Building and Evaluating a SOA-Based Model for Purchase Order Management in E-Commerce System

E-Commerce systems are characterized by complex Web applications that use different operating systems and different technologies. One of the most popular E-Commerce applications is conducted between businesses (B2B) and between a business and a consumer (B2C) is Purchase Order Management. It consists of components such as Sales, Shipping and Billing. In many cases nowadays Purchase Order Management components use integration approaches that lack interoperability and manageability resulting in customer dissatisfaction, time consumption and excessive costs. In this research, we build a model to overcome shortcomings of current Purchase Order Management system. The model is based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and Web services. They offer many advantages and help achieve the goals of interoperability and manageability. The proposed model is evaluated by using a scenario based software architecture method and proves that it achieves the quality attributes set as goals for the model which are interoperability and manageability. A case study of the model is implemented as a prove-of-concept. A specific usage scenario for the model is discussed and further proves that the model accomplishes its functionality and quality attributes

Analysis of current middleware used in peer-to-peer and grid implementations for enhancement by catallactic mechanisms

This deliverable describes the work done in task 3.1, Middleware analysis: Analysis of current middleware used in peer-to-peer and grid implementations for enhancement by catallactic mechanisms from work package 3, Middleware Implementation. The document is divided in four parts: The introduction with application scenarios and middleware requirements, Catnets middleware architecture, evaluation of existing middleware toolkits, and conclusions. -- Die Arbeit definiert Anforderungen an Grid und Peer-to-Peer Middleware Architekturen und analysiert diese auf ihre Eignung für die prototypische Umsetzung der Katallaxie. Eine Middleware-Architektur für die Umsetzung der Katallaxie in Application Layer Netzwerken wird vorgestellt.Grid Computing

Proof-of-Concept Application - Annual Report Year 1

In this document the Cat-COVITE Application for use in the CATNETS Project is introduced and motivated. Furthermore an introduction to the catallactic middleware and Web Services Agreement (WS-Agreement) concepts is given as a basis for the future work. Requirements for the application of Cat-COVITE with in catallactic systems are analysed. Finally the integration of the Cat-COVITE application and the catallactic middleware is described. --Grid Computing

Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) For Integrating Social Tagging Data

Data integration and mediation have become central concerns of information technology over the past few decades. With the advent of the Web and the rapid increases in the amount of data and the number of Web documents and users, researchers have focused on enhancing the interoperability of data through the development of metadata schemes. Other researchers have looked to the wealth of metadata generated by bookmarking sites on the Social Web. While several existing ontologies have capitalized on the semantics of metadata created by tagging activities, the Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) emphasizes the structure of tagging activities to facilitate modeling of tagging data and the integration of data from different bookmarking sites as well as the alignment of tagging ontologies. UTO is described and its utility in modeling, harvesting, integrating, searching, and analyzing data is demonstrated with metadata harvested from three major social tagging systems (Delicious, Flickr, and YouTube)

Agent-based Extensions for the UML Profile for Service-Oriented Architectures (UPMS-A)

Service-Oriented Architectures are today’s favorite answer to solve interoperability issues. As various kinds of systems can be used to implement Service-Oriented Architectures, the recent trend is to apply principles of Model-Driven Development by (i) modeling the Service-Oriented Architecture in an abstract manner and (ii) providing model transformations between this abstract specification and the underlying platform specific systems. As such, Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) became very popular as both, Service-Oriented Architectures and Multi-Agent Systems, share several commonalities. In this thesis, we compare the core building blocks of Multi-Agent Systems and a proposal for a standardized UML Profile and Metamodel for Services (UPMS) requested by the Object Management Group. The major objective of this investigation is to identify if SOA-Pro–the current submission under review–offers functionalities to allow modeling of Multi-Agent Systems adequately and if not to identify what kind of functionality is missing and how this functionality can be achieved. Interaction aspect in MASs describes how the interaction between autonomous entities or organizations take place. In our comparison we found that the ability to multicast messages is one feature that is lacking in UML Sequence Diagrams. This is an important feature or characteristic of agent interaction protocols. Here we show that SOA-Pro can easily be extended to support these kinds of functionalities

Agile Market Engineering: Bridging the gap between business concepts and running markets

The agile market engineering process model (AMEP) is built on the insight, that market design and development is a wicked problem. Electronic markets are too complex to be completely designed upfront. Instead, AMEP tries to bridge the gap between theoretic market design and practical electronic market platform development using an agile, iterative approach that relies on early customer feedback and continuous improvement. The AMEP model is complemented by several supporting software artifacts

Two Studies on The Use of Information Technology in Collaborative Planning, Forecasting & Replenishment (CPFR)

In the 1st study, I seek to determine whether there are trends in the coverage of the use of Information Technology in CPFR in support of Supply Chain Management. I look at the way technology is studied along two dimensions. The first dimension is the function within CPFR—Planning, Forecasting or Replenishment. The second dimension is level at which the study addresses use of the technology, whether at the Operational, Tactical or Strategic level. Within this 3x3 matrix, I seek to prove that studies would primarily fall along a line where the higher the level functions should be served by systems which have a longer-term orientation. This was broadly true, along with an emphasis on studies at the strategic level. Additionally, I find an underrepresentation of Forecasting, especially at the strategic level. The 2nd study seeks to determine the factors affecting IT system use for CPFR, in the real world. I examine the factors affecting system use along two dimensions. The first is along the company-level dimension. There are 3 points along the company-level dimension, defined as follows. Strategic use is defined as use by upper level management who are interested in the long term view of the organization and its processes and products. The Tactical use of IT for CPFR includes use by middle managers at a departmental level for medium term decision making. Operational level IT use covers functions which directly affect individual customers and keep the business running day to day. The second dimension along which system use is examined, is the functional-dimension. There are 3 points along this dimension and they are defined as follows. Use of IT for Planning, based on the VICS standard, is usually, but not exclusively under the purview of senior managers to determine what products to manufacture and the features they should have. Forecasting is done mainly by middle-managers in order to move enough products at the right time, to the right paces, while avoiding over-stocking each product. The Replenishment function is the actual process of moving items to the customer as they are ordered on-line or bought from the shelf. This is typically the job of operational logistics personnel such as purchasing and, shipping and delivery, as well as front-line staff such as customer service, shop-floor attendants or cashiers who interface directly with customers. In examining real world IT use for CPFR, I build on Simmonds, Haines & Li (2013) which looks at the trends and gaps in the IT literature as far as use of IT in CPFR was concerned. The aim is to determine whether the literature lines up with reality, or whether researchers are inherently biased when studying how Information Technology is used to support CPFR. A survey instrument was sent to 4000 senior managers in manufacturing and distribution companies. IT use along the STO dimension (Haines, Hough, & Haines, 2010) and its relationship with Industry characteristics (clock-speed of the industry and technological orientation) will be investigated in the context of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Fred D. Davis, 1989). Product factors (such as demand variability & luxury nature of the product) which drive IT use (Attaran & Attaran, 2007) along the PFR dimension will be investigated in the context of Technology Task Fit Theory (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). Intra-firm trust (Frazier, Johnson, Gavin, Gooty, & Bradley Snow, 2010) and its effect on use on the PFR dimension, will be looked at with managerial influence within Innovation Diffusion theory (Rogers, 2010) as a basis. Trust issues including confidence of management in competence of workers and confidence of employees in dependability of IT