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École Supérieure
d' Électronique de
l' Ouest

and

Departamento de Sistemas 
e Informática da
EST-Setúbal/IPS 
Escola Superior de 
Tecnologia de Setúbal 
 Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal

ICEIS 2003 Sites
www.est.ips.pt/iceis/
www.iceis.org

VALIDATING REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY AS A DATABASE QUALITY METRIC

Coral Calero, Mario Piattini, Macario Polo and Francisco Ruiz

This paper describes two metrics based on the referential integrity. The first one is defined as the maximum number of levels of referential integrity among tables and the second one is defined as the number of foreign keys. An empirical study for demonstrate that these metrics can affect the understandability of the relational database schema is presented. Four cases have been designed in order to validate empirically the influence of the two metrics. With the results obtained we conclude that the referential integrity affects the undestandability of the relational database schema.

A PROPOSAL FOR CONTROL DATABASE SOFTWARE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Antonio Martínez and Mario Piattini

In this paper, we propose a measurement set for the CA-OpenIngres/4GL, by adapting classical metrics (size, length, complexity, cohesion, and coupling) which can be generalized for other relational database fourth generation languages. These measures are characterized using the mathematical framework developed by Briand et al. (1996) and Morasca and Briand (1997). Note that the proposed measures and metrics have been conceived to be applied in traditional languages, which are more homogeneous than 4GL ones. These measures do not take into account the 4GL languages include sentences ( sub-languages) of different nature.
We propose a classification of the fourth generation languages in sub-languages ( procedural control sentences, visual control sentences, exception handling sentences, database objects manipulation sentences, data manipulation sentences, security control sentences, transaction control sentences). The application of these measures would provide a more accurate vision of the characteristics of the evaluated code.

GATHERING THE RIGHT INFORMATION AT THE RIGHT TIME: AN AGENT BASED APPROACH TO DATA WAREHOUSES LOADING PROCESSES

Orlando Belo

In order to build accessible and effective means for decision-making, enterprises gather large amounts of data on their distributed information sources and, in some cases, on external repositories. After, the information gathered is analysed, selected, filtered, transformed and integrated in special data storage units, commonly named by data warehouses systems. To do all the previous tasks properly, it is necessary to dispense significant efforts on the enterprise functional and operational analyse processes and on the definition and implementation of mechanisms that ensure effectively the operations involved with the "migration" of data into the data warehouse system. Moreover, it is also necessary to guarantee consistency, permanent data availability, and high quality levels on the information stored on the data warehouses. Thus, through the combination of information systems and data warehousing techniques, and agent-based technology, we designed an intelligent data warehousing system management architecture. The architecture's model includes all the passive and active components – data resources, end-users, and agents - related to system management, information gathering, and fault tolerance mechanisms, for an intelligent data warehousing system.

DB-GRAPH: A TOOL FOR DEVELOPMENT OF DATABASE SYSTEMS BASED ON THE EXTENDED ENTITY RELATIONSHIP LOGICAL MODEL

Marcos Aurélio Alves, Marcelo Ossamu Honda and Fábio Lúcio Meira

The main goal of this paper is the presentation of the graphic tool for development of databases systems: db-Graph. This tool allows the construction of a logical model of database based on the extended entity relationship model, following the pattern defined by Elmasri and Navathe in [ELMAS94]. The main prominence of the tool is that it allows the manipulation of the data base (inclusion, exclusion, alteration, queries) directly in the graphic model as well as in the relational model, generated automatically. The tool presents three modules: Publishing module, for the construction and manipulation of the logical model; Conversor Module, to generate the relational model automatically; Queries Generator module, for manipulation of database directly in the relational model.

A SYSTEM FOR ANALYSIS & VISUALIZATION OF DOMAIN SPECIFIC DATA

Srinivas Narasimha Kini, Srikantha and K. Poulose Jacob

Computerization and the usage of digital devices in recent years have made data available in digital form in the corporate world. Despite this, most corporate executives are not using their invaluable asset, data, fully. A visual form of presentation can enhance executives understanding of the data and their interrelationships. This paper discusses how complementary technologies like networking, data warehousing, data mining, OLAP and data visualization can be used to develop the system architecture for a domain specific data with an example of the election domain. A system with such architecture can be used efficiently in the corporate scenario to help executives to make strategic decisions. This paper also explains the creation of efficient data warehouse with the concept of static and dynamic data.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN OBJECT-ORIENTED ROAD NETWORK DATABASE

Muhammad Abaidullah Anwar and Takaichi Yoshida

One of the problems raised by the Transportation Industry is to arrange the data related to a road in such a way such that its retrieval, especially a part of the road, may be efficient and unnecessary data processing may be avoided. This paper presents an effort to handle this problem by dividing the road into road segments into levels in which a country is divided into administrative areas i.e. prefectures, cities, etc Responsibility-Driven Approach of Object-oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) is used in designing the Road Network Data Model. The design process is divided into two phases. In Exploratory Phase, the classes needed for the data model, overall responsibilities of the system and responsibilities of the individual classes have been identified. In the Analysis Phase, analysis of hierarchies is done to arrange the identified classes into containment and composite hierarchies.

HOW DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS INFLUENCE MANAGEMENT DECISION EFFECTIVENESS?

Alberto Carneiro

This article is concerned with decision process and examines the relationships between management decision effectiveness, information attributes, and decision support systems in the context of database management. By considering how a database and the information technology affect the consequences of manager's decisions, this study attempts to provide useful insights on the linkages between strategic management, information technology, and a number of information attributes commonly used in dealing with strategic needs. This study proposes also an interpretative linear programming model, with special focus on the relationships between decision effectiveness and decision support systems. Results indicate that middle and top managers are increasingly taking into account the importance of information resources and the role of decision support systems to assure decision effectiveness. The major findings are discussed and directions for future research are suggested according to the proposed model.

MODELLING BACKGROUND PROCESSES IN PARALLEL DATABASE SYSTEMS FOR PERFORMANCE PREDICTION

K. J. Lü

Performance predication is a valuable technique for the application sizing, capacity planning and performance tuning of database systems. It allows design choices to be tested easily and cheaply. It can highlight potential performance problems in designs before any construction conducted. Background process is one of the most important activities involved in database operation. The way of estimating the cost of background processes will greatly affect the accuracy of performance predication for the entire system. An approximation modelling approach for background processes in parallel database systems is introduced. This approach could be used in analytical tools for performance prediction of shared-nothing and shared-disk parallel database systems.

A COORDINATION MODEL FOR WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Danilo Montesi, David Beaumont, Peter Dearnley and Dan Smith

Systems coordination is essential to achieve a common goal through cooperative systems. Active rules provide a simple and powerful approach to achieve high level activities coordination and can easily and flexibly express coordination policies among different tasks that are executed by different systems. We propose a coordination model based on active rules where rule semantics can be immediate, deferred or decoupled. Under the immediate semantics a rules is executed as soon as it is triggered. Under the deferred semantics rule execution is postponed. Under the decoupled semantics rule executions form a separate sequence that can run concurrently. All the semantics of these rules can be expressed within a simple and uniform formal model to define several coordination policies. Transactional behaviour can be expressed within the same coordination model to realize workflow management systems where all-or-nothing behaviour is often required and can run on top of a database system. We describe a conceptual architecture based on database systems to control access, a discussion of the toolkit, and a description of the workflow interface to the Web. This approach follows previous experiences at BT Laboratories where customized solutions have been developed for several data-intensive cooperative systems.

TWO FAST ALGORITHMS FOR REPEATED MINING OF ASSOCIATION RULES BASED ON RESOURCE REUSE

Xiaoping Du, Kunihiko Kaneko and Akifumi Makinouchi

This paper proposes new algorithms for mining association rules in a large database of sales transactions. In order to obtain the results satisfying the users, data mining has to be repeated several times with diferent minimum supports. If the existing mining algorithms are used for each repeated mining, similar and unnecessary processing is repeated, which may lead to overhead. We propose two more e
ective algorithms. They store the intermediate results which are used for the following mining and reuse them to improve the performance of repeated mining. The empirical evaluation shows that, when the algorithms are repeated each time, the performance of our algorithms is much better than that of the rerunning present algorithms.

AUTOMATIC DOCUMENT ANALYSIS AND UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM

Xuhong Li, Jianshun Hu, Zhenfu Cheng, D.C. Hung, and Peter A. Ng

Document processing is a crucial process in the office automation. Document image processing begins from the "OCR" phase with difficulty of the document "analysis" and "understanding". In this paper, we describe an automatic document classification and extraction system (ADoCES), which is a component of TEXPROS (Text Processing System). This component proceeds from scanning a given paper-document into the system, classifying it as a particular type, which is characterized in terms of attributes to form a frame template, and then extracting the pertinent information from the document to form its corresponding frame instance, which is an effective digital form of the original document. Given an incoming document, the document analysis proceeds to define its layout structure in terms of a directed and weighted graph (DWG) and its logical structure in terms of a frame template. The document understanding proceeds to extract information from the document based on the layout structure and the frame template of the document. We describe briefly that the system can "learn" from experiences and function in an operational stage.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT TRAVEL PLANNING APPLICATION

Marisol Correia

Here it is presented an application that plans out travel on public transports and that chooses the best ones, according to preference criteria provided by the user. These criteria are: the time spent on the travel, the price of the tickets and the quality of the transports. The application combines different means of transport. Algorithms and heuristics were developed to draw up transport plans and to choose the best ones. The best plans are determined using the multi-attributes decision techniques. The application uses a database that was developed in a Relational Database Management System. To draw the database at the conceptual and the applicational level, it was used one of the models based on the object, the Entity-Relationship Model.

A NOVEL APPROACH FOR THE SEAMLESS INTEGRATION OF MEDIA MANAGEMENT INTO DISTRIBUTED ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Gabor Szentivanyi, Waltraud Gerhardt and Mohammad Abolhassani

Current approaches to enrich distributed enterprise information systems with media functionality do not provide a high degree of openness, flexibility and configurability. The deficiencies are to be found in the models that serve as a foundation for the management and the information to be managed, and in the architecture that provides a realisation environment for the models. On the one hand, the models used are usually not full-fledged, distributed object models, but interchange scripts, proprietary protocols and local views. On the other hand, the architectures used cannot provide the infrastructures to seamlessly incorporate distributed object models with all their features. This paper defines the foundations of distributed enterprise information systems as business management and media management. It examines existing architectures and points out their deficiencies what concernes seamless integration of media management. Finally, it proposes a distributed object model for media management and an architecture for distributed information systems, into which the media management model can seamlessly be integrated.

SUPPORTING DECISIONS CONCERNING LOCATIONROUTING OF OBNOXIOUS FACILITIES: AN APPLICATION EXAMPLE OF VISUALIZATION AND INTERACTION TECHNIQUES

Carlos Ferreira, Andreia Barbosa De Melo and Beatriz Sousa Santos

The problem of locating obnoxious facilities has become a major social concern. In these cases the traditional optimality criterion of "closeness" is replaced by the opposite criterion; moreover location and routing decisions are usually intimately related and combining both provides a better modelling. The problem’s already high complexity is also increased when other criteria of interest are considered simultaneously. The use of multiobjective location-routing models, which corresponds to a better modelling in real cases, can be jeopardised by the huge demanded effort. In consequence, the use of graphical and interactive methods becomes of great importance. This paper addresses specific issues and corresponding developed solutions for the visualization and interaction problems related to the use of a multiobjective location-routing model that could be used in a Decision Support System for Location-Routing of Obnoxious Facilities. A mock-up user interface was developed in order to test if the visualization and interaction solutions prove adequate.

CANDIDATE DROP ALGORITHM FOR MINING ASSOCIATION RULES

S. Raman T. S. Appan

Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) helps in realizing the potential value of the implicit information stored in large databases. One specific approach to that is the mining of association rules. An example of an association rule is that \90% of customers who buy Rufies also buy Coke". The main problem is that of discovering the relationship between such items. As per the widely used apriori algorithm, the frequent itemsets are generated through an iterative process which requires a large number of I/O operations. The partition algorithm, which is a later development, scans the database only twice. In the rst scan, it generates a huge list of potential candidate itemsets which will be used in the second scan to generate the frequent itemsets. In this paper, a new approach called the candidate drop method is proposed, and it reduces the number of potential candidates through the use of Virtual Large Partitions. Empirical evaluation shows that the reduction is between 24% and 41%. Also, the number of scans over the database is reduced to between 1 and (2n-1)/n, where n is the number of partitions.

AN INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTED MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES

Américo Lopes Azevedo and Cesar Toscano

A component-based Information System supporting the requirements of an optimisation-based global Order Promise system developed for use in distributed manufacturing enterprises is described. The system is full Distributed Object Oriented and is part of a broader Decision Support System for production and operations planning for the semiconductor industry. In this manufacturing sector, planning and control activities are very complex, and have to take place both within the enterprise and across the whole supply network in order to achieve high levels of performance. This leads to new more challenging requirements for information systems, that are partially fulfilled with the system described in this paper.

USING TRANSFORMATION PATHS TO TRANSLATE AND MIGRATE DATA

Christophe Nicolle, Nadine Cullot and Kokou Yétongnon

The increasing need for exchanging data between heterogeneous distant sites, and for managing new database systems lead to develop new mechanisms and architectures to allow interoperability of information systems. One of the main problems of these architectures is to take into account heterogeneous data translation between cooperative databases. Many translation methodologies have been developed, but they are often too specific or not extensible to new models. This paper presents a case tool, called TIME, to aid the construction and the management of heterogeneous cooperative information systems. The key features of this solution are 1) a set of abstract metatypes that capture the characteristics of various modelling concepts, 2) the organisation of the metatypes in a generalisation hierarchy to allow unification and correlation of data models and 3) a set of transformation rules coupled with the hierarchy that ensure the translation between instances of metatypes. Rules are combined in translation path used for the translation schema and the migration of data. A Data Translation Module uses this translation path to build data translators, which can format data requested from one system to another system.

UPDATING MULTIPLE DATABASES THROUGH MEDIATORS

Vânia Maria Ponte Vidal and Bernadette Farias Lóscio

Mediator is a facility that supports an integrated view over multiple information sources, and allows for queries to be made against the integrated view. In this paper, we extend the mediator architecture to support updates against the integrated view. Updates expressed against the mediator’s integrated view need to be translated into updates of the underlying local databases. We developed algorithms to generate translators for the basic types of mediator update operations. In our approach, a translator is a function that receives an update request and generates the update's translation. In this paper, we present the algorithm that generates translators for monovalued attribute modification operations.

AN INTELLIGENT RETAIL ANALYSIS SYSTEM

M. Fátima Rodrigues and Carlos S. Ramos

The progress of data-collection technology, such as bar-code scanners in commercial domains, generates huge amounts of data. Moreover, pressure to improve profitability has caused retail companies to spend more energy in identifying sales opportunities. To aid this task, companies increasingly store huge amounts of data in data warehouses for decision support purposes. Actually the needs of decision-support systems are evolving into finer and finer-grain requirements. In the 60's the requirements were at the market level; in the 70's, at the niche level; in the 80's at the segment level; and in the 90's, at the customer level (Druker 1995). These finer-grain requirements obviously lead to the use of more data in decision support systems. It is not realistic to expect that all this data be carefully analysed by human experts. A new generation of tools and techniques for automated intelligent database analysis is needed. These tools and techniques are the subject of the rapidly emerging field of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, which is the subject of this article. This article presents two Data Mining exercises that we have added to DECADIS - ''DEscoberta de Conhecimento em Armazéns de Dados da DIStribuição'' (Knowledge Discovery in Retail Data Warehouses), which is an integrated system to understand customer behaviour and consumption patterns in a Portuguese company of the retail industry.

ON INCORPORATING MULTIMEDIA INTO SPATIOTEMPORAL SYSTEMS

Cláudio de Souza Baptista

The advances in multimedia technology have changed the way of designing information systems. The number of applications requiring the use of this new data type is increasing. This work focus on the integration of multimedia into spatial information systems. It is advocated that the use of metadata in order to express the semantic of those data types is essential for effectively index, retrieve, transport and storage of them. A metamodel is defined which encompasses spatial, temporal, aspatial and multimedia data types. This model is defined using a hierarchical approach with different levels of abstraction and it is implemented on the top of an object-relational database system. A key characteristic of the model is the flexibility in querying the database objects by content, by spatial and temporal features, and by keywords. The model is designed obeying the following properties: unified and transparent view of the underlying data, query facilities, indexing requirements, distribution, interoperability, and extensibility.

ANALYZING THE IMPACT OF SCHEMA CHANGE ON APPLICATION PROGRAMS

M. Bouneffa, H. Basson and L. Deruelle

A database is generally shared by several application programs. This makes any schema change critical and often prohibited because existing application programs often become invalids to run against the modified schema. Many approaches have been developed to deal with this problem and the main idea was to make the change transparent for the programs. In the case of Object-Oriented databases, transparency is often reached by using a kind of ad hoc polymorphism, which may be implemented by the instances, the query language or the application programs. Such approaches are often very useful for a transition period or for a limited taxonomy of schema changes. However, they can not be sufficient to deal with all kind of schema changes. Otherwise, polymorphism based approaches may increase the systems complexity and would have bad side effects on both the maintenance process and the system performance. In this paper, we deal with adapting object-oriented application programs to the database schema change. We assume that such programs must evolve to meet the new schema versions. Our approach is based on the use of a software change impact analyser that we developed to manage the change of object-oriented programs.

PROTOTYPE VALIDATION OF THE TRAPEZOIDAL ATTRIBUTE CARDINALITY MAP FOR QUERY OPTIMIZATION IN DATABASE SYSTEMS

Murali Thiyagarajah and B. John Oommen

Current database systems utilize histograms to approximate frequency distributions of attribute values of relations. These are used to efficiently estimate query result sizes and access plan costs and thus minimize the query response time for business and (non commercial) database systems. In two recent works (Oommen, Thiyagarajah 1999a, Oommen, Thiyagarajah 1999b) we proposed two new forms of histogramlike techniques called the Rectangular and Trapezoidal Attribute Cardinality Maps (ACM) respectively. Since these techniques are based on the philosophies of numerical integration, they provide much more accurate result size estimations than the traditional equi-width and equi-depth histograms currently being used by many commercial database systems. In (Oommen, Thiyagarajah 1999a; Oommen, Thiyagarajah 1999b) we also provided a fairly extensive mathematical analysis for their average and worst case errors for their frequency estimates which, in turn, were verified for synthetic data. This paper reports the prototype validation for the Rectangular-ACM (R-ACM) for query optimization in real-world database systems. By using an extensive set of experiments using real-life data (U.S. Census 1997, NBA 1992), we demonstrate that the T-ACM scheme is much more accurate than the traditional histograms for query result size estimation. We anticipate that it could become an invaluable tool for query optimization in the future.

MEDINFORM: AN ENTERPRISE-WIDE MEDICAL INFORMATION AND TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM

Pang Pingli and Micheal Fenton

MedInform is a distributed medical imaging system. It links scattered medical resources and provides cheap, scalable, personalized, secure and fast access to them, not only within an organization, but in other institutions as well. The system consists of a set of autonomous local systems that each specializes in a certain medical domain such as craniofacial surgery and planning or cardiology. Each of these domain systems has a distributed 3-tier web-based client/server architecture. The database provides local storage to facilitate faster and special information accessing of medical data and others from PACSs, image devices, existing systems, or outside institutions. The service layer does such computation intensive jobs as image analysis, 3-D visualization and Telemedicine which allows the client computer to be simple with less computation power. This gives cheap image access for general users, including patients. Each interface component serves certain application rendering purpose. The role-oriented interface picks the related interface components that are needed by the user, to form the most suitable working environment. The existing systems and point-of-care devices are linked to the system through DICOM and HL7 interfacing services. The communication among the different systems is achieved through an Information Repository Center (IRC) using interface component or service objects that gives more efficient system integration than the present method through HL7 interfacing. The IRC links the shared PACSs and other medical devices. It keeps indexing on various information in PACSs, domain systems and outside institutions. Upon any information changes, they inform IRC to update its indexes. Levels of information access control and security are also maintained in IRC and domain systems.

THREE-LEVEL ARCHITECTURE FOR QUERY CLOSURE IN DATABASE SYSTEMS

B.Nick Rossiter, David A. Nelson and Michael A. Heather.

In a database query, closure is achieved when the output from its execution is a first-class database structure. Such structures should be capable of being further manipulated or queried by the database system according to its model without limitations Closure comes easily to relational databases because there is only one type of data - the table. In more expressive database models, such as the object-oriented, closure is not achieved naturally. Such systems allow new objects to be created but it is much more difficult to create new class-object structures, which rank equally in all respects with other such structures already existing in the database. For ODMG, the problem of closure is acknowledged and some tentative solutions have been proposed.

STRUCTURE LEARNING OF BAYESIAN NETWORKS FROM DATABASES BY GENETIC ALGORITHMS APPLICATION TO TIME SERIES PREDICTION IN FINANCE

Jérôme Habrant

This paper outlines a genetic algorithm based method for constructing bayesian networks from databases. Our method permits the generation of a complete structure if there is no expert for the domain studied. Also it allows taking advantage of the knowledge about the domain by specifying connections in the network. To test our method, we applied it to time series prediction in finance with 5 shares. We experimented 3 different genetic algorithms: first, we used classical syntactical genetic operators, second we add 2 high-level genetic operators by taking the semantic of the structures into consideration, and third, we add a last powerful operator. Furthermore, we studied 3 constraints on the structures: by assuming an ordering between the nodes, by releasing the ordering assumption and by forcing the structures to use all available information to build the forecasts. For each of the 3 genetic algorithms and the 3 constraints, we present our results concerning the genetic algorithms convergence and the predictive power of the best structures obtained. Our results are encouraging.

A GENERAL METHODOLOGY FOR ROBOTIC HAPTIC RECOGNITION OF 3-D OBJECTS

E. Faldella and M. Prandini

Three-dimensional object recognition is a fundamental prerequisite to build versatile robotic systems. This paper describes an approach to the recognition problem that exploits tactile sensing, which can be conveniently integrated into an advanced robotic end-effector. The adopted design methodology is based on the training and classification activities typical of the unsupervised Kohonen neural networks, with a learning phase of the geometric properties of the objects, followed by the operative phase of actual recognition in which the robot explores with its end-effector the objects, correlating the sensorial data with the preceding perceptive experiences. The validity of the novel approach pursued for the design of the haptic recognition system has been ascertained with reference to a high-dexterity 3-finger, 11-degree of freedom robotic hand (the University of Bologna hand), but the underlying methodological issues can be specialized to any robotic dexterous end-effector. The developed prototype system, even though currently referring to a simulated environment, has already shown a satisfactory operative level in recognizing objects belonging to a set of significant cardinality, independently of their pose in the working space.

LINGUISTIC ENGINEERING FOR CONCEPTION OF MULTIAGENTS SYSTEMS

Jean-Philippe Kotowicz and Xavier Briffault

The actors of a company must collaborate in an efficient way to achieve the common purposes of the company (the Project). Therefore, they must have competencies, manage and produce knowledge, perform tasks, and communicate between them. The objective of the EUREKA project "MERCURE", in which this work fits, is to propose a tool of assistance to collaboration and communication between actors based on a multi-agents platform (software agents) communicating by speech acts of advanced languages. The software agents are built by analysis of the actors’ competencies, from interviews in natural language.

DAMAS: AN INTEGRATED BUSINESS MODELLING INFORMATION SYSTEM TO SUPPORT MANAGEMENT ENTERPRISE DECISIONS

Luigi Lavazza and Habib Sedehi

DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data repositories and system dynamics modelling tools. The latter are used to simulate the behaviour of different business areas, such as marketing, finance, production, etc. Moreover, an enterprise-wide, company-specific model, integrating the aforementioned areas, is being built. The main target is wine production industry. Nevertheless, the DAMAS consortium is pursuing the applicability of the proposed approach to other industrial sectors. DAMAS features a business object architecture, encapsulating legacy repositories, as well as business intelligence and common functions. Managers are provided with a high-level dashboard which co-ordinates, controls and monitors the underlying business objects.

SIPO: A SYSTEM FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF OBJECTIVES

Paulo Rogério Perfeito Tomé and Luís Alfredo Martins do Amaral

The explicit or implicit definition of objectives of an organisation is usually realised by the individuals of that organisation. Individuals have their own personal objectives, departmental objectives and also objectives for the organisation in its entirety. Knowledge of all the objectives is important for the future development of the organisation. In order that the objectives might be achieved it is important that they be understood. For this reason they must be expressed in a clear and precise way. The coexistence of a multitude of objectives, pursued by different individuals, causes conflicts, redundancies and cross-influences that confirm the relations among these objectives. This article describes an intelligent system that allows the totality of objectives of an organisation to be determined. To this end an attempt is made to establish a language and a set of relations which is to be found among these objectives.

WHAT’S IN A NODE: NODES AND AGENTS IN LOGISTIC NETWORKS

Joaquim Reis and Nuno Mamede

In this article we describe components of a representation scheme for modeling a logistics environment, where production and distribution of products can both occur and must be coordinated, following from previous work of the authors. These components, model enterprises (e.g., factories, warehouses, etc.) in a Production/Distribution network (P/D network, for short), as well as capacity management at enterprise facilities, and agents which act as enterprise managers, taking decisions that affect the available capacity at the facilities. In the near future, our goals include approaching the multi-agent coordination problems that occur in scheduling activity in this kind of environment.

NEURAL NETWORKS FOR X-RAY IMAGE SEGMENTATION

Su Linying, Bernadette Sharp and Darryl Davis

The paper addresses the application and challenges of using neural networks to segment gray-level images; approaches we term direct perception. The work described here is part of Intelligent Multi-Agent Image Analysis System, which is being developed to promote the automated diagnosis and classification of digital images. In this paper we show how neural networks may be successfully segment medical X-ray images of the thigh. They are Back Propagation neural network, Counter Propagation neural network, Self-Organizing Feature Map, Bi-directional Associative Memory, and a hybrid network consisted of BP and SOFM. The comparisons among their performance are made, and some feature extraction techniques used here are presented. A kind of one layer neural network, known as WISARD, may be used to validate the segmentation performance based on the segmentation results. A highly general validation information, the centroid curve of the segmented images, is proposed here.

SCALABLE INTELLIGENCE DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Carlos Ramos

In this paper we try to compare two different approaches: decision support technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. After a discussions on these approaches we conclude that they are not alternative, being most of times complementary. A new concept is introduced “Scalable Intelligence Decision Support Systems - SIDSS”. The idea is to have a new generation of Decision Support Systems that gives to the user the opportunity to use as much system intelligence as he or she wants to use. Some on-going projects in this direction will be presented in the paper.

TOWARDS AN EXECUTABLE SPECIFICATION OF MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS

V. Hilaire and T. Lissajoux and A. Koukam

Facing Multi-Agent Systems spread and numerous implementations, the engineering methods gap is becoming acute. This paper proposes a formal specification method in order to fulfil that need. This method is based upon two existing formalisms: Object-Z and statecharts. We compose them to build a specification framework and illustrate the approach with an example drawn from radiomobile network field.

THE STL++ COORDINATION LANGUAGE: APPLICATION TO SIMULATING THE AUTOMATION OF A TRADING SYSTEM

Michael Schumacher, Fabrice Chantemargue, Simon Schubiger, Béat Hirsbrunner and Oliver Krone

This paper introduces the STL++ coordination language, a C++-based language binding of the ECM coordination model. STL++ applies theories and techniques known from coordination theory and languages in distributed computing to try to better formalise communication and coordination in distributed multi-agent applications. STL++, as such, may be seen as a preliminary agent language which allows the organisational structure or architecture of a multi-agent system to be described, with means to dynamically reconfigure it. It is aimed at giving basic constructs for distributed implementations of generic multi-agent platforms, to be run on a LAN of general-purpose workstations. We illustrate the application of STL++ to a real case study, namely the application to simulating the automation of a trading system.

WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE TO DO THAT ? INFUSING ADAPTIVE WORKFLOW TECHNOLOGY WITH KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE ORGANISATIONAL AND AUTORITY CONTEXT OF A TASK

Peter Jarvis, Jussi Stader, Ann Macintosh, Jonathan Moore and Paul Chung

To achieve more widespread application, workflow systems need to be developed to operate in dynamic environments where they are expected to ensure that users are supported in performing flexible and creative tasks while maintaining organisational norms. We argue that in order to cope with these demands, the systems must be provided with knowledge about the organisational structure and authority context of tasks. We support this argument by identifying a number of decision points that an adaptive workflow system must support, discussing how these decisions can be supported with technically oriented capability specifications, and describe how this support can be enhanced with the inclusion of knowledge about organisational structure and authority. We outline how such knowledge can be captured, structured, and represented in a workflow system. We then demonstrate the use of such knowledge by describing how the task initiation, task planning, activity scheduling, and agent interaction functions within a workflow system can be enhanced by it.

HOLONIC DYNAMIC SCHEDULING ARCHITECTURE AND SERVICES

Nuno Silva and Carlos Ramos

Manufacturing systems are changing its structure and organisation. Supply chain are evolving to more coupled organisations, like virtual enterprises, though maintaining the single entities autonomy, adaptability and dynamism properties. Such organisations are very different, which imply organisational and technological shift through agility, distribution, decentralisation, reactivity and flexibility. New organisational and technological paradigms are needed in order to reply to the modern manufacturing systems needs. This paper present a holonic manufacturing system architecture and complementary services supplied to assist overall Communication, Security, Reliability, Information Management, Co-operation and Co-ordination.

CONTOUR ESTIMATION ON PIECEWISE HOMOGENEOUS RANDOM FIELDS

José A. Moinhos Cordeiro and José M. Bioucas Dias

This paper addresses contour estimation on images modeled as piecewise homo- geneous random fields. It is therefore assumed that images are samples of random fields composed of a set of homogeneous, in a statistical sense, regions; pixels within each region are assumed to be independent samples of a given random variable. Particular attention is given to Gaussian, Rayleigh, and Poisson densities. The model just described accurately fits many class of problems on image modalities such as optical, ultrasound, X-rays, emission tomography, and confocal microscopy, only to name a few. The followed approach is Bayesian: contours are assumed to be non-causal Markov random fields. This description is appropriate to include a priori information such as continuity, smoothness, elasticity, and rigidity. The selected estimation criterion is the maximum a posteriori (MAP). In the present context, MAP estimation, although simpler than others (e.g., minimum mean square error or minimum absolute error), leads to a huge non-linear optimization problem. By using dynamic programming associated to a multigrid resolution technique, quasi-optimal contour estimates are computed with an acceptable complexity. A set of tests using synthetic and real images illustrates the appropriateness of the proposed methodology.

SPARSE-IT: AN INTELLIGENT TUTOR FOR POWER SYSTEM CONTROL CENTER OPERATOR TRAINING

Zita A. Vale, António Silva, Luiz Faria, Nuno Malheiro, Carlos Ramos and Albino Marques

This paper deals with the use of the intelligent tutor SPARSE-IT, as an example of an Engineering application of Artificial Intelligence techniques in power systems Control Center environment. This tutor works in close association with SPARSE, an expert system specialized in the interpretation of the alarm messages produced by the Scada system during serious incidents. Its main purpose is the training of the control Center operators in this precise task. This paper discusses issues such as the representation of an adequate user model, the acquisition of the domain knowledge to be taught to the operators and techniques for the accurate evaluation of the trainee’s progress.

AN EXPERT SYSTEM FOR INTELLIGENT INFORMATION PROCESSING IN PORTUGUESE POWER SYSTEM CONTROL CENTERS

Zita A. Vale, Carlos Ramos, Luiz Faria, Jorge Santos, Nuno Malheiro, António Silva and Albino Marques

Power System Control Centers receive real-time information about the power system that they operate. In incident situations, a huge volume of information can be received requiring intelligent means of processing and interpreting it. Knowledge Based Systems developed for this purpose have to be integrated with the existing hardware and software and to be able to assure real-time performance under incident conditions. This paper discusses the requirements of Knowledge Based Systems for control center applications. SPARSE, an Expert System developed for assisting the operators of Portuguese Transmission Control Centers is used as an example throughout the paper. Knowledge maintenance and knowledge verification and validation are considered as important issues for the success of this kind of applications.

AGENT MEDIATED MULTI PERSPECTIVE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Gulden Uchyigit

In this paper we present a distributed CSCW tool with an agent based infrastructure which enables stakeholders to co-operatively work together from different sites on developing a requirements specification. We discuss the roles and functionalities of the agents that provide support for consistency checking, task delegation and graphical display of user selected mode. The agents communicate using a variant of KQML, a proposed standard inter agent communication language.

USING INTELLIGENT RETINA WITH CELLULAR AUTOMATA IN ACCESS CONTROL

Eduard Franti, Monica Dascalu, George Stefan and Mihai Stanescu

This paper presents the project of an access control device realized with an intelligent retina based on cellular automata model dedicated to a particular traffic control application: the control of the access in spaces with important dimension restrictions like tunnels, bridges or narrow streets, at the entry of garages or parkings and so on. The device process the information given by a (simplified) digital camera, detecting the dimensions of the incoming vehicles and comparing them with the accepted limits. Depending on the result obtained, a traffic light will signal if the access is permitted or not. The paper describes the function and the possibilities of implementation with cellular automata, the results of the simulations and the principle project for hardware implementation.

VEHICLE DETECTION IN TRAFFIC IMAGES

Luigi Di Stefano and Enrico Viarani

This paper describes a method for detecting vehicles in traffic images which relies on motion estimation provided by a Block Matching Algorithm (BMA). Once motion has been estimated via BMA, the motion field is regularised by means of a Vector Median Filter. Finally, vehicles are detected by grouping together image blocks with similar motion. The main contributions of the paper consist in an effective approach to prevent wrong matches in static areas which yields also a significant computational saving and the use of an adaptive vector median filter aimed at avoiding vehicle erosion.

INTELLIGENT AGENTS GENERATING PERSONAL NEWSPAPERS

D. Cordero, P. Roldan, S. Schiafino and A. Amandi

NewsAgent is an intelligent type of agent that has the capability of generating personal newspapers from particular user preferences extracted by observation and feedback. This agent generates personal newspapers using static word analysis for extracting a global classification and case-based reasoning for dynamic subclassification. The agent observes users by an applet with capabilities of detecting changes of pages. It also records the routine of reading newspapers of each user for analyzing readings in terms of their routines. The contributions of this work are both a software architecture for interface agents moving on web pages and the classification of specific themes using case-based reasoning.

SOLVING THE TIMETABLING PROBLEM WITH SIMULATED ANNEALING

F. Melício, P. Caldeira and A. Rosa

School timetabling is an optimisation problem, which consists in assigning lectures to timeslots, satisfying a set of constraints of various kinds. Due mostly to the constraints this problem falls in the category of NPcomplete. Simulated Annealing (SA) have been applied with significant success to different combinatorial optimisation problems. Nevertheless, any implementation of SA algorithm is highly dependent of how structural elements are defined, i.e., solution space, generation of new solutions, cost function. In this paper, we try to solve the timetabling problem using simulated annealing and compare several parameters concerning the algorithm.

A DISTRIBUTED APPROACH TOWARDS DESIGNING INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEMS FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Codrin Ionut Zolti, Stefan-Lucian Voinea, Gabriel Dima, Marcel Profirescu , Ion Miu and Gheorghe Olteanu

This original approach towards ITS is defined by several features as: a WWW dedicated architecture, a distributed way of working both in the design and exploitation phases, a heuristic method to gather the needed information from all people involved in the project rather than from a limited number of experts. The development process is enhanced by shifting it toward the Open Source Software Community. Inter-human communication receives a great deal of attention, as it is an important speed up factor for the learning process.

GDOS – A GRAPHICAL DIAGNOSIS-ORIENTED EXPERT SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT TOOL

Joaquim Filipe, Ana Fred and Mário Fernandes

This paper presents an integrated environment for the development of diagnosis-oriented expert systems, comprising graphical support for knowledge acquisition, edition, explanation and validation. GDOS (Graphical Diagnosis-Oriented Shell), a Windows based software tool, extends one of the most popular shells – CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System) with the following features: backward chaining engine; graph-based explanation facilities; knowledge editor including a fuzzy fact editor and a rules editor, with facts-rules integrity checking; belief revision mechanism; built-in case generator and validation module. Most tools emphasise knowledge acquisition and knowledge base construction without much concern for validation. GDOS distinctive feature, besides its emphasis on the graphical orientation in all phases of system development, consists of a specially designed tool for assisting in the validation phase. GDOS has supported the development of the PSG Expert System, under the ENN project1, where it has proved to be a valuable tool for the development of medical expert systems. It is currently being used for developing a new system2 also in the medical domain.

ADVANTAGES OF A HIERARCHICAL PRESENTATION OF DATA STRUCTURES

J.A. Bakker

Using the development of a scheduling system as an example, we demonstrate that the usability of graphical data models can be improved by a hierarchical presentation of object types. Such abstraction hierarchies clearly show the presence of semantic links. Their perception is essential for the evaluation of data models, the specification of additional rules, the design of applications and queries, and the design of data distribution schemes as well. We conclude that system design can be improved significantly by using a hierarchical presentation of object types.

TRAFFIC SIMULATION OF LARGE REGIONS

Pedro Mendes and João Menano

The application of artificial life methods to traffic simulation allows us to experience several solutions to traffic problems. Former strategies have a considerable number of problems and a different approach is needed. What is intended with this article is the description of a new method, the macroscopic simulation using inter and intra-zonal traffic.

PROCESS MODELLING WITH NATURAL LANGUAGE INPUT

Geetha K. Abeysinghe and Christian R. Huyck

In this paper we are focusing on the process elicitation stage of process modelling which is crucial. The aim is to aid both the modeller and the process user in process elicitation. For those who carry out the process (process actors) it is much more natural and easy to describe what they do in natural language, but it is inevitable that many of these descriptions will contain ambiguity. If the natural language description can be automatically converted into a graphical form, which is also executable, then these executable models can be presented to the process actors and easily verified by demonstration.

EXPERT SYSTEM OBJECT-ORIENTED COMBINING SYSTEMATIC AND HEURISTIC REASONING

Lucimar F. de Carvalho, Hugo J. T. de Carvalho, Júlio C. Nievola, Celso A. Kaestner, Cristiane Koehler, Charles T. Batezini, Raquele Z. Grazziotin and Vinícius S. Borguetti

This paper presents the knowledge Based System (KBS) to support the Clinical Diagnosis of Epileptic Seizures. It is based on the classification of type the Crises of the International League Against Epilepy/81 and KADS1 methodology. The classification uses the Artificial symbolic Intelligence techniques being implemented in the shell KAPPA-PC2 (heuristic reasoning) and following the Object Orientation paradigm (systematic reasoning). The KADS methodology provides the flexible life-cycle model goes structuring and controlling the development process, rules and guidelines it goes guiding the knowledge engineer through the life-cycle model, and methods, tools and techniques it goes supporting various life-cycle model activities. Further work is being conducted towards the following issues: use of this model in order to treat about uncertainty with the Bayes´s Theorem and Conditional Probability of dates in medical diagnosis. The Bayes´s Theorem is a quantitative method for the revision of well-known probabilities, with base in a new information.

TYPE INFERENCE IN LOGIC PROGRAMMING CONTEXT

Cedric Luiz De Carvalho, Eduardo Costa Pereira and Rita Maria Da Silva Julia

This paper presents an algorithm for type inference in logic languages at compile time. It consists of a symbolic execution of the program in order to find out types corresponding to all predicate argument positions. It handles ground type arguments, such as integers and strings, and arbitrary compound type arguments, such as f(integer), f(integer, g(string)). The algorithm exhibits parametric polymorphism and does not require any kind of declaration. It was implemented as part of the logic language NetProlog. It is a well known fact that verifying type consistency at compile-time allows the detection of eventual programming errors. Once type verification is concluded, the system has no further need for information about data types. Then, one can assume that only type correct arguments are passed down to predicates. The absence of runtime type verification greatly improves performance of the generated code. Notice that, if type verification is not carried out at compile time, the generated code must contain filters and guards to prevent wrong data from getting to predicate calls. The programmer must distribute these guards along the source code.

SYSTEM FOR OPERATIONAL PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Alexandre Bragança and Carlos Ramos

This abstract presents a system for operational process management, namely manufacture’s processes. The presented system is to be used mainly in small/medium size enterprises with productive systems like batch or job-shop. One of the main purposes in developing this system was its flexibility, accessibility and easy way of using. The system is divided in two areas: the area of support for specification of productive process and the area destined to scheduling, dispatch and control of the production. The system is based on a graphic tool that is used to specify process, scheduling of instances of process and monitoring the instances.

MANAGING KNOWLEDGE FOR AN INTELLIGENT DOCUMENT PROCESSING SYSTEM

Jianshun Hu, Xuhong Li, D.C. Hung, Simon Doong and Peter A. Ng

In this paper, we describe the representation and organization of the knowledge about the infrastructure of storing documents and about the document base itself, which support fast retrieval of documents and information from various documents. A numerous components of the knowledge base of TEXPROS, such as the system catalog, the frame template base and the frame instance base are discussed.

OPTIMIZING A REAL-WORLD SCHEDULING PROBLEM IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY

J. Psarras, G. Mitrou, I. Makarouni and D. Askounis

The steel industry’s scheduling is characterized by the problem volume, the complexity of the objective function and the multiplicity of the constraints. The problem at hand is a flow shop scheduling problem and requires the effective use and programming of the factory resources. It incorporates the following elements: a) Group of Machines: Ruled by specific functional and physical constraints. b) Group of "Jobs": Each "job" is processed by the machines following a strict order. c) Group of Constraints: Physical, Functional, Hard, Soft, Preferences, etc. d) Objective Function: Is used to evaluate the quality of the solution. The problem is one of the most difficult NP-Hard. In order to handle the inherent intractability of this problem, a system based on Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) and Heuristics, representing the empirical knowledge for the specific industry, has been designed and implemented on the ECLiPSe (ECLiPSe Common Logic Programming System) platform. ECLiPSe is a development environment for constraint programming applications, containing several constraint solver libraries that allow to develop efficient programs to solve combinatorial problems in planning, scheduling, resource allocation, time-tabling, transport, etc. It is a single powerful tool with extended Prolog technology, persistent knowledge base, constraints handling facilities and parallelism.

NEGOTIATION AMONG INTENTIONAL AGENTS

Fernando Lopes, Nuno Mamede, Helder Coelho and A. Q. Novais

This paper presents a model for intentional agents operating in multi-agent domains and a mechanism for generating negotiation proposals. Intentional agents are defined as autonomous computational processes with cognitive structures composed of beliefs, desires, intentions and expectations, which act rationally to pursue their own goals. They perform means-end reasoning and generate alternative plans of action, which they select according to their preferences and adopt for further execution. In this paper a set of mental states of intentional agents is defined, namely beliefs, desires, intentions and expectations and the relationships between them specified. A detailed framework for means-end reasoning based on planning from second principles is also presented. Agents are assumed to have a library of plan templates or schemata, which are defined as frame-like structures with five components: a header, an argument list, a type, a body and a list of constraints. Means-end reasoning is based on retrieving from this library alternative plan templates, which match a top-level goal, and processing their constituting body components. The retrieved plan templates represent different ways to achieve the goal and only one of them is selected for execution. The selected plan template is used to start the construction of a plan structure: a hierarchical and temporally constrained AND-tree. The header component is made the root node of the plan strcuture. The body component is then processed and its body steps are placed at appropriate points in the plan structure. The alternative plan templates are stored for negotiation purposes and placed in the plan structure alongside the selected one.The whole process is the repreated for every body step of the selected plan template.

TASK MODELING IN A MULTI-AGENT LOGISTIC DOMAIN

Joaquim Reis and Nuno Mamede

This work concerns to scheduling in a broad sense, i.e., planning/scheduling at the logistic inter-enterprise level, and is also related to earlier work in coordinated planning, management planning, and modern work in supply-chain management. Logistic tasks, to be scheduled by agents playing the roles of interdependent enterprises (managing renewable resources like factories, warehouses, transportation fleets) acting as clients and as suppliers in multi-product cooperative production/distribution networks and the constraints on tasks, are described, as well as how uncertain knowledge about tasks can be represented. In our opinion the referred scheduling problem can be seen as a dynamic Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DCSP). The scheduling activity can be viewed through the DAI Multi-Agent paradigm as a Multi-Agent coordination problem in a semi-cooperative environment because, in scheduling their interdependent tasks, agents will cooperate to avoid violation of hard (capacity and temporal) constraints but will try to satisfy the most of its scheduling preferences.

AN ENTERPRISE-WIDE WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Lawrance M. L. Chung and Keith C. C. Chan

GENERATING OBJECT-Z SPECIFICATIONS FROM USE CASES

Ana Moreira and João Araújo

AN AGGREGATION BASED APPROACH TO RECONCILE EXPRESSIVENESS AND UNAMBIGUITY IN OBJECT ORIENTED MODELLING LANGUAGES

Luc Goossens

ALLIANCE: AN AGENT-BASED CASE ENVIRONMENT FOR ENTERPRISE PROCESS MODELLING, ENACTMENT AND QUANTITATIVE CONTROL

Ilham Alloui, Sorana Cîmpan, Flavio Oquendo and Hervé Verjus

IDEF0-BASED SOFTWARE PROCESS ANALYSIS FOR SCHEDULING SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

Akihiro Abe and Tetsuo Tamai

QUANTITATIVE MANAGEMENT OF OO DEVELOPMENT

Marjan Hericko, Matjaz B. Juric, Tomaz Domajnko, Ales Zivkovic and Ivan  Rozman

ADAPTIVE WORKFLOW

W.M.P. van der Aalst, T. Basten, H.M.W. Verbeek, P.A.C. Verkoulen and M. Voorhoeve

RE-ARRANGING THE CHAIRS: TACKLING THE OWNERSHIP ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSITION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS SUPPORT

Dennis Hart and Greg Whymark

SOFTWARE EFFORT ESTIMATION: THE ELUSIVE GOAL IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

J. Javier Dolado, Luis Fernández, M. Carmen Otero and Leire Urkola

INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR INFORMATION SYSTEM ANALYSIS AT THE ENTERPRISE LEVEL

Remigijus Gustas

USING CRITICALITY AS A BASIS FOR DETERMINING INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS FOR AN EIS

Gregory K. Whymark

A METHOD FOR INTEGRATING LEGACY SYSTEMS WITHIN DISTRIBUTED OBJECT ARCHITECTURE

Matjaz B. Juric, Ivan Rozman and Marjan Hericko

THE SOFTWARE DIMENSIONS THEORY

Claudine Toffolon

INCREASING OPPORTUNITIES FOR REUSE THROUGH TOOL AND METHODOLOGY SUPPORT FOR ENTERPRISE-WIDE REQUIREMENTS REUSE AND EVOLUTION

K. Suzanne Barber, Thomas J. Graser, Stephen R. Jernigan and Col. John Silva

THE FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE GROUPWARE APPLICATIONS

S. Terzis, P. Nixon, V. Wade, S. Dobson and J. Fuller

AN INTERPRETIVE APPROACH TO ORGANISATIONAL INQUIRY AND DESCRIPTION FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT IN INNOVATION CENTRES

Pedro José Leonardo and António Lucas Soares

INTELLIGENT AGENTS FOR QoS CONTROL AND ADAPTATION IN DISTRIBUTED MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

Farid Naï T-Abdesselam

INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN LARGE-SCALE ENTERPRISES USING MODEL-INTEGRATED COMPUTING

Amit Misra, Janos Sztipanovits, Gabor Karsai, Michael Moore, Akos Ledeczi and Earl Long

SPECIFYING SEMANTIC CONSTRAINTS FOR A HEALTHCARE SCHEDULER

J. Artur Vale Serrano, Marta Jacinto and João Paulo Cunha

FACILITATING ORGANISATIONAL ACTIVITIES USING PLANS AND AUDITS

Carlos J. Costa, Tânia Ho and Pedro Antunes

BUSINESS OBJECTS IN CONCEPTUAL INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE MODELLING

Rui Gomes and António Dias de Figueiredo

TRANSPORTATION IN POSTAL ENTERPRISE OF SERBIA: APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AND INTRANET IMPLEMENTATION

Nada Milosavljevic, Dragoslav Rasinac, Ranko R. Nedeljkovic and Dejan Damnjanovic

A HIGH SPEED ACCESS METHOD TO DATA STRUCTURES WITH INHERITANCE HIERARCHY

Shuichi Nishioka, Fumikazu Konishi, Jun'Ichi Kuroiwa, Makoto Onizuka and Jinnnosuke Nakamura

CUSTOMER ORIENTED ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: A CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP LIFE CYCLE APPROACH

Satya P. Chattopadhyay

BEYOND RELATIONSHIP MARKETING Technologicalship Marketing: Relationship marketing based on technology

Mosad Zineldin

INFORMATION MODELLING FOR RESOURCE-ORIENTED BUSINESS PROCESS

Jamal El-Den and J.P. Briffaut

THE INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR FAULT-TOLERANT SYSTEM SIMULATION AND DESIGN

A.E.Alexandrovich, R.M.Nikitin and V.O.Chouckanov

MULTI LANGUAGE AND MULTI PLATFORM SUPPORT FOR AGENT EXECUTION USING CORBA PLATFORM – AN IMPLEMENTATION

Orandi Mina Falsarella

MAINTENANCE TYPES IN THE MANTEMA METHODOLOGY

Francisco Ruiz, Mario Piattini, Macario Polo and Coral Calero

TOWARDS A VISUAL ENVIRONMENT FOR ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

Stewart Thomson and John A. W. McCall

FACTORISATION OF OMT MODELS

Viviane Jonckers, Bruno Van Damme and Katja Verbeeck

OBJECTS COUNT FOR SOFTWARE ESTIMATION

E. Chang, T. Dillon and M. Ilkov

GUIDE TO DEVELOP AN EUROMETHOD COMPATIBLE INFORMATION SYSTEM METHODOLOGY A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

Antonio de Amescua Seco, Adoración de Miguel Castaño, Javier García Guzmán, Juan Llorens Morillo and Luis Fernández Sanz

THE DECISION PROCESS IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING: A FRAMEWORK BASED ON THE CALL OPTIONS THEORY

Claudine Toffolon and Salem Dakhli

ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL OF INTELLIGENT ROBOTS - AN IMPLEMENTATION POINT OF VIEW

Ariana Popescu and Gheorghe Musca

AN ASSISTANT FOR SELECTING OBJECT ORIENTED METHODS FOR APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT

Gilene Do Espírito Santo Borges and Maria Elenita Menezes Nascimento

TRANSPORTATION IN POSTAL ENTERPRISE OF SERBIA: A CASE STUDY

Vladimir Papic, Milan Brujic, Jovan Popovic and Olivera Medar

MODELING ENTERPRISE ORGANIZATIONAL AND DECISION STRUCTURES

Hélène Bestougeff

A COMPREHENSIVE ORGANISATIONAL MODEL FOR ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Glen Duncan, Ron Beckett and Fawzy Soliman

STRATEGIC ROLE OF IT LEADER IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PROCESS CHANGE

Fawzy Soliman and John Politis

ROLE OF ERP SYSTEMS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING

Zahra Salameh

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR MANUFACTURING MANAGEMENT THROUGH ‘TEAM BUILDING’

Ergun Gide

IMPORTANCE OF CONFORMANCE OF DATA COLLECTION TO THE ERP MODEL

George Jamoo

BLIND SIGNATURES WITH DOUBLE-HASHED MESSAGES FOR FAIR ELECTRONIC ELECTIONS AND OWNERSHIP CLAIMABLE DIGITAL CASH

Chun-I Fan, Wei-Kuei Chen and Yi-Shiung Yeh

APPLICATIONS OF STATELESS CLIENT SYSTEMS IN COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISES

Sheng Feng Li, Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Andy Hopper

MAXIMISING THE BENEFITS OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE: AUTOMATING THE PROCESS OF VIRTUAL STORE GENERATION & MARKETING FOR SMES

Colin Charlton, Jim Geary, Janet Little and Irene Neilson

DEVELOPING DATABASE APPLICATION IN INTERNET - AN ASP FRAMEWORK

Gheorghe Musca, Ariana Popescu and Florin Munteanu

A ‘SEMANTIC’ APPROACH FOR IMPLEMENTING METADATA ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Gian Piero Zarri

VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS OVER IP/ATM NETWORKS IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Luis Orozco Barbosa

SYSTEM SUPPORT FOR INTRANET-BASED WORKFLOW PROCESSING

Alexander Schill and Christian Mittasch

BUILDING A WORKFLOW ENACTMENT SERVICE FOR TELEWORK CO-ORDINATION

Diogo Ferreira, João Rei, José M. Mendonça and J. J. Pinto Ferreira

A NEW METHOD TO BLOCK ACCESS TO ILLEGAL AND HARMFUL CONTENT ON THE INTERNET

Byung-Jeon Yoo, Hyun-Gyoo Yook and Myong-Soon Park

AN EFFICIENT PROTOCOL FOR RADIO PACKET NETWORKS

A-Rum Jun, Se-Jin Hwang, Hae-Sun Shin, Gun-Hee Kim and Myong-Soon Park

NETPROLOG - A LOGIC PROGRAMMING SYSTEM FOR THE JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE

Cedric Luiz De Carvalho, Eduardo Costa Pereira and Rita Maria Da Silva Julia

IMPLEMENTING NETWORK PROTOCOLS IN JAVA - A FRAMEWORK FOR RAPID PROTOTYPING

Matthias Jung, Ernst W. Biersack and Alexander Pilger

COMBINING GRAPHIC AND ALPHANUMERIC INFORMATION IN JAVA APPLICATIONS

Ricardo João Cruz Correia and José Paulo Leal

SOFTWARE AGENTS IN NETWORK MANAGEMENT

Rui Pedro Lopes and José Luís Oliveira

ADVANTAGES AND PITFALLS OF OO BUSINESS FRAMEWORKS

Simon Beloglavec, Tomaz Domajnko, Marjan Hericko and Ivan Rozman

ISSUES ON INTERNET EVOLUTION AND MANAGEMENT

Rui L. Aguiar and José Luís Oliveira

A REMOTE METEOROLOGICAL DATA SERVICE SUPPORTED ON CORBA

Jorge S. C. Mota, José Luís Oliveira and Fernando M. S. Ramos

A WEB BROWSING AGENT

Aimilia Tzanavari

TIBLEUS: A MODEL TO BUILD INTERNET ONLINE SUPPORT SERVICES USING ASP

José García-Fanjul, Cristina Monteserín, Claudio De La Riva and Javier Tuya

DILEMMA: A MEDIATION METHODOLOGY TO INTEROPERATE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Fabrice Jouanot, Nadine Cullot, Christophe Nicolle and Kokou Yétongnon

REALIZATION OF EXPOSITION-LIKE EVENTS IN CYBER-SPACE

Adérito Marcos, Jürgen Bund, Luís Grave, Eduardo Tsen and Rosa Ferreira

STATEWIDE ENTERPRISE COMPUTING WITH THE PURDUE UNIVERSITY NETWORK-COMPUTING HUBS

Nirav H. Kapadia, José A. B. Fortes and Mark S. Lundstrom

CLIENT CACHE-INDEX FORWARDING FOR REDUCING NETWORK TRAFFIC OVER WIRELESS NETWORK FOR THE WWW

Hae-Sun Shin, Gyeong-Hun Kim, Se-Jin Hwang, A-Rum Jun, Gun-Hee Kim and Myong-Soon Park

A JAVA DISTRIBUTED ARCHITECTURE FOR REMOTE AND AUTOMATIC MANAGEMENT OF TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATIONS

J. Arribi and V. Carneiro

AN APPLET BASED QUERY TOOL

Nuno Valero Ribeiro

BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING AND ANALYSIS USING GERT NETWORKS

Joseph Barjis and Jan L.G. Dietz

A CAUSAL MODEL FOR THE INTENTION TO USE A WEB SITE: A STUDY BASED ON THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL AND THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS PERSPECTIVE

Chaoming J. Wu

BASE ARCHITECTURE FOR NETWORK APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Cecilia Sosa Arias Peixoto and Beatriz Mascia Daltrini

DISTRIBUTED NETWORKING COMPUTER MODEL: SUN’S JINI AS AN ADVANCE IN THE TECHNOLOGY: AN OVERVIEW OF JAVA’S DISTRIBUTED PLATFORM

Hugo José P. B. Paulino Pinto

3270 WEBCLIENT - A JAVA IMPLEMENTATION OF DYNAMIC REVAMPING

Duarténn, C. J., Bontchev, B., Azevedo, J., Cabeleira, J., Granja, R. and Stocker de Sousa, M.

ALEPH: AN ENVIRONMENT FOR MANAGING WEB DATABASE APPLICATIONS

José Paulo Leal

WEB INTERFACE TO A METEOROLOGICAL STATION

F. Melo Rodrigues, J. Braz Gonçalves and J. Furtado Gomes