hyperarcs. Some of hyperarcs consist of documents and document types that can play the role of
tail and head of the hyperarc and at the same time designate the changes
of documents. Other incident hyperarcs contains as head a role (job responsibility) and/or actors of interested organization units so that the
hyperarc designates the responsibility for manipulation on the specific
document by roles and belonging actors; and as tail the role or actor
who is responsible for receiving the document. From the process-oriented
view, a scene is elementary part or task of information systems services,
or a kind of Web services;
The life cycle of documents can be described by a directed path through
the dirhypergraph, the documents may be contained one or more scenarios. The documents without free variables appear as head of certain
hyperarcs as the final state of documents manipulation.

15

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

Figure 1. A Part of a Directed Hypergraph for Story Board

E1
E2
E3

v2
1
1
0

v3
1
0
0

v4
0
1
1

v5
0
1
1

v7
1
0
0

v8
1
0
0

v10
1
0
1

v11
0
0
1

Table 3: The incidence matrix representing the hyper network

5.5.

Model transformations

To put the disparate and different models into a unified framework, the
first attempt is to map the WIS and its possible models into the Zachman
architecture that contains the important aspects and views of an IS within an
organization context. To make the various models comparable, verifiable in
the sense of correctness, the object-oriented modeling approach can be used
for each modeling artifact as all the views of Zachman can be modeled by
object-oriented paradigm from the classical IS and database technology to the
document-oriented WIS.
Beside representation of document and data, the description of application
in the form of WIS could be done in an object-oriented manner. The UML pro-

16

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Figure 2. Partitions of the Hypergraph according to Document-centric Story

Algebra
vides a visual language, at the syntactic level, the systems analysis and design
methods offer the systematic way how to organize a system into an operational
application [?].
Axiomatic Design (AD) Theory [?] is a design method that offer assistance
for designers to structure design problems by a systematic way. The axiomatic
design approach can be applied to modeling and design of WIS. The story algebra, the processes and documents as design artifacts appears at the surface of
WIS. The processes captured through the scenes and scenarios of story algebra
should be further refined to meet the underlying information and data bases.
The consistency and integrity between the document-centric story algebra representation and the internal part of WIS that consists of the data structure,
the behavior of entities and the impacts triggered by events.
The axiomatic design can be aligned with the Zachman architecture as
perspectives can be considered as domains as all domains of axiomatic design
theory is contained within the set of Zachmans perspectives and represents the
life cycle of system development and operation.

Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

17

The models that appears in the columns of Zachman architecture can be

created using of object-oriented paradigm. The framework matrix consists of a
vertical axis that provides multiple perspectives of the overall architecture and
a horizontal axis, which provides a viewpoints of stakeholder incorporating
as design artifacts within the architecture. The applicable perspectives and
classifications within the framework are illustrated in Table 2.
According to axiomatic design theory, the requirements can be captured by the
following concepts: Customer Needs (CNs), Functional Requirements (FRs),
Design Parameters (DPs), and Process Variables (PVs).

Figure 3. Hyperarcs expressing roles and responsibilities, documents evolution

and interdependencies between them
The combining the hypergraph approach and axiomatic design methods
yield a robust design tool. The hyperedges of the hypergraph can represent
that which DPs satisfy which FRs, which model refines which models, which
models fulfill either certain Ds or FRs.
The analysis and design of WIS consists of refinement and process of decomposition that proceed through the matrix both vertically and horizontally. The
mapping process between the perspectives and viewpoints within the Zachman
matrix can be expressed mathematically in terms of the characteristic vectors
that define the design goals and design solutions, furthermore the relationships
and their constraint. At a given level of design hierarchy, the set of functional
requirements that define the specific design goals constitute a vector {FRs}
in the functional aspect. Similarly, the set of design parameters in one of the

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alint Moln
ar

perspectives for the FRs also constitutes a vector {DPs}. The relationship
between these two vectors can be written as:

(5.1)

F Rs = ADP s

The matrix A type represents the actual method, the transformation and
mapping between the functional requirement and design decision (5.1). The
verification and validation for properties of correctness, faithfulness, consistency and integrity among the design decision is represented by matrix B type
(5.3). Matrix B designates the state transition between the relevant pairs of
models situated in the columns, i.e. aspects of Zachman architecture Table 5.

(5.2)

a11
[A] = a21
a31

a12
a22
a32

a13
a23
a33

The User Requirements, the Customer Needs (CNs) transformed into Functional Requirements (FRs). The Functional Requirements can be represented
by models that refers to classes of objects Table 5.

(5.3)

DP s = BDP s

The navigation rules for transformation can be deduced from the incidence
and adjacency matrix of the hypergraph that represents WIS. The design hierarchies, the perspectives of Zachmans architecture are described in a unified
and uniform manner by the hypergraph.

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Applications of Hypergraphs in Informatics

Aspects

Q
Perspectives

Entities
= what
Data
Architecture

Locations
= where
Technology
Architecture
CN
FR

People =
who

Time
when

CN
FR

Activities
=
how
Applications
Architecture
CN
FR

Contextual
Conceptual

CN
FR

CN
FR

CN
FR

Logical

DP

DP

DP

DP

DP

DP

Physical

DP

DP/

DP

DP

DP

DP

Detailed representation (outof-context)

Functioning
enterprise/organization

PV

PV

PV

PV

PV

PV

Data

Function

Network

Organization

Schedule

Strategy

Q
Q

Q
Q

Motivation
= why

Scope
Enterprise
Model
System
Model
Technical
Model
Components

Customer Needs (CNs), Functional Requirements (FRs), Design Parameters (DPs),

and Process Variables (PVs)

Table 5: Model transformation based on Zachman architecture and CNs, FRs,

DPs, PVs

6.

Conclusion

The above-outlined mathematical formalism has put into a unified framework the disparate approaches as Blokdikjs Information Systems Model, Zachman architecture / ontology, and the Axiomatic Design. The hypergraph approach provides a tool that the orthogonal viewpoints of an information system
as data and information, the procedural aspect showing the system behavior,
and the models existing as design artifacts can be managed in a integrated
way. The Axiomatic Design offers the systematic and mathematical formalization of requirements and their refinement during the system life cycle. This
environment gives help to change management in both design and operational
time of WIS. The hypergraph accurately represents the interdependencies and
set of relationships among the elements of WIS. The adjacency and incidence
matrices formulate mathematically these relationships. On the one side, the
formal matrix descriptions can assist between the consistency, integrity, accuracy checking of WIS. However, the changes cannot be avoided either in
design or operational time. The changes in the design time should be escalated
through the models, the design and engineering activities. The propagation of
modification will criss-cross the aspects and perspectives of Zachman matrix,
between the various meta models for handling certain single models. The hypergraph approaches take care of consistency of models.
The most modern databases provides opportunities to operationalize the

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before outlined ideas. The formalized mathematical description can be implemented graph databases. Moreover, several hypergraph databases emerged in
the open source domain that offer services for implementing hypergraph structures directly in this database environment [?]. As further research, a prototype
implementation of the formalized approach will be attempted.

B
alint Moln
ar
Information Systems Department, E
otv
os Lorand University of Budapest, Pazmny
Peter set
any 1/C
1117 Budapest
Hungary
[email protected]