Generating customized yet factually consistent information: a constraint satisfaction approach

We present an information customization framework that leverages a hybrid of adaptive hypermedia and intelligent techniques, in particular constraint satisfaction methods, to generate customized and factually consistent information based on a user profile. Information customization is modeled as a constraint satisfaction problem, whereby a solution is derived by (a) satisfying user-model constraints to select a user-specific set of ‘information snippets’; and (b) establishing inter-snippet consistency to ensure that all snippets are compatible with each other. Our approach takes the unique step of establishing factually consistency – via the satisfaction of inter-snippet constraints – between heterogeneous information snippets. A customized information package is generated by systematically synthesizing the set of user-specific and factually consistent information snippets. The featured information customization framework incorporates variations of various search and constraint satisfaction methods. The work is applied in an E-Healthcare setting leading to the generation of customized healthcare information.     

Iterative development of information systems: A case study

This paper makes some observations about the applicability of iterative development for system implementation. After a general discussion of the software process, the types of projects suitable for this approach are identified. A system designed to support the iterative development method is then briefly examined, and a case study of its use is presented. Conclusions about the process are drawn, and some research issues regarding productivity are defined.     

Utilizing deontic operators in information systems specification

One major task in requirements specification is to capture the rules relevant to the problem at hand. Declarative, rule-based approaches have been suggested by many researchers in the field. However, when it comes to modeling large systems of rules, not only for the behavior of the computer system but also for the organizational environment surrounding it, current approaches have problems with limited expressiveness, flexibility, and poor comprehensibility. Hence, rule-based approaches may benefit from improvements in two directions: (1) improvement of the rule languages themselves and (2) better integration with other, complementary modeling approaches.In this article, both issues are addressed in an integrated manner. The proposal is presented in the context of the Tempora project on rule-based information systems development, but has also been integrated with PPP. Tempora has provided a rule language based on an executable temporal logic working on top of a temporal database. The rule language is integrated with static (ER-like) and dynamic (SA/RT-like) modeling approaches. In the current proposal, the integration with complementary modeling approaches is extended by including organization modeling (actors, roles), and the expressiveness of the rule language is increased by introducing deontic operators and rule hierarchies. The main contribution of the article is not seen as any one of the above-mentioned extensions, but as the resulting comprehensive modeling support. The approach is illustrated by examples taken from an industrial case study done in connection with Tempora.C. List of Symbols Subset of set - Not subset of set - Element of set - Not element of set - Equivalent to - Not equivalent to - ¬ Negation - Logical and - Logical or - Implication - Sometime in past - Sometime in future - Always in past - Always in future - Just before - Just after - u Until - s Since - Trigger - Condition - _s State condition - Consequence - _a Action - _s State - Role - Actor - ¬ - General deontic operator - O Obligatory - R Recommended - P Permitted - D Discouraged - F Forbidden - (/–) General rule - t _R Real time - t _M Model time     

Assessing realized information systems strategy

This research developed and validated a tool to measure realized information systems strategy or existing uses of information technology in organizations. It was recognized that intended uses of technology often differ from actual uses. The objective of the study was to determine a valid and reliable way of quantifying how information technology is actually used by organizations to provide support for business operations.     

Unifying design and runtime software adaptation using aspect models

Software systems are seen more and more as evolutive systems. At the design phase, software is constantly in adaptation by the building process itself, and at runtime, it can be adapted in response to changing conditions in the executing environment such as location or resources. Adaptation is generally difficult to specify because of its cross-cutting impact on software. This article introduces an approach to unify adaptation at design and at runtime based on Aspect Oriented Modeling. Our approach proposes a unified aspect metamodel and a platform that realizes two different weaving processes to achieve design and runtime adaptations. This approach is used in a Dynamic Software Product Line which derives products that can be configured at design time and adapted at runtime in order to dynamically fit new requirements or resource changes. Such products are implemented using the Service Component Architecture and Java. Finally, we illustrate the use of our approach based on an adaptive e-shopping scenario. The main advantages of this unification are: a clear separation of concerns, the self-contained aspect model that can be weaved during the design and execution, and the platform independence guaranteed by two different types of weaving.     

A method to build information systems engineering process metamodels

Several process metamodels exist. Each of them presents a different viewpoint of the same information systems engineering process. However, there are no existing correspondences between them. We propose a method to build unified, fitted and multi-viewpoint process metamodels for information systems engineering. Our method is based on a process domain metamodel that contains the main concepts of information systems engineering process field. This process domain metamodel helps selecting the needed metamodel concepts for a particular situational context. Our method is also based on patterns to refine the process metamodel. The process metamodel can then be instantiated according to the organisation’s needs. The resulting method is represented as a pattern system.     

Comparison criteria for GDMO-based network management information models: A step towards the integration of management systems

The integration of Management Information Bases (MIBs) is one of the challenges of integrated network management. This is made more difficult by the existence of many different ways for structuring the MIB and defining managed objects. This paper addresses the issue of integrating GDMO-based MIBs created on the basis of different Management Information Models (MIMs). Three MIMs (NMF Library Release 1. 1, ITU-T M. 3100 and ETSI GOM) are analyzed with the help of a simple network configuration, and some MIM comparison criteria are proposed. The criteria can be used to assess the dificulty of integrating MIBs based on those models.     

Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering

It is widely acknowledged that adopting a socio-technical approach to system development leads to systems that are more acceptable to end users and deliver better value to stakeholders. Despite this, such approaches are not widely practised. We analyse the reasons for this, highlighting some of the problems with the better known socio-technical design methods. Based on this analysis we propose a new pragmatic framework for socio-technical systems engineering (STSE) which builds on the (largely independent) research of groups investigating work design, information systems, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering. STSE bridges the traditional gap between organisational change and system development using two main types of activity: sensitisation and awareness; and constructive engagement. From the framework, we identify an initial set of interdisciplinary research problems that address how to apply socio-technical approaches in a cost-effective way, and how to facilitate the integration of STSE with existing systems and software engineering approaches.     

Issues in information systems planning

Numerous difficulties face information systems managers as they develop IS plans. Three nominal group technique sessions used IS practitioners from different levels of management to identify specific difficulties. The findings indicate a wide variety of problems faced by these managers. Top IS managers were concerned most with learning the objectives of top general management. Middle IS managers were concerned most with adopting a methodology for planning. Operating IS managers were concerned most with understanding the perceived needs of the user. These results suggest the need for more sophisticated management techniques (or the better use of existing techniques) and the need for research to address the development, utilization and evaluation of such techniques.     

Compositional design of isochronous systems

The synchronous modeling paradigm provides strong correctness guarantees for embedded system design while requiring minimal environmental assumptions. In most related frameworks, global execution correctness is achieved by ensuring the insensitivity of (logical) time in the program from (real) time in the environment. This property, called endochrony or patience, can be statically checked, making it fast to ensure design correctness. Unfortunately, it is not preserved by composition, which makes it difficult to exploit with component-based design concepts in mind. Compositionality can be achieved by weakening this objective, but at the cost of an exhaustive state-space exploration. This raises a trade-off between performance and precision. Our aim is to balance it by proposing a formal design methodology that adheres to a weakened global design objective: the non-blocking composition of weakly endochronous processes, while preserving local design objectives for synchronous modules. This yields an effective and cost-efficient approach to compositional synchronous modeling.     

Reusing semi-specified behavior models in systems analysis and design

As the structural and behavioral complexity of systems has increased, so has interest in reusing modules in early development phases. Developing reusable modules and then weaving them into specific systems has been addressed by many approaches, including plug-and-play software component technologies, aspect-oriented techniques, design patterns, superimposition, and product line techniques. Most of these ideas are expressed in an object-oriented framework, so they reuse behaviors after dividing them into methods that are owned by classes. In this paper, we present a crosscutting reuse approach that applies object-process methodology (OPM). OPM, which unifies system structure and behavior in a single view, supports the notion of a process class that does not belong to and is not encapsulated in an object class, but rather stands alone, capable of getting input objects and producing output objects. The approach features the ability to specify modules generically and concretize them in the target application. This is done in a three-step process: designing generic and target modules, weaving them into the system under development, and refining the combined specification in a way that enables the individual modules to be modified after their reuse. Rules for specifying and combining modules are defined and exemplified, showing the flexibility and benefits of this approach.

Basic theoretical results for expert systems. Application to the supervision of adaptation transients in planar robots

The objective of expert systems is the use of Artificial Intelligence tools so as to solve problems within specific prefixed applications. In the last two decades a great experimental effort together with some theoretical knowledge have been employed to investigate the completeness and consistency of knowledge-based systems and to clarify the structure of these systems. Nevertheless, there is often a gap in the formalism which allows the structuring of the expert system programming towards the expert system design. In the last years, a new field called Ontological Engineering, defined by the IEEE as “the field that establishes a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that describe a domain of scientific or technological interest” is trying to fill this gap. The work presented here may be placed in this context. In particular, the paper deals with the development of an expert system valid to optimize the adaptation transients arising in adaptive control using a logic formalism previously described, providing good simulation results. Its structure is composed by a supervisor based on an expert network organization and designed to improve the transient performances in the adaptive control of a planar robot. Apart form the basic adaptation scheme consisting of an estimation algorithm plus an adaptive controller, two additional coordinated expert systems are used to update an adaptation gain and the sampling period with a master expert system coordinating both above expert systems.     

The effects of source representation and goal instructions on college students' information evaluation behavior change

We investigated ways of scaffolding information evaluation behavior (IEB) in online inquiry contexts. Previous instructional support simplified IEB and rarely critically addressed the cognitive load that accompanies multiple representations or naïve task perception that hinders critical evaluation. We conducted a longitudinal, 2 × 2 quasi-experimental study in an introductory college biology course, varying (A) Source Representation Scaffolds to address limited cue awareness and cognitive load and (B) Goal Instructions to address task perception. For treatment A, students were given an annotation tool in addition to a checklist (Control A). For treatment B, instead of persuasion goal instructions (Control B), written task directions prompted student to consider alternative ideas (balanced reasoning goals). We measured students' IEB four times. We also measured individual task perception and cognitive capacity. Multilevel analyses identified the specific nature of changes in IEB. On average, IEB did not improve much in the baseline group while task perception and cognitive capacity differentiated IEB scores. Conversely, both annotation and balanced reasoning goals yielded improved gains in IEB, but there was a negative interaction effect when they were combined. The results demonstrate the benefits of annotation and balanced reasoning goals but suggest the need to address possible difficulties in using multiple scaffolds.     

Evolutionary design of user interfaces for workflow information systems

In this paper we argue that user interface design should evolve from iterative to evolutionary in order to support the user interface development life cycle in a more flexible way. Evolutionary design consists of taking any input that informs to the lifecycle at any level of abstraction and its propagation through inferior and superior levels (vertical engineering) as well as the same level (horizontal engineering). This lifecycle is particularly appropriate when requirements are incomplete, partially unknown or to be discovered progressively. We exemplify this lifecycle by a methodology for developing user interfaces of workflow information systems. The methodology involves several models (i.e., task, process, workflow, domain, context of use) and steps. The methodology applies model-driven engineering to derive concrete user interfaces from a workflow model imported into a workflow management system in order to run the workflow. Instead of completing each model step by step, any model element is either derived from early requirements or collected in the appropriate model before being propagated in the subsequent steps. When more requirements are elicited, any new element is added at the appropriate level, consolidated with the already existing elements, and propagated to the subsequent levels. A workflow editor has been developed to support the methodology.     

Enabling multi-use, multi-tool models of manufacturing systems through an experimental frame expert system

A significant shortcoming of traditional modeling methodologies is the limited access they provide for decision-makers who are not modeling specialists. This paper presents an expert system approach to address this shortcoming. An expert system called the experimental frame expert system (EFES) was developed for this purpose within an advanced modeling environment for manufacturing systems. EFES reduces the dependence upon modeling specialists, and thus, makes models, both analytical and simulation, more accessible to decision-makers. This is accomplished by using two knowledge bases, one related to the manufacturing system specific symptoms and problems, and the other to system analysis and optimization tools. This paper presents the dissertation research effort that led to development of these two knowledge bases as well as the EFES framework within the advanced modeling environment.     

Supporting teachers in adaptive educational systems through predictive models: A proof of concept

Adaptive educational systems (AESs) guide students through the course materials in order to improve the effectiveness of the learning process. However, AES cannot replace the teacher. Instead, teachers can also benefit from the use of adaptive educational systems enabling them to detect situations in which students experience problems (when working with the AES). To this end the teacher needs to monitor, understand and evaluate the students’ activity within the AES. In fact, these systems can be enhanced if tools for supporting teachers in this task are provided. In this paper, we present the experiences with predictive models that have been undertaken to assist the teacher in PDinamet, a web-based adaptive educational system for teaching Physics in secondary education. Although the obtained models are still very simple, our findings suggest the feasibility of predictive modeling in the area of supporting teachers in adaptive educational systems.     

制造业企业信息化项目监理策略分析

通过分析制造业企业信息化的特点,依据系统论的分析方法,结合监理的一般要求,形成了符合目前制造业企业信息化项目需要的监理方法和策略。     

An integrated approach toward strategic information systems planning

Within the competitive global environment, information has become a key resource for increasing a corporation's competitiveness by changing the nature or conduct of business. Accordingly, corporations are now seeking a method for information systems planning to maximize their strategic effectiveness.Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) refers to the process of creating a portfolio for the implementation and use of IS to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of a corporation, so that it can achieve its objectives. An investigation of SISP, however, showed that only 24% of planned applications were actually developed (Int. J. Comput. Appl. Technol., 8 (1995), 61; MIS Quarterly, September (1988), 445). This figure clearly shows that enhancements are required for current SISP processes. In particular, this paper focuses on SISP methodologies, which provide support for overall SISP processes.The paper initially identifies four general SISP methodology problems: lack of support for Information Technology Architecture, under-emphasis on information technology opportunities, duration of SISP, and lack of support for business process reengineering. Next, it proposes an integrated SISP methodology which solves the above problems while retaining the advantageous qualities of current SISP methodologies. Finally, a case study is added to show how the methodology actually works in practice.     

Applying CIM-to-PIM model transformations for the service-oriented development of information systems

Context

Model-driven approaches deal with the provision of models, transformations between them and code generators to address software development. This approach has the advantage of defining a conceptual structure, where the models used by business managers and analysts can be mapped into more detailed models used by software developers. This alignment between high-level business specifications and the lower-level information technologies (ITs) models is crucial to the field of service-oriented development, where meaningful business services and process specifications are those relevant to real business scenarios.

Objective

This paper presents a model-driven approach which, starting from high-level computational-independent business models (CIMs) - the business view - sets out guidelines for obtaining lower-level platform-independent behavioural models (PIMs) - the information system view. A key advantage of our approach is the use of real high-level business models, not just requirements models, which, by means of model transformations, helps software developers to make the most of the business knowledge for specifying and developing business services.

Method

This proposal is framed in a method for service-oriented development of information systems whose main characteristic is the use of services as first-class objects. The method follows an MDA-based approach, proposing a set of models at different levels of abstraction and model transformations to connect them.

Results

The paper present the complete set of CIM and PIM metamodels and the specification of the mappings between them, which clear advantage is the support for the alignment between high-level business view and ITs. The proposed model-driven process is being implemented in an MDA tool. A first prototype has been used to develop a travel agency case study that illustrates the proposal.

Conclusion

This study shows how a model-driven approach helps to solve the alignment problem between the business view and the information system view that arises when adopting service-oriented approaches for software development.