INTEGRATION VERSUS DEDICATION IN ROMANIAN MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS

The technologies supporting future business must be intuitive from a user standpoint, flexible from design standpoint and highly productive. As an answer to many requirements, analysts recommend the inclusion of SOA and ESB in the IT management strategies, since these tend to become mainstream, overcoming their abstract vision status in the last decade. In this paper, we provide a study regarding the attitude of companies from north-western Romania with respect to this transition and the SOA&ESB models. Our analysis targets attributes such as: level of understanding, knowledge and concern in adopting such technologies, the management involvement in the company IT strategy, the added value of the new technologies and risk factors for the migration towards an SOA&ESB architecture.integration,enterprise applications,web applications,SOA,ESB,framework

About Hierarchical XML Structures, Replacement of Relational Data Structures in Construction and Implementation of ERP Systems

The projects essential objective is to develop a new ERP system, of homogeneous nature, based on XML structures, as a possible replacement for classic ERP systems. The criteria that guide the objective definition are modularity, portability and Web connectivity. This objective is connected to a series of secondary objectives, considering that the technological approach will be filtered through the economic, social and legislative environment for a validation-by-context study. Statistics and cybernetics are to be used for simulation purposes. The homogeneous approach is meant to provide strong modularity and portability, in relation with the n-tier principles, but the main advantage of the model is its opening to the semantic Web, based on a Small enterprise ontology defined with XML-driven languages. Shockwave solutions will be used for implementing client-oriented hypermedia elements and an XML Gate will be de-fined between black box modules, for a clear separation with obvious advantages. Security and the XMLTP project will be an important issue for XML transfers due to the conflict between the open architecture of the Web, the readability of XML data and the privacy elements which have to be preserved within a business environment. The projects finality is oriented on small business but the semantic Web perspective and the surprising new conflict between hierarchical/network data structures and relational ones will certainly widen its scope. The proposed model is meant to fulfill the IT compatibility requirements of the European environment, defined as a knowledge society. The paper is a brief of the contributions of the team re-search at the project type A applied to CNCSIS "Research on the Role of XML in Building Extensible and Homogeneous ERP Systems".XML structures, database management system

A Proposal for Deploying Hybrid Knowledge Bases: the ADOxx-to-GraphDB Interoperability Case

Graph Database Management Systems brought data model abstractions closer to how humans are used to handle knowledge - i.e., driven by inferences across complex relationship networks rather than by encapsulating tuples under rigid schemata. Another discipline that commonly employs graph-like structures is diagrammatic Conceptual Modeling, where intuitive, graphical means of explicating knowledge are systematically studied and formalized. Considering the common ground of graph databases, the paper proposes an integration of OWL ontologies with diagrammatic representations as enabled by the ADOxx metamodeling platform. The proposal is based on the RDF-semantics variant of OWL and leads to a particular type of hybrid knowledge bases hosted, for proof-of-concept purposes, by the GraphDB system due to its inferencing capabilities. The approach aims for complementarity and integration, providing agile diagrammatic means of creating semantic networks that are amenable to ontology-based reasoning

Enriching Linked Data with Semantics from Domain-Specific Diagrammatic Models

One key driver of the Linked Data paradigm is the ability to lift data graphs from legacy systems by employing various adapters and RDFizers (e.g., D2RQ for relational databases, XLWrap for spreadsheets). Such approaches aim towards removing boundaries of enterprise data silos by opening them to cross-organizational linking within a “Web of Data”. An insufficiently tapped source of machine-readable semantics is the underlying graph nature of diagrammatic conceptual models – a kind of information that is richer compared to what is typically lifted from table schemata, especially when a domain-specific modeling language is employed. The paper advocates an approach to Linked Data enrichment based on a diagrammatic model RDFizer originally developed in the context of the ComVantage FP7 research project. A minimal but illustrative example is provided from which arguments will be generalized, leading to a proposed vision of “conceptual model”-aware information systems

Semantic Bridging between Conceptual Modeling Standards and Agile Software Projects Conceptualizations

Software engineering benefitted from modeling standards (e.g. UML, BPMN), but Agile Software Project Management tends to marginalize most forms of documentation including diagrammatic modeling, focusing instead on the tracking of a project\u27s backlog and related issues. Limited means are available for annotating Jira items with diagrams, however not on a granular and semantically traceable level. Business processes tend to get lost on the way between process analysis (if any) and backlog items; UML design decisions are often disconnected from the issue tracking environment. This paper proposes domain-specific conceptual modeling to obtain a diagrammatic view on a Jira project, motivated by past conceptualizations of the agile paradigm while also offering basic interoperability with Jira to switch between environments and views. The underlying conceptualization extends conceptual modeling languages (BPMN, UML) with an agile project management perspective to enrich contextual traceability of a project\u27s elements while ensuring that data structures handled by Jira can be captured and exposed to Jira if needed. Therefore, concepts underlying the typical software development project management are integrated with established modeling concepts and tailored (with metamodeling means) for the domain-specificity of agile project management. A Design Science approach was pursued to develop a modeling method artifact, resulting in a domain-specific modeling tool for software project managers that want to augment agile practices and enrich issue annotation

The Place of e-Learning in Romanian Universities’ Strategies

The educational policy documents at European level reaffirm professors’ status as key players of strategies aimed to stimulate socio-economic development. In a powerful knowledge-based society, the e-Learning system has the capacity to transform education, creating major initiatives required to identify new skills and behaviors. In this paper we try to outline the position of this new educational system in the Romanian higher education strategy

Towards a Modeling Method for Managing Node.js Projects and Dependencies

This paper proposes a domain-specific and technology-specific modeling method for managing Node.js projects. It addresses the challenge of managing dependencies in the NPM and REST ecosystems, while also providing a specialized workflow model type as a process-centric view on a software project. With the continuous growth of the Node.js environment, managing complex projects that use this technology can be chaotic, especially when it comes to planning dependencies and module integration. The deprecation of a module can lead to serious crisis regarding the projects where that module was used; consequently, traceability of deprecation propagation becomes a key requirements in Node.js project management. The modeling method introduced in this paper provides a diagrammatic solution to managing module and API dependencies in a Node.js project. It is deployed as a modeling tool that can also generate REST API documentation and Node.js project configuration files that can be executed to install the graphically designed dependencies

A BPM Lifecycle Plug-in for Modeling Methods Agility

Business Process Management literature has proposed several BPM lifecycles on a level of abstraction that is modeling method -agnostic, i.e. they consider the modeling language and tool support an underlying invariant or technological concern. While remaining on the same abstraction layer, we highlight a method agility requirement observed in commercial BPM consulting projects - concretely, it manifests as change requests for the modeling language or tool, from one lifecycle iteration to the next, leading to situations of model value co-creation as customer demands are assimilated in the modeling method. Based on a conceptualization of such situations, a lifecycle plug-in is proposed in the form of a methodology and associated tool support, allowing for responsive evolution of the adopted modeling method with impact on several lifecycle phases. Historical examples from the evolution of a BPM product are provided to illustrate and classify the demands that motivate the existence of this lifecycle plug-in

User Experience Modeling Method for a Vision of Knowledge Graph-based Process Automation

This research proposes a User Experience modelling method which is an early-stage component of a research project’s vision of innovating Robotic Process Automation with the help of Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language Processing. The core idea is to integrate, in RDF graphs, a representation of the user experience and contextual information about the organization and relevant data sources for that experience. Existing RPA tools use workflow repositories that employ XML-based descriptions for both processes and UI elements. They also provide built-in workflow designers that are not tailored for design-time analysis (e.g., model queries, reporting, reasoning) but instead are just raising the abstraction level of traditional scripting – from writing code to visually connecting pre-programmed pieces of functionality. The proposal detailed in this paper makes use of Domain-Specific Modeling Language engineering to repurpose an open source BPMN implementation for describing User Experience. We rely on a metamodeling platform to ensure that the resulting diagrams are also machine-readable and take advantage of an existing plug-in to make them available as RDF graphs that can be used by other components of an automation architecture. The paper focuses on the modelling method and tool as one of the early steps of the project’s vision

From BPMN Models to Labelled Property Graphs

There\u27s a growing interest in leveraging the structured and formal nature of business process modeling languages in order to make them available not only for human analysis but also to machine-readable knowledge representation. Standard serializations of the past were predominantly XML based, with some of them seemingly discontinued, e.g., XPDL after the dissolution of the Workflow Management Coalition. Recent research has been investigating the interplay between knowledge representation and business process modeling, with the focus typically placed on standards such as RDF and OWL. In this paper we introduce a converter that translates the standards-compliant BPMN XML format to Neo4J labelled property graphs (LPG) thus providing an alternative to both traditional XML-based serialization and to more recent experimental RDF solutions, while ensuring conceptual alignment with the standard serialization of BPMN 2.0. A demonstrator was built to highlight the benefits of having such a parser and the completeness of coverage for BPMN models. The proposal facilitates graph-based processing of business process models in a knowledge intensive context, where procedural knowledge available as BPMN diagrams must be exposed to machines and LPG-driven applications