Search

This paper discusses ongoing research studying requirements determination for knowledge management (KM) systems across organizational boundaries. The domain of information technology outsourcing (ITO) relationships is used as the example in this discussion. Business networks, such as, outsourcing arrangements for information technology management or business process management have become a routine arrangement. Data and knowledge sharing becomes a vital aspect of operating and managing such business networks. Consequently, the role of knowledge management becomes more important as business networks become more prevalent. Knowledge management, in the context of business partnerships or networks, is the set of processes necessary to facilitate sharing of information and process knowledge. KM processes also direct the information and knowledge sharing in a way that supports each organization's objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consequent formalization of requirements for intelligent web came after the chaos with static, then afterwards with dynamic web resources. The semantic web is an extension of the current web, where information has well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation [Hiba! A hivatkozási for rás nem található.]. Abstract requirements [Hiba! A hivatkozási forrás nem található.] for information formalization became specific technologies [Hiba! A hivatkozási forrás nem található., Hiba! A hivatkozási forrás nem található.] aimed to implement the vision of semantic web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective use of knowledge results in better decision-making within projects. Moreover, the unpredictable nature of software projects and the need for effective communication within project teams requires a framework for social interaction and feedback that results in better decision-making. This paper analyses the creation and capture of knowledge within software development projects and discusses the central role of decision making in the development process, and how the effective use of knowledge helps improve decision-making. The paper views how the knowledge generated and decisions made within a software project can be provided greater visibility and communicated effectively, and to achieve this, presents a framework to facilitate social interaction and feedback during the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to identify the issues in information systems (IS) management expected to be the most important over the next three to five years, to assess the importance of these issues, and compare the results of our study to the findings of similar investigations, with emphasis on the study done in Slovenia in 1992. The two-round Delphi method was used to collect the opinions of IS managers in Slovenian companies. The Qmethod and Q-sort ranking were used for data analysis. The study showed that views and opinions of IS department managers in Slovenia are becoming more similar to the views of their counterparts from other countries, revealed by other comparable investigations. This indicates that the economic and cultural environment in Slovenia that was specific after the economic and political transition in the nineties does not deviate considerably from the environment in other countries. Compared to the earlier study, technology-related issues became less important, and business-related issues appear to be more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The business rule approach is used in information systems to represent domain knowledge and to maintain rules systems efficiently in volatile business environment. But firstly, it is necessary to determine the business rules and ensure that the rules are appropriate. The important requirement for developing of the rules model is to reduce efforts, costs and time. This requirement can be implemented by the explicit use of enterprise knowledge for generation of rules, which can be implemented as modern DBMSs triggers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to explore the contributions of a codification process to the analysis of knowledge creation mechanisms within a network of firms. The idea is to provide a theoretical framework on knowledge creation dynamics within a network through the notion of network capabilities, and to analyse the impact of a codification process on the development and the strengthening of these capabilities. The illustration of this work in progress is located in the scientific park of Sophia Antipolis (Alpes-Maritimes, France), focusing on the Telecom Valley® association which gathers the main actors of the sophipolitan Telecom cluster. Our empirical study is conducted as a part of a research contract, the Knowledge Management Platform (KMP) project. The aim of this contract is to build a semantic web service of competencies in order to enhance exchange and combination dynamics of knowledge within the Telecom cluster thanks to the codification of tacit knowledge. We have centred our analysis on the codification process conducted within the Telecom Valley® network during the conception of the KMP project. The KMP experience shows the main role of the codification process in the enhancement of the organizational knowledge creation mechanisms of the Telecom Valley® network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document clustering is the classification of documents into several groups based on a given classification criteria, like the topic similarity. In a supervised learning scenario, the system extracts features from labeled examples and learns to identify documents of the same categories. A large family of methods is based on vector spaces, where documents are represented by vectors in a space of features, like occurrences of the various terms. Every used term (not a stopword and not too rare) is assigned to a feature and the coordinate of the document along this dimension is a function of the occurrence of the term in the documents. A frequently used weighting scheme family is the TFIDF (term-frequency, inverse document frequency) scheme [1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The web service composition has become an activity research area to improve the usability of web services. By composing web services, enterprise can rapidly deliver cheaper and better business services to their customers. However, how to efficiently select and compose required services is a challenge. The challenge is caused by the gap between customer requirement and service description because the current service description technology lacks abstraction and has no semantics. Many research works on service composition are integrating semantics to solve the service description problem, but they have not sufficiently addressed abstraction. In this paper we propose an approach, named common process pattern, which can improve the efficiency of service discovery and composition. A common process pattern instance abstractly describes a set of services and their relationships based on a commonly used business process. Because of the abstraction provided by this approach, a common process pattern instance's description can be much closer to a customer requirement than a technical service description. Therefore, the service discovery becomes easier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is twofold. It introduces first an expert system shell whose inference engine is based on stratified forward chaining presented in detail in the paper [1]. The stratified forward chaining (hereafter sfc) was proposed as a generalization for the inheritance networks with exception since it allows more than one antecedent in the premises part of a rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the scope of the clinical trials. As clinical trials are rigorously controlled, it is important to have a well-designed control mechanism for clinical trials quality assurance. Each clinical trial is executed according to a set of rules. All the rules for a particular clinical trial are described in different source documents and are not stated explicitly. While rules for particular trial are not organized as a whole, it complicates the control of the trial. The need for accurate recording and processing of patient data is fundamental to any clinical trial. If data stored in the clinical trial database are incorrect, conclusions of the analyses will also inevitably be incorrect. The need of a central storage for rules in particular trial is obvious. The clinical trial business rules repository may be used to reuse the knowledge gathered in one clinical for further trials. The paper presents a method for business rules retrieval from UML models and the employment of proposed in conduct of clinical trials. The analysis of business rules approach principles application in clinical trials is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ontologies are becoming increasingly accepted as a form for information representation of distributed web-based information and its processing. In our paper we build a web-based application around an ontology, which serves both as a data base and metadata source used in processing of the data. We propose techniques and methods that exploit this metadata to provide an easy and flexible implementation of the CRUD pattern. We identify patterns in the ontological representation of domain entities and transform them into webbased forms for data management. Based on this flexible framework we can model variations to adapt the application for specific sub-domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a novel approach regarding adaptive knowledge assessment using concept maps. Adaptive knowledge assessment adapts assessment tasks to the ability and knowledge level of a particular learner and makes a corresponding system more powerful and valuable. The already developed prototype of an intelligent knowledge assessment system based on multiagent paradigm and concept maps is described, but mainly the paper focuses on the support of adaptive assessment regarding the further enhancement of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case of a cultural institution in Australia, the paper introduces the context and application of the knowledge commons, a vision in cultural institutions and in doing so, argue for the case of community centred approach to design based on structurational and action research principles for cultural communities. The paper argues for the application of design principles and in studying how these principles may be enacted in cultural institutions; it argues for potential of empowering and sustaining communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widely recognized problem concerning WSDL-based descriptions of web-services that services are described syntactically not capturing enough meaning [Patil et al. 2004, Probst and Lutz 2004, Elenius et al. 2005]. In order to automate service discovery and composition several semantic heterogeneity problems should be solved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MEO project (Hungarian Unified Ontology) started in 2005. The most important goals of the project were 1) building an upper level ontology, 2) developing a special application supported by ontological knowledge, and 3) planning, establishing and distributing an ontology infrastructure. All achievements of the project were intended to be freely accessible and usable according to the Creative Commons philosophy. In the first part of the paper we outline the ontology building process, briefly describe the most important ontological concepts, present and interpret our most important methodological decisions and our ontological commitments, and show the applied layered solution of the project: how the conceptual and the language layers can be separated and integrated. While the conceptual layer is always language independent, the language layer can contain any number of individual languages without restriction. In the second part of the paper we discuss the structure and the logic of MEO ontology, and present some interesting problems we had to solve in our project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an up-to-date software architecture, which is used in many areas of informatics today. There are lots of open standards and free tools which aim to realize the concepts of SOA. This paper introduces an approach by using a given collection of open standards and tools to realize a semantically enriched SOA architecture. The main building blocks of the architecture, the Web services, will be extended by a semantic description. The resulting SOA architecture and the services themselves will be called semantically enriched. For orchestration we use the OWL-S [1] standard. The choreography will be described in BPEL. The semantically enriched Web services run on an OWL-S Virtual Machine, while the complex processes, described in BPEL [2] on a BPEL run-time. Between the OWL-S invoke and BPEL description a special, self-developed mediator service will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a software tool working on-line with a multi-threaded client/ server architecture that permits loading the images and alphanumeric data in a database either directly, or by processing a DICOM file. It also allows the simple text based query of the database and content-based query on color or color texture features at the level of the entire image or at the level of the regions. The software tool has a modularized architecture. The module for extracting the images and alphanumeric information from the DICOM files and the module for extracting image visual characteristics (color and color texture) and the color regions are on the server side and are implemented using Java technology. For the database the MySQL server is used, and the client interface which allows the execution of simple text based query and content-based visual query on color and color texture features is implemented using the JSP and Servlet technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology in combination with changes in organizational structures and forms for work has led to an increasing amount of information and also to totally new forms of information and records creation. Much of the information that earlier was produced on paper is now being produced in electronic form, for example as e-mail and in databases. A 10-year period is a long time when it comes to preserving electronic records. This is of course due to the rapid technological development, for example the problems with obsolete software and file formats. Vitale functions in society such as the social insurance and national registration have to be accessible for long periods of time. Without authentic, accessible, searchable, and reliable records these functions in society are in fact impossible to maintain. There still remain a lot of problems to solve before secure and efficient long-term preservation will be brought about. Digital preservation requires, in addition to the technological development, elaborated strategies, new workflows and organizational structures, standards and common metadata, new specific competences, and close co-operation across different professional fields. Though many problems still remain to be solved, governmental as well as business organizations are in an intermediate stage in the changeover to electronic records and have to deal with this situation. In this paper an empirical study of seven Swedish governmental departments is presented. The study was carried through with help of interviews and in some of the cases examination of complementary documentation. The result of the study shows the stage of changeover organizations are in, and the different strategies they use to handle the mixture of paper-bound documents, scanned documents, electronic records, databases, etc that comprise the information about one single commission or object and which has to be handled both in the short and the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An information retrieval system allows users to efficiently retrieve documents that are relevant to their current interests. The collection of documents from which the selected ones have to be retrieved might be extremely large and the use of terminology might be inconsistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agents who answer the calls in a reverse directory service have to face a considerable challenge: they need to communicate proper names (such as the names of persons, companies and streets). Their pronunciation is frequently irregular and their spelling is not obvious. The authors developed a TTS specialized for this task, i.e. the reading of names and addresses in order to create an automatic reverse directory service. The novelty of our system compared to others developed earlier is that we employed a new reading mode and optimized the acoustic database based on an extensive analysis of Hungarian proper names. This resulted in high intelligibility and naturalness. Our system was launched as a service of T-Mobile Hungary. The specialized TTS can also be the basis of other applications in the future, such as location based services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increased number of public organisations engage in E-Democracy projects to improve their capability to communicate on democratic issues. Such efforts are complex due to lack of knowledge on how to develop information technology solutions to support the complex nature of the electronic communication taking place. In this paper a process is proposed, identifying objectives and genres in E-Democracy projects. The process addresses two major problems identified from the E-Democracy literature and a case study. Firstly, the purposes of E-Democracy projects are often unclear and somewhat naïvely understood. Secondly, it seemed difficult to enact technology to achieve the identified objectives. This paper first describes the suggested process and then focus on experiences from an action case study. The opportunity to link main ideas (phase 1) and genres (phase 2) showed importance in the discussion about what to develop in the action case project. Introducing E-Democracy models simplified a comparison between alternatives and initiated a discussion on the objectives before focusing directly on technology, which is found to be a weakness in other E-Democracy projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the help of researchers of single-chip microprocessors, it is now possible to manufacture very small embedded devices and gather these in one network. In most cases, the network consists of various sensors, which communicate with the data gathering nodes, data processing nodes, data storage nodes and data visualization nodes (in case a human-machine interface is used to monitor such system). In general, each of such components can be a subsystem of a distributed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The firm's IT experience is considered among the characteristics that influence the adoption of an ERP. Few authors assume that the firms IT experience act as a main risk factor for ERP implementation projects. In this paper, a literature review based on theories related to resistance and conflicts factors in ERP implementation is presented. Then we describe the outcomes that may be deducted from a high-tech SME which tried to adopt an ERP. We find in this case that IT expertise and culture turned out to be inhibitors of ERP adoption. In conclusion, we present a dual perspective on the firm's capability to implement an ERP. Key words: ERP, resistance, conflicts, culture, IT expertise [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to changes in the world of data, new demands on databases appear and consequently questions, where the databases field is and where it should be going. Abiteboul et al. [1] emphasize two main driving forces in database area: Internet and particular sciences, as the physics, biology, medicine, and engineering. These sciences produce large and complex data sets that require more advanced database support than current commercial systems provide. For example, BaBar database, containing nuclear data and considered as the biggest in the world, had more than 895 terabytes data stored in 847149 files on November 5, 2004. The system CORIE (Columbia River Estuary) produces in its simulations 5 gigabytes of forecast data each day [5]. Data volume doubles approximately every year and it is measured even in petabytes [8]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fingerprints recognition is established technique for police agencies. Most of the companies and public organizations are using password or token such as magnetic or smart card based identity management systems. Security of these systems depends crucially on the proper behavior of the users since passwords and tokens can be easily transferred. Biometric identification has obvious advantages if security of the system is not always in the best interest of the users. Biometrical data of the fingerprint is the best way to identify the person taking into account efficiency, availability, reliability, time-constrains, etc. Technology advances in computing and optical scanners allow create low -cost small size fingerprint- based identification systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, tourist regions have placed greater stress on the concept of Universal Design (UD), which takes into account the needs of a more diverse range of people, including senior citizens, the disabled, and foreign visitors. We have been conducting research and development on a system, based on the UD concept, for providing tourism information suited to various user characteristics. The system is designed for Hiraizumi, a tourist area which is aiming to register its historical cultural assets on the World Heritage List in 2008. This paper analyzes needs relating to Universal Design of tourist information, and describes system design and prototype development/evaluation efforts based on that analysis. Satisfactory results were obtained regarding the validity and implementation potential of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]