Exploiting rules and processes for increasing flexibility in service composition

Recent trends in the use of service oriented architecture for designing, developing, managing, and using distributed applications have resulted in an increasing number of independently developed and physically distributed services. These services can be discovered, selected and composed to develop new applications and to meet emerging user requirements. Service composition is generally defined on the basis of business processes in which the underlying composition logic is guided by specifying control and data flows through Web service interfaces. User demands as well as the services themselves may change over time, which leads to replacing or adjusting the composition logic of previously defined processes. Coping with change is still one of the fundamental problems in current process based composition approaches. In this paper, we exploit declarative and imperative design styles to achieve better flexibility in service composition

Situational Enterprise Services

The ability to rapidly find potential business partners as well as rapidly set up a collaborative business process is desirable in the face of market turbulence. Collaborative business processes are increasingly dependent on the integration of business information systems. Traditional linking of business processes has a large ad hoc character. Implementing situational enterprise services in an appropriate way will deliver the business more flexibility, adaptability and agility. Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm. It is now being embraced by organizations everywhere as the key to business agility. Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX on the other hand provide good user interactions for successful service discovery, selection, adaptation, invocation and service construction. They also balance automatic integration of services and human interactions, disconnecting content from presentation in the delivery of the service. Another Web technology, such as semantic Web, makes automatic service discovery, mediation and composition possible. Integrating SOA, Web 2.0 Technologies and Semantic Web into a service-oriented virtual enterprise connects business processes in a much more horizontal fashion. To be able run these services consistently across the enterprise, an enterprise infrastructure that provides enterprise architecture and security foundation is necessary. The world is constantly changing. So does the business environment. An agile enterprise needs to be able to quickly and cost-effectively change how it does business and who it does business with. Knowing, adapting to diffident situations is an important aspect of today’s business environment. The changes in an operating environment can happen implicitly and explicitly. The changes can be caused by different factors in the application domain. Changes can also happen for the purpose of organizing information in a better way. Changes can be further made according to the users' needs such as incorporating additional functionalities. Handling and managing diffident situations of service-oriented enterprises are important aspects of business environment. In the chapter, we will investigate how to apply new Web technologies to develop, deploy and executing enterprise services

DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!: Managing troublemakers in magazines' online communities

“Trolling” and other negative behaviour on magazine websites is widespread, ranging from subtly provocative behaviour to outright abuse. Publishers have sought to develop lively online communities, with high levels of user-generated content. Methods of building sites have developed quickly, but methods of managing them have lagged behind. Some publishers have then felt overwhelmed by the size and behaviour of the communities they have created. This paper considers the reasons behind trolling and the tools digital editors have developed to manage their communities, taking up the role of Zygmunt Bauman's gardeners in what they sometimes refer to as “walled gardens” within the Internet's wild domains. Interviews were conducted with online editors at the front line of site management at Bauer, Giraffe, IPC, Natmags, RBI and the Times. This article shows how publishers are designing sites that encourage constructive posting, and taking a more active part in site management. Web 2.0 and the spread of broadband, which have made management of fast-growing communities difficult, may themselves bring positive change. As uploading material becomes technically easier, “ordinary” citizens can outnumber those who, lacking social skills or with little regard for social norms, originally made the Internet their natural habitat

Fear Destroys the Ability to Trust: Impact on Employee Engagement during Structural Change in Telecommunication Sector of Pakistan

Due to economic downturns and structural pressures, the telecommunication sector have frequently had to go through structural change to remain competitive. This could distract telecommunication sector away from focusing on trusting relationships leading towards failure in managing change. Present research fill this gap and aims to examine the effect of trust in leadership on employee’s engagement during structural change. To provide additional insight, the present study used fear of change as a moderator between relationship of trust in leadership and employee engagement. Drawn from cross-sectional research design, a web-based survey was used to collect data from employees of telecommunication sector across all provinces of Pakistan that experienced structural change within their organization. A total of 447 responses were received. The study findings indicate that employee level of trust in leadership in change helped them to foster their engagement in change process. Additionally it was also supported that decrease in employee’s fear of change enhances the effect of trust in leadership on employee’s engagement during change.&nbsp

Positive Psychological Wellbeing Is Required for Online Self-Help Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain to be Effective

The web-based delivery of psychosocial interventions is a promising treatment modality for people suffering from chronic pain, and other forms of physical and mental illness. Despite the promising findings of first studies, patients may vary in the benefits they draw from self-managing a full-blown web-based psychosocial treatment. We lack knowledge on moderators and predictors of change during web-based interventions that explain for whom web-based interventions are especially (in)effective. In this study, we primarily explored for which chronic pain patients web-based Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was (in)effective during a large three-armed randomized controlled trial. Besides standard demographic, physical and psychosocial factors we focused on positive mental health. Data from 238 heterogeneously diagnosed chronic pain sufferers from the general Dutch population following either web-based ACT (n = 82), or one of two control conditions [web-based Expressive Writing (EW; n = 79) and Waiting List (WL; n = 77)] were analysed. ACT and EW both consisted of nine modules and lasted nine to 12 weeks. Exploratory linear regression analyses were performed using the PROCESS macro in SPSS. Pain interference at 3-month follow-up was predicted from baseline moderator (characteristics that influence the outcome of specific treatments in comparison to other treatments) and predictor (characteristics that influence outcome regardless of treatment) variables. The results showed that none of the demographic or physical characteristics moderated ACT treatment changes compared to both control conditions. The only significant moderator of change compared to both EW and WL was baseline psychological wellbeing, and pain intensity was a moderator of change compared to EW. Furthermore, higher pain interference, depression and anxiety, and also lower levels of emotional well-being predicted higher pain interference in daily life 6 months later. These results suggest that web-based self-help ACT may not be allocated to chronic pain sufferers experiencing low levels of mental resilience resources such as self-acceptance, goals in life, and environmental mastery. Other subgroups are identified that potentially need specific tailoring of (web-based) ACT. Emotional and psychological wellbeing should receive much more attention in subsequent studies on chronic pain and illness

Towards a homogeneous characterization of the model-driven web development methodologies

In recent years a large number of Model-Driven Web development approaches have been designed and are being applied with success in real environments. However, as new ones are frequently emerging in this changing time, authors have to change and update them constantly and, consequently; development teams do not know which is the most suitable for them because in many cases it depends on their project scope. Furthermore, approaches are usually appearing with different concepts and terminologies in many cases, although all lack the use of standards and practical experience. Thus, the need of managing quality in this type of approach arises every day. This paper suggests a characterization of these methodologies in order to use this information for the quality management of Model-Driven Web development methodologies for authors and development teams alike. In addition, an experimental study in order to analyse and evaluate a Model-Driven Web development methodology (the NDT methodology) has been carried out within a specific work context.Junta de Andalucía TIC-5789Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2010-20057-C03-0

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

Technology Transfer and Education Training and Extension in Grassland Farming

Stakeholders in grassland farming, including farmers, rural communities, urban consumers, politicians, educators, and service agencies, widely agree that the goal for grassland farming is the triple bottom line: farming systems that are ecologically sustainable, profitable and socially acceptable. This paper considers how extension and training might contribute to that worthy goal by encouraging practitioners to better manage their management environment. The notion of a management environment refers to a holistic consideration of those factors that impact on farmers, farm advisors or educators, that subset of grassland farming ‘practitioners’ within the wider range of stakeholders. The difficulty faced by these practitioners is how to achieve the triple bottom line in a management environment that is changing rapidly, often through influences that are outside their control. To this end the paper progressively develops the following themes. (1) Change is an inherent part of the management environment in grassland farming and is driven by macro influences that arise from outside the farm and by micro influences that impact on farm management options. (2) Successful practitioners must manage change and the role of training and extension is to facilitate management of change. (3) Managing change requires a suite of knowledge and skills that foster innovation in the management environment, thereby demanding successful managers to be self-reliant and to embrace a life-long process of learning. (4) Information to cope with change and to underpin management decisions will, increasingly, be obtained through the World Wide Web and other modern forms of communication. (5) Active learning methods, ranging from apprenticeships to participatory groups are becoming the preferred means for adopting appropriate technologies or actions for managing change. (6) Curricula in training institutions need to move from the traditional emphasis on technologies and the means of production to courses that emphasize a holistic view of agriculture and the skills for handling the management environment at both the macro and micro levels. The overall thrust of the paper is to propose that the most worthy aim in training and extension is to prepare graduates for a world of change by ensuring they have the basic knowledge, skill, confidence and attitude to embark on a lifetime of learning, adaptation and innovation

Managing Requirement Volatility in an Ontology-Driven Clinical LIMS Using Category Theory. International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications

Requirement volatility is an issue in software engineering in general, and in Web-based clinical applications in particular, which often originates from an incomplete knowledge of the domain of interest. With advances in the health science, many features and functionalities need to be added to, or removed from, existing software applications in the biomedical domain. At the same time, the increasing complexity of biomedical systems makes them more difficult to understand, and consequently it is more difficult to define their requirements, which contributes considerably to their volatility. In this paper, we present a novel agent-based approach for analyzing and managing volatile and dynamic requirements in an ontology-driven laboratory information management system (LIMS) designed for Web-based case reporting in medical mycology. The proposed framework is empowered with ontologies and formalized using category theory to provide a deep and common understanding of the functional and nonfunctional requirement hierarchies and their interrelations, and to trace the effects of a change on the conceptual framework.Comment: 36 Pages, 16 Figure