Terminology Maintenance for Corporate Information Retrieval

The goal of information retrieval in the corporate environment is to provide management, sales, marketing, and product development with timely information about the changes in external forces that impact strategic and tactical business decisions including what products to build and how to position these products in the marketplace. The elements of this type of information change rapidly. Mergers and acquisitions change the structure of the marketplace, the vendors and their products; political and economic changes impact production and market decisions from manufacturing plant locations to the location of distribution facilities. Thus, corporate IR is a complex, volatile application which requires tools and processes to allow dynamic modification to content. This paper will discuss how Thesaurus/Indexing Management System (TIMS) is used at Digital Equipment Corporation to allow for modification of the information retrieval application without modifying or reloading the underlying content. Part of the solution lies in the capabilities of using faceted thesaurus structures, that can serve as an abstracted model of the user's need and the content. Consistent information retrieval, and its benefit of ongoing funding and support, depends on the continual application of maintenance processes as part of the overall management of a corporate information retrieval program. This paper will present the following topics related to thesaurus maintenance: capturing and structuring of unknown terms, implementation and training, and evaluation

Recommendation, collaboration and social search

This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology. Information searching and browsing have often been conceptualized as a solitary activity, however they always have a social component. We may talk about 'the' searcher or 'the' user of a database or information resource. Our focus may be on individual uses and our research may look at individual users. Our experiments may be designed to observe the behaviors of individual subjects. Our models and theories derived from our empirical analyses may focus substantially or exclusively on an individual's evolving goals, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions. Nevertheless there are always social aspects of information seeking and use present, both implicitly and explicitly. We start by summarizing some of the history of information access with an emphasis on social and collaborative interactions. Then we look at the nature of recommendations, social search and interfaces to support collaboration between information seekers. Following this we consider how the design of interactive information systems is influenced by their social elements

PFTijah: text search in an XML database system

This paper introduces the PFTijah system, a text search system that is integrated with an XML/XQuery database management system. We present examples of its use, we explain some of the system internals, and discuss plans for future work. PFTijah is part of the open source release of MonetDB/XQuery

Measuring usability for application software using the quality in use integration measurement model

User interfaces of application software are designed to make user interaction as efficient and as simple as possible. Market accessibility of any application software is determined by the usability of its user interfaces. A poorly designed user interface will have little value no matter how powerful the program is. Thus, it is significantly important to measure usability during the system development lifecycle in order to avoid user disappointment. Various methods and standards that help measure usability have been developed. However, these methods define usability inconsistently, which makes software engineers hesitant in implementing these methods or standards. The Quality in Use Integrated Measurement (QUIM) model is a consolidated approach for measuring usability through 10 factors, 26 criteria, and 127 metrics. It decomposes usability into factors, criteria, and metrics, and it is a hierarchical model that helps developers with no or little background of usability metrics. Among 127 metrics of QUIM, essential efficiency (EE) is the most specific metric used to measure the usability of user interfaces through an equation. This study involves a comparative analysis between three case studies that use the QUIM model to measure usability in terms of EE for three case studies: (1) Public University Registration System, (2) Restaurant Menu Ordering System, and (3) ATM system. A comparison is made based on the percentage of EE for each element of the use cases in each use case diagram. The results obtained revealed that the user interface design for Restaurant Menu Ordering System scored the highest percentage of EE, thus proving to be the most user-friendly application software among its counterparts

Developing strategic learning alliances: partnerships for the provision of global education and training solutions

The paper describes a comprehensive model for the development of strategic alliances between education and corporate sectors, which is required to ensure effective provision of education and training programmes for a global market. Global economic forces, combined with recent advances in information and communication technologies, have provided unprecedented opportunities for education providers to broaden the provision of their programmes both on an international scale and across new sectors. Lifelong learning strategies are becoming increasingly recognized as an essential characteristic of a successful organization and therefore large organizations have shown a preparedness to invest in staff training and development. The demands for lifelong learning span a wide range of training and educational levels from school-level and vocational courses to graduate-level training for senior executive

Investigating the role of innovation over collaborative relation intensity in supply chains

This paper discusses investigating the role of innovation over collaborative relation intensity in supply chains. It was presented at the 17th international conference of the European operations management association

Improving the decision-making process using an information management system

Research article published on Special Issue of International Journal of Current Research. Also available online at http://www.journalcra.com.The ability to make effective decisions is crucial to an organization’s survival in today’s tumultuous business environment. In order for firms to evaluate alternatives and make informed choices they must have reliable and timely data upon which to make their decisions. Consequently, the development of effective information management techniques is critical. In this research a web-based information management system is developed for better decisionmaking. Two agents are integrated in the system, namely; mapping agent and extraction agent. The mapping agent reduces the workload for users charged with the responsibility of data entry. The extraction agent is designed to aid in the retrieval of current, timely and relevant data, eliminating unnecessary information. The critical information requirements are identified and a prototype is developed for verification. The prototype is developed using PHP language for the system interfaces with GD for providing a graphical reporting supported by a MySQL database. The system is implemented and tested at a Kenyan based Internet Service Provider. As a result, the organization under study increases its sales through improved targeted marketing and monitoring of the outcome. The user load is also reduced by half and the risk of data input errors minimized by 80%.The ability to make effective decisions is crucial to an organization’s survival in today’s tumultuous business environment. In order for firms to evaluate alternatives and make informed choices they must have reliable and timely data upon which to make their decisions. Consequently, the development of effective information management techniques is critical. In this research a web-based information management system is developed for better decisionmaking. Two agents are integrated in the system, namely; mapping agent and extraction agent. The mapping agent reduces the workload for users charged with the responsibility of data entry. The extraction agent is designed to aid in the retrieval of current, timely and relevant data, eliminating unnecessary information. The critical information requirements are identified and a prototype is developed for verification. The prototype is developed using PHP language for the system interfaces with GD for providing a graphical reporting supported by a MySQL database. The system is implemented and tested at a Kenyan based Internet Service Provider. As a result, the organization under study increases its sales through improved targeted marketing and monitoring of the outcome. The user load is also reduced by half and the risk of data input errors minimized by 80%

Data Processing and the Envision

Data is being generated very rapidly due to increase in information in everyday life. Huge amount of data gets accumulated from various organizations that is difficult to analyze and exploit. Data created by an expanding number of sensors in the environment such as traffic cameras and satellites, internet activities on social networking sites, healthcare database, government database, sales data etc., are example of huge data. Processing, analyzing and communicating this data are a challenge. Online shopping websites get flooded with voluminous amount of sales data every day. Analyzing and visualizing this data for information retrieval is a difficult task. There are large number of information visualization techniques which have been developed over the last decade to support the exploration of large data sets. With today’s data management systems, it is only possible to view quite small portions of the data. If the data is presented textually, the amount of data which can be displayed is in the range of some 100 data items, but this is like a drop in the ocean when dealing with data sets containing millions of data items. Data is being generated very rapidly due to increase in information in everyday life. Huge amount of data gets accumulated from various organizations that is difficult to analyze and exploit. Data created by an expanding number of sensors in the environment such as traffic cameras and satellites, internet activities on social networking sites, healthcare database, government database, sales data etc., are example of huge data. Processing, analyzing and communicating this data are a challenge. Online shopping websites get flooded with voluminous amount of sales data every day. Analyzing and visualizing this data for information retrieval is a difficult task. Therefore, a system is required which will effectively analyze and visualize data. This paper focuses on a system which will visualize sales data which will help users in applying intelligence in business, revenue generation, and decision making, managing business operation and tracking progress of tasks. Effective and efficient data visualization is the key part of the discovery process. It is the intermediate between the human intuition and quantitative context of the data, thus an essential component of the scientific path from data into knowledge and understanding. Therefore, a system is required which will effectively analyze and visualize data. This paper focuses on a system which will visualize data which will help users in interactive data visualization applying in business, revenue generation, and decision making, managing business operation and tracking progress of tasks