WISM 2005 : web information systems modeling

Modern Web Information Systems (WIS) need to satisfy a large number of requirements coming from different WIS stakeholders. Modeling WIS by focusing at one design aspect at-a-time helps the implementation of these requirements. During the last years several model-driven methodologies have been proposed to support the WIS design. Strategic modeling is usually the first step in WIS design. It is a very general characterization of WIS which answers questions like: what is the purpose of the WIS?, which are the WIS users?, what functionality is provided by the WIS?, what is the content of the WIS?, what is the layout and atmosphere of the presentations provided by the WIS?, etc. It is only after answering the above questions at a high abstract level that the designer can proceed with the detailed specifications of the WIS. Data integration is one of the most important characteristics of WIS. Some examples of domains in which data integration is present are: public services and bioinformatics. WIS need to support user interfaces that make a lot of data coming from different sources available to the user in a transparent way. The Semantic Web technologies seem to facilitate the data integration problem on the Web by providing the necessary languages to describe the data semantics. Very often the Web user browses pages that he will like to view again at a later time. The present browsing history mechanisms included in Web browsers proved to be insufficient for an adequate retrieval of already seen information. A semantical organization of the previously visited pages can improve the process of retrieving previously seen data. There is an increasing demand to make WIS personalizable so that these systems better deal with the user interests. WIS design methodologies do propose adaptation techniques in order to realize WIS personalization. Despite the fact that some of these adaptation techniques are very similar (or even the same) in different methodologies, the notations to specify WIS personalization aspects are quite different. By defining a reference model for specifying WIS personalization one could improve the reuse of the personalization specifications and also enable a seamless translation between different specific personalization specifications. The above issues are some of the topics that are tackled in the workshop papers. We hope that we did raise the readers’ interest so that they will have a close look at the papers and possibly contribute to the fascinating and challenging area of WIS modeling

Evolution, survival and anomalies

Rio, A., & Abreu, F. B. E. (2023). PHP code smells in web apps: Evolution, survival and anomalies. Journal of Systems and Software, 200, 1-23. [111644]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2023.111644Abstract Context: Code smells are symptoms of poor design, leading to future problems, such as reduced maintainability. Therefore, it becomes necessary to understand their evolution and how long they stay in code. This paper presents a longitudinal study on the evolution and survival of code smells (CS) for web apps built with PHP, the most widely used server-side programming language in web development and seldom studied. Objectives: We aimed to discover how CS evolve and what is their survival/lifespan in typical PHP web apps. Does CS survival depend on their scope or app life period? Are there sudden variations (anomalies) in the density of CS through the evolution of web apps? Method: We analyzed the evolution of 18 CS in 12 PHP web applications and compared it with changes in app and team size. We characterized the distribution of CS and used survival analysis techniques to study CS’ lifespan. We specialized the survival studies into localized (specific location) and scattered CS (spanning multiple classes/methods) categories. We further split the observations for each web app into two consecutive time frames. As for the CS evolution anomalies, we standardized their detection criteria. Results: The CS density trend along the evolution of PHP web apps is mostly stable, with variations, and correlates with the developer’s numbers. We identified the smells that survived the most. CS live an average of about 37% of the life of the applications, almost 4 years on average in our study; around 61% of CS introduced are removed. Most applications have different survival times for localized and scattered CS, and localized CS have a shorter life. The CS survival time is shorter and more CS are introduced and removed in the first half of the life of the applications. We found anomalies in the evolution of 5 apps and show how a graphical representation of sudden variations found in the evolution of CS unveils the story of a development project. Conclusion: CS stay a long time in code. The removal rate is low and did not change substantially in recent years. An effort should be made to avoid this bad behavior and change the CS density trend to decrease.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

TAXING THE RETICULUM TAXATION AND TARIFF ISSUES IN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

This thesis will explore, first within a historical context, and second, in a contemporary model, the impact and effect of electronic commerce in both a general and Electronic magazines. The thesis will explore governmental and legal responses, from a taxation and tariff point of view to the challenges posed by commercial transactions initiated and completed via the Internet and the World Wide Web. The broad question is therefore presented: How should governments, primarily American state and local governments, but also governments worldwide, respond to changes in technology that have a direct effect on the way business is conducted within their states and with their citizens? From that penumbral question, an examination and exploration of the many options currently under discussion here and abroad will be conducted. Additionally, the thesis will explore a narrower question, one that applies almost exclusively to the state and local governments within the United States, at least as it pertains to the issue of taxation: What are the appropriate responses when technology virtually erases borders, rendering obsolete the need for physical presence within a taxing jurisdiction in order to conduct business within that jurisdiction? Because the vast majority of electronic commerce, electronic commercial transactions, and electronic commercial Web, Web sites, and Web servers are either within the United States or are generated by American concerns , much of this thesis will focus upon American law at the federal and state levels and on the problems encountered by state and local governments whose sales and use tax revenues are directly threatened by what are currently non-taxed transactions. The thesis, however, will not confine itself completely to American law, as the European Union, Australia, and Asia, among others, grapple with the myriad issues presented by this interconnection of technologies that carries with it the promise of huge increases in efficiency and prosperity, but that is extremely difficult to define and control, as well as to tax. By the time this thesis reaches final form, the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce ( ACEC), created as part of Congress\u27 passage of the Internet Tax Freedom Act ( JTFA ) that became law on October 21, 1998, has invited, received, and reviewed various taxing and tax system reform plans from politicians, academics, economists, governmental officials, and other interested parties. In addition, The ACEC has, according to its mandate, reported to Congress on those plans

A Project Component in a Web Engineering Course

Web applications are an extremely important and ubiquitous part of today\u27s world. Students must not only know how to develop them from a technical perspective, but in doing so need to understand how to follow the proper principles of software engineering - delivering the project on time, on budget, and in a high quality manner. At the Department of Software Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology, we offer a Web Engineering course which not only introduces students to a variety of web technologies, but more importantly it shows them how to use them in a collaborative environment while properly utilizing web engineering methodologies.The course includes a significant project component requiring students to use a variety of contemporary technologies and resources to create a robust web application. The main premise of the project is for each group to create a web portal using both custom-built and already existing components. The project takes place over the entire 15 week course term, includes multiple releases, and has students work in teams of 4-5. This innovative project component has received significant praise from both students and faculty members while fulfilling an emerging area of our curriculum. Students enjoy the real-world nature of the project and the ability to work with contemporary technologies in a format which closely mimics what they will see in industry. This paper outlines the educational objectives, project details, some sample project results of our class offering, as well as student feedback about the project. The goal of this work is to share the project, its importance, and lessons learned for use at other institutions with similar educational goals

Process Integration and Web Services: A Case of Evolutional Development in a Supply Chain

Many situations of rapid emergence of a phenomenon are characterised by the fact that a lot of what is written and said is based on ideas, though the discussion may be flavoured by hype rather than anchored in reality - at least in the beginning. Still, there are also situations that constitute real changes. Extensive experiences from spare parts logistics at Volvo are the basis for an up-to-date view of development and use of web services. This paper provides results and experiences from implementations of advanced web service solutions. The origin of these solutions is a desire to improve process integration between supply chain actors. Therefore, the context for business-to-business process integration between suppliers, manufacturers, dealers and customers is also presented. Focus is made on how the usage of IS/IT and management concepts can give extended reach and create closer customer relationships. It is an evolutional development that has often exploited existing strengths and timing of opportunities provided by linking technology and organisational conditions between different actors. The case gives a perspective of Volvos global supply chain, aspects of its evolution and findings concerning timing, culture, installed base and stakeholder relations. The paper provides a general case to the discussion of process integration and in particular, it shares experiences and results from implementation of advanced web services

User Behavior in Tagging in the OPAC : The Example of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Library in Zagreb

Paradigmatic change has occurred in understanding the relationship of Internet users towards the content available on the Web. Unlike the earlier role of users as passive consumers, the new network, Web 2.0 is based on the user-friendly technologies which are focused on collaborative and interactive information services, social bookmarking services, where users can categorize and store their own web links, images, bibliographic records or PDF files. These technologies allow users to independently organize information in the ways which suit them best. Unlike the traditional organizing, where information specialists or authors describe, organize and classify contents, the users of social bookmarking services create metadata themselves using uncontrolled keywords - tags. Library of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb also allows its users to tag bibliographic records of library materials. In June 2010 the option of adding and browsing tags in the Koha catalogue was plugged in, and the users were informed about this new library service. The aim of this study is to explore how the Library users tag bibliographic records, i.e. what keywords are used to organize the information in the catalogue. The research problems were the following: which users are the most common taggers, which type of metadata is marked by tags and how do theme tags correspond to the key words in the catalogue

Cloudworks: social networking for learning design

Why do some social networking services work and others fail? Can we apply the best of Web 2.0 principles to an educational context? More specifically can we use this as a means of shifting teaching practice to a culture of sharing learning ideas and designs? Can we harness the potential of technologies to create more engaging learning experiences for students? These are the key questions this paper addresses. We describe how we are using the concept of 'object-orientated social networking' to underpin the creation of a social networking tool, Cloudworks, for sharing learning ideas and designs

On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues

The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues

A linked data compliant framework for dynamic and web-scale consumption of web services

The While Semantic Web Services (SWS) research aims at automating Web service tasks such as discovery, orchestration and execution, its take-up is very limited so far. This is due to several reasons, such as inherent complexity of existing SWS frameworks and the considerable costs involved in creating correct SWS descriptions. In addition, while semantics are in use to enable tasks such as discovery, interaction between service consumers, providers and brokering environments is still not supported by semantic message descriptions. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has produced a set of established principles for sharing and describing data, such as RDF as representation language and the integral use of dereferencable URIs. In this paper we propose to apply those principles to expose Web services and Web APIs and introduce a framework in which service registries as well as services contribute to the automation of service discovery, and hence, workload is distributed more efficiently. This is achieved by developing a Linked Data compliant Web services framework with that communicate with semi-centralised registries but compute their suitability for a given request themselves. All communications among different framework components are using RDF-based message protocols including service input and output. This framework aims at optimizing load balance and performance by dynamically assembling services at run time in a massively distributed Web environment