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

A Secure and Fair Resource Sharing Model for Community Clouds

Cloud computing has gained a lot of importance and has been one of the most discussed segment of today\u27s IT industry. As enterprises explore the idea of using clouds, concerns have emerged related to cloud security and standardization. This thesis explores whether the Community Cloud Deployment Model can provide solutions to some of the concerns associated with cloud computing. A secure framework based on trust negotiations for resource sharing within the community is developed as a means to provide standardization and security while building trust during resource sharing within the community. Additionally, a model for fair sharing of resources is developed which makes the resource availability and usage transparent to the community so that members can make informed decisions about their own resource requirements based on the resource usage and availability within the community. Furthermore, the fair-share model discusses methods that can be employed to address situations when the demand for a resource is higher than the resource availability in the resource pool. Various methods that include reduction in the requested amount of resource, early release of the resources and taxing members have been studied, Based on comparisons of these methods along with the advantages and disadvantages of each model outlined, a hybrid method that only taxes members for unused resources is developed. All these methods have been studied through simulations

Configurable Process Models as a Basis for Reference Modeling

Off-the-shelf packages such as SAP need to be configured to suit the requirements of an organization. Reference models support the configuration of these systems. Existing reference models use rather traditional languages. For example, the SAP reference model uses Eventdriven Process Chains (EPCs). Unfortunately, traditional languages like EPCs do not capture the configuration-aspects well. Consider for example the concept of "choice" in the control-flow perspective. Although any process modeling language, including EPCs, offers a choice construct (e.g., the XOR connector in EPCs), a single construct will not be able to capture the time dimension, scope, and impact of a decision. Some decisions are taken at run-time for a single case while other decisions are taken at build-time impacting a whole organization and all current and future cases. This position paper discusses the need for configurable process models as a basic building block for reference modeling. The focus is on the control-flow perspective. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

Whose Trojan Horse? The Dynamics of Resistance Against IFRS

The introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”) has been debated in the United States since at least the accounting scandals of the early 2000s. While publicly traded firms around the world are increasingly switching to IFRS, often because they are required to do so by law or by their stock exchange, the Securities Exchange Com-mission (“SEC”) seems to have become more reticent in recent years. Only foreign issuers have been permitted to use IFRS in the United States since 2007. By contrast, the EU has mandated the use of IFRS in the consolidated financial statements of publicly traded firms since 2005. In the United States, IFRS, which are promulgated by the London-based Inter-national Accounting Standards Board (“IASB”), are often seen as an at-tempt by Europeans to colonize U.S. accounting standard setting, and as an element of a foreign legal system alien to U.S. capital markets and securities law. In this article, we suggest that this perception is actually a myth, which we attempt to debunk. In fact, the introduction of IFRS in Europe, particularly Continental Europe, was far from controversial. IFRS were promoted by Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions and strongly support-ed by the United States, particularly when capital markets internationalized in the 1990s. They were—and still are—in many ways at odds with the Continental European accounting cultures of countries such as France and Germany, on whose examples we draw. In spite of the EU mandate for publicly traded firms, accounting law in these jurisdictions has still not fully absorbed IFRS; nevertheless, for now a solution that reconciles traditional and international accounting has been found. In this article, we explore the problems and resistance of IFRS in Continental Europe and seek to draw lessons for the United States. We argue that given the shared heritage of U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”) and IFRS as investor-oriented accounting standards, their introduction in the United States should be considerably easier than it was on the other side of the Atlantic

Creating the strategic learning environment at City University London

Purpose: This paper describes the creation of a new approach to the implementation of educational technologies at a UK Higher Education Institution. Driven by changes in technology, an evaluation of the virtual learning environment (VLE) provided the opportunity to reassess the application of technology to the curriculum. However, such an evaluation and subsequent implementation is not about technology but a social process of negotiation and stakeholder engagement. The narrative of the evaluation is explored to offer lessons to other institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes a story telling approach as this enables greater emotional engagement with the reader as well as the description of the social and organisational aspects of such a VLE evaluation. This approach enables the difficulty of change in complex organisations, such as a University, to be addressed more fully. Findings: Key lessons from the evaluation of the VLE and resulting creation of the strategic learning environment (SLE) are drawn which can be of use to other institutions. The main finding is the fact that such evaluations and implementation of educational technologies are not about technical factors but about opportunities and threats presented by such technologies to the educational experience. These findings also inform future development of the SLE at the institution. Originality/value: This paper will be of interest to institutions that are undertaking evaluation exercises of their educational technology provision as well as those that are implementing new technologies or considering large scale organisational change