Assimilating sense into disaster recovery databases and judgement framing proceedings for the fastest recovery

The replication between the primary and secondary (standby) databases can be configured in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. It is referred to as out-of-sync in either mode if there is any lag between the primary and standby databases. In the previous research, the advantages of the asynchronous method were demonstrated over the synchronous method on highly transactional databases. The asynchronous method requires human intervention and a great deal of manual effort to configure disaster recovery database setups. Moreover, in existing setups there was no accurate calculation process for estimating the lag between the primary and standby databases in terms of sequences and time factors with intelligence. To address these research gaps, the current work has implemented a self-image looping database link process and provided decision-making capabilities at standby databases. Those decisions from standby are always in favor of selecting the most efficient data retrieval method and being in sync with the primary database. The purpose of this paper is to add intelligence and automation to the standby database to begin taking decisions based on the rate of concurrency in transactions at primary and out-of-sync status at standby

Design and Implementation of a Web-Based Lead Management System Using Oracle and Coldfusion Technologies

In business a key to being successful is being able to identify who your customers are and evaluating their needs. Most businesses are not only comprised of a single customer; therefore, there is a need to retain customer information and to track the customer from initial contact to the point of sale. While there are numerous off the shelf products that can store customer data, often times they do not easily allow for modifications and many of these products would require some sort of wide area network (WAN), which could incur extensive costs, in order for highly distributed sales people to access the application. As of this writing, Affordable Residential Communities (ARC) is currently the largest owner and operator of manufactured home communities in the United States, managing over 57,600 home sites in more than 278 properties across 24 states. Prior to the implementation of this application, ARC used Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to track customer inquiries and possible sales leads. However, using this method did not provide an easy way for ARC to assign leads to the sales staff nor did it provide a way for the sales staff to track and monitor the lead until the point of sale. The Excel spreadsheets were also used as traffic logs for ARC\u27s communities which were sent to district level and regional level personnel for evaluation. ARC needed an efficient system in place which would eliminate the need for the Excel based system and one which would facilitate in the assigning, tracking and reporting on possible leads who want to move into one of their communities or who want to take part in one of the housing options ARC offers. The Excel spreadsheets were the only tool upper-level personnel had to report how much traffic was moving through a community and it was only by combining and manipulating these spreadsheets that they were able to see the traffic at a district or regional level. Currently, ARC uses Oracle Report Server to generate reports based on data stored in Oracle databases which the company relies on for its day to day operations, its financial reporting, and its property management data; it is in the reporting system that the lead management reports were to be integrated. Throughout this paper this author will touch on the lead tracking and assignment problems encountered by ARC and document the design, development and implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that can be used by numerous sales people via an Internet connection and a Web browser

Comparativa de Métricas de Seguridad de Diseño Software

Sin métricas de seguridad no podríamos medir el éxito de las políticas, mecanismos e implementaciones de seguridad, ni tampoco se podría mejorar la seguridad si no se pudiera medir. Por lo tanto, es ampliamente admitida la importancia que tiene la utilización de métricas para la calidad de la seguridad. Sin embargo, la definición de métricas de seguridad se trata de una disciplina que está aún dando los primeros pasos, y de la que hasta ahora no había muchos recursos documentados o trabajos centrados en ella. Es por ello que en este artículo se estudian los últimos modelos existentes que definan métricas de seguridad y sus componentes como aspectos que inciden en la calidad de los productos software. A fin de que sirva como base para seguir avanzando en la investigación en esta área de conocimiento.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Self-Protecting Access Control: On Mitigating Privacy Violations with Fault Tolerance

Self-protecting access control mechanisms can be described as an approach to enforcing security in a manner that automatically protects against violations of access control rules. In this chapter, we present a comparative analysis of standard Cryptographic Access Control (CAC) schemes in relation to privacy enforcement on the Web. We postulate that to mitigate privacy violations, self-protecting CAC mechanisms need to be supported by fault-tolerance. As an example of how one might to do this, we present two solutions that are inspired by the autonomic computing paradigm1. Our solutions are centered on how CAC schemes can be extended to protect against privacy violations that might arise from key updates and collusion attacks

0028/2009 - Problemas na Elicitação de Requisitos: Uma visão de pesquisa/literatura

A primeira fase na engenharia de requisitos é a elicitação de requisitos, na qual as informações sobre as necessidades do cliente são adquiridas, sendo crucial e crítica e podendo comprometer todas as etapas subseqüentes do desenvolvimento. O presente relatório apresenta um levantamento dos problemas que ocorrem durante a elicitação de requisitos citados na literatura da área

Requirements engineering for electronic healthcare records

This thesis investigates requirements engineering methods based on process modelling for Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) systems. The relation between software requirements and user workflows is essential in healthcare settings: EHRs are expected to improve clinical and administrative workflows. In turn, the new workflows are expected to satisfy a number of business goals. If a new software system does not support the desired clinical workflows or patient journeys, then its value and benefits are often disputed by stakeholders. Our hypothesis is that requirements engineering methods based on process models will contribute to the overall success of EHR projects in the industry. By success, we mean software systems that are in use and meet the business benefits expected of them. The experiments presented in this thesis are aimed to develop and evaluate a method that allows business analysts to make use of process models during requirements engineering for EHRs. The goal of the method is to ensure the software specification is aligned to and supports the user workflows. Each of the four experiments addresses a specific research objective, and thus the findings from each experiment constitute the basis for one of our four contributions to science. / Experiment 1: Relating Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering and Process Modelling: This experiment investigates the design of a common framework for describing process models and software requirements. It relates the KAOS framework for goal oriented requirements engineering and the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN). Our goal is to facilitate requirements elicitation. Specifically, business analysts using our framework should be able to reason about the alignment of the software specification to the business processes, and identify specific changes that improve this alignment (either changes in the design of the system, or changes in the business processes). This first experiment was conducted as part of the WellbeingUCL project, supported by Boots. / Experiment 2: Inferring Goal Models from Process Models: The second experiment investigates a method for business analysts to derive software requirements from process models. The purpose for defining such a method is to provide sufficient guidance to business analysts, during requirements elicitation. Our aim is to help business analysts elicit meaningful goal models and shape the design of the system-to-be, in light of these goals. A number of heuristics to facilitate requirements elicitation are proposed and evaluated, considering the trade-offs between a fully automated and a human driven process. / Experiment 3: Electronic Healthcare Record for Bupa: The third experiment evaluates the requirements engineering method during an EHR implementation for a chronic condition management service delivered by Bupa nurses in South West England. Action research is used to assess the impact and fit of the requirements elicitation process, in relation to the current work practices of business analysts in the industry. The extended KAOS framework and goal inference heuristics have been used to inform the final software specification, guide the workflow redesign and clarify the business benefits. From a project management perspective, this experiment evaluates how the KAOS method aligns with the Agile and Lean methodologies used in Bupa. The project has delivered an EHR system actively used to support the care of 2,600 patients. / Experiment 4: Personal Health Record for Nuffield Health: The fourth experiment evaluates the extended KAOS framework when developing a new digital customer proposition with an underlying EHR system. It investigates how consumer journeys can be modelled as KAOS process models. Of specific interest is the ability of the framework to clarify the responsibility assignments among the different agents (i.e. system components) that need to collaborate to deliver the end to end customer journey. The experiment was run as an action research project, in partnership with Nuffield Health. The results have informed the architecture of an open source personal health record for lifestyle data. / Contributions to science: This thesis advances the field of requirements engineering by introducing and evaluating a requirements elicitation method based on business process models. It also presents new evidence into the use of goal oriented requirements engineering for the design and implementation of EHR systems in the industry. Our four contributions to science directly follow from the results of the four experiments conducted as part of this research. Our first two contributions cover the conceptual framework and our proposed method for requirement elicitation based on process models. Our last two contributions present evidence for the practical use and benefits of our goal oriented requirements engineering method in industry based projects. First, we present an extension of the KAOS requirements engineering framework which includes a business process view with clearly defined syntax and execution semantic. This approach ensures process models and goal models have a shared semantic. A new concept, that of Intentional Fragment, captures the explicit relation between fragments of a process model and a specific goal. We also define additional consistency rules, to clarify how the process view relates with other KAOS models: object, agent and operation model. Secondly, we present a set of goal inference techniques to help analysts build goal models starting from process models. In effect, analysts can start from the artefacts that are most familiar to them (i.e. the workflow models) and gradually derive a goal model for the system-to-be. A set of 12 heuristics have been fully defined and integrated into a semi-structured method for goal elicitation. Our third contribution is an evaluation of how the goal oriented requirements engineering method (incorporating workflow analysis) supports the design and deployment of a EHR system in a clinical setting. The project was representative for the challenges faced by healthcare organisations wishing to deploy EHRs: quality of care standards that impose constraints on process redesign; legacy systems that have shaped the workflow; organisational complexity and competing stakeholder interests. We show that by methodically applying our goal inference techniques we were able to produce a valid goal model starting from models of the nurses workflows. The resulting goal model was used to reason about alternative design options in the system-to-be, and to clarify the benefit case in deploying the EHR system. Fourth, we examine the requirements engineering process for an EHR system meant to support a new customer proposition. This project was representative for the challenges faced in the digital health industry: a target consumer journey driven by user experience research; many different systems required to collaborate; focus on the architectural design of the system. We show that we can apply our goal inference techniques to customer journey maps and produce a meaningful goal model. This has been used to shape the architecture of the EHR system and reason about integration requirements. We also argue that our goal inference techniques complement agile development practices used within the organisation