Service agents based collaborative workflow management implementation

Workflow management systems in collaborative logistic companies require strong information systems to support in a distributed environment. These IT integration requirements have expanded considerably with the advent of collaborative e-business; utilizing B2B (Business to Business) and P2P (Partner to Partner) e-commerce. This paper deals with adaptation management of collaborative workflow changes in such consortia and proposes architecture for implementation of these changes through the process of component integration and agent based workflow management system where by existing workflow systems adapt to the changes. This paper describes conceptual framework required for prototype implementation resulting in new collaborative workflow adaptation

Human - computer interactions and user interfaces for remote control of manufacturing systems

Rad prikazuje novi pristup unapređenju tradicionalnog daljinskog upravljanja u proizvodnim sistemima zasnovan na obezbeđenju funkcionalnosti pragmatičnog nivoa komunikacionih kanala. Korišćenje raznovrsnih pristupa i metodologija, poput video konferencije, računarski podržanog kooperativnog rada, virtuelne stvarnosti, alata drugih virtuelnih okruženja, kao što su "Metaverse" internet veb pragmatični alati, je neophodno u cilju prevazilaženja problema prostorne barijere. Stoga je dalja analiza korisničkog interfejsa čovek-mašina presudna za interakciju korisnika sa proizvodnim sistemom preko daljinskog upravljanja unutar postavljenih okvira. U ovom radu su prikazani preliminarni rezultati evaluacije dva tipa korišćenih interfejsa, koji se naročito razlikuju sa prezentacionog aspekta, dok su funkcionalnosti daljinskog upravljanja iste za oba tipa interfejsa. Rezultati analize ocena korisnika, pokazuju da je jedan interfejs sa aspekta korisnika, ocenjen nivoima različitih faktora, bolje od drugog.This paper refers to the new direction for enhancement in traditional remote controlling functionality in manufacturing systems. Employing a diversity of tools such as videoconferencing, computer supported cooperative work tools, immersive virtual reality, virtual environment tools, such as "Metaverse" tools, and Internet through Pragmatic Web, is necessary for overcoming the "space barrier". Therefore, further analysis of human-machine user interface is crucial for user interaction with manufacturing systems through remote control. That is the motivation for investigation on evaluation of the user interfaces for remote control of manufacturing systems within the above-mentioned framework. Preliminary results of the evaluation of two types of interfaces are presented in this paper. These two interfaces are distinctive in one particular presentational aspect, while all the remote controlling functionalities are equal for both. The results show that one user interface type clearly fares better than the other over a number of factors as graded by users

Specifying process-oriented hypertext for organizational

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Assuring Homeland Security: Continuous Monitoring, Control and Assurance of Emergency Preparedness

This paper examines the potential relationships of Continuous Auditing and Emergency Preparedness to the design, development, and implementation of Emergency Response Management Information Systems (ERMIS). It develops an argument for the integration of emergency response processes and continuous decision process auditing requirements into the system development life cycle of an organization wide ERMIS

Augmenting applications with hyper media, functionality and meta-information

The Dynamic Hypermedia Engine (DHE) enhances analytical applications by adding relationships, semantics and other metadata to the application\u27s output and user interface. DHE also provides additional hypermedia navigational, structural and annotation functionality. These features allow application developers and users to add guided tours, personal links and sharable annotations, among other features, into applications. DHE runs as a middleware between the application user interface and its business logic and processes, in a n-tier architecture, supporting the extra functionalities without altering the original systems by means of application wrappers. DHE automatically generates links at run-time for each of those elements having relationships and metadata. Such elements are previously identified using a Relation Navigation Analysis. DHE also constructs more sophisticated navigation techniques not often found on the Web on top of these links. The metadata, links, navigation and annotation features supplement the application\u27s primary functionality. This research identifies element types, or classes , in the application displays. A mapping rule encodes each relationship found between two elements of interest at the class level . When the user selects a particular element, DHE instantiates the commands included in the rules with the actual instance selected and sends them to the appropriate destination system, which then dynamically generates the resulting virtual (i.e. not previously stored) page. DHE executes concurrently with these applications, providing automated link generation and other hypermedia functionality. DHE uses the extensible Markup Language (XMQ -and related World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets of XML recommendations, like Xlink, XML Schema, and RDF -to encode the semantic information required for the operation of the extra hypermedia features, and for the transmission of messages between the engine modules and applications. DHE is the only approach we know that provides automated linking and metadata services in a generic manner, based on the application semantics, without altering the applications. DHE will also work with non-Web systems. The results of this work could also be extended to other research areas, such as link ranking and filtering, automatic link generation as the result of a search query, metadata collection and support, virtual document management, hypermedia functionality on the Web, adaptive and collaborative hypermedia, web engineering, and the semantic Web

A knowledge representation model to support concurrent engineering team working

This thesis demonstrates that a knowledge representation model can provide considerable support to concurrent engineering teams, by providing a sound basis for creation of necessary software applications. This is achieved by demonstrating that use of the knowledge representation model facilitates the capture, interpretation and implementation of important aspects of the multiple, diverse types of expertise which are essential to the successful working of concurrent engineering project teams. The varieties of expertise which can be modelled as instances of the knowledge representation model range from specialist applications, which support particular aspects of design, by assisting human designers with highly focused skills and knowledge sets, to applications which specialise in management or coordination of team activities. It is shown that both these types of expertise are essential for effective working of a concurrent engineering team. Examination of the requirements of concurrent engineering team working indicate that no single artificial intelligence paradigm can provide a satisfactory basis for the whole range of possible solutions which may be provided by intelligent software applications. Hence techniques, architectures and environments to support design and development of hybrid software expertise are required, and the knowledge representation model introduced in this research is such an architecture. The versatility of the knowledge representation model is demonstrated through the design and implementation of a variety of software applications

Initial design principles for establishing a learning community for public health professionals through authentic e-learning

The storage, transportation and distribution of time and temperature sensitive pharmaceutical products (TTSPPs) such as vaccines within the appropriate temperature conditions are important public health concerns. The personnel who handle pharmaceutical products must have high levels of expertise so they can take actions to ensure that the TTSPPs are not negatively affected by sub-standard practices. This paper describes the first phase of a multi-year educational design research project designed to enhance expertise in the field of pharmaceutical cold chain management. The paper describes the process of developing design principles to guide the conceptualisation and prototyping of authentic e-learning capable of enabling public health personnel to develop the skills required for effective pharmaceutical cold chain management and to establish a learning community extending beyond the course. Five design principles are shared along with examples of how they were instantiated in the prototype e-learning

Building a Research University Ecosystem: the Case of Software Engineering Education at Sofia University

This paper analyses the specifics and the tendencies in building of the knowledge society and the role of the universities in this process. Some European policies and programs dedicated to the new role of the universities in realizing the Lisbon Strategy are analysed as well. It is emphasized on the importance of integration of the ‘knowledge triangle’ (education, research and innovation) into a research university and on the urgent need to re-design the university activities according the new requirements. This paper describes some real experiences, emerging models and lessons learnt based on the case of Software Engineering education and research being held at Sofia University

Designing websites with eXtensible web (xWeb) methodology

Today, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, representing and interchanging data among various enterprises systems and databases in the context of complex web enterprises information systems (EIS). Conversely, for web EIS (such as e-commerce and portals) to be successful, it is important to apply a high level, model driven solutions and meta-data vocabularies to design and implementation techniques that are capable of handling heterogonous schemas and documents. For this, we need a methodology that provides a higher level of abstraction of the domain in question with rigorously defined standards that are to be more widely understood by all stakeholders of the system. To-date, UML has proven itself as the language of choice for modeling EIS using OO techniques. With the introduction of XML Schema, which provides rich facilities for constraining and defining enterprise XML content, the combination of UML and XML technologies provide a good platform (and the flexibility) for modeling, designing and representing complex enterprise contents for building successful EIS. In this paper, we show how a layered view model coupled with a proven user interface analysis framework (WUiAM) is utilized in providing architectural construct and abstract website model (called eXtensible Web, xWeb), to model, design and implement simple, user-centred, collaborative websites at varying levels of abstraction. The uniqueness xWeb is that the model data (web user interface definitions, website data descriptions and constraints) and the web content are captured and represented at the conceptual level using views (one model) and can be deployed (multiple platform specific models) using one or more implementation models