Dear Colleague,
We are excited to introduce Enterprise Information Systems: A Pattern Based Approach, third edition, a major revision of Accounting, Information Technology, and Business Solutions, second edition. This edition has a brand new title given that over 75% of the content is new, including topics not typically found in other AIS texts.

Why these major changes?

• This edition follows an innovative approach to teaching information systems-REA, which looks at the relationship between an organization's critical resources, events, and agents. REA, developed by Bill McCarthy of Michigan State University is a framework for creating an enterprise wide database that can be used to retrieve information for multiple business purposes. Using traditional diagrams and an alternative grammar format, students will be able to separate the substance from the form of the REA framework. This edition goes beyond the business process level of coverage of the REA enterprise ontology not previously addressed. We've drilled down the high-level value system view to the more detailed value chain level and illustrated how the transaction cycles fit together to form the value chain, which enables your students to see the "big picture."
• This edition is built on the idea that a separation between accounting information systems and management information systems should not exist. We believe patterns help people see the "big picture" of enterprises more clearly and therefore help design better systems. We believe you cannot identify anything that we need to account for that we do not also need to manage; nor can we identify anything we need to manage that we do not also need to account for. In this edition, we will show how a well-designed REA-based Accounting Information System is the Enterprise Information System.
• This edition covers such topics as enterprise systems integration, representation and patterns, value system and value chain modeling, information retrieval via SQL and QBE queries, view integration and implementation compromises, and inter-versus intra-enterprise systems. We've also moved the coverage on internal controls later in the text based on the belief that the REA framework can enhance and structure our thinking about internal controls, but internal controls don't facilitate our thinking about the REA framework.

This textbook offers your students a unique alternative to the more traditional forms of accounting information systems (or other types of information systems). We do not present the traditional approach as a basis for comparison, rather we simply present what we believe is the most current and innovative method to designing enterprise information systems.