A Model-Based Approach for the Management of Electronic Invoices

The globalized market pushes companies to expand their business boundaries to a whole new level. In order to efficiently support this environment, business transactions must be executed over the Internet. However, there are several factors complicating this process, such as the current state of electronic invoices. Electronic invoice adoption is not widespread because of the current format fragmentation originated by national regulations. In this paper we present an approach based on Model-Driven Engineering techniques and abstractions for supporting the core functions of invoice management systems. We compare our solution with the traditional implementations and try to analyze the advantages MDE can bring to this specific domain

Toward the automation of business process ontology generation

Semantic Business Process Management (SBPM) utilises semantic technologies (e.g., ontology) to model and query process representations. There are times in which such models must be reconstructed from existing textual documentation. In this scenario the automated generation of ontological models would be preferable, however current methods and technology are still not capable of automatically generating accurate semantic process models from textual descriptions. This research attempts to automate the process as much as possible by proposing a method that drives the transformation through the joint use of a foundational ontology and lexico-semantic analysis. The method is presented, demonstrated and evaluated. The original dataset represents 150 business activities related to the procurement processes of a case study company. As the evaluation shows, the proposed method can accurately map the linguistic patterns of the process descriptions to semantic patterns of the foundational ontology to a high level of accuracy, however further research is required in order to reduce the level of human intervention, expand the method so as to recognise further patterns of the foundational ontology and develop a tool to assist the business process modeller in the semi-automated generation of process models

Bipartite electronic SLA as a business framework to support cross-organization load management of real-time online applications

Online applications such as games and e-learning applications fall within the broader category of real-time online interactive applications (ROIA), a new class of ‘killer’ application for the Grid that is being investigated in the edutain@grid project. The two case studies in edutain@grid are an online game and an e-learning training application. We present a novel Grid-based business framework that makes use of bipartite service level agreements (SLAs) and dynamic invoice models to model complex business relationships in a massively scalable and flexible way. We support cross-organization load management at the business level, through zone migration. For evaluation we look at existing and extended value chains, the quality of service (QoS) metrics measured and the dynamic invoice models that support this work. We examine the causal links from customer quality of experience (QoE) and service provider quality of business (QoBiz) through to measured quality of service. Finally we discuss a shared reward business ecosystem and suggest how extended service level agreements and invoice models can support this

Analysing how constraints impact architectural decision-making

Architectural design projects are characterised by a high number of constraints. Along with planning, energy performance and fire safety regulations, current designers have to face constraining factors related to budget, acoustics, orientation, wind turbulence, accessibility for the disabled, and so forth. These constraints steer the design process implicitly and explicitly in certain directions as soon as architectural designers aim at satisfying design briefs. We aim in this article at analysing the impact of such constraints on the design process. At this end, we have studied four design sessions in a particular (student) design use case. In analysing these four sessions, we used linkography as a method, because this appeared to be one of the better options to obtain a more quantitative assessment of the design process. The linkography method was combined with an interview of the student design team, in order to check the correctness of our conclusions

Generation of file processing programs based on JSP

This paper describes the generation of file processing programmes within the TUBA environment. Program structures are derived from data structures according to the JSP method. Expressions describing output data are specified in user-system dialogues. The program specifications are stored in the dictionary. Complete executable programs can be generated from these specifications