bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Decision Support Systems and their Application in Construction
Authors: Abdou Alaa , Radaideh Moh’d , Lewis John
Published: May 2011

Decisions are activities that we face and deal with every day. Decision support systems are used to support and improve decision making. They help people make better and faster decisions than they could make themselves. The construction industry witnessed a growth in the application of knowledge-based expert systems in the eighties and early nineties, followed by the application of fuzzy, artificial neural networks and hybrid (integrated) systems. Potential applications of the Internet in the construction industry have generated many research projects recently. The purpose of this chapter is to understand decision support systems and their basic technologies, and to review their application in the construction industry. The construction industry is rapidly realising the need to integrate information technology and artificial intelligence into its processes in order to remain competitive.
Impacts of the Digital Economy
Authors: Mowatt Simon
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines changes in innovation and competition made possible in two traditional industries by the adoption of integrated information and communication technologies. Using empirical interview-based research the chapter highlights the importance of consumer-driven innovation. The development of complex innovation networks to supply consumer needs is demonstrated using two example sectors, the UK magazine publishing and grocery retailing industries. The innovation process is outlined in detail and the importance of linkages to the end-consumer and market experts is acknowledged. In addition, this chapter offers the concept of “life-span” goods as those developed from the outset as having a short life dependent on changing consumer tastes and fashions. Within this environment firms act more as project orchestrators, using core skills in developing innovation teams based on a deep knowledge of consumer activities. Finally the chapter concludes by examining the challenge to economic analysis and to the theory of the firm provided by shifting and temporary alliances.
An E-Classification of the World's Capital Cities
Authors: Brunn Stanley D.
Published: May 2011

The world’s capital cities perform various political functions for their populations, contain embassies, consulates, and missions of other governments, and serve as headquarters for major corporations, cultural, and humanitarian organizations. While social scientists have classified major cities based on population size, number of corporate headquarters, banks, and airline connections, the emergence of ICTs suggests additional criteria. I use the number of URL references to Web sites listed in the Google search engine for 199 world capitals and classify them into five distinct categories. Small, prosperous city-states and major capitals in Western Europe and North America have the most hyperlinks. The fewest are for capitals in poor, rural Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Capitals with multiple government offices, strong ICT economies and dominant tourist economies have the most hyperlinks per capita. These are mostly in wealthy Europe and North America. The lowest values are among African and Asian capitals in poor countries and those with repressive regimes. Major news items, embassy, financial, and tourism information are major themes on web pages. Additional research topics are suggested.
Reengineering Legacy Systems Towards Web Environments
Authors: Zou Ying , Kontogiannis Kostas
Published: May 2011

With the widespread use of the Web, distributed object technologies have been widely adopted to construct network-centric architectures, using XML, Web Services, CORBA, and DCOM. Organizations would like to take advantage of the Web in its various forms of Internet, Intranet and Extranets. This requires organizations to port and integrate their legacy assets to distributed Web-enabled environments, so that the functionality of existing legacy systems can be leveraged without having to rebuild these systems. In this chapter, we provide techniques to re-engineer standalone legacy systems into Web-enabled environments. Specifically, we aim for a framework that allows for the identification of reusable business logic entities in large legacy systems in the form of major legacy components, the migration of these procedural components to an object-oriented design, the specification of interfaces of these identified components, the automatic generation of CORBA wrappers to enable remote access, and finally, the seamless interoperation with Web services via HTTP based on the SOAP messaging mechanism.
Evolution and Maintenance of Web Sites
Authors: Capilla Rafael , Duenas Juan C.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we describe the product line models, and show how to apply them for developing and evolving Web products. A product line captures the common and variable aspects of software systems as key assets under a common architecture. Software companies are increasingly adopting this approach in order to accelerate the development of families of similar software products. In certain domains, such as the Web systems, development and maintenance operations are required more often. New techniques to engineer Web sites are needed in order to reduce the time to market for the Web products and to maintain the systems afterward. The authors believe that understanding the notion of lightweight product line and the role that the architecture plays will help software engineers in the construction of software products, and they will be able to manage the evolution effectively against future changes.
Social Oracles as Advertising Tools in Programmable Businesses
Authors: Flor Nick V.
Published: May 2011

A social oracle is a particular kind of software agent that outputs social information. The information provided by a social oracle is typically for entertainment purposes and not necessarily genuine. But irrespective of the veracity of its information, a social oracle can also be a highly-effective, virtually no-cost advertising tool for businesses. This chapter analyzes the use of social oracles as advertising tools in one of the largest community forums on the Internet: yesnomaybe.com, which is also a special kind of business known as a programmable autonomous business. Using representational analysis techniques from the field of distributed cognition, the chapter argues that social oracles are effective advertising tools not because they provide entertaining social information, but rather because they are based on common social processes where individuals freely share information with one another. By mediating the communication of such processes with information technology, they can be adapted into low cost, direct-response advertising mechanisms. The chapter concludes by outlining how processes similar to those underlying social oracles can be adapted into product oracles for advertising the products of more conventional (non-programmable) businesses.
Constraints on Conceptual Join Paths
Authors: Halpin Terry
Published: May 2011

To ensure that a software system accurately reflects the business domain that it models, the system needs to enforce the business rules (constraints and derivation rules) that apply to that domain. From a conceptual modeling perspective, many application domains involve constraints over one or more conceptual schema paths that include one or more conceptual joins (where the same conceptual object plays roles in two relationships). Popular information modeling approaches typically provide only weak support for such conceptual join constraints. This chapter contrasts how these join constraints are catered for in object-role modeling (ORM), the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the Object-oriented Systems Model (OSM), and some popular versions of entity-relationship (ER) modeling. Three main problems for rich support for join constraints are identified: disambiguation of schema paths, disambiguation of join types, and mapping of join constraints to implementation code. To address these problems, some notational, metamodel, and mapping extensions are proposed.
An Overview of SAP Technology
Authors: Lau Linda K.
Published: May 2011

This chapter commences with a brief description of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), follows by a description of SAP, the largest enterprise software provider in the world. The timeline of activities since its inception in 1972 are summarized in a table. SAP’s flagship software program, the R/3 system, is portrayed in more detail. The capabilities of the R/3 system, the three-tier client/server technology it employs, its hardware and software, and several problems associated with its implementation and use are discussed. The two R/3 implementation tools – namely, the Accelerated SAP and the Ready to Run systems – are also described.
B2E SAP Portals
Authors: Stein Andrew , Hawking Paul , Wyld David C.
Published: May 2011

The global ERP industry that blossomed in the 1990’s automating back office operations has made moves to introduce a “second wave” of functionality in ERP systems. In 2002/3 there was an expanded focus on mysap.com, small to medium enterprises and the expansion into “second wave” products. Companies around the world are exploring various Internet business models to evaluate their business potential and risk implications and a number of companies have realized the relatively quick gains with low associated risks that can be achieved through the business-to-employee (B2E) model. Employee Self Service (ESS) is a solution based on this model that enables employee’s access to the corporate human resource information system, and Australian companies are increasingly implementing this solution. This chapter presents the findings of a research project that looks at the changing nature of Human Resources (HR) in modern organisations and the development of an HR ESS portal in a major Australian organisation.
ERP II & Change Management
Authors: Hawking Paul , Foster Susan , Stein Andrew
Published: May 2011

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have become an essential information systems infrastructure for large organisations. Organisations are now looking for ways to leverage their ERP investment by introducing new functionality; however, no matter how many implementations these companies have undertaken the same people issues still provide barriers. This research looks at the change management practices of Australian companies and identifies the main success factors and barriers associated with implementing change management strategies. The chapter presents the results of a survey of 35 major Australian organisations that have implemented an ERP system. Many of these organisations have long histories of ERP usage and multiple ERP implementations and upgrades. The main findings indicate that the respondents considered change management crucial to successful ERP implementations, yet their organisations did not perform change management very well. The main success factor to change management was provision of adequate resources, with the main barrier being lack of communication up and down the organisation.
Object-Relational Spatial Indexing
Authors: Kriegel Hans-Peter , Pfeifle Martin , Potke Marco , Seidl Thomas , Enderle Jost
Published: May 2011

In order to generate efficient execution plans for queries comprising spatial data types and predicates, the database system has to be equipped with appropriate index structures, query processing methods and optimization rules. Although available extensible indexing frameworks provide a gateway for seamless integration of spatial access methods into the standard process of query optimization and execution, they do not facilitate the actual implementation of the spatial access method. An internal enhancement of the database kernel is usually not an option for database developers. The embedding of a custom, block-oriented index structure into concurrency control, recovery services and buffer management would cause extensive implementation efforts and maintenance cost, at the risk of weakening the reliability of the entire system. The server stability can be preserved by delegating index operations to an external process, but this approach induces severe performance bottlenecks due to context switches and inter-process communication. Therefore, we present the paradigm of object-relational spatial access methods that perfectly fits to the common relational data model, and is highly compatible with the extensible indexing frameworks of existing object-relational database systems, allowing the user to define application-specific access methods.
Indexing Multi-Dimensional Trajectories for Similarity Queries
Authors: Valachos Michail , Hadjieleftheriou Marios , Keogh Eamonn , Gunopulos Dimitrios
Published: May 2011

With the abundance of low-cost storage devices, a plethora of applications that store and manage very large multi-dimensional trajectories (or time-series) datasets have emerged recently. Examples include traffic supervision systems, video surveillance applications, meteorology and more. Thus, it is becoming essential to provide a robust trajectory indexing framework designed especially for performing similarity queries in such applications. In this regard, this chapter presents an indexing scheme that can support a wide variety of (user-customizable) distance measures while, at the same time, it guarantees retrieval of similar trajectories with accuracy and efficiency.
Simple and Incremental Nearest-Neighbor Search in Spatio-Temporal Databases
Authors: Raptopoulou Katerina , Papadopoulos Apostolos N. , Manolopoulos Yannis
Published: May 2011

The efficient processing of nearest-neighbor queries in databases of moving objects is considered very important for applications such as fleet management, traffic control, digital battlefields and more. Such applications have been rapidly spread due to the fact that mobile computing and wireless technologies nowadays are ubiquitous. This chapter presents important aspects towards simple and incremental nearest-neighbor search for spatio-temporal databases. More specifically, we describe the algorithms that have already been proposed for simple and incremental nearest neighbor queries and present a new algorithm regarding that issue. Finally, we study the problem of keeping a query consistent in the presence of insertions, deletions and updates of moving objects.
Mining in Spatio-Temporal Databases
Authors: Wang Junmei , Hsu Wynne , Lee Mong Li
Published: May 2011

Recent interest in spatio-temporal applications has been fueled by the need to discover and predict complex patterns that occur when we observe the behavior of objects in the three-dimensional space of time and spatial coordinates. Although the complex and intrinsic relationships among the spatio-temporal data limit the usefulness of conventional data mining techniques to discover the patterns in the spatio-temporal databases, they also lead to opportunities for mining new classes of patterns in spatio-temporal databases. This chapter provides a survey of the work done for mining patterns in spatial databases and temporal databases, and the preliminary work for mining patterns in spatio-temporal databases. We highlight the unique challenges of mining interesting patterns in spatio-temporal databases. We also describe two special types of spatio-temporal patterns: location-sensitive sequence patterns and geographical features for location-based service patterns.
Infrastructure Support for Smart Organizations
Authors: Bertok Peter , Xu Xinjian
Published: May 2011

In a rapidly changing world, continuous adoption of new practices is crucial for survival; organizations embracing the latest technologies have a competitive edge. Smart organizations readily take on board new organizational forms and practices, those in particular that offer agility and responsiveness. The Internet and the World Wide Web offer a new way of collaboration via Web services, but heterogeneity of different service components make cooperation difficult. This chapter describes a new approach to combine Web services by employing a layered structure, in which composition of a value-added service can be built from individual components, and each service component can have semantically equivalent but syntactically different alternatives.
Reaching Students of Many Languages and Cultures
Authors: Yoshii Rika , Bork Alfred , Milne Alastair , Katada Fusa , Zhang Felicia
Published: May 2011

To address the global problems of learning, we must make our development strategies ready to support the many different languages and cultures in the world. This chapter discusses how the Irvine-Geneva development strategy supports, and can be made to support further, development of global materials. We will first discuss essential characteristics of the kind of learning software that will successfully address global education. We will then discuss our design and translation strategies for current software with those characteristics, the tools we have developed for facilitating them, and our implementation strategies. We will end our discussion with linguistics issues related to globalization in general.
Designing for Learning in Narrative Multimedia Environments
Authors: Gjedde Lisa
Published: May 2011

Narrative is fundamental for learning and the construction of meaning. In the design of interactive learning programs, the need for narrative is often neglected, and the emphasis is on information design rather than the design of experiential learning environments. This chapter presents research related to the development of two prototypes of narrative interactive multimedia learning environments, from an experiential and situated learning perspective and proposes a model for a narrative learning process, related to a situated and experiential learning perspective.
Causal Mapping
Authors: Narayanan V. K.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, I provide an historical overview of the use of causal mapping, and its migration from political science to organization theory, and more recently into research efforts in Information Technology (IT). Since this migration has brought in its wake a diversity of perspectives and approaches, a secondary objective of this chapter is to sketch this diversity. I discuss the diversity in perspectives, research contexts and focus. Three perspectives (social constructionist, objectivist, and expert-anchored), four research contexts (discovery, hypothesis testing, evocative and intervention) and three types of foci (content, structure and behavior) are summarized.
Belief Function Approach to Evidential Reasoning in Causal Maps
Authors: Srivastava Rajendra P. , Buche Mari W. , Roberts Tom L.
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the use of the evidential reasoning approach under the Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory of belief functions to analyze revealed causal maps (RCM). The participants from information technology (IT) organizations provided the concepts to describe the target phenomenon of Job Satisfaction. They also identified the associations between the concepts. This chapter discusses the steps necessary to transform a causal map into an evidential diagram. The evidential diagram can then be analyzed using belief functions technique with survey data, thereby extending the research from a discovery and explanation stage to testing and prediction. An example is provided to demonstrate these steps. This chapter also provides the basics of Dempster-Shafer theory of belief functions and a step-by-step description of the propagation process of beliefs in tree-like evidential diagrams.
The Geographical Edge
Authors: Allaway Arthur W. , Murphy Lisa D. , Berkowitz David K.
Published: May 2011

This chapter demonstrates important insights gained by adding spatial capabilities to marketing analyses. Four steps are described to produce a geographically enabled data set of the first year’s daily use for a major retailer’s loyalty card program at one store in a mid-western U.S. city. Traditional analysis is contrasted with results from a geographic information system (GIS). Probabilities of adoption were clearly tied to the geographic variables generated by the GIS; for example, over the whole year, the likelihood of someone adopting on a given day decreased 13.4% for each mile they resided away from the store, while each Innovator (adopted in the first two days) located within .6 mile of a prospective adopter increased adoption likelihood by 13.2%. Further, three very distinct spatial diffusion stages are visible showing adoption as a function of distance to the store itself, to the billboards, and to the earliest adopters.
Isobord's Geographic Information System Solution
Authors: Neufeld Derrick J. , Griffith Scott
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a case study of Isobord1, a Canadian manufacturer of high quality particleboard that uses straw instead of wood as the main raw material input. Isobord is facing critical operational problems that threaten its future. Gary Schmeichel, a biotechnology consultant hired by Isobord, must recommend how much straw collection equipment to purchase and what kind of information technology to acquire to help manage equipment dispatch operations. Schmeichel is exploring how geographic information systems (GIS) and relational database management systems (RDBMS) might help manage operations, but budget and time constraints and organizational inexperience seriously threaten these efforts. Decisions must be made immediately if there is to be any hope of implementing a system to manage the first year’s straw harvest. Readers are challenged to put themselves in Schmeichel’s shoes and prepare recommendations for Isobord.
Virtual Enterprise Integration
Authors: Putnik Goran D. , Cunha Maria M. , Sousa Rui , Avila Paulo
Published: May 2011

Virtual enterprise integration (VEI) is virtually the most critical success factor for making virtual enterprise (VE) a real, competitive, and widely implemented organizational and management concept. However, according to many authors, the present solutions for VEI are either insufficient or inexistent. One of the reasons for the situation is the failure of the approach of “traditional” information systems and organizations to dealing with the nowadays turbulent market and organizations’ requirements, where actual VEI solutions are mainly sought. This chapter presents a discussion on the VEI issue as a contribution to a better understanding of the VEI phenomenon, and it could be seen as a contribution to an eventual framework for VEI science, engineering, development, and implementation. Also, two metatheoretical structures for VEI research and development are proposed: VEI abstractions hierarchy and VEI semiotics.
BM_Virtual Enterprise
Authors: Putnik Goran D , Cunha Maria M. , Sousa Rui , Avila Paulo
Published: May 2011

BM_virtual enterprise (BM_VE) is a virtual enterprise (VE) in a total or partial conformance with the BM_virtual enterprise architecture reference model (BM_VEARM). BM_VE is a kind of VE characterized as a dynamically reconfigurable network integrated over the global domain, satisfying the requirements for integrability, distributivity, agility, and virtuality as competitiveness factors. BM_VE uses three main mechanisms, or tools: market of resources, broker, and virtuality. This chapter presents the three fundamental mechanisms for the VE reconfiguration dynamics and virtuality; introduces the basic concept of the BM_VEARM, which serves as the conceptual and formal base for building BM_VE instances; shows the formal specification and theory of the structural aspects of the BM_VE as well as some aspects of the BM_VE reconfiguration dynamics; presents the BM_VE as an agile/virtual enterprise (A/VE); and finally, describes some important consequences of virtuality in BM_VE, i.e., that the BM_VE structure is hierarchical, a new definition of the VE (in which the network as the VE characteristic is irrelevant from the operational unit’s point of view), and the process of a “traditional” enterprise virtualization.
Semantic Distance, the Next Step?
Authors: Goranson Ted
Published: May 2011

Enterprise integration has, in the past, focused on strategies for complete harmonization of various dimensions using collected technologies and techniques. The virtual enterprise case presents us, almost by definition, with cases where preharmonized infrastructure is neither feasible nor desirable. Through international workshops, the community has identified a next-generation strategy for how to measure the imperfections in integration that will be encountered. Presumably, a new class of tools and strategies will emerge. The idea is still very early in its life. This chapter presents a snapshot of early conclusions. One proposal of a strategy is outlined.
Online Group Projects
Authors: Taylor Valerie
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on group projects in online learning and outlines lesson modules for teaching online instructors to use group projects in their courses. The lessons themselves are structured to be an example of online staff development for distance learning faculty. While group projects are often included in on-campus classes, faculty teaching online courses are reluctant to use group projects for these classes. The technology and the students’ acceptance of the online learning environment should be used to extend the pedagogical benefits of group work. With adequate staff development, online instructors can successfully integrate group learning into online classes.
A Constructivist Framework for Online Collaborative Learning
Authors: Stacey Elizabeth
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this chapter is to review and discuss theoretical perspectives that help to frame collaborative learning online. The chapter investigates literature about the type of learning and behavior that are anticipated and researched among participants learning collaboratively and discusses how these attributes explain computer-supported collaborative learning. The literature about learning is influenced by perspectives from a number of fields, particularly philosophy, psychology, and sociology. This chapter describes some of these perspectives from the fields of cognitive psychology, adult learning, and collaborative group learning. Recent research into computer-supported collaborative learning that applies these theories will also be discussed.
Use and Mis-Use of Technology for Online, Asynchronous, Collaborative Learning
Authors: Klemm W.R.
Published: May 2011

Online learners are typically considered to be isolated learners, except for occasional opportunities to post views on an electronic bulletin board. This is not the team orientation that is so central to collaborative learning (CL) theory. Why does formal CL receive so little attention in online instruction? First, the teachers who do value CL generally are traditional educators and not involved in online instruction. Second, online teachers often have little understanding or appreciation for the formalisms of CL. In this chapter, electronic bulletin boards, although universally used, are shown to provide poor support for Collaborative Learning. As a better alternative, shared-document conferencing environments that allow learning teams to create academic deliverables are discussed. Finally, examples are given of well-known CL techniques, illustrating how these are implemented with shared-document conferencing.
The Future Virtual Reality Melting Pot
Authors: Wingrave Chadwick A.
Published: May 2011

Virtual reality replaces or modifies human sensory input as do other technologies but with different methods or goals. Currently and even more so in the future, these technologies will work off the successes of each, creating a virtual reality melting pot. In this chapter, we look at some of these technologies and their current effect on virtual reality. From there, we identify human technological drives and use this to highlight future technologies that will meld into the melting pot. Lastly, we look at how some of these changes will impact human society and human everyday life.
Using Context Information to Build a Topic-Specific Crawling System
Authors: Wu Fan , Hsu Ching-Chi
Published: May 2011

One of the major problems for automatically constructed portals and information discovery systems is how to assign proper order to unvisited Web pages. Topic-specific crawlers and information seeking agents should try not to traverse the off-topic areas and concentrate on links that lead to documents of interest. In this chapter, we propose an effective approach based on the relevancy context graph to solve this problem. The graph can estimate the distance and the relevancy degree between the retrieved document and the given topic. By calculating the word distributions of the general and topic-specific feature words, our method will preserve the property of the relevancy context graph and reflect it on the word distributions. With the help of topic-specific and general word distribution, our crawler can measure a page’s expected relevancy to a given topic and determine the order in which pages should be visited. Simulations are also performed, and the results show that our method outperforms the breath-first and the method using only the context graph.
Web Usage Mining in Search Engines
Authors: Baeza-Yates Ricardo
Published: May 2011

Search engine logs not only keep navigation information, but also the queries made by their users. In particular, queries to a search engine follow a power-law distribution, which is far from uniform. Queries and related clicks can be used to improve the search engine itself in different aspects: user interface, index performance, and answer ranking. In this chapter we present some of the main ideas proposed in query mining and we show a few examples based on real data from a search engine focused on the Chilean Web.
The Effects of IT on Supply Chain Management in the Automobile Industry
Authors: Kim Ki Chan , Im Il , Kang Myung Soo
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the concept of electronic supply chain design (eSCD) and empirically examines the impacts of eSCD on supply chain management. eSCD is a supply chain design that integrates and coordinates suppliers, manufacturers, logistic channels, and customers using information technology (IT). In this chapter, a model that shows the effects of eSCD on the customization capability of companies was developed. From previous studies, the model identifies three major effects of eSCD—electronic linkage effect, supply chain coordination effect, and co-engineering effect. The model also shows a process through which an electronic supply chain network is transformed from a simple infrastructure for data exchange into a knowledge-sharing network for fast response and customization. The model was tested using the data collected from the automobile industry in Korea. It was shown that eSCD has significant effects on the supply chain coordination and co-engineering. It was also shown that eSCD affects the customization capability.
Alaska's Embrace of Digital Opportunities
Authors: Lan Ping , Yen David C.
Published: May 2011

There have been a very limited number of systematic studies of how a region is turning digital opportunities into a development force. In theory, major advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have successfully transformed traditional businesses and markets, revolutionized learning and knowledge-sharing, generated global information flows, and empowered citizens and communities in new ways to redefine governance (Afuah, 2003; Mullaney et al., 2003). At a regional level, this “digital revolution” could offer enormous opportunities to support sustainable local prosperity, and thus help to achieve the broader development goals (DOT Force, 2001). Alaska is one state that can be positioned to take advantage of Internet and e-commerce technologies. Isolated from the U.S. main economic centers and heavily reliant on the export of commodities in its economy, e-commerce or business via the Internet is an ideal choice for Alaska. However, the available statistics do not support this claim. Most economic indicators show a downward trend in Alaska since 1995, in spite of the fact that the federal government expenditure has been increasing (ASTF, 2002). This chapter is dedicated to measuring the usage of the Internet in Alaska. It hypothesizes that geographical limitations help a region like Alaska embrace ICT and its applications without much hesitation, but also hinders the region to fully exploit the potential of ICT due to the limitations of resources. A large-scale survey was conducted to reveal the characteristics of Internet usage among individuals, government agencies, local communities, and private firms in Alaska. This research is of interest in two aspects: It could offer help for policymakers and enterprises within Alaska to realize the potential development brought about by the current digital revolution, and it could help enterprises outside Alaska to target this market more effectively. Theoretically, it could shed light on issues related to technology adoption and local innovation. Besides that, the platform-dependent approach used in this research can be applied in a broader context.
User Acceptance Diffusion of Innovations Summarized
Authors: Spil Ton A.M.
Published: May 2011

There are many quantitative studies on the behavior of consumers of new products or services. This chapter shows the starting point of three major lines of quantitative research. The next four chapters will lean heavily on these three subjects: diffusion of innovations, technology acceptance, and theory of planned behavior. The first line of research is the diffusion of innovations research that can be traced back to Rogers. One of the most important features of the book is the characterization of the persuasion step with relative advantage as a major driver for acceptation of innovations. The second line is the many applications of the technology acceptance model (TAM) that was introduced by Davis in the late 1980s. The most important result of this article is that perceived usefulness was significantly more strongly linked to usage than was ease of use, both defined in this chapter.
Understanding Physician Use of Online Systems
Authors: Horan Thomas A. , Tulu Bengisu , Hilton Brian N.
Published: May 2011

This chapter develops a conceptual model for physician acceptance and tests this socio-work structure model using a nationwide survey of physicians (n = 141). The domain focus of this study is physician acceptance of online disability evaluation systems for generating and managing medical examination reports. The survey measured whether behavioral intention to use the new system varied as a function of IT infrastructure, organizational readiness relating to IT, physician experience with computer use in clinical settings, and both specific and general attitudes toward online system use in clinical settings. Survey findings suggest that each of these factors affects behavioral intent to use online disability evaluation systems and that these factors are more important than generalized attitudes toward online systems or socio-demographic predictors. Findings suggest that work-practice variables are important when considering physicians use of online systems. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications for devising advanced testing systems that can be used to ensure active physician participation in medical informatics systems
The UTAUT Questionnaire Items
Authors: Spil Ton A.M. , Schuring Roel W.
Published: May 2011

PU = Perceived Usefulness (Davis, 1989) RA = Relative Advantage (Rogers, 1983) OE = Outcome expectations (Compeau & Higgins, 1995) • P1. I would find the system useful in my job (PU). • P2. Using the system enables me to accomplish tasks more quickly (RA). • P3. Using the system increases my productivity (RA). • P4. If I use the system, I will increase my chances of getting a raise (OE).
Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in IS in Healthcare Revisited
Authors: Kaplan Bonnie
Published: May 2011

Using a variety of research methods provides several advantages. Through multiple methods, different kinds of data are collected, each set of which might provide partial information needed for a complete picture, thereby strengthening the robustness of research results. Research that combines qualitative and quantitative methods, though rare, provides an example of the benefits of multimethod studies. In this chapter, I describe three evaluation research studies that used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. In these studies, researchers produced results they would not have achieved if they had not combined methods. The first study is of a pioneering computer-based patient record and clinical decision support system, PROMIS. The second study is of a clinical laboratory information system. The third, a more recent study, evaluated an automated telephone health behavior advisory system. The PROMIS study compared different groups using PROMIS and compared PROMIS users with those using a manual patient record. The laboratory information system and telephone advisory system studies explored differences among ostensibly the same users of the same technology, only to find that these users divided into groups that differed in their responses to the technologies. Such studies could point to considerations other than technology per se that are important in how individuals react to and use technologies. All three studies are examples of how multimethod research can produce significant results.
Evaluation of Health Information Systems
Authors: Ammenwerth Elske , Graber Stefan , Burkle Thomas , Iller Carola
Published: May 2011

This chapter summarizes the problems and challenges that occur when health information systems are evaluated. The main problem areas presented are the complexity of the evaluation object, the complexity of an evaluation project, and the motivation for evaluation. Based on the analysis of those problem areas, the chapter then presents recommendations of how to address them. In particular, it discusses in more detail what benefits can be obtained from applying triangulation in evaluation studies. Based on the example of the evaluation of a nursing documentation system, it shows how both the validation of results and the completeness of results can be supported by triangulation. The authors hope to contribute to a better understanding of the peculiarities of evaluation in healthcare, and to provide information how to overcome them.
Assessing E-Health
Authors: Wickramasinghe Nilmini , Geisler Elie , Schaffer Jonathan
Published: May 2011

While healthcare is the biggest service industry on the globe, it has yet to realize the full potential of the e-business revolution in the form of e-health. This is due to many reasons, including the fact that the healthcare industry is faced with many complex challenges in trying to deliver cost-effective, high-value, accessible healthcare and has traditionally been slow to embrace new business techniques and technologies. Given that e-health to a great extent is a macro-level concern that has far reaching micro-level implications, this chapter first develops a framework to assess a country’s preparedness with respect to embracing e-health (i.e., the application of e-commerce to healthcare) and from this, an e-health preparedness grid to facilitate the assessment of any e-health initiative. Taken together, the integrative framework and preparedness grid provide useful and necessary tools to enable successful e-health initiatives to ensue by helping country and/or organization within a country to identify and thus address areas that require further attention in order for it to undertake a successful e-health initiative.
The Evaluation Roadmap
Authors: Ammenwerth Elske , Brender Jytte , Nykanen Pirkko , Prokosch Hans-Ulrich , Rigby Michael , Talmon Jan
Published: May 2011

(Extracted from Ammenwerth. E., Brender, J., Nykänen, P., Prokosch, H., Rigby, M., & Talmon, J. [2004]). Visions and strategies to improve evaluation of health information systems Reflections and lessons based on the HIS-EVAL workshop in Innsbruck. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 73, 479-491.) Results from the European Science Foundation sponsored Workshop on Systematic Evaluation of Health information Systems (HIS-EVAL), April 4-6th, 2003. Participants: Jos Aarts, Elske Ammenwerth, Andrea Berghold, Marie-Catherine Beuscart-Zéphir, Jytte Brender, Thomas Bürkle, Martina Deibl, Martin Denz, Nina Eminovic, Rolf Holle, Mathew Jones, Joe Liu, Christian Nøhr, Pirkko Nykänen, Ulrich Prokosch, Michael Rigby, Cornelia Ruland, Heike Sander, Nikki Shaw, Arjen Stoop, Jan Talmon, Vivian Vimarlund, Jeremy Wyatt. Initiator and contact point: Elske Ammenwerth, MIT-University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, elske.ammenwerth@umit.at
Service-Oriented Computing and the Model-Driven Architecture
Authors: Piccinelli Giacomo , Skene James
Published: May 2011

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) and the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) are complementary systems development approaches with the mutual aim of reducing the cost of future systems integration. This chapter introduces the MDA concept and technologies to an SOC audience and employs these technologies to enhance support for SOC through the definition of a domain-specific modeling language for electronic services. The language is defined as an extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Its semantics are defined using a domain model of electronic service systems based on concepts drawn from literature and experience with a range of commercial platforms for the deployment of electronic services.
Using Peer-to-Peer Systems for Data Management
Authors: Verma Dinesh C.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes a peer-to-peer approach for managing data backup and recovery in an enterprise environment. Data management systems in enterprises constitute a significant portion of the total cost of management of data in enterprise systems. Maintaining data with a high degree of availability and reliability is typically done by having a centralized backup system that maintains backup copies of data. The maintenance of a large dedicated backup server for data management requires a highly scalable network and storage infrastructure, leading to a major expense center within the enterprise. With the current trends in workstation disk storage, an alternative peer-to-peer paradigm for data management can offer an approach that provides equivalent performance at a fraction of the cost of the centralized backup system. The author hopes that the contents of the chapter would lead to the development of more solutions that harness the power of peer-to-peer networks.
Peer-to-Peer Technology and the Copyright Crossroads
Authors: Dogan Stacey L.
Published: May 2011

The introduction of peer-to-peer technology has posed enormous challenges for traditional copyright law. Whereas historically copyright holders could preserve their core economic markets by pursuing a fairly limited set of commercial actors, peer-to-peer technologies decentralize content distribution and make it possible for anyone with a computer to disseminate infringing content around the world. In the struggle to find a solution to the peer-to-peer crisis, courts and policymakers have considered a number of alternatives, from abandonment of copyright law to a wholesale restructuring of its entitlement structure. This chapter explains why peer-to-peer technology presents such a challenge for copyright, and explores some of the pending proposals to solve the current dilemma.
Ten Lessons from Finance for Commercial Sharing of IT Resources
Authors: Cheliotis Giorgos , Kenyon Chris , Buyya Rajkumar
Published: May 2011

Sharing IT resources within and among organizations is an attractive value proposition in terms of efficiency and flexibility, but despite this, commercial practice is limited. In contrast, financial and commodity markets have proved very successful at dynamic allocation of different resource types to many different organizations. Thus to understand how the potential benefits of sharing IT resources may be promoted in practice, we analyze enabling factors in successful markets. We present 10 basic lessons for IT resource sharing derived from a financial perspective and modified by considering the nature and context of IT resources. From each lesson we derive the required software or process capability required to support it. We then evaluate the maturity of the respective capabilities within the peer-to-peer and grid environments using a simple framework based on the standard Capability Maturity Model approach. We conclude with a description of the largest capability gaps and the lowest hanging fruit for making IT resource sharing a more viable business proposition.
Web Engineering Resources Portal (WEP)
Authors: Christodoulou Sotiris P. , Papatheodorou Theodore S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the Web Engineering Resources Portal (WEP) as a basic reference model and guide for Web Engineers. WEP provides a general classification of Web Engineering resources under technologies, research results, and tools. It consists of a reference model and a resources portal. The objective of the WEP reference model is to provide a common basic terminology, a technical-oriented classification of Web applications (WebApps), a specification of WebApps Logical and Physical Architectures, a classification of skills needed in Web projects and a generic and adaptable Web lifecycle process model. The WEP reference model provides the framework upon which Web Engineering resources are classified and presented. The WEP portal provides several and cross-referenced taxonomies of technologies, research results, and tools whereas its objective is to facilitate Web Engineers to comprehend available resources, understand their role and appropriately use them during development and operation/maintenance of Web information systems.
On Portals
Authors: Wojtkowski Wita , Major Marshall
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we present our views and observations concerning portals. We introduce the notion of a portal, review several possible characterizations, and focus our discussion on one type of portal—the enterprise portal. We review what functionality the enterprise portal should provide and discuss, in brief, why interest in portals and associated technologies remains strong. We ponder the ecosystem of the portal components that include wireless applications and discuss why portals might be useful for information intensive small and medium-sized enterprises. We offer a general list of portal vendors supplying a variety of solutions and the most current software, services, and relevant hardware vendors offering solutions for the small and medium-sized enterprises. We conclude the chapter with our views concerning the portals market.
Intelligent Portals for Supporting Medical Information Needs
Authors: Moon Jane , Burstein Frada
Published: May 2011

The aim of this chapter is to review the way portal technology can assist users seeking medical information. There has been an increase in health Internet usage, and better health-care delivery outcomes are predicted as users are better informed when making medical decisions. At the same time, there is much concern about the need for medical portals to meet community information needs. This chapter discusses what constitutes an intelligent portal, discusses desirable portal components and attributes of intelligent portal features, and how these can be implemented to meet the needs of diverse users. Seven Australian medical Web sites have been analysed according to intelligence features. The results and analysis are presented and discussed, in particular, with respect to their functionality as defined for intelligent portals. The discussion is focused on the extent to which these attributes help users with their information seeking and therefore support their decision-making processes.