The result of good modelling of the real-world usually leads to good information systems being built. Good models help us to understand and predict how certain business systems work and to frame questions about the real-world system allowing us to determine how well it is meeting our goals.

Businesses are usually primarily involved in the processing of transactions because the business is trying to accomplish some goal. One approach is to think about events following this three-step approach:

a. Identify the goals that a business must accomplish.

b. Identify the processes that must be undertaken to accomplish each goal.

c. Within each process, identify the events of interest.

Once the events of interest are identified, we can then recognize the sorts of data we need to record about the event.

By asking the following sorts of questions we can characterise events:

What happened?

When did the event happen?

What agents were involved?

What resources (things) were involved?

Where did the event occur?

Briefly explain why it is important to know the above questions and give one relevant example pertinent to each of the four questions in the table below. For example, knowing what agents were involved allows us to determine whether the agents were internal or external, e.g., salespersons or customers. We can use that information to understand who our best salespersons are and to pay commissions to those salespersons accordingly. (24 marks max - up to 4 marks for each explanation and up to 2 marks for each pertinent example)