A method for taxonomy development and its application in information systems

A fundamental problem in many disciplines is the classification of objects in a domain of interest into a taxonomy. Developing a taxonomy, however, is a complex process that has not been adequately addressed in the information systems (IS) literature. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for taxonomy development that can be used in IS. First, this paper demonstrates through a comprehensive literature survey that taxonomy development in IS has largely been ad hoc. Then the paper defines the problem of taxonomy development. Next, the paper presents a method for taxonomy development that is based on taxonomy development literature in other disciplines and shows that the method has certain desirable qualities. Finally, the paper demonstrates the efficacy of the method by developing a taxonomy in a domain in IS.     

Mobile Commerce: Framework,Applications and Networking Support

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress towards strategies, requirements, and development of e-commerce applications. However, nearly all e-commerce applications envisioned and developed so far assume fixed or stationary users with wired infrastructure. We envision many new e-commerce applications that will be possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless and mobile networks. To allow designers, developers, and researchers to strategize and create mobile commerce applications, we propose a four-level integrated framework for mobile commerce. Since there are potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce applications, we attempt to identify several important classes of applications such as mobile financial applications, mobile inventory management, proactive service management, product location and search, and wireless re-engineering. We discuss how to successfully define, architect, and implement the necessary hardware/software infrastructure in support of mobile commerce. Also, to make mobile commerce applications a reality, we address networking requirements, discuss support from wireless carriers, and present some open research problems.     

Connection Rerouting for Wireless ATM Networks

Wireless ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is an emerging technology designed to provide multimedia and other Quality of Service-oriented applications to mobile users by extending ATM connections to involve wireless links. The use of wireless ATM has also been motivated by an increasing deployment of ATM technology in backbone networks and also due to the need to support emerging services in the next generation (broadband) wireless networks, both terrestrial and satellite based. Since ATM was originally designed for high bandwidth and low error rate environment to support stationary users, the use of ATM in wireless environment raises many interesting issues. These include managing end-to-end ATM connection (using connection re-routing), maintaining location information about users as they move, supporting transmission of ATM cells over wireless links, and supporting quality of service )QoS( requirements in limited bandwidth environment. As users move, the end-to-end ATM connections need to be rerouted to support continued communications. The design of such rerouting schemes has recently received some consideration in literature, however many important issues including support for multicast and overhead requirements have not been fully addressed. In this paper, we present a detailed treatment of connection rerouting issues, design and performance evaluation of two rerouting schemes, and the support for multicast rerouting.     

Community structure of planktons and macrozoobenthos,with special reference to pollution in the River Khan (India)

This paper presents an assessment of water quality of the River Khan, which passes through Indore and is subjected to sewage and industrial pollution. The analysis of various pollution parameters showed an increase when the sewage and industrial channels joined the river. Changes in the biotic communities, such as phytoplankton, zooplankton and macrozoobenthos, have been explained numerically with the help of a diversity index and showed a decrease in diversity values with an increase in pollution, along with a correlation with physico‐chemical aspects. Genera tolerant to various degree of pollution has also been identified. The extend of pollution by certain heavy metals such as Cu, Zn, Ni, Cr, Cd and Hg has also been studied.     

Supporting Mobile Commerce Applications Using Dependable Wireless Networks

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is an emerging discipline involving applications, mobile devices, middleware, and wireless networks. While most of existing e-commerce applications can be modified to run in a wireless environment, m-commerce also involves many more new applications that become possible only due to the wireless infrastructure. These applications include mobile financial services, user and location specific mobile advertising, mobile inventory management, wireless business re-engineering, and mobile interactive games. In addition to device and wireless constraints, mobile commerce would also be impacted by the dependability of wireless infrastructure. Unlike e-commerce applications that usually run on fixed networking infrastructure of fairly high dependability (approaching to about 100%), m-commerce applications may not receive such high dependability from the existing and emerging wireless infrastructure. So far, most of the m-commerce research focuses on applications, devices, and security issues. We believe that some work is necessary in addressing the dependability challenges of the wireless infrastructure. In this paper, we present (a) the dependability issues of wireless infrastructure, (b) several architectures to improve the dependability of wireless networks, and (c) a simulation model and results on wireless dependability for m-commerce. The results show that a significant improvement is possible in wireless dependability for supporting m-commerce applications.     

Group-oriented mobile services: Requirements and solutions

Emerging mobile services, including m-commerce, have received considerable interest among researchers, developers, service providers, and users. Some of these mobile services will be group-oriented and thus require the support for group communications among mobile users. In this paper, several group-oriented mobile services and their specific requirements are presented and discussed. Several wireless solutions are also presented to meet the diverse and complex requirements of group-oriented mobile services.     

Supporting Group-Oriented Mobile Services Transactions

A middleware framework for wireless networks--including 3G/4G--provides solutions for managing transactions in group-oriented mobile services such as auctions, financial services, and multiparty interactive games.     

Supporting dependable group‐oriented mobile transactions: redundancy‐based architecture and performance

Several of the emerging mobile commerce services, such as mobile auctions, mobile financial services, and multi‐party interactive games, will require support for dependable transactions. This is a difficult challenge because of both intermittent connectivity and potential failures in wireless infrastructure. In this paper, we present a multi‐network access‐based wireless architecture and related protocols to support dependable transactions. The key idea is to allow group users to utilize access to one or more wireless networks to complete different steps of a transaction. This allows for transactions to be completed even under time‐ and location‐dependent connectivity problems and network failures. The performance results show that access to multiple wireless networks leads to very high transaction completion probability even when individual wireless networks do not offer continuous and/or highly available access. The transaction completion probability is found to be dependent on the group size and number of steps in a transaction, and the same level of dependable performance for transactions can be achieved by increasing the number of wireless networks or improved access to individual networks. The overhead for multi‐network access can be further reduced by creating preferred wireless networks and by reducing the number of critical users in different transaction stages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.