A software development framework for context-aware systems

The beginning of the new century has been characterised by the miniaturisation and accessibility of electronics, which has enabled its widespread usage around the world. This technological background is progressively materialising the future of the remainder of the century, where industry-based societies have been moving towards information-based societies. Information from users and their environment is now pervasively available, and many new research areas have born in order to shape the potential of such advancements. Particularly, context-aware computing is at the core of many areas such as Intelligent Environments, Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living or Pervasive Computing. Embedding contextual awareness into computers promises a fundamental enhancement in the interaction between computers and humans. While traditional computers require explicit commands in order to operate, contextually aware computers could also use information from the background and the users to provide services according to the situation. But embedding this contextual awareness has many unresolved challenges. The area of context-aware computing has attracted the interest of many researchers that have presented different approaches to solve particular aspects on the implementation of this technology. The great corpus of research in this direction indicates that context-aware systems have different requirements than those of traditional computing. Approaches for developing context-aware systems are typically scattered or do not present compatibility with other approaches. Existing techniques for creating context-aware systems also do not focus on covering all the different stages of a typical software development life-cycle. The contribution of this thesis is towards the foundation layers of a more holistic approach, that tries to facilitate further research on the best techniques for developing these kinds of systems. The approach presents a framework to support the development not only with methodologies, but with open-source tools that facilitate the implementation of context-aware systems in mobile and stationary platforms

Enhancing organisational innovativeness in a Malay cultural environment

PhD ThesisEssentially this study is founded upon the culture-specific thesis that organisational processes are influenced to a large extent by the cultural settings in which they operate. Hence management processes such as the management of innovations in organisations; ought to be culturally relative. The main objectives of this study are: i to identify, the major cultural values of the Sarawak Malays of relevance to the facilitation or inhibition of "innovatogenic" behaviour in an organisational context ii to identify, assess and evaluate active strategies used to nurture "innovatogenic" behaviour in some Malay organisations in response to these cultural influences, with due attention being paid to both thoses trategies which exploit any positive influence and those which aim to overcome any negative influence of such cultural values iii to highlight issues worthy of consideration in developing 'culturally' appropriate' strategies to nurture 'innovatogenic' behaviour (In particular, the study aims to demonstrate that (i) the innovation process is culture specific and (ii) any strategies employed must take a holistic approach and ensure that the both the structural aspects and ideational aspects of such strategies are congruent with each other). A qualitative research involving two phases of fieldwork was employed: Phase 1 . The Key Informant Interview. Unstructured interviews were conducted with twenty senior managers. These managers were purposely selected for their vast experience in managing Malay workers, both at managerial and operative levels. These interviews focused on two aspects: (a) their views and perspectives regarding Malay cultural values and beliefs and whether these values and beliefs had any impact on their 'innovation producing' behaviour. (b) The strategies used to incorporate these values and beliefs into their managerial philosophies and practices. Phase 2. Case studies of three selected organisations. A month was spent in each of three organisations; collecting information on eight key aspects of the organisations: strategic focus, management/leadership style; management attitude/orientation- . infrastructure, task structure, ideas management, performance management and orgarlisational climate. Both interview and survey methods of data collection were employed. The Ekvall's Creative Climate Questionnairew as then used to assesst he creative climate of the organisations. Data analysis was guided by a conceptual framework that linked the capability. means, and motivation of individuals to behave' innovatogenrically' with the structural and ideational features of the organisation. The main findings of the study indicate that (i) Malays are very concerned with maintaining harmonious relationship with superiors and peers. A tendency for collective behaviour, a need for personalised relationships, deference to leaders, loyalty to group and leader, and a focus on social benefit of an action to group and self were key features of this realtionship orientation Consequently, Malay organisations seem to be characterised by socially determined form of work relationship and priorities that are not conducive to the generation and exploitation of ideas. ii Organisational behaviour is culture specific: the social beliefs , values and customs of a society and the concomitant impact of these on organisational behaviour is significant and cannot be ignored. Subjective interpretations of strategies, procedures and practices by members of an organisation shapes their behaviour in relation to them. As such, an organisation cannot be made innovative through the introduction ( or imposition) of new strategies or mechanismws ithout due considerationsto the dominanti deationalm oder elating to theses trategiesa nd mechanism.The Ministry of Industrial Development, Sarawak: Mara Institute of Technology

An Overview of the OLI Multiparadigm Programming Language and Its Semantics

Lee and Pun outline the OLI language as an accompaniment of the OLI multiparadigm programming design methodology. The OLI language integrates the object-oriented and the logic programming paradigms with a precise and well-balanced interface so that each paradigm shares an equal and cooperating partnership in problem analysis and problem solving. An important property of OLI is that programmers can program either in one of the paradigms alone or in a mixed paradigm without sacrificing expressiveness and efficiency. In this paper, we give a formal definition of the OLI language and study its semantics both from the logical perspective and the object-oriented perspective. By viewing objects as an enrichment of the Herbrand universe, we define the declarative and operational semantics of OLI . We show that OLI's operational semantics, a generalization of SLD-resolution, is sound and complete. From the object-oriented point of view, the logic part of OLI is simply an object with logic progr..