COMMUNICATION NEEDS IN A DATA ENGINEERING WORLD

Data engineering is a new professional discipline that focuses on the design, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance of long-lived distributed information systems. Unfortunately, communication engineers have long viewed distributed information systems only from a perspective of data transport requirements. Hence they have often overlooked opportunities to apply extended communications technology to the fulfillment of information system requirements. Some of the resulting shortcomings stemming from this narrow viewpoint are described, and areas for further study are suggested. We illustrate the opportunities for further study in the context of data engineering via a concrete example, the design of a medical information system.