bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mobile e-Learning for Next Generation Communication Environment
Authors: Wu Tin-Yu , Chao Han-Chieh
Published: May 2011

This article develops an environment for mobile e-learning that includes an interactive course, virtual online labs, an interactive online test, and lab-exercise training platform on the fourth generation mobile communication system. The Next Generation Learning Environment (NeGL) promotes the term “knowledge economy.” Internetworking has become one of the most popular technologies in mobile e-learning for the next generation communication environment. This system uses a variety of computer embedded devices to ubiquitously access multimedia information, such as smart phones and PDAs. The most important feature is greater available bandwidth. The learning mode in the future will be an international, immediate, virtual, and interactive classroom that enables learners to learn and interact.
OFDM Transmission Technique
Authors: Rohling Hermann
Published: May 2011

The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission technique can efficiently deal with multi-path propagation effects especially in broadband radio channels. It also has a high degree of system flexibility in multiple access schemes by combining the conventional TDMA; FDMA; and CDMA approaches with the OFDM modulation procedure; which is especially important in the uplink of a multi-user system. In OFDM-FDMA schemes carrier synchronization and the resulting sub-carrier orthogonality plays an important role to avoid any multiple access interferences (MAI) in the base station receiver. An additional technical challenge in system design is the required amplifier linearity to avoid any non-linear effects caused by a large peak-to-average ratio (PAR) of an OFDM signal. The OFDM transmission technique is used for the time being in some broadcast applications (DVB-T; DAB; DRM) and wireless local loop (WLL) standards (HIPERLAN/2; IEEE 802.11a) but OFDM has not been used so far in cellular communication networks. The general idea of the OFDM scheme is to split the total bandwidth into many narrowband sub-channels which are equidistantly distributed on the frequency axis. The sub-channel spectra overlap each other but the sub-carriers are still orthogonal in the receiver and can therefore be separated by a Fourier transformation. The system flexibility and use of sub-carrier specific adaptive modulation schemes in frequency selective radio channels are some advantages which make the OFDM transmission technique a strong and technically attractive candidate for the next generation of mobile communications. The objective of this chapter is to describe an OFDM-based system concept for the fourth generation (4G) of mobile communications and to discuss all technical details when establishing a cellular network which requires synchronization in time and frequency domain with sufficient accuracy. In this cellular environment a flexible frequency division multiple access scheme based on OFDM-FDMA is developed and a radio resource management (RRM) employing dynamic channel allocation (DCA) techniques is used. A purely decentralized and self-organized synchronization technique using specific test signals and RRM techniques based on co-channel interference (CCI) measurements has been developed and will be described in this chapter.
Semantic E-Business
Authors: Singh Rahul , Iyer Lakshmi , Salam A.F.
Published: May 2011

We define Semantic eBusiness as “an approach to managing knowledge for coordination of eBusiness processes through the systematic application of Semantic Web technologies.” Advances in Semantic Web-based technologies offer the means to integrate heterogeneous systems across organizations in a meaningful way by incorporating ontology—a common, standard, and shareable vocabulary used to represent the meaning of system entities; knowledge representation, with structured collections of information and sets of inference rules that can be used to conduct automated reasoning; and intelligent agents that collect content from diverse sources and exchange semantically enriched information. These primary components of the Semantic Web vision form the foundation technology for semantic eBusiness. The challenge for research in information systems and eBusiness is to provide insight into the design of business models and technical architecture that demonstrate the potential of technical advancements in the computer and engineering sciences to be beneficial to business and consumers. Semantic eBusiness seeks to apply fundamental work done in Semantic Web technologies to support the transparent flow of semantically enriched information and knowledge—including content and know-how—to enable, enhance, and coordinate collaborative eBusiness processes within and across organizational boundaries. Semantic eBusiness processes are characterized by the seamless and transparent flow of semantically enriched information and knowledge. We present a holistic view of semantic eBusiness that integrates emergent and well-grounded Semantic Web technologies to improve the current state of the art in the transparency of eBusiness processes.
Application of Web Services in the Context of E-Procurement
Authors: Oliver Stanley , Maringanti Kiran
Published: May 2011

This chapter highlights the importance of e-procurement and the barriers affecting its widespread adoption in the context of small and medium enterprises. The chapter takes a technical perspective and critically analyzes the importance of information systems in the procurement domain and the integration challenges faced by SMEs in today’s digitally networked economy. Next, the role of XML-based Web services in solving the integration challenges faced by SMEs is discussed. Subsequently, a procurement transformation framework enabled by Web services which provides a clear methodology of the way in which information systems should be introduced in the procurement domain is discussed. The chapter concludes by a discussion of the measures that must be undertaken by various stakeholders like the government and universities in increasing the awareness levels of SMEs to the latest e-business mechanisms.
Organisational Challenges of Implementing E-Business in the Public Services
Authors: Andreescu Francesca
Published: May 2011

Underpinning £136 billion of economic activity in the United Kingdom, Britain’s National Mapping Agency is a commercialising public sector organisation having trading fund status and existing in the intersection of two different spheres—the public and the private. Recognised as a leading participant in the geographic information industry, within which it is forging partnerships with key private sector companies, the organisation has enthusiastically grasped ebusiness as an all-embracing phenomenon and implemented a new strategy that transformed the way it did business. Drawing on longitudinal data gathered over a period of four years, this article explores the processes of strategic and organisational transformation engendered by e-business implementation in this organisation and discusses the successful elements, as well as some of the challenges to its change efforts.
E-CRM and Managerial Discretion
Authors: Coltman Tim , Dolnicar Sara
Published: May 2011

Most sectors of industry, commerce, and government have reported variation in the performance payoff from electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM). In this paper we build on surprisingly sparse literature regarding the importance of managerial discretion to show that the heterogeneity of beliefs held by managers about e-CRM execution matter when explaining e-CRM success. Drawing on a data sample comprising 50 interviews and 293 survey responses we utilise segmentation techniques to identify significant differences in managerial beliefs and then associate these belief segments with e-CRM performance. Results indicate that (1) three distinct types of managers can be identified based on the heterogeneity of their e-CRM beliefs: mindfully optimistic, mindfully realistic, and mindfully pessimistic; (2) that there is far less homogeneity at the individual firm level than is normally assumed in the literature; (3) that heterogeneity in managerial beliefs is systematically associated with organisational performance; and (4) these results serve to remind practitioners that e-CRM performance is dependent upon the right balance between managerial optimism and realism.
Histogram-Based Compression of Databases and Data Cubes
Authors: Cuzzocrea Alfredo
Published: May 2011

Histograms have been extensively studied and applied in the context of Selectivity Estimation (Kooi, 1980; Muralikrishna & DeWitt, 1998; Piatetsky-Shapiro et al., 1984; Poosala et al., 1996; Poosala, 1997), and are effectively implemented in commercial systems (e.g., Oracle Database, IBM DB2 Universal Database, Microsoft SQL Server) to query optimization purposes. In statistical databases (Malvestuto, 1993; Shoshani, 1997), histograms represent a method for approximating probability distributions. They have also been used in data mining activities, intrusion detection systems, scientific databases, that is, in all those applications which (i) operate on huge numbers of detailed records, (ii) extract useful knowledge only from condensed information consisting of summary data, (iii) but are not usually concerned with detailed information. Indeed, histograms can reach a surprising efficiency and effectiveness in approximating the actual distributions of data starting from summarized information. This has led the research community to investigate the use of histograms in the fields of database management systems (Acharya et al., 1999; Bruno et al., 2001; Gunopulos et al., 2000; Ioannidis & Poosala, 1999; Kooi, 1980; Muralikrishna & DeWitt, 1998; Piatetsky-Shapiro et al., 1984; Poosala, 1997; Poosala & Ioannidis, 1997), online analytical processing (OLAP) systems (Buccafurri et al., 2003; Cuzzocrea, 2005a; Cuzzocrea & Wang, 2007; Furfaro et al., 2005; Poosala & Ganti, 1999), and data stream management systems (Guha et al., 2001; Guha et al., 2002; Thaper et al., 2002), where, specifically, compressing data is mandatory in order to obtain fast answers and manage the endless arrival of new information, as no bound can be given to the amount of information which can be received.
A Survey on Temporal Data Warehousing
Authors: Golfarelli Matteo , Rizzi Stefano
Published: May 2011

Data warehouses are information repositories specialized in supporting decision making. Since the decisional process typically requires an analysis of historical trends, time and its management acquire a huge importance. In this paper we consider the variety of issues, often grouped under term temporal data warehousing, implied by the need for accurately describing how information changes over time in data warehousing systems. We recognize that, with reference to a three-levels architecture, these issues can be classified into some topics, namely: handling data/schema changes in the data warehouse, handling data/schema changes in the data mart, querying temporal data, and designing temporal data warehouses. After introducing the main concepts and terminology of temporal databases, we separately survey these topics. Finally, we discuss the open research issues also in connection with their implementation on commercial tools.
Design of a Data Model for Social Network Applications
Authors: Mitra Susanta , Bagchi Aditya , Bandyopadhyay A.K.
Published: May 2011

A social network defines the structure of a social community like an organization or institution, covering its members and their inter-relationships. Social relationships among the members of a community can be of different types like friendship, kinship, professional, academic, and so forth. Traditionally, a social network is represented by a directed graph. Analysis of graph structure representing a social network is done by the sociologists to study a community. Hardly any effort has been made to design a data model to store and retrieve social-network-related data. In this paper, an object-relational graph data model has been proposed for modeling a social network. The objective is to illustrate the power of this generic model to represent the common structural and node-based properties of different social network applications. A novel, multi-paradigm architecture has been proposed to efficiently manage the system. New structural operators have been defined in the paper and the application of these operators has been illustrated through query examples. The completeness and the minimality of the operators have also been shown.
A Database Service Discovery Model for Mobile Agents
Authors: Song Lei , Li Xining , Ni Jingbo
Published: May 2011

One of the main challenges of mobile agent technology is how to locate hosts that provide services requested by mobile agents. Traditional service location protocols can be applied to mobile agent systems in order to explore the service discovery issue. However, because of their architecture deficiencies, they adequately do not solve all the problems that arise in a dynamic domain such as database location discovery. From this point of view, we need some enhanced service discovery techniques for the mobile agent community. This article proposes a new model for solving the database service location problem in the domain of mobile agents by implementing a service discovery module based on search engine techniques. As a typical interface provided by a mobile agent server, the service discovery module improves the decision ability of mobile agents with respect to information retrieval. This research is part of the IMAGO system, an infrastructure for mobile agent applications. This article focuses on the design of an independent search engine, IMAGOSearch, and discusses how to integrate service discovery into the IMAGO system, thus providing a global scope service location tool for intelligent mobile agents.
Designing Information Systems Capabilities to Create Business Value
Authors: Schlueter Langdon Christoph
Published: May 2011

Despite Internet success and the fact that software has become the factory in many businesses, questions remain concerning information technology (IT) business value, the IT payoff paradox, and why IT even matters. While numerous econometric studies have established that there is significant business value from IT investments at an aggregate level, it is often unclear how this value accrues specifically and how a particular IS design and specific IS capabilities contribute. Therefore, this article focuses on IT business value (ITBV) antecedents. It analyzes the role of two distinct key IS capabilities: integration and flexibility, which are widely considered central to IS analysis and design. This article is a necessary first step toward decomposing and measuring ITBV antecedents. Subsequent efforts can build on it by developing scales and survey instruments for quantitative-empirical evaluation. This article follows a tradition of theory development adapted and condensed into a four-step approach for IS literature by Zmud (1998), defines and clearly delineates the constructs, and evolves a model that links them with IT business value.
Alliance Project
Authors: Sugito Shigenobu , Kubota Sachiko
Published: May 2011

This study has three main aims: 1. to develop software for an indigenous kinship database and genealogy using a crossplatform Java engine; 2. to contribute to a kinship study, which will serve as a fieldwork support tool for anthropologists; and 3. to assess the importance and potential of the kinship database and genealogy in IT-based indigenous knowledge management. Regarding the third aim, we would like to emphasize the importance of kinship data in the post-colonial era, and the need for kinship data in land rights issues and the recognition of indigenous identity, as well as the possibility of the autonomous use of this visualized kinship database by indigenous peoples in the future. The Alliance Project, which is named after the alliance theory by C. Levi-Strauss (1969), started as the management of a kinship study for the Yolngu people of Eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, and was later extended to the study of kinship in general.
UB2SQL
Authors: Mammar Amel , Laleau Régine
Published: May 2011

UB2SQL is a tool for designing and developing database applications using UML and B formal method. The approach supported by UB2SQL consists of two successive phases. In the first phase, with the design of applications using class, state and collaboration diagrams, B specifications are automatically generated from UML diagrams; the diagrams are then augmented with these B specifications in place. The second phase deals with the refinement of these B specifications into a relational database implementation, for which UML representation is constructed. In both phases, proofs are achieved to ensure correctness of the obtained B specification and correctness of the refinement process. To overcome the lack of rules and tactics in the B prover, UB2SQL defines specific rules and tactics making the proof task seem like a push-button activity. To increase the usability of UB2SQL in both academic and industrial contexts, the tool has been integrated as a plug-in to the Rational Rose CASE tool. Such integration allows users to develop and be able to visualize graphical UML diagrams and formal B notation in a single environment.
A Prehospital Database System for Emergency Medical Services
Authors: Hashmi Nada , Gaynor Mark , Pepe Marissa , Welsh Matt , Tollefsen William W. , Myung Dan
Published: May 2011

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are not only responsible for providing prompt and efficient medical care to many different types emergencies, but also for fully documenting each and every event. Unfortunately, the vast majority of EMS events are still documented by hand. The documents are then further processed and entered manually into various billing, research, and other databases. Hence, such a process is expensive, labor intensive, and error prone. There is a dire need for more research in this area and for faster, efficient solutions. We present a solution for this problem: Prehospital Patient Care Record (PCR) for emergency medical field usage with a system called iRevive that functions as a mobile database application. iRevive is a mobile database application that is designed to facilitate the collection and management of prehospital data. It allows point-of-care data capture in an electronic format and is equipped with individual patient sensors to automatically capture vital sign data. Patient information from the field is wirelessly transmitted to a back-end server, which uses Web service standards to promote interoperability with disparate hospital information systems, various billing agencies, and a wide variety of research applications. In this chapter, we describe the current state of EMS, the iRevive application, a mini-trial deploying iRevive in real scenarios, the results, and a future direction for our solution.
Databases for Multiple Archaeological Excavations and Internet Applications
Authors: Karamalis Athanasios
Published: May 2011

The science of Archaeology has been in existence for a long time and the way an archaeological excavation is conducted hasn’t changed much. However, the way archaeological data is recorded has changed dramatically by the progress of technology and the widespread use of computers. Nowadays, almost any archaeological excavation uses databases to record not only the objects which have been found, but also the various data which come up during the excavation process (Lock, 2003). Many remarkable researches have been conducted by archaeologists who developed standards and methods for recording the data which was produced during an archaeological excavation. Although many excavators use particular standards and methods for data recording, these usually cannot be completely implemented and have to be adapted to the particular requirements of the excavation. The reasons why this is happening are the various differences excavations have; in how archaeologists excavate a site, which data is recorded and how the data is characterized (we will discuss further this topic in the following chapters).
The Knowledge Transfer Process
Authors: Kwan M. Millie , Cheung Pak-Keung
Published: May 2011

Knowledge transfer in an organization is the process through which one unit (e.g., group, department, or division) is affected by the experience of another. Yet, experience has shown that transferring knowledge, whether at the individual, group, product line, department, or division level, is usually a laborious, time-consuming, and difficult task. In this article, we review 20 recent empirical studies on knowledge transfer and suggest a fourstage process model to summarize and organize their findings. This resulted in a framework where determinants for success at each stage of the knowledge transfer process are defined. Based on this knowledge transfer framework, we propose a knowledge transfer management system that integrates current knowledge management tools and technologies to support the needs at different stages of the knowledge transfer process.
The Critical Role of Information Processing in Creating an Effective Knowledge Organization
Authors: King William R.
Published: May 2011

This article provides a conceptual framework and an architecture for an effective knowledge organization (EKO) that emphasizes the important role of information processing in facilitating the creation of a dynamic knowledge capability, which is the essence of an EKO. The architecture links core knowledge management, intellectual property management, organizational learning, and innovation modules with information processing as the hub, or linchpin. The organization’s need to distinguish among these components of an EKO is argued by comparing and contrasting the conceptual bases, objectives, processes, systems, performance measures, and culture of each module. This EKO viewpoint integrates many concepts and applications from various literatures, but it is somewhat contrary to the conventional wisdom that has tended to de-emphasize the significance of information technology in knowledge management.
A GIS-Based Interactive Database System for Planning Purposes
Authors: Al-Hanbali Nedal , Sadoun Balqies
Published: May 2011

Decision making in planning should consider state-of-the-art techniques in order to minimize the risk and time involved. Proper planning in developing countries is crucial for their economical recovery and prosperity. Proper database systems, such as the ones based on GIS, are a must for developing countries so that they can catch up and build effective and interactive systems in order to modernize their infrastructures and to help improve the standard of living of their citizens. The huge and fast advancement in computing and information technology make it easy for the developing countries to build their database infrastructures. GIS-technology is one of the best and fastest tools to build such systems, manage resources, encourage businesses, and help to make efficient and cost-effective decisions.
SQL Code Poisoning
Authors: Tzouramanis Theodoros
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on the SQL code poisoning attack. It presents various ways in which a Web database can be poisoned by malicious SQL code, which can result in the compromise of the system. Subsequently, techniques are described for the detection of SQL code poisoning and a number of lockdown issues that are related to this type of attack are discussed. This chapter also reviews security mechanisms and software tools that protect Web applications against unexpected data input by users; against alterations of the database structure; and against the corruption of data and the disclosure of private and confidential information, all of which are owed to the susceptibility of these applications to this form of attack.
A Multiple-Bits Watermark for Relational Data
Authors: Li Yingjiu , Guo Huiping , Wang Shuhong
Published: May 2011

At the heart of the information economy, commercially and publicly useful databases must be sufficiently protected from pirated copying. Complementary to the Database Protection Act, database watermarking techniques are designed to thwart pirated copying by embedding ownerspecific information into databases so that the ownership of pirated copies of protected databases can be claimed if the embedded information is detected. This article presents a robust watermarking scheme for embedding a multiple-bits watermark to numerical attributes in database relations. The scheme is robust in the sense that it provides an upper bound for the probability that a valid watermark is detected from unmarked data, or a fictitious secret key is discovered from pirated data. This upper bound is independent of the size of the data. The scheme is extended to database relations without primary-key attributes to thwart attribute-related attacks. The scheme is also extended to multiple watermarks for defending additive attacks and for proving joint ownership.
Association Rule Hiding Methods
Authors: Verykios Vassilios S.
Published: May 2011

The enormous expansion of data collection and storage facilities has created an unprecedented increase in the need for data analysis and processing power. Data mining has long been the catalyst for automated and sophisticated data analysis and interrogation. Recent advances in data mining and knowledge discovery have generated controversial impact in both scientific and technological arenas. On the one hand, data mining is capable of analyzing vast amounts of information within a minimum amount of time, an analysis that has exceeded the expectations of even the most imaginative scientists of the last decade. On the other hand, the excessive processing power of intelligent algorithms which is brought with this new research area puts at risk sensitive and confidential information that resides in large and distributed data stores.
Looking for Information in Fuzzy Relational Databases Accessible Via Web
Authors: Martínez-Cruz Carmen , Blanco Ignacio José , Vila Maria Amparo
Published: May 2011

The Semantic Web has resulted in a wide range of information (e.g., HML, XML, DOC, PDF documents, ontologies, interfaces, forms, etc.) being made available in semantic queries, and the only requirement is that these are described semantically. Generic Web interfaces for querying databases (such as ISQLPlus ©) are also part of the Semantic Web, but they cannot be semantically described, and they provide access to one or many databases. In this chapter, we will highlight the importance of using ontologies to represent database schemas so that they are easier to access. The representation of the fuzzy data in fuzzy databases management systems (FDBMS) has certain special requirements, and these characteristics must be explicitly defined to enable this kind of information to be accessed. In addition, we will present an ontology which allows the fuzzy structure of a fuzzy database schema to be represented so that fuzzy data from FDBMS can also be available in the Semantic Web.
Deterministic Motif Mining in Protein Databases
Authors: Ferreira Pedro Gabriel , Azevedo Paulo Jorge
Published: May 2011

Protein sequence motifs describe, through means of enhanced regular expression syntax, regions of amino acids that have been conserved across several functionally related proteins. These regions may have an implication at the structural and functional level of the proteins. Sequence motif analysis can bring significant improvements towards a better understanding of the protein sequence- structure-function relation. In this chapter, we review the subject of mining deterministic motifs from protein sequence databases. We start by giving a formal definition of the different types of motifs and the respective specificities. Then, we explore the methods available to evaluate the quality and interest of such patterns. Examples of applications and motif repositories are described. We discuss the algorithmic aspects and different methodologies for motif extraction. A brief description on how sequence motifs can be used to extract structural level information patterns is also provided.
Mining Allocating Patterns in Investment Portfolios
Authors: Wang Yanbo J. , Zheng Xinwei , Coenen Frans
Published: May 2011

An association rule (AR) is a common type of mined knowledge in data mining that describes an implicative co-occurring relationship between two sets of binary-valued transaction-database attributes, expressed in the form of an ? rule. A variation of ARs is the (WARs), which addresses the weighting issue in ARs. In this chapter, the authors introduce the concept of “one-sum” WAR and name such WARs as allocating patterns (ALPs). An algorithm is proposed to extract hidden and interesting ALPs from data. The authors further indicate that ALPs can be applied in portfolio management. Firstly by modelling a collection of investment portfolios as a one-sum weighted transaction-database that contains hidden ALPs. Secondly the authors show that ALPs, mined from the given portfolio-data, can be applied to guide future investment activities. The experimental results show good performance that demonstrates the effectiveness of using ALPs in the proposed application.
A Framework for Communicability of Software Documentation
Authors: Kamthan Pankaj
Published: May 2011

The role of communication is central to any software development. The documentation forms the message carrier within the communication infrastructure of a software project. As software development processes shift from predictive to adaptive environments and serve an ever more hardware diverse demographic, new communication challenges arise. For example, an engineer may want to be able to remotely author a document in a shell environment without the need of any special purpose software, port it to different computer architectures, and provide different views of it to users without making modifications to the original. However, the current state of affairs of software documentation is inadequate to respond to such expectations.
Mining Software Specifications
Authors: Lo David , Khoo Siau-Cheng
Published: May 2011

Software is a ubiquitous component in our daily life. It ranges from large software systems like operating systems to small embedded systems like vending machines, both of which we frequently interact with. Reducing software related costs and ensuring correctness and dependability of software are certainly worthwhile goals to pursue. Due to the short-time-to-market requirement imposed on many software projects, documented software specifications are often lacking, incomplete and outdated (Deelstra, Sinnema & Bosch 2004). Lack of documented software specifications contributes to difficulties in understanding existing systems. The latter is termed program comprehension and is estimated to contribute up to 45% of total software cost which goes to billions of dollars (Erlikh 2000, Standish 1984; Canfora & Cimitile 2002; BEA 2007). Lack of specifications also hampers automated effort of program verification and testing (Ammons, Bodik & Larus 2002).
Human-Centered Design of a Semantically Enabled Knowledge Management System for Agile Software Engineering
Authors: Höcht Christian , Rech Jörg
Published: May 2011

Developing human-engineered systems is considered as a challenge that addresses a wide area of expertise; computer scientists as well as social scientists. These experts have to work together closely in teams in order to build intelligent systems to support agile software development. The methodology developed in the RISE project enables and supports the design of human-centered knowledge-sharing platforms, such as Wikis based on standards in the field of education science. The project “RISE” (Reuse In Software Engineering) is part of the research program “Software Engineering 2006” funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). The goal was to improve the reuse of artifacts in software engineering, and brought together researchers from education science (The Department of Educational Sciences and Professional Development at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern) and computer science (Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)) with industrial partners (Empolis GmbH and brainbot technologies AG). This chapter gives an overview about the human-centered design of Wiki-based knowledge and learning management systems in software engineering projects, and raises several requirements one should keep in mind when building human-centered systems to support knowledge and learning management.
Decision Rule for Investment in Frameworks of Reuse
Authors: Gelbard Roy
Published: May 2011

Reuse helps to decrease development time, code errors, and code units. Therefore, it serves to improve quality and productivity frameworks in software development. The question is not HOW to make the code reusable, but WHICH amount of software components would be most beneficial, that is, cost-effective in terms of reuse, and WHAT method should be used to decide whether to make a component reusable or not. If we had unlimited time and resources, we could write any code unit in a reusable way. In other words, its reusability would be 100%. However, in real life, resources are limited and there are clear deadlines to be met. Given these constraints, decisions regarding reusability are not always straightforward. The current research focuses on decision-making rules for investing in reuse frameworks. It attempts to determine the parameters, which should be taken into account in decisions relating to degrees of reusability. Two new models are presented for decision-making relating to reusability: (i) a restricted model and (ii) a non-restricted model. Decisions made by using these models are then analyzed and discussed.
Design Diagrams as Ontological Sources
Authors: Kannan Kalapriya , Srivastava Biplav
Published: May 2011

Ontology is a basic building block for the semantic web. An active line of research in semantic web is focused on how to build and evolve ontologies using the information from different ontological sources inherent in the domain. A large part of the IT industry uses software engineering methodologies to build software solutions that solve real-world problems. For them, instead of creating solutions from scratch, reusing previously built software as much as possible is a business-imperative today. As part of their projects, they use design diagrams to capture various facets of the software development process. We discuss how semantic web technologies can help solutionbuilding organizations achieve software reuse by first learning ontologies from design diagrams of existing solutions and then using them to create design diagrams for new solutions. Our technique, called OntExtract, extracts domain ontology information (entities and their relationship(s)) from class diagrams and further refines the extracted information using diagrams that express dynamic interactions among entities such as sequence diagram. A proof of concept implementations is also developed as a Plug-in over a commercial development environment IBM’s Rational Software Architect.
Evolution in Model-Driven Software Product-Line Architectures
Authors: Deng Gan , Gray Jeff , Schmidt Douglas C. , Lin Yuehua , Gokhale Aniruddha , Lenz Gunther
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes our approach to modeldriven engineering (MDE)-based product line architectures (PLAs) and presents a solution to address the domain evolution problem. We use a case study of a representative software-intensive system from the distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems domain to describe key challenges when facing domain evolution and how we can evolve PLAs systematically and minimize human intervention. The approach uses a mature metamodeling tool to define a modeling language in the representative DRE domain, and applies a model transformation tool to specify model-tomodel transformation rules that precisely define metamodel and domain model changes. Our approach automates many tedious, time consuming, and error-prone tasks of model-to-model transformation, thus significantly reducing the complexity of PLA evolution.
Integrated Software Testing Learning Environment for Training Senior-Level Computer Science Students
Authors: Bolanos Daniel , Sierra Almudena
Published: May 2011

Due to the increasingly important role of software testing in software quality assurance, during the last several years, the utilization of automated testing tools, and particularly those belonging to the xUnit family, has proven to be invaluable. However, as the number of resources available continues increasing, the complexity derived from the selection and integration of the most relevant software testing principles, techniques and tools into an adequate learning environment for training computer science students in software testing, increases too. In this chapter we introduce a experience of teaching Software Testing for a senior-level course. In the elaboration of the course a wide variety of testing techniques, methodologies and tools have been selected and seamlessly integrated. An evaluation of students performance during the three academic years that the course has been held show that students’ attitudes changed with a high or at least a positive statistical significance.
A Survey of Object-Oriented Design Quality Improvement
Authors: Olmedilla Juan José
Published: May 2011

The use of object-oriented (OO) architecture knowledge such as patterns, heuristics, principles, refactorings and bad smells improve the quality of designs, as Garzás and Piattini (2005) state in their study; according to it, the application of those elements impact on the quality of an OO design and can serve as basis to establish some kind of software design improvement (SDI) method. But how can we measure the level of improvement? Is there a set of accepted internal attributes to measure the quality of a design? Furthermore, if such a set exists will it be possible to use a measurement model to guide the SDI in the same way software processimprovement models (Humphrey, 1989; Paulk, Curtis, Chrissis, & Weber, 1993) are guided by process metrics (Fenton & Pfleeger, 1998)? Since (Chidamber & Kemerer, 1991) several OO metrics suites have been proposed to measure OO properties, such as encapsulation, cohesion, coupling and abstraction, both in designs and in code, in this chapter we review the literature to find out to which high level quality properties are mapped and if an OO design evaluation model has been formally proposed or even is possible.
Deductive Semantics of RTPA
Authors: Wang Yingxu
Published: May 2011

Deductive semantics is a novel software semantic theory that deduces the semantics of a program in a given programming language from a unique abstract semantic function to the concrete semantics embodied by the changes of status of a finite set of variables constituting the semantic environment of the program. There is a lack of a generic semantic function and its unified mathematical model in conventional semantics, which may be used to explain a comprehensive set of programming statements and computing behaviors. This article presents a complete paradigm of formal semantics that explains how deductive semantics is applied to specify the semantics of real-time process algebra (RTPA) and how RTPA challenges conventional formal semantic theories. Deductive semantics can be applied to define abstract and concrete semantics of programming languages, formal notation systems, and large-scale software systems, to facilitate software comprehension and recognition, to support tool development, to enable semantics-based software testing and verification, and to explore the semantic complexity of software systems. Deductive semantics may greatly simplify the description and analysis of the semantics of complicated software systems specified in formal notations and implemented in programming languages.
Examining Open Source Software Licenses through the Creative Commons Licensing Model
Authors: Lin Kwei-Jay , Lin Yi-Hsuan , Ko Tung-Mei
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the authors present a novel perspective by using the Creative Commons (CC) licensing model to compare 10 commonly used OSS licenses. The authors also propose a license compatibility table to show that whether it is possible to combine OSS with CC-licensed open content in a creative work. By using the CC licensing concept to interpret OSS licenses, the authors hope that users can get a deeper understanding on the ideas and issues behind many of the OSS licenses. In addition, the authors hope that by means of this table, users can make a better decision on the license selection while combining open source with CC-licensed works.
Exploring the Effects of Process Characteristics on Products Quality in Open Source Software Development
Authors: Koch Stefan , Neumann Christian
Published: May 2011

There has been considerable discussion on the possible impacts of open source software development practices, especially in regard to the quality of the resulting software product. Recent studies have shown that analyzing data from source code repositories is an efficient way to gather information about project characteristics and programmers, showing that OSS projects are very heterogeneous in their team structures and software processes. However, one problem is that the resulting process metrics measuring attributes of the development process and of the development environment do not give any hints about the quality, complexity, or structure of the resulting software. Therefore, we expanded the analysis by calculating several product metrics, most of them specifically tailored to object-oriented software. We then analyzed the relationship between these product metrics and process metrics derived from a CVS repository. The aim was to establish whether different variants of open source development processes have a significant impact on the resulting software products. In particular we analyzed the impact on quality and design associated with the numbers of contributors and the amount of their work, using the GINI coefficient as a measure of inequality within the developer group.
On Concept Algebra
Authors: Wang Yingxu
Published: May 2011

Concepts are the most fundamental unit of cognition that carries certain meanings in expression, thinking, reasoning, and system modeling. In denotational mathematics, a concept is formally modeled as an abstract and dynamic mathematical structure that encapsulates attributes, objects, and relations. The most important property of an abstract concept is its adaptive capability to autonomously interrelate itself to other concepts. This article presents a formal theory for abstract concepts and knowledge manipulation known as “concept algebra.” The mathematical models of concepts and knowledge are developed based on the object-attribute-relation (OAR) theory. The formal methodology for manipulating knowledge as a concept network is described. Case studies demonstrate that concept algebra provides a generic and formal knowledge manipulation means, which is capable to deal with complex knowledge and software structures as well as their algebraic operations.
On System Algebra
Authors: Wang Yingxu
Published: May 2011

Systems are the most complicated entities and phenomena in abstract, physical, information, and social worlds across all science and engineering disciplines. System algebra is an abstract mathematical structure for the formal treatment of abstract and general systems as well as their algebraic relations, operations, and associative rules for composing and manipulating complex systems. This article presents a mathematical theory of system algebra and its applications in cognitive informatics, system engineering, software engineering, and cognitive informatics. A rigorous treatment of abstract systems is described, and the algebraic relations and compositional operations of abstract systems are analyzed. System algebra provides a denotational mathematical means that can be used to model, specify, and manipulate generic “to be” and “to have” type problems, particularly system architectures and high-level system designs, in computing, software engineering, system engineering, and cognitive informatics.
An Operational Semantics of Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA)
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Ngolah Cyprian F.
Published: May 2011

The need for new forms of mathematics to express software engineering concepts and entities has been widely recognized. Real-time process algebra (RTPA) is a denotational mathematical structure and a system modeling methodology for describing the architectures and behaviors of real-time and nonreal-time software systems. This article presents an operational semantics of RTPA, which explains how syntactic constructs in RTPA can be reduced to values on an abstract reduction machine. The operational semantics of RTPA provides a comprehensive paradigm of formal semantics that establishes an entire set of operational semantic rules of software. RTPA has been successfully applied in real-world system modeling and code generation for software systems, human cognitive processes, and intelligent systems.
Constructing Mobile Technology-Enabled Environments for an Integrated Learning Approach
Authors: Felisa Verdejo María , Celorrio Carlos , Julio Lorenzo Emilio , Millán Marta , Prades Sergio , Vélez Javier
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a review of the approach, design and implementation of the networked educational infrastructure of the ENLACE project that supports ubiquitous learning processes. The design phase in ENLACE was conceived based on a Learning Object Repository and the learning tools are presented as well as the approach for integrating these tools into the networking infrastructure. Considerations about the evaluation and the evolution of the system are also discussed.
A Semantic Web-Based Information Integration Approach for an Agent-Based Electronic Market
Authors: João Viamonte Maria
Published: May 2011

With the increasing importance of e-commerce across the Internet, the need for software agents to support both customers and suppliers in buying and selling goods/services is growing rapidly. It is becoming increasingly evident that in a few years the Internet will host a large number of interacting software agents. Most of them will be economically motivated, and will negotiate a variety of goods and services. It is therefore important to consider the economic incentives and behaviours of e-commerce software agents, and to use all available means to anticipate their collective interactions. Even more fundamental than these issues, however, is the very nature of the various actors that are involved in e-commerce transactions. This leads to different conceptualizations of the needs and capabilities, giving rise to semantic incompatibilities between them. Ontologies have an important role in Multi-Agent Systems communication and provide a vocabulary to be used in the communication between agents. It is hard to find two agents using precisely the same vocabulary. They usually have a heterogeneous private vocabulary defined in their own private ontology. In order to provide help in the conversation among different agents, we are proposing what we call ontology-services to facilitate agents’ interoperability. More specifically, we propose an ontology-based information integration approach, exploiting the ontology mapping paradigm, by aligning consumer needs and the market capacities, in a semi-automatic mode. We propose a new approach for the combination of the use of agent-based electronic markets based on Semantic Web technology, improved by the application and exploitation of the information and trust relationships captured by the social networks.