A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards

Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard

Implementing a discrete event software selection methodology for supporting decision making at Accenture

For large international companies with their own simulation team, it is often hard to make a decision related to selection of new discrete-event simulation software. This paper presents a comprehensive discrete-event simulation software selection methodology that has been successfully used for decision making at Accenture consulting company. Accenture already used a simulation tool at the start of the project, but wanted to find out whether the current tool used still was the most appropriate one for its needs, and to evaluate the latest discrete-event simulation tools. The developed methodology consists of two phases: phase 1 quickly reduces the long list to a short list of packages, and phase 2 matches the requirements of the company with the features of the simulation package in detail. Successful application of the proposed methodology indicates its possible application for decision making in other large organisations, provided that the study is performed by a third party to avoid risks of influencing the outcome of the selection process

Sibling Caretaking Among Mexican American Youth

VAQUITA allows developers to reverse engineer a presentation model of a web page according to multiple reverse engineering options. The alternative models offered by these options not only widen the spectrum of possible presentation models but also encourage developers in exploring multiple reverse engineering strategies. The options provide filtering capabilities in a static analysis of HTML code that are targeted either at multiple widgets simultaneously or at single widgets at a time, for their attributes and other manipulations. This flexibility is particularly important when the presentation model is itself used to migrate the presentation of the web page to other types of user interfaces, possibly written in different languages, in different computing platforms