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The beautification of a user interface resulting from model-to-model and model-to-code transformations in Model-Driven Architecture consists of performing manual changes to address user requirements which have not been supported during the transformations. These requirements may include customization, users' preferences, and compliance with corporate style guidelines. This paper introduces a beautification process into a user-interface model. This process includes a series of beautification operations based on a formal definition, as well as a constrained editor that enables designers to apply these beautification operations on a user interface. All manual changes done using these beautification operations are transformed into model-to-model transformations, thus reducing the problem of round-trip engineering. The paper also demonstrates that this process significantly reduces the number of manual changes performed on user interfaces of information systems, while preserving the quality properties induced by the transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a new algorithm for automatic recognition of hand drawn sketches based on the Levenshtein distance. The purpose for drawing sketches in our application is to create graphical user interfaces in a similar manner as the well established paper sketching. The new algorithm is trainable by every user and improves the recognition performance of the techniques which were used before for widget recognition. In addition, this algorithm ay serve for recognizing other types of sketches, such as letters, figures, and commands. In this way, there is no modality disruption at sketching time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the problem of evaluating elderly people's perception of assistive robots and domotic environments. Specifically, we focus on aspects related to the modalities in which interaction can occur between an elder user and an assistive robotic agent. Our work benefits from the products of project RoboCare, namely, a domestic environment in which sensors, intelligent software components and a domestic robot provide a set of cognitive support services for the elder user. This paper analyzes a number of evaluation criteria in detail, specifically related to the robot's aspect, the way in which it communicates with the user, and the perceived usefulness of its support services. Among these criteria, the paper proposes and reports an evaluation of the Proactive interaction modality (where the system takes the initiative) and On-demand interaction (in which the user explicitly requests a service). Users evaluate the On-demand support services in personal safety scenarios as particularly useful, and less so in scenarios which are not critical. The paper also provides a discussion which can be useful for the design of future assistive agents and robotic companions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Manas, a Semiotic Engineering epistemic tool for the design of collaborative systems (CoSys) whose aim is to expand the designers' knowledge and awareness of their influence on groups and group dynamics. Manas has been developed to help designers represent their conception of computer-mediated communication and reflect upon some of its potential social effects, springing from user-system interaction, as well from user-user interaction (through the system). The paper illustrates how Manas can lead designers to reflect upon both the design problem and its proposed solution(s), which allows them to make more conscious decisions. Increased knowledge and awareness should then enhance the quality of CoSys design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel browsing paradigm, taking benefit of the various types of links (e.g. thematic, temporal, references, etc.) that can be automatically built between multimedia documents. This browsing paradigm can help eliciting multimedia archives' hidden structures or expanding search results to related media. The paper intend to present a novel model for browsing any kind of multimedia archives and further focuses on an archive of meetings recordings, in order to illustrate the advantage of our method to perform cross-meetings and in general cross-documents browsing. First of all, the structure of meeting datasets is presented, describing in particular the media implied, the annotations used for cross-document linking and the major mining techniques integrated in this work. Then, the paper presents at a glance the visual browser we developed that combines searching and browsing by links. Further, the performances of the actual system are discussed, i.e. the automatic indexing and linking processes for the two different meeting corpora, as well as the access and browsing performances. Finally, the paper presents the major unsolved issues and our perspectives for future works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the rationale behind a user interface requirements management notation and a supporting tool suite. The notation is being developed to facilitate the design of interactions based on an account of non-functional requirements (NFRs), thus the acronym NfRn for the technique. NfRn is a graphical notation which is used to specify an interactive system's global execution context (GEC). The resulting depiction is referred to as the Global Execution Context graph (GECg). The GECg is a visual construction, which consists of nodes, representing interaction scenarios, and directed links representing scenario relationships designating alternate execution, concurrency, ordering, and set-oriented relationships between two scenario nodes. The technique is particularly useful for specifying certain NFRs - such as adaptability, adaptivity, scalability and portability - which are especially relevant for anytime, anywhere access. In the paper, we demonstrate the application of the technique in the context of an on-going research project aiming to build an ‘electronic village' of local interest in the region of Crete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses personalised cooperative mobile learning. Context, context-awareness and the application of context-awareness are considered. The development of a generic RDF context framework is presented, adaptability is considered and comparisons are drawn with related research. Context definitions are domain specific with each domain requiring specific contextual design. In this paper, the focus is the context definition for a student in the domain of higher education. A context reasoning ontology is introduced to provide support for intelligent context processing. The paper concludes that RDF/RDFS combined with OWL and Jena provides a basis for the creation of context, context reasoning with ontology enabling effective intelligent context processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-learning has been adopted by more and more educational institutions to implement their new learning and teaching strategy around the world. Students can study their courses which could be run by different universities which run different e-learning platforms. A universal data integrated e-learning platform is essential to transparentise the significant difference among disparate data sources which are used by different e-learning systems. This paper proposes an effective data integration mechanism for e-learning system. At the same time security concerns are discussed. The workflow-based data integration approach is shown in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context technology is a core component in cooperative mobile applications. Based on our research project "A Context Framework for Personalised Mobile Learning in Pedagogic Systems", this paper presents a semantic context model called "SmartContext", which includes a standardised context template, a context reasoning ontology and a context middleware to investigate a solution for supporting cooperative mobile learning. The integration of "SmartContext" with the current e-learning system in University of Central England is also included in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach of multidisciplinary knowledge modeling for concurrent and collaborative design. Firstly, a method to acquire the knowledge from simulation and specification is studied. The knowledge is used to constitute concurrent and collaborative design model. Secondly, a concurrent and collaborative design algorithm is presented to solve the model. Finally, the method is demonstrated by a design example of bogie. The results prove that multidisciplinary knowledge modeling from simulation data and specification is feasible, and the proposed method can be applied in concurrent and collaborative design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the extended quality function deployment (QFD) in life cycle design (LCD) based on the traditional QFD which is often used at the requirement analysis stage. By investigating QFD in the product life cycle design, the extended QFD is proposed with the theoretical frame. The extension begins with the analysis of requirement by adding environment and cost factors, instead of only customer requirements, as the input of the 1st level house of quality (HoQ). Accordingly, multi-target values are built in. In a sequential process of the LCD, the extension carries out requirement deployment, function deployment, equipment deployment, part deployment, cost deployment and reliability deployment. Finally, this paper reveals how to apply the extended QFD in LCD and how to choose and adjust HoQ for different products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an application framework for constructing sketch-based cooperative design (especially for distributed conceptual design) tools. Three key issues are addressed: (1) how to represent and store sketch document; (2) how does the system infer the designers' intention and help them to complete the design process; (3) how to implement the communication between the client and the server. Solutions to these problems are proposed in this paper. The framework has been implemented and tested on a variety of applications, for example, cooperative UML diagram design. The primary experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to manage constraint information in cooperative design due to its variety and changeability. The concept of Constraint Information Visualization (CIV) in cooperative design and CIV framework comprising the CIV methodology are put forward to control cooperative design flow efficiently, detect constraint conflicts early and negotiate the contradiction under the support of visualization. On the basis of classification and representation of constraint information, this paper discusses the importance of CIV and its formalized description for cooperative design. The procedure of visual mapping and harmony evaluation is given in details. The main step of visual mapping is divided into classification mapping, structure and harmony mapping and detailed property mapping. Visual Mapping implements mapping from constraint information to visual representation with corresponding mapping modes. The concepts of local harmony and global harmony are also proposed for cooperation. An application of CIV verifies CIV methodology, which will direct a new way to implement complicated constraints management in cooperative design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Ubicomp scenarios tiny wireless embedded sensor devices are used, and devices often collaborate to accomplish a common goal. This paper presents a group formation method designed for collaboration of devices. The paper analysis requirements for typical application scenarios, and then presents the general concept of the group formation process. The proposed formation method is a variant of an auction-based algorithm. The algorithm works fully distributed and is based on individual, private believes of the devices in the auctioneered item - e.g. a sensor value. The paper introduces the algorithm and analyses its effects analytically and in simulation. We show, that fully distributed operation, high robustness in the case of network failures and extreme low resource (energy) consumption can be obtained. We introduce an application case and present results from a real-world implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper claims that the design and construction of safety critical interactive systems require both a task centred approach to support efficiently operator's goals and activities and a system centred approach to increase the dependability of the system. The approach presented proposes a model-based approach integrating tasks and system models. This integration is done at the model level (in a similar way as in [13]) and at the tool level exploiting PetShop environment [3] for the system side and AMBOSS [1] for the task side. The tool level integration describes three different protocols each of them having advantages and limitations. The model-based approaches are introduced through a case study in the field of command and control systems. The application called AGENDA allows operators to define and organize work plan for satellite ground systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usability evaluation methods are a battery of techniques for assessing the usability of interactive systems or of proposed interactive systems. This paper describes a new evaluation method, particularly appropriate for evaluating safety critical and high quality user interfaces. The method can also be used for informing HCI research. The method is applied when a specification is available of an interactive system, or when a system (or prototype) is working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, collaborative product development has become a strategic necessity to develop high quality products at low cost and with quick response time to market demand. Past decades have seen significant advances to collaborative product development. However, Enterprises are still confronted with some problems. Firstly, the research in strategic level of collaborative product development is lacking. There are no formal processes and models for collaborative product development. On the other hand, the full alignment between information system and collaborative business is still missing. The information system cannot adapt to the fast changed business. This paper aims to provide the strategy and reference business model for collaborative product development. And then, to support the implementation of strategy and model, a workflow and web service based engineering collaboration portal is developed. The workflow is used to model and execute the collaborative product development processes, and the web service is the implementing technology of the portal. The combination of workflow and web service can fit the gap between business and information system and achieve on-demand business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is devoted to application of formal concept analysis and collaborative design in shipbuilding. Sourcing and shoring strategies of a Norwegian multinational design company is illustrated by a concept lattice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a document recommendation system based on clustering peer-to-peer networks. It's an unstructured P2P system. In this system each agent-peer can learn user's interest, then it helps user share and recommend documents with the other users. Since each peer in our P2P networks is a node, in order to cluster them, we import the concept of Group. Each group is composed of peers. The types of documents, which belong to a same group, are uniform. This paper presents how these peers help users to share and to recommend documents, and how they cluster into groups. Our experiment results show the advantages of the document recommendation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on differential conversion, which is a new approach to data transformation between different software systems. The strategy of differential conversion, which is built on a log of changes and identifier mapping, was introduced in CDVE 2006 in a purely theoretical paper entitled Data Exchange in CAD during Iterative Work with Heterogeneous Systems. A specific case study of differential conversion in use is elaborated in this text. It is about an intelligent bi-directional transformation between DWG and SVG. DWG is a proprietary CAD-format of the AutoCAD system, whereas SVG is an open, generic graphics format, based on XML. The implemented transformation allows usage of a model created in a CAD-system within a cooperative design intended for non-CAD users. It is useful not only for reading, but even for writing into the model and modifying it. Any changes made are returned back to the original model. The following case exemplifies the previously discussed strategy. For example, a project submitter, or another party in the review process, can use a normal, generic SVG editor for writing comments and proposals into the model. A solver can transform them back into the CAD-model, without other entities in the model being damaged. This case study describes differential export and import tools and takes note of the particular solutions of the log of changes and identifier mapping problems. It also describes the relationship to the original differential conversion proposal, discusses the particular implementation, and again generalizes into some design pattern for differential conversion implementation projects in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the complexity of application system for enterprises, an important challenge is to dynamically schedule and integrate the heterogeneous and distributed services or activities to work cooperatively and efficiently. An effective technology to resolve the problem is grid service. A grid service built on both grid computing and web services technologies is an extended Web service. An application system for enterprises is a grid service composition that consists of a collection of grid services related by data and control flow. Therefore, there is a need for modeling and analyzing techniques and tools for reliable and effective grid service composition. The Petri net based method is an idea approach. In this paper, we use a colored dynamic timed Petri net (CDTPN) to model the grid service composition. The definition of CDTPN for grid service and an algorithm to construct a composite service are proposed. We give a definition of reachable service graph and an algorithm for constructing the reachable service graph of CDTPN. Finally, we discuss the correctness and effectiveness of the grid service composition by analyzing the reachable service graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative team members usually come from diverse disciplines; their demands for knowledge are also different from each other. This paper is mainly concerned with how to capturing designers' knowledge demands in collaborative team. With the view from workflow, designers' knowledge demand is modeled from three aspects, members, roles, and tasks' requirements for knowledge. Based on the model of knowledge demand, some intelligent mining methods are proposed so that designers' knowledge demand could be derived automatically. With the knowledge demand model, a knowledge supply system could be developed to realize: knowledge within an appropriate domain could be delivered to the proper user among the collaborative team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lots of routing protocols have been proposed in the literatures to overcome several challenges in ad hoc networks. The fundamental point we consider in this paper is that most of such protocols are generally based on the assumption that mobile nodes are functionally equivalent to each other in computing power and memory space. Moreover, all of the mobile nodes are required to use a common routing protocol to communicate with each other. However, such assumptions do not reflect the real world, even further the future oriented ubiquitous world. The ubiquitous paradigm requires networking technologies to support the heterogeneity including various capabilities to compute, amounts of storage, radio interfaces, patterns of mobility and others. In real scenario, for instance, some nodes may not want to relay packets for others owing to their power constraints. Also there might be nodes employing different routing protocols in a single communication zone. To cover some of these cases, this paper proposes a simple but efficient approach called HRPC (Heterogeneous Routing Protocol Coordinator) that works well in our previously proposed MANET architecture. HRPC is not a stand-alone routing protocol but a coordinating module for support bridging functionality between heterogeneous routing protocols in MANET. This paper also gives HRPC implementation and its demonstration results, where DYMO and OLSR routing protocols are used as an exemplified scenario to evaluate the operability of HRPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As key technologies of sensor network have been deployed to various applications, such as ubiquitous computing and mobile computing, the importance of sensor network were recognized. Because most sensors are battery operated, the constrained power of sensors is a serious problem. If data containing small error is tolerable to users, the sensor data can be sampled discretely. An efficient power conserving algorithm is presented in this paper. By observing the trend of the sensor data, it was possible to predict the time that exceeds the specified maximum error. The algorithm has been applied to various sensor data including synthetic data. Compared to the regular sensors which do not adapt the proposed algorithm, the proposed sensors in this paper shows that the sensor's life time can be increased up to six folds within the range of 1% tolerable data error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the ubiquitous computing technology (uT) is prevailing, applying uT is more likely to transform the legacy way of providing services to a new service everywhere, every time, with any devices to gain more comparative advantages than the other typical services. This opportunity naturally requires a methodology to assess to what extent the legacy e-services are transformed to the uT-based services. However, research about assessing the level of u-Transformation has been still very few. Hence, this paper aims to propose a methodology for assessing the level of u-Transformation oriented by the teleology of ubiquitous services. A case study, GPS-based navigation services, is performed to show the feasibility of the methodology addressed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the Obje Perception Framework (OPF), a distributed software architecture for context sensing and inference in ubiquitous computing environments. OPF provides flexibility, scalability, and robustness even as the sensor configuration changes. For flexibility, OPF supports many context inference tasks, ways of achieving those tasks, and heterogeneity in sensor types. With respect to scalability, OPF accommodates the needs of a large number of applications simultaneously while conserving power and reducing the amount of data transmitted over the network. And to support robustness to dynamism, OPF constructs context inference pipelines to satisfy each applications' needs in a goal-directed fashion. The value of OPF is demonstrated by a case study of an end-user application that helps users establish and manage connections among the various digital resources in their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pervasive computing environments need to exhibit highly adaptive behavior to meet the changing personal requirements and operational context of environment. Recently, task computing (TC) paradigm has gained acceptance as the choice computing model for pervasive computing environment. One of the key components of TC is a task model that provides an adequate high-level description of user-oriented tasks. This paper presents a novel context-sensitive task modeling approach capable of supporting complex, user-oriented task definitions, and proposes an algorithm to discover a task and a method to execute it. This work is motivated by the fact that whilst current TC systems allow users to interact with their ambient environments in terms of high level tasks, existing task definitions are still relatively simple, and do not include user-centric and environmental contextual information in the task definition. This paper elaborates the proposed task model through a smart home application example to illustrate steps in context-dependent task modeling, service provisioning and resource organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges for ubiquitous computing is to design systems that can be both understood by their users and at the same time understand the users themselves. As information and its meaning becomes more associated with the communities that provide and use it, how will it be possible to build effective systems for these users? We have been examining these issues via ethnographic analysis of the information and community supporting system that we have developed and employed at conference events. This paper presents initial analysis and suggests greater focus on the interaction between members of micro-communities of users in future ubicomp research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, new information and communication technologies have lived a secret life. For individuals and institutions around the world, this constellation of mobile phones, personal computers, the internet, software, games, and other computing objects have supported a complex set of religious and spiritual needs. In this paper, I offer a survey of emerging and emergent techno-spiritual practices, and the anxieties surrounding their uptake. I am interested in particular in the ways in which religious uses of technology represent not only a critique of dominant visions of technology's futures, but also suggest a very different path(s) for ubiquitous computing's technology envisioning and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an ongoing project on the concept of interaction among people via a mobile (city) application. The focus of our research lies on its usability and sociability, i.e., on all aspects that are related to community forming and development in a city context. In order to analyze them, we have developed a method that combines two techniques that are not common in usability studies: the association technique and the laddering method. We have called this combination the ‘connotation chain' technique. In this paper, we will first introduce this technique showing its advantages and disadvantages in a usability study. Then, we will present the results of applying this technique to our specific objective and, finally, we will discuss its implications for the further development of the interface of this application. Keywords: Mobile communication within a city context, Communities, Association technique, Laddering and User-centered design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several approaches for data interoperation identified by Karp have been implemented for biological databases. We extend Karp's approach for interoperation not only to protein databases but also to knowledge bases and other information sources. This paper outlines algebra for protein data source composition based on our existing work of Protein Ontology (PO). In this paper we consider the case of establishing correspondence between various protein data sources using semantic relationships over the conceptual framework of PO. Here we provide specific set of relationships over PO framework to cover data semantics for integrating data information from diverse protein data sources. These relationships help in defining semantic query algebra for PO to efficiently reason and query the instance store. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for query approximation in Geographical Information Systems. In our approach, queries are expressed by the Geographical Pictorial Query Language (GeoPQL), and query approximation is performed using WordNet, a lexical database for the English language available on the Internet. Due to the focus on geographical context, we address WordNetpartitiontaxonomies. If a concept contained in a query has no match in the database, the query is approximated using the immediate superconcepts and subconcepts in the WordNet taxonomy, and their related degrees of similarity. Semantic similarity is evaluated using the information content approach, which shows a higher correlation with human judgment than the traditional similarity measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes, for the case of Enterprise Java Bean components and JBoss application server, how replication for availability can be supported to tolerate application server/transaction manager failures. Replicating the state associated with the progression of a transaction (i.e., which phase of two-phase commit is enacted and the transactional resources involved) provides an opportunity to continue a transaction using a backup transaction manager if the transaction manager of the primary fails. Existing application servers do not support this functionality. The paper discusses the technical issues involved and shows how a solution can be engineered. Keywords: Availability, application servers, components, Enterprise Java Beans, fault tolerance, middleware, replication, transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the era of stove-piped Geographical Information Systems up to interesting mash-ups involving Internet based mapping services, the approaches of handling Geographical Information (GI) have changed significantly. This paper briefly concentrates up on the distinctive features and current implementations of Spatial Data Access Patterns. Considering the information requirements of the users in Emergency Operations Center, this paper identifies the issues and challenges in handling GI in dynamically changing environments. Two new patterns based on appropriate integration of Semantics and Grid technology are introduced, that may satisfy the identified requirements. Necessary alterations in current practices for handling GI is discussed with detail considerations for realization of these patterns on open environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of recent information retrieval systems make use of ontologies to help the users clarify their information needs and come up with semantic representations of documents. A particular concern here is the integration of these semantic approaches with traditional search technology. The research presented in this paper examines how ontologies can be efficiently applied to large-scale search systems for the web. We describe how these systems can be enriched with adapted ontologies to provide both an in-depth understanding of the user's needs as well as an easy integration with standard vector-space retrieval systems. The ontology concepts are adapted to the domain terminology by computing a feature vector for each concept. Later, the feature vectors are used to enrich a provided query. The whole retrieval system is under development as part of a larger Semantic Web standardization project for the Norwegian oil & gas sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of an ongoing research effort to better understand the process of conceptual modeling. As part of this effort, we are currently developing a modeling laboratory named MoDial (Modeling Dialogues). The main contribution of this paper is a conceptual meta-model of that part of MoDial which aims to capture the elicitation aspects of the modeling process used in creating a model, rather than the model as such.The current meta-model is the result of a two-stage research process. The first stage involves theoretical input from literature and earlier results. The second stage is concerned with (modest) empirical validation in terms of interviews with modeling experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One distinctive feature of pervasive computing environments is the common need to gather and process context information about real persons. Unfortunately, this unavoidably affects persons' privacy. Each time someone uses a cellular phone, a credit card, or surfs the web, he leaves a trace that is stored and processed. In a pervasive sensing environment, however, the amount of information collected is much larger than today and also might be used to reconstruct personal information with great accuracy. The question we address in this paper is how to control dissemination and flow of personal data across organizational, and personal boundaries, i.e., to potential addressees of privacy relevant information. This paper presents the User-Centric Privacy Framework (UCPF). It aims at protecting a user's privacy based on the enforcement of privacy preferences. They are expressed as a set of constraints over some set of context information. To achieve the goal of cross-boundary control, we introduce two novel abstractions, namely Transformations and Foreign Constraints, in order to extend the possibilities of a user to describe privacy protection criteria beyond the expressiveness usually found today. Transformations are understood as any process that the user may define over a specific piece of context. This is a main building block for obfuscating - or even plainly lying about - the context in question. Foreign Constraints are an important complementing extension because they allow for modeling conditions defined on external users that are not the tracked individual, but may influence disclosure of personal data to third parties. We are confident that these two easy-to-use abstractions together with the general privacy framework presented in this paper constitute a strong contribution to the protection of the personal privacy in pervasive computing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the analysis phase of information systems development, it is important to have the conceptual schema validated by the business domain expert, to ensure that the schema accurately models the relevant aspects of the business domain. An effective way to facilitate this validation is to verbalize the schema in language that is both unambiguous and easily understood by the domain expert, who may be non-technical. Such verbalization has long been a major aspect of the Object-Role Modeling (ORM) approach, and basic support for verbalization exists in some ORM tools. Second generation ORM (ORM 2) significantly extends the expressibility of ORM models (e.g. deontic modalities, role value constraints, etc.). This paper discusses the automated support for verbalization of ORM 2 models provided by NORMA (Neumont ORM Architect), an open-source software tool that facilitates entry, validation, and mapping of ORM 2 models. NORMA supports verbalization patterns that go well beyond previous verbalization work. The verbalization for individual elements in the core ORM model is generated using an XSLT transform applied to an XML file that succinctly identifies different verbalization patterns and describes how phrases are combined to produce a readable verbalization. This paper discusses the XML patterns used to describe ORM constraints and the tightly coupled facilities that enable end-users to easily adapt the verbalization phrases to cater for different domain experts and native languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental study for extracting a terminology from a corpus made of Curriculum Vitae (CV). This terminology is to be used for ontology acquisition. The choice of the pruning rate of the terminology is crucial relative to the quality of the ontology acquired. In this paper, we investigate this pruning rate by using several evaluation measures (precision, recall, F-measure, and ROC curve). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an extension to the Object-Role Modeling approach to support formal declaration of dynamic rules. Dynamic rules differ from static rules by pertaining to properties of state transitions, rather than to the states themselves. In this paper, application of dynamic rules is restricted to so-called single-step transactions, with an old state (the input of the transaction) and a new state (the direct result of that transaction). Such restricted rules are easier to formulate (and enforce) than a constraint applying historically over all possible states. In our approach, dynamic rules specify an elementary transaction type indicating which kind of object or fact is being added, deleted or updated, and (optionally) pre-conditions relevant to the transaction, followed by a condition stating the properties of the new state, including the relation between the new state and the old state. These dynamic rules are formulated in a syntax designed to be easily validated by non-technical domain experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In software engineering, the notion of unit testing was successfully introduced and applied. Unit tests are easy manageable tests for small parts of a program - single units. They proved especially useful to capture unwanted changes and side effects during the maintenance of a program, and they grow with the evolution of the program. Ontologies behave quite differently than program units. As there is no information hiding in ontology engineering, and thus no black box components, at first the idea of unit testing for ontologies seems not applicable. In this paper we motivate the need for unit testing, describe the adaptation to the unit testing approach, and give use cases and examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a holistic approach to enhance human knowledge in distributed and strictly linked contexts. Current semantic web technologies focus their attention only on the machine side of the interaction process. Our approach considers both the human and the machine working together to accomplish a task, stressing the importance of adapting data, tools and interactions to the different skills, contexts and tasks of the users. Multimodal interactive systems based on Semantic Web technologies support the sharing of knowledge among co-workers in different real networked environments. We present a scenario in the building sector, in which mobile systems are needed to reduce loosing of information on technical drawings from the building yard to the office. The paper presents a specification method and its link to semantic web technologies to satisfy the emerging requirements. Keywords: Multimodal interactive system (MIS), Semantic Web technologies, Human-Computer Interaction, Knowledge Sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within organizations, workflow systems can automate business processes by centrally coordinating activity sequences. But outside their borders, organizations are autonomous entities that cannot be subject to centralized process control. Their internal processes are autonomously defined and controlled, and what they need is to synchronize those concurrent processes. Just like Petri nets are a valuable tool to model activity sequencing in local business processes, π-calculus becomes a useful tool to model concurrency in inter-organizational processes. After a review of the main developments in cross-organizational workflow management, this paper illustrates the use of π-calculus to model the interactions between business processes running concurrently in different organizations. These interactions range from invoking external services to more complex patterns such as contract negotiation and partner search and selection. The paper concludes with a case study that illustrates the application of the proposed approach in a more realistic business scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, companies are pursuing the objective of electronically linking their business processes for improving their supply chains. For creating such inter-organizational collaboration, intra- and inter-organizational knowledge workers (IKWs) function as assisting experts. However, IKWs must not constantly "reinvent the wheel" but should instead be supported by a repository that contains knowledge about how to design business processes. Thus, this paper proposes the support of IKWs by a pattern repository for the effective and efficient design of inter-organizational business processes. A pattern is conceptually formulated knowledge that is technology independent. By storing patterns in a uniform specification template of a meta model, it is possible to perform systematic reasoning. Having information readily available about the technology support of individual patterns, IKWs can quickly analyse with which intersection of pattern sets it is possible to link intra-organizational business processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of software process improvement in a virtual environment where several organizations are cooperatively involved in the development of a software product, each one using its own development process. The main focus of the paper is a methodology, called Process and Project Alignment Methodology, to improve the development process of a single organization based on projects knowledge. However, the authors believe that the same fundaments can be applied in a virtual organization and discuss the extension of the presented methodology to a virtual organizational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direct banking business is characterized by integrated distribution channel politics and holistic sales approaches combined with multi-channel-management. Direct banks in Europe and especially in Germany are currently facing increasing market competition. The crucial factors for growth are product innovation, cost control and the flexibility to react individually to each customer in a rapidly changing business environment. In order to compete, direct banks are forced to undergo a drastic transformation of business processes as well as organizational and managerial structures. The application of new concepts in building information systems is therefore necessary in order to further support business needs and allow for the management and adaptation of systems that are dependent on the fast changing market requirements. This paper shows how the information technology (IT) landscape of one of the five leading direct banks in Germany could be optimized by means of a service-based orientation. The case outlined in this paper focuses on the customer service domain. The main goal is to concurrently reduce costs by automating business processes and to increase the quality of customer services. A reference model for these customer service processes is then introduced. Based on this model, this paper describes a business component-oriented system architecture according to identified business components, and their corresponding services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) using a certificate has already been widely used in a variety of fields for the provision of security service. Accordingly a Certification Authority (CA) that issues a certificate must securely construct a Certification Authority System and manage it. It is significantly important for a CA to ensure its service to continue to operate properly by preparing for any disaster caused by a CA's private key compromise no matter what the cause is. In this paper, we provide the definitions of PKI disaster recovery and PKI business continuity, which are more clear and specific than ever before. We also present three requirements for a PKI model preparing for a disaster. Then we propose a PKI model that ensures business continuity in the event of a disaster in which a CA key is exposed. It is easily applied to the existing PKI structure. We stress that the proposed PKI model in this paper is the first to ensure both applicability to the existing models and business continuity in the event of a disaster. Keywords: Public key infrastructure, PKI model, business continuity, forward secure signature scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case in the development of a knowledge community support system in the context of an industrial association group in the construction sector. This system is a result of the Know-Construct project which aims at providing association sponsored SME communities of the construction sector with a sophisticated information management platform and community building tools for knowledge sharing. The paper begins by characterizing the so-called construction industry knowledge community. The Know-Construct system concept and the its general architecture are described, focusing on the semantic resources, in particular the ontologies structure. The final part of the paper depicts the approach to the actual introduction of the system in the community. An action-research approach was planned to obtain research results regarding the social acceptance of semantic resources such as the ontologies and technical classifications used in system. Keywords: enterprise sponsored virtual communities, ontology based infor-mation systems, action-research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provoke further theorising and action by the Community Informatics community about working with Indigenous communities. In particular, we present research undertaken with the Indigenous Maori and Pakeha (European) community in Aotearoa/New Zealand as a case study to learn from. Maori are of interest because of their engagement with, and speaking out, about ICTs. We suggest that particular attention needs to be paid from an ethical perspective in working with diversity in order that research and action are undertaken that benefits both the researcher and participant community. Community Informatics would benefit from more attention to articulating its assumptions about the nature of research and action with cultural diversity in its role as a bridge between diverse communities and the design and implementation of Information and Communication Technologies. Keywords: Community technology; community informatics; Maoris and technology;Kaupapa Maori research (Indigenous Knowledge); New Zealand and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web service composition is a distributed model to construct new web service on top of existing primitive or other composite web services. Many research efforts have been made in web services composition and coordination. In such a scenario, an important issue is how to assess the degree of trustworthiness one can have about the web service composition, especially their performance and dependability characteristics. In this paper, we propose a petri net based approach to predict the reliability of web service composition. The first step of the approach involves the transformation of web service composition specification into Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) model. The proposed transformation is built upon BPEL. From the SPN model, we can derive the reliability and performance measure of web service composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]