SELECTED ASPECTS OF DIGITAL REPRESENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

From the viewpoint of the evolution of computing devices and corresponding use cases, the article structures an information systems timeline progressing through early electromechanical devices, electronic vacuum tubes, solid-state and integrated circuit electronics, the advent of microprocessors, personal and remote computing, and distributed systems of numerous autonomous devices, while exploring different approaches to a digital representation of computational entities. By establishing the research scope and organizing scholarly sources chronologically, the article reveals and selects connections between individual events, provides an overview and critical analysis, and highlights expected future expansions and shifts in approaches to digital representation. Thus, the article examines a shift from operations and operands, their further complication into code and data structures, and the transition from procedural to structured and object-oriented programming (OOP). Client-server applications implemented with static OOP and relational data management are examined as the pinnacle of monolithic architecture. The subsequent domain-driven design (DDD) and microservices architecture are examined as contemporary methods for remote cloud computing environments. The article then discusses the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), the emergence of smart things and digital twins, describes advanced and novel use cases of global digitalization, such as Industry 5.0 ideas, and reveals the limitations of extant methods for corresponding digital representation. Ultimately, the article introduces a novel method for digital representation employing the post-non-classical paradigm in computer science, which eschews predefined structures in favor of dynamic, interaction-based representations, enabling flexible and adaptive design of distributed systems. Future research directions include the formal specification of this approach and the development of tools for its implementation in complex distributed systems.