bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The State of the Art and Open Problems in Data Replication in Grid Environments
Authors: Shorfuzzaman Mohammad , Eskicioglu Rasit , Graham Peter
Published: May 2010

Data Grids provide services and infrastructure for distributed data-intensive applications that need to access, transfer and modify massive datasets stored at distributed locations around the world. For example, the next-generation of scientific applications such as many in high-energy physics, molecular modeling, and earth sciences will involve large collections of data created from simulations or experiments. The size of these data collections is expected to be of multi-terabyte or even petabyte scale in many applications. Ensuring efficient, reliable, secure and fast access to such large data is hindered by the high latencies of the Internet. The need to manage and access multiple petabytes of data in Grid environments, as well as to ensure data availability and access optimization are challenges that must be addressed. To improve data access efficiency, data can be replicated at multiple locations so that a user can access the data from a site near where it will be processed. In addition to the reduction of data access time, replication in Data Grids also uses network and storage resources more efficiently. In this chapter, the state of current research on data replication and arising challenges for the new generation of data-intensive grid environments are reviewed and open problems are identified. First, fundamental data replication strategies are reviewed which offer high data availability, low bandwidth consumption, increased fault tolerance, and improved scalability of the overall system. Then, specific algorithms for selecting appropriate replicas and maintaining replica consistency are discussed. The impact of data replication on job scheduling performance in Data Grids is also analyzed. A set of appropriate metrics including access latency, bandwidth savings, server load, and storage overhead for use in making critical comparisons of various data replication techniques is also discussed. Overall, this chapter provides a comprehensive study of replication techniques in Data Grids that not only serves as a tool to understanding this evolving research area but also provides a reference to which future e orts may be mapped.
Architectural Elements of Resource Sharing Networks
Authors: de Assuncao Marcos Dias , Buyya Rajkumar
Published: May 2010

This chapter first presents taxonomies on approaches for resource allocation across resource sharing networks such as Grids. It then examines existing systems and classifies them under their architectures, operational models, support for the life-cycle of virtual organisations, and resource control techniques. Resource sharing networks have been established and used for various scientific applications over the last decade. The early ideas of Grid computing have foreseen a global and scalable network that would provide users with resources on demand. In spite of the extensive literature on resource allocation and scheduling across organisational boundaries, these resource sharing networks mostly work in isolation, thus contrasting with the original idea of Grid computing. Several efforts have been made towards providing architectures, mechanisms, policies and standards that may enable resource allocation across Grids. A survey and classification of these systems are relevant for the understanding of different approaches utilised for connecting resources across organisations and virtualisation techniques. In addition, a classification also sets the ground for future work on inter-operation of Grids.
Simultaneous MultiThreading Microarchitecture
Authors: Liu Chen , Li Xiaobin , Liu Shaoshan , Gaudiot Jean-Luc
Published: May 2010

Due to the conventional sequential programming model, the Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) that modern superscalar processors can explore is inherently limited. Hence, multithreading architectures have been proposed to exploit Thread-Level Parallelism (TLP) in addition to conventional ILP. By issuing and executing instructions from multiple threads at each clock cycle, Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT) achieves some of the best possible system resource utilization and accordingly higher instruction throughput. In this chapter, the authors describe the origin of SMT microarchitecture, comparing it with other multithreading microarchitectures. They identify several key aspects for high-performance SMT design: fetch policy, handling long-latency instructions, resource sharing control, synchronization and communication. They also describe some potential benefits of SMT microarchitecture: SMT for faulttolerance and SMT for secure communications. Given the need to support sequential legacy code and emerge of new parallel programming model, we believe SMT microarchitecture will play a vital role as we enter the multi-thread multi/many-core processor design era.
Power Allocation for Cooperative Communications
Authors: Kaya Onur , Ulukus Sennur
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, we review the optimal power allocation policies for fading channels in single user and multiple access scenarios. We provide some background on cooperative communications, starting with the relay channel, and moving onto mutually cooperative systems. Then, we consider power control and user cooperation jointly, and for a fading Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC) with user cooperation, we present a channel adaptive encoding policy, which relies on block Markov superposition coding. We obtain the power allocation policies that maximize the average rates achievable by block Markov coding, subject to average power constraints. The optimal policies result in a coding scheme that is simpler than the one for a general multiple access channel with generalized feedback. This simpler coding scheme also leads to the possibility of formulating an otherwise non-concave optimization problem as a concave one. Using the perfect channel state information (CSI) available at the transmitters to adapt the powers, we demonstrate significant gains over the achievable rates for existing cooperative systems. We consider both backwards and window decoding, and show that, window decoding, which incurs less decoding delay, achieves the same sum rate as backwards decoding, when the powers are optimized.
Network Coding for Multi-Hop Wireless Networks
Authors: Yu Meng , Li Jing (Tiffany) , Wang Haidong
Published: May 2010

We consider practical network coding, a useful generalization of routing, in multi-hop multicast wireless networks. The model of interest comprises a set of nodes transmitting data wirelessly to a set of destinations across an arbitrary, unreliable, and possibly time-varying network. This model is general and subsumes peer-to-peer, ad-hoc, sensory, and mobile networks. It is first shown that, in the singlehop case, the idea of adaptively matching code-on-graph with network-on-graph, first developed in the adaptive-network-coded-cooperation (ANCC) protocol, provides a significant improvement over the conventional strategies. To generalize the idea to the multi-hop context, we propose to transform an arbitrarily connected network to a possibly time-varying “trellis network,” such that routing design for the network becomes equivalent to path discovery in the trellis. Then, exploiting the distributed, real-time graph-matching technique in each stage of the trellis, a general network coding framework is developed. Depending on whether or not the intermediate relays choose to decode network codes, three practical network coding categories, progress network coding, concatenated network coding and hybrid network coding, are investigated. Analysis shows that the proposed framework can be as dissemination-efficient as those with random codes, but only more practical.
Single and Double-Differential Coding in Cooperative Communications
Authors: Bhatnagar Manav R. , Hjørungnes Are
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, we discuss single and double-differential coding for a two-user cooperative communication system. The single-differential coding is important for the cooperative systems as the data at the destination/relaying node can be decoded without knowing the channel gains. The double-differential modulation is useful as it avoids the need of estimating the channel and carrier offsets for the decoding of the data. We explain single-differential coding for a cooperative system with one relay utilizing orthogonal transmissions with respect to the source. Next, we explain two single-differential relaying strategies: active user strategy (AUS) and passive users relaying strategy (PURS), which could be used by the base-station to transmit data of two users over downlink channels in the two-user cooperative communication network with decode-and-forward protocol. The AUS and PURS follow an improved time schedule in order to increase the data rate. A probability of error based approach is also discussed, which can be used to reduce the erroneous relaying of data by the regenerative relay. In addition, we also discuss how to implement double-differential (DD) modulation for decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward based cooperative communication system with single source-destination pair and a single relay. The DD based systems work very well in the presence of random carrier offsets without any channel and carrier offset knowledge at the receivers, where the single differential cooperative scheme breaks down. It is further shown that optimized power distributions can be used to improve the performance of the DD system.
Space-Time Coding For Non-Coherent Cooperative Communications
Authors: Harshan J. , Rajan G. Susinder , Rajan B. Sundar
Published: May 2010

Cooperative communication in a wireless network can be based on the relay channel model where a set of users act as relays to assist a source terminal in transmitting information to a destination terminal. Recently, the idea of space-time coding (STC) has been applied to wireless networks wherein the relay nodes cooperate to process the received signal from the source and forward them to the destination such that the signal received at the destination appears like a space-time block code (STBC). Such STBCs (referred as distributed space time block codes [DSTBCs]) when appropriately designed are known to offer spatial diversity. It is known that separate classes of DSTBCs can be designed based on the destination‘ s knowledge of various fading channels in the network. DSTBCs designed for the scenario when the destination has either the knowledge of only a proper subset of the channels or no knowledge of any of the channels are called non-coherent DSTBCs. This chapter addresses the problems and results associated with the design, code construction, and performance analysis (in terms of pairwise error probability [PEP]) of various noncoherent DSTBCs.
Resource Allocation for a Cooperative Broadband MIMO-OFDM System
Authors: Abualhaol Ibrahim Y. , Matalgah Mustafa M.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, a cooperative broadband relay-based resource allocation technique is proposed for adaptive bit and power loading multiple-input-multiple-output/orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system. In this technique, sub-channels allocation, M-QAM modulation order, and power distribution among different sub-channels in the relay-based MIMO-OFDM system are jointly optimized according to the channel state information (CSI) of the relay and the direct link. The transmitted stream of bits is divided into two parts according to a suggested cooperative protocol that is based on sub-channel-division. In this protocol, the first part is sent directly from the source to the destination, and the second part is relayed to the destination through an indirect link. Such a cooperative relay-based system enables us to exploit the inherent system diversities in frequency, space and time to maximize the system power efficiency. The BER performance using this cooperative sub-channel-division protocol with adaptive sub-channel assignment and adaptive bit/power loading are presented and compared with a noncooperative ones. The use of cooperation in a broadband relay-based MIMO-OFDM system showed high performance improvement in terms of BER.
Enterprise Specific BPM Languages and Tools
Authors: Brahe Steen
Published: May 2010

Many enterprises use their own domain concepts when they model business processes. They may also use technology in specialized ways when they implement the business processes in a Business Process Management (BPM) system. In contrast, BPM tools often provide a standard business process modeling language, a standard implementation technology and a fixed transformation that may generate the implementation from the model. This makes the tools inflexible and difficult to use. This chapter presents another approach. It applies the basic model driven development principles of direct representation and automation to BPM tools through a tool experiment in Danske Bank. We develop BPM tools that capture Danske Banks specific modeling concepts and use of technology and which automate the generation of code. An empirical evaluation reveals remarkable improvements in development productivity and code quality. We conclude that BPM tools should provide flexibility to allow customization to the specific needs of an enterprise.
Bayesian Agent Adaptation in Complex Dynamic Systems
Authors: Allen-Williams Mair , Jennings Nicholas R.
Published: May 2010

Multi-agent systems draw together a number of significant trends in modern technology: ubiquity, decentralization, openness, dynamism and uncertainty. As work in these fields develops, such systems face increasing challenges. Two particular challenges are decision making in uncertain and partiallyobservable environments, and coordination with other agents in such environments. Although uncertainty and coordination have been tackled as separate problems, formal models for an integrated approach are typically restricted to simple classes of problem and are not scalable to problems with many agents and millions of states. We improve on these approaches by extending a principled Bayesian model into more challenging domains, using heuristics and exploiting domain knowledge in order to make approximate solutions tractable. We show the effectiveness of our approach applied to an ambulance coordination problem inspired by the Robocup Rescue system.
Multiple-Step Backtracking of Exception Handling in Autonomous Business Process Management
Authors: Wang Mingzhong , Chen Jinjun , Ramamohanarao Kotagiri , Unruh Amy
Published: May 2010

This chapter proposes a multiple-step backtracking mechanism to maintain a tradeoff between replanning and rigid backtracking for exception handling and recovery, thus enabling business process management (BPM) systems to operate robustly even in complex and dynamic environments. The concept of BDI (belief, desire and intention) agent is applied to model and construct the BPM system to inherit its advantages of adaptability and flexibility. Then, the flexible backtracking approach is introduced by utilizing the beneficial features of event-driven and means-end reasoning of BDI agents. Finally, we incorporate open nested transaction model to encapsulate plan execution and backtracking to gain the system level support of concurrency control and automatic recovery. With the ability of reasoning about task characteristics, our approach enables the system to find and commence a suitable plan prior to or in parallel with a compensation process when a failure occurs. This kind of computing allows us to achieve business goals efficiently in the presence of exceptions and failures.
Adaptive Development and Management of Business Collaborations
Authors: Orriens Bart , Yang Jian
Published: May 2010

The IT infrastructure of organizations must be agile and dynamic in order to respond quickly to the new business models and requirements. This has led to an increasing demand from individual organizations for corporate business services that can easily adapt to changes through business collaboration. Popular solutions for business collaboration development and management do not properly cater for the specification of new collaborations nor do they facilitate the management of existing ones. In this book chapter we present a rule based approach for collaboration development and management. The proposed approach allows organizations to capture the requirements for their business collaborations in an explicit, manageable and uniform manner in the form of rules. These rules can then be used to drive and constrain the development and management of needed business collaboration models. Practical feasibility of the approach is demonstrated in the context of a complex insurance claim scenario using prototype tooling.
Engineering of Experience Based Trust for E-Commerce
Authors: Sun Zhaohao , Han Jun , Dong Dong , Zhao Shuliang
Published: May 2010

Trust is significant for sustainable development of e-commerce and has received increasing attention in e-commerce, multiagent systems (MAS), and artificial intelligence (AI). However, little attention has been given to the theoretical foundation and intelligent techniques for trust in e-commerce from a viewpoint of intelligent systems and engineering. This chapter will fill this gap by examining engineering of experience-based trust in e-commerce from the viewpoint of intelligent systems. It looks at knowledgebased trust, inference-based trust and their interrelationships with experience-based trust. It also examines scalable trust in e-commerce. It proposes a knowledge based model of trust in e-commerce and a system architecture for METSE: a multiagent system for experience-based trust in e-commerce. The proposed approach in this chapter will facilitate research and development of trust, multiagent systems, e-commerce and e-services.
Tending and Trekking towards Composite Oriented Architecture (COA)
Authors: Raj Chelliah Pethuru
Published: May 2010

With the noteworthy spurt of service orientation (SO) principles, the spur and surge for composition paradigm have taken a fabulous and fruitful dimension and perspective. Composites are emerging and establishing as the promising, proven and potential building-blocks in the pulsating ICT space. Enterprises are very optimistic and sensitive about the shining days of composites in their day-to-day dealings and obligations to their restive partners, government agencies, venerable customers, demanding end-users, and loyal employees. In short, composites are bound to increasingly and illuminatingly participate and contribute towards fulfilling the goals of realizing integrated, optimized, smart and lean business processes that in turn can lead to extended, connected, adaptive, and on-demand businesses. As next-generation ICT is presumed to thrive on spontaneous and seamless collaboration among systems, services, servers, sensors, etc. by sending messages as well as smartly sharing a wider variety of connected and empowered resources, there arises a distinct identity and value for progressive, penetrative and pervasive composites. Already we started to read, hear and experience composite applications, services, and views. As composition is to flower and flourish in a positive fashion, the future IT is definitely on right track. In this chapter, you can find discussions about how rapidly and smoothly services enable business-aligned composites realization. There are sections dealing with prominent composition paradigms, patterns, platforms, processes, practices, products, perspectives, problems and potentials.
Semantic Business Process Mining of SAP Transactions
Authors: Ingvaldsen Jon Espen , Gulla Jon Atle
Published: May 2010

This chapter introduces semantic business process mining of SAP transaction logs. SAP systems are promising domains for semantic process mining as they contain transaction logs that are linked to large amounts of structured data. A challenge with process mining these transaction logs is that the core of SAP systems was not originally designed from the business process management perspective. The business process layer was added later without full rearrangement of the system. As a result, system logs produced by SAP are not process-based, but transaction-based. This means that the system does not produce traces of process instances that are needed for process mining. In this chapter, we show how data available in SAP systems can enrich process instance logs with ontologically structured concepts, and evaluate techniques for mapping executed transaction sequences with predefined process hierarchies.
Developing Efficient Processes and Process Management in New Business Creation in the ICT-Sector
Authors: Juntunen Arla
Published: May 2010

In this study, a Finnish telecommunication company is analyzed from 1990-2007. Discussing the major developments in technology, society and firm-level decisions, this study focuses on the R&D process development and changes due to these exogenous and endogenous factors that have occurred. These factors have also caused changes in the company’s competitive advantage, organizational structure, product- and service portfolio. It has required adaptation skills and capabilities to manage change in order to survive in a rapidly changing competitive environment. This chapter will describe the changes in the R&D process from the in-house development to a multi-partner R&D network. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be considered both a strategic catalyst and enabler of business process reengineering (BPR). In summary, the chapter discusses how a competitive advantage in mobile and multimedia business was created by efficient process changes and network management capabilities.
Operational Process Management in the Financial Services Industry
Authors: Heckl Diana , Moormann Jürgen
Published: May 2010

The financial services industry faces significant competitive pressures. Economic and political influences, incessant regulation, and fast changing markets make for a highly complex and dynamic environment. Thus, banks and insurance companies are forced to permanently improve their performance – raising process performance represents one of the biggest levers for success. This chapter analyses the challenges of operational process management for banks and insurance companies. The involvement of customers in service processes of financial institutions make these not as easy to manage as production processes. In response to these challenges, cornerstones for a general framework for operational management of service processes will be developed. The aim of this chapter is to present a framework for structuring service processes which allows combining influences by customers and an operational process management. The concept is based on the modularisation approach and will be demonstrated using a loan process as an example.
Digital Inclusion and Electronic Government
Authors: da Silva Helena Pereira , da Silva Lídia de Jesus Oliveira Loureiro
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents the results of the search carried out in the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database, with the aim of shedding light on the status of the connection between digital inclusion and electronic government. The theme is the leitmotif of the authors’ research projects. The method of search is detailed, and the strategies used are presented. The search took place at two different times: in August 2006 and in October 2008. The results of each survey are presented separately, with the purpose of comparison and to emphasize the differences between one and the other. Two aspects were the focus of the analysis of the retrieved items: the process of information retrieval and the objective and questions of research. In the 2006 survey, the points that stand out are: that researchers need to be competent in information retrieval from bibliographic databases; the new role of public libraries and librarians, with respect to electronic government; and the importance of formulating national policy on information and electronic government. The second study highlighted again: the need for informational competence on the part of researchers for the retrieval of information; the concept of Information Asymmetry, as a new component in the relationship between digital inclusion and electronic government; the importance of the architecture of information in government Web sites and the role of professional information; and electronic citizenship or cyber-citizenship. This study showed that “digital inclusion” and “electronic government” is a “kaleidoscopic” topic because it reveals many other facets, according to the evolution of the use and non-use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies), particularly access to and use of information on the Internet. However, one idea seems central and permeates all considerations of this relationship: that the implementation of electronic government and its success go far beyond technology deployment. The effectiveness of electronic government depends on many more issues involving the participation of citizens. This participation depends on issues related to the provision of information and care with the architecture of information for government Web sites, in addition to training information for citizens.
The E-Governance Concerns in Information System Design for Effective E-Government Performance Improvement
Authors: Vat Kam Hou
Published: May 2010

This chapter investigates a set of governance concerns related to the electronic transformation of public administration for performance improvement under the context of reinventing government in the knowledge age. Of specific interest is the organizational context to situate information systems (IS) design for services referring mainly to the decisions that define expectations, enable empowerment, or verify performance of the people or units involved. In particular, this research is looking into the transformative impact of such an IS effort on the design of a citizen-centric model of public service in the digital operation of today’s government (or e-government). Meanwhile, e-governance should relate to the practical rendering over an electronic environment such practices as consistent management, cohesive policies, responsive processes, and decision-rights for different areas of responsibilities. The framework of analysis in this discussion should accommodate the configuration of a government unit’s value profile in public sector as exemplified in many of today’s citizen-centric societies. This framework highlights a public sector reform approach to nurture information systems (IS) support for improving public sector management. The premise of our exploration is that as we move into the knowledge society, more and more public sector organizations should fulfill their roles from the creation and application of knowledge. This is an example of the value shop model, in which value is created by configuring and applying specific knowledge to solve problems in citizens’ areas of interest. This discussion covers the issues in digitizing knowledge portfolios in support of performance improvement among institutional units. Thereby, managing knowledge work at the e-government level is a behavior involving various e-governance concerns such as challenges on internal enculturation of participative knowledge sharing among public sector organizations, and on the proper understanding of the institution’s context of public service development.
Sociocultural Context of E-Government Readiness
Authors: Zacher Lech W.
Published: May 2010

E-government is not only an innovative idea but, more and more in a growing number of countries, a practical activity of high priority. It reflects the emergence and development of information societies (IS). Socio-cultural context is a framework of e-government strategies and practices. The context will determine the effects of such efforts. It is important to consider and understand the socio-cultural characteristics and functioning of society while its e-government undertakings are planned and introduced. From this point of view, the presently emerging worldwide information societies can be grouped in classes. It may help to analyze the classes’ needs and possibilities and to formulate proper e-government agenda to be implemented. The real specificities and diversities among classes make the IS development multi-trajectory. In this diversified world, the effects will vary greatly. This chapter has tried to identify and briefly analyze the challenges for e-government strategies and practices from the point of view of socio-cultural context. It is argued that this context should be treated dynamically – as changing and as creating potential for change leading to further advancement of IS. Thus the discourse on the sociocultural context of e-readiness is summarized. Some conclusions and recommendations are formulated, especially with reference to diversities and specificities of IS classes.
National Culture and E-Government Readiness
Authors: Kovacic Zlatko J.
Published: May 2010

Diffusion of information and communication technologies is a global phenomenon. In spite of rapid globalization there are considerable differences between nations in terms of the adoption and usage of new technologies. Several studies exploring causal factors including national cultures of information and communication technology adoption have been carried out. The focus of this chapter is slightly different from other studies in this area. Rather than concentrating on the individual information technology an overall e-Government readiness is the focus. This research conducted an analysis of the impact national culture has on e-Government readiness and its components for 62 countries. E-Government readiness assessment used in this study is based on the UN E-Government Survey 2008, while the national cultural dimensions were identified using Hofstede’s model of cultural differences. The research model and hypotheses were formed and tested using correlation and regression analysis. The findings indicate that worldwide e-Government readiness and its components are related to culture. The result has theoretical and practical implications.
Financial Analysis of the ICT Industry
Authors: Mathur Somesh K.
Published: May 2010

Analysis of financial issues for the information and communication technology (ICT) sector is an essential element to study the progress of the sector, and especially the analysis should relate to the regulatory perspective of the country, if it would judge the overall e-government scenario of that country. Along this context, this chapter attempts to quantify the technical efficiency of the ICT sector in 45 countries during 2002-03, and in 52 countries during 2006-07 by using DEA method; Malmquist index of productivity growth in the ICT sector in 45 countries between these two periods; the proportions of the productivity growth attributable to efficiency change and technical change; and the effect on total factor productivity (TFP) of catching-up, the export ratio, broadband policy, and technical readiness using a regression analysis. As a result, the chapter finds that the ICT sectors in South Korea and Argentina were relatively efficient in 2002-03, while in 2006-07, the ICT sectors in Bahrain, Brazil, and Sweden showed relative efficiency. Furthermore, the productivity growth in the ICT sector in developing and newly industrialized countries is slightly higher than the growth in developed and transition countries, suggesting the catching-up of developing and newly industrialized countries. This catching-up effect is also confirmed in the regression analysis. Finally, this chapter concludes that, technological readiness, which is a measure of the agility with which an economy adopts existing technologies, has a positive impact on TFP growth.
Enhancing Accessibility to E-Government Processes
Authors: Richter Stefan , Kuhn Norbert , Naumann Stefan , Schmidt Michael
Published: May 2010

Many governmental institutions have started to provide their customers with access to governmental documents by electronic means. This changes the way of interaction between authorities and citizens considerably. Hence, it is worthwhile to look at both the chances and the risks that this process of change implies for disabled citizens. Due to different laws or legal directives governmental authorities have a particular responsibility to consider also the needs of handicapped persons. Therefore, they need to apply appropriate techniques for these groups to avoid an “Accessibility Divide”. This discussion is built on the observation that governmental processes are mostly based on the exchange of forms between authorities and citizens. Authors state that such processes can be distinguished into three scenarios, with the use of paper as means of transport on the one end and complete electronic treatment at the other end. For each scenario there exist tools to improve accessibility for people with certain disabilities. These tools include standard technologies like improved Web access by magnifying characters, assistive technologies like document cameras, and more sophisticated approaches like integrated solutions for handling forms and government processes. This chapter focuses on approaches that provide access to governmental processes for people with visual impairments, elderly people, illiterates, or immigrants. Additionally, it sees a chance to enable electronic government processes in developing countries where the citizens have less experience in handling IT-based processes. The main part of the chapter describes an approach to combine scanned images of paper-based forms containing textual information and textto- speech synthesis yielding an audio-visual document representation. It exploits standard document formats based on XML and web service technology to achieve independency from software and hardware platforms. This is also helpful for conventional governmental processes because people within the group of interest stated above often also have problems to access non-digitized information, for instance when they have to read announcements within public administration offices.
Local E-Government Management
Authors: Rahman Hakikur
Published: May 2010

Despite the popularity, potency and perfection of electronic government (e-Government), it is yet somehow remain in uncharted territory for many countries in terms of implementing e-governance at the local government level. However, technology possess the potential for improving the way government works, and utilizing the newly evolved technology many countries have been engaged themselves for improving the way their citizens work. Local and national governments are trying to realize this potential by finding ways to implement novel technology in spearheading its utilization to achieve the best services for their citizens. They include awareness raising, knowledge acquisition, social networking, and mobilization in planning, developing, implementing, and evaluating local e-government initiatives to draw inferences and recommendations learning from local e-government pioneers across the globe. This chapter has tried to draw a line of reference by put forwarding the importance of local e-government organizational structure, and their supremacies in terms of utilization of information and communication technology (ICT). Along this context, the chapter has attempted to synthesize a few prospective local e-government scenarios, focus on their adaptation of ICT, puts forward recommendations to improve local e-government for better utilization of information services.
E-Government in a Federal State
Authors: Seliger Bernhard
Published: May 2010

After reluctance in the 1990s, Germany finally, in the early 2000s, actively began to pursue the modernization of its administration through online government. The federal initiative “Bund online 2005” with an investment volume of 800 million Euro was one of the largest government online projects worldwide. Other initiatives, like BayernOnline in the economically most dynamic German state, Bavaria, started on the regional level. Nevertheless, in international studies Germany regularly scored moderately in “e-readiness.” The focus on services for citizens and the neglect of business services, especially on the federal level, is one of the reasons. A second reason is a lack of modernization, when bureaucratic procedures are merely digitalized instead of using digitalization for reform. A third challenge is the complicated interaction of various levels of government in a federal state. This chapter first gives a short overview over e-government initiatives and results in Germany. Afterwards, the e-government initiative of Bavaria, “BayernOnline” is presented. Then, the problems of e-government in Germany (neglect of e-government options for business, lack of modernization, compatibility and competition in a federal state) are discussed, followed by a discussion of e-government as one instrument to contribute to a solution of economic problems in Germany. Finally, a view ex-post looks at the results of the “Bund online 2005” initiative and how it helped to overcome bureaucratic inertia in Germany. E-federalism, the interplay of the introduction of e-government on different (federal, regional and local) levels of government certainly needs a balance of competition and cooperation, but should not be seen as a problem for the introduction of e-government per se, but rather as a chance for fruitful competition for the best concepts of e-government.
An Epistemology of Intellectual Capital and its Transition to a Practical Application
Authors: Carrell Jan
Published: May 2010

Organization requirements for survival evolve reflective of the environment in which they exist. It has been theorized the organizational tool for survival of the 21st century is intellectual capital. As with new concepts the transition from theory to practical implementation is not without challenges. Intellectual capital struggles with transitioning into the world of business. This chapter includes a limited study of organizations in the Midwestern United States whose executives espouse a valuation of their organizations’ intellectual capital but have not bridged the gap from the theoretical understanding of intellectual capital to the practical documentation of their organizational intellectual capital in practice. This finding illustrates an estrangement between the academic field of theory and the practical implementation in the organizations.
Intellectual Capital Management in Long-Lasting Family Firms
Authors: Trevinyo-Rodriguez Rosa Nelly
Published: May 2010

How to acknowledge, manage and measure intangible strategic resources embedded in organizational settings—such as intellectual capital—has been a widely discussed topic during the last two decades. However, when referring to unique organizational forms such as family-owned or controlled firms, the topic is understudied. Considering that approximately one third of S&P 500 are family-controlled firms— i.e. DuPont—, which have survived beyond a lifetime, the author asks herself how these long-lasting family businesses managed to balance the strategic and parallel creation, development and use of their intellectual capital both at the family and business levels in order to support growth and regeneration. She introduces the ICFB-Family Wealth matrix in order to describe our findings.
Mining Unnoticed Knowledge in Collaboration Support Systems
Authors: Gkotsis George , Tsirakis Nikos
Published: May 2010

Numerous tools aiming at facilitating or enhancing collaboration among members of diverse communities have been already deployed and tested over the Web. Focusing on the particularities of online communities of practice (CoPs), this chapter introduces a framework for mining knowledge that is hidden in such settings. The authors’ motivation stems from the criticism that contemporary tools receive regarding lack of active participation and limited engagement in their use, which is partially due to the inability of identifying and exploiting a set of important relationships among community members and the associated collaboration-related assets. The authors’ overall approach elaborates and integrates issues from the data mining and the social networking disciplines. More specifically, the proposed framework enables CoPs members to rank the contributions of their peers towards identifying meaningful relationships, as well as valuable information about roles and competences. In the context of this chapter, the authors first model the characteristics of the overall collaboration setting and propose a set of associated metrics. Next, in order to reveal unnoticed knowledge which resides within CoPs, a data mining technique that groups users into clusters and applies advanced social networking analysis on them is proposed. Finally, the authors discuss the benefits of their approach and conclude with future work plans.
Visualising the Invisible in Science Centres and Science Museums
Authors: Salmi Hannu , Sotiriou Sofoklis , Bogner Franz
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents an implementation of augmented reality (AR) technology in science education. While this technology up to now mainly was used by very special users such as the military and high-tech companies it gradually converts into wider educational use. Specific research programmes such as CONNECT and EXPLOAR applied this technology with a specific focus on selected learning scenarios by a close co-operation of formal education and informal learning. Empirical effects related to intrinsic motivation and cognitive learning of students (n: 308) were encouraging. The implementation of augmented reality in the context of the “Hot Air Balloon” exhibit at Heureka science centre in Finland unveiled encouraging results. While the high achievers again did best in the post-knowledge test, low achievers again were clearly catching up with the others. The difference to between the treatment and the control group was clear. It seems like that visualising a very theoretical scientific phenomenon increased the individual understanding substantially especially for those students who otherwise had severe difficulties. This is an essential result which needs further analysis. The “new educational model & paradigms” was monitored for 182 teachers. The main focus, however, pointed to a feed-back of in-service teachers and teacher students since they act as key players in the use and acceptance of any new educational technology or curriculum renewal. The main objectives were as follows: (i) From a teacher-controlled learning towards a pupil-orientated learning; (ii) connecting of ICT-AR with and between existing learning environments; and (iii) changes in roles and responsibilities of students and teachers.
The LBF R-Tree
Authors: Eavis Todd
Published: May 2010

In multi-dimensional database environments, such as those typically associated with contemporary data warehousing, we generally require effective indexing mechanisms for all but the smallest data sets. While numerous such methods have been proposed, the R-tree has emerged as one of the most common and reliable indexing models. Nevertheless, as user queries grow in terms of both size and dimensionality, R-tree performance can deteriorate significantly. Moreover, in the multi-terabyte spaces of today’s enterprise warehouses, the combination of data and indexes ? R-tree or otherwise ? can produce unacceptably large storage requirements. In this chapter, the authors present a framework that addresses both of these concerns. First, they propose a variation of the classic R-tree that specifically targets data warehousing architectures. Their new LBF R-tree not only improves performance on common user-defined range queries, but gracefully degrades to a linear scan of the data on pathologically large queries. Experimental results demonstrate a reduction in disk seeks of more than 50% relative to more conventional R-tree designs. Second, the authors present a fully integrated, block-oriented compression model that reduces the storage footprint of both data and indexes. It does so by exploiting the same Hilbert space filling curve that is used to construct the LBF R-tree itself. Extensive testing demonstrates compression rates of more than 90% for multi-dimensional data, and up to 98% for the associated indexes.
Dynamic Workload for Schema Evolution in Data Warehouses
Authors: Bentayeb Fadila , Favre Cécile , Boussaid Omar
Published: May 2010

A data warehouse allows the integration of heterogeneous data sources for identified analysis purposes. The data warehouse schema is designed according to the available data sources and the users’ analysis requirements. In order to provide an answer to new individual analysis needs, the authors previously proposed, in recent work, a solution for on-line analysis personalization. They based their solution on a user-driven approach for data warehouse schema evolution which consists in creating new hierarchy levels in OLAP (on-line analytical processing) dimensions. One of the main objectives of OLAP, as the meaning of the acronym refers, is the performance during the analysis process. Since data warehouses contain a large volume of data, answering decision queries efficiently requires particular access methods. The main issue is to use redundant optimization structures such as views and indices. This implies to select an appropriate set of materialized views and indices, which minimizes total query response time, given a limited storage space. A judicious choice in this selection must be cost-driven and based on a workload which represents a set of users’ queries on the data warehouse. In this chapter, the authors address the issues related to the workload’s evolution and maintenance in data warehouse systems in response to new requirements modeling resulting from users’ personalized analysis needs. The main issue is to avoid the workload generation from scratch. Hence, they propose a workload management system which helps the administrator to maintain and adapt dynamically the workload according to changes arising on the data warehouse schema. To achieve this maintenance, the authors propose two types of workload updates: (1) maintaining existing queries consistent with respect to the new data warehouse schema and (2) creating new queries based on the new dimension hierarchy levels. Their system helps the administrator in adopting a pro-active behaviour in the management of the data warehouse performance. In order to validate their workload management system, the authors address the implementation issues of their proposed prototype. This latter has been developed within client/server architecture with a Web client interfaced with the Oracle 10g DataBase Management System.
Federated Data Warehouses
Authors: Berger Stefan , Schrefl Michael
Published: May 2010

Federated data warehouses are a collection of autonomous and often heterogeneous data marts (DM). When attemping to integrate autonomous DMs, data designers commonly face numerous conflicts that must be repaired. This chapter analyzes and classifies the conflicts at the schema and instance level among dimensions and cubes in a systematic way, based on a formal data model. It shows the dependencies between dimension and cube integration and presents a methodological DM integration approach. A running example demonstrates how to repair the various heterogeneities. Moreover, the chapter introduces a federated DW reference architecture enabling tightly coupled integration of autonomous DMs.