Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science - Volume 7, issue 4

Authors: Yamaguchi, Hiroshi | Suzuki, Kenji | Ramamoorthy, Chittoor V.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The evolution and dominance of service functions in addition to their distinguishing features has been the subject of study for years. Service functions aim to satisfy and facilitate the needs of their customers. In doing so, service providers design the service functions so that the customers feel comfortable and convenient when using them. The evolution of technology and automation has enabled functions like knowledge-intensive man-machine interactions to be flexible and user friendly. In this paper, we …discuss a wide range of interconnected topics, emphasizing the multi-faceted nature of service functions. These areas include the evolution of service functions and their associated systems and products, as well as the consequent creation of implicit requirements, the technology transfer process, and the error proneness due to intense and prolonged interaction. We argue that by proper 'humanization and personalization' the service-based interactive systems can be made easy for the customer to use and enjoy personalized services. We conclude that by introducing transparent feedback mechanisms, the quality of service and its associated systems can be automatically monitored and their functions can be continuously improved. We also note that such feedback mechanisms must guarantee the preservation of the customers?privacy. Show more

Keywords: Interactive service system, humanization, Kozmetsky Effect

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 1-11, 2003

Authors: Bayrak, Coşkun | Kolukísaoğlu, Hayrettin | Sieloff, Steve

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The World Wide Web (WWW) is becoming the most important source of information for business intelligence and information dissemination. Past information gathering techniques like surfing and sifting are proving insufficient in processing the vast volumes of data readily available from the Web. In addition, companies are being forced to integrate this vast data repository within specific cost, time, and reliability spectrums. This paper presents the fundamentals of a system called "Browser Harness" (B2H) that …extracts the requested data from Web sites in a supervised fashion. The algorithmic background of this system is based on the tag structure of web pages, as HTML is the predominate choice for rendering web page content on the WWW. B2H is an interactive tool for harnessing data from semi-structured and structured web pages by analyzing the tag structure of the input page and locating the data in the HTML code. The extracted data is then exported to XML, delimited text, or database tables. Show more

Keywords: Data extraction, web mining

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 13-23, 2003

Authors: Chitra, A. | Sadasivam, G. Sudha

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The distributed object standards Component Object Model (COM) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) apply object technology to design and use software components. While COM forms a good front end for the Microsoft Systems, CORBA is well suited for middle tier and back end Unix servers. By integrating them, the user can get a combination of the best attributes of both the systems. Bridging software is needed to transparently couple components from both the systems. …This paper discusses a static method of achieving COM/CORBA interworking using a generic IDL compiler. It maps the COM and CORBA IDLs onto an intermediate representation from which stubs and skeletons are generated. Further, threading is used to allow multiple COM clients to contact a single CORBA server using Internet Interoperable Protocol / Transmission Control Protocol (IIOP/TCP) as a communication medium. To improve the networking speed and to bring about multicasting, IIOP/UDP has also been tried as a communication medium. The Object Reference (OR) from the implementation repository (IMR) and the Object Identifier (OID) from the registry have also been cached to improve the speed of the name lookup mechanism. Show more

Keywords: COM/CORBA interworking, static IDL compiler, cache, IIOP, thread

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 25-33, 2003

Authors: Kamimura, Manabu | Inoue, Kiyofumi | Hasegawa, Akiko | Kawabata, Ryo | Kumagai, Satoshi | Itoh, Kiyoshi

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: To make business processes work effectively, it is critical for workers to communicate and collaborate with each other. Especially, when designing supporting systems for collaborative processes, the business experts and the professional systems designer have to communicate effectively, though they have different viewpoints to the system. Business experts prefer capturing general view of the entire system. On the other hand, system designers require detailed information without ambiguity. This fact sometimes results in …communication problems. To solve this problem we propose to integrate the methods developed for each of them to facilitate the design process. We introduce two methods, IDEF0 and Multi-Context Map (MCM). Both methods are designed to analyze collaborative processes and produce function models, though the target user is quite different. IDEF0 is a simple and a flexible method, and is mainly used as a communication tools among collaborators who are not familiar with complex notations, such as business experts. On the other hand, MCM produces a precise description, and is for professional system designers and engineers, who require detailed information without ambiguity. MCM has richer syntax and defines the collaboration tasks in detail. MCM is powerful when formalizing complex requirements, though some collaborators may prefer simple methods they are used to, such as IDEF0, to MCM. To support the exchange of information between MCM and IDEF0, we develop a bi-directional converter between them. In this paper, we propose two methods of designing E-R models that is useful for database design between business experts and professional system engineers. In many cases, the process of designing databases still relies on professional system engineer's intuition. This fact sometimes causes the information among business experts not to be captured properly in the requirements because of the communication problems between business experts and professional systems engineers. Our methods facilitate the process of sharing information between them, and enable the designer to reflect the information properly in the requirements. One of the methods is extracting E-R models from well-disciplined IDEF0 diagrams to facilitate business experts in designing databases, and the other is from both MCM and CLM, which enable the systems designer to capture detailed data structure of the databases. The function models enable the designers to define the scope of the system effectively, which is very difficult by using only the data models. We conclude our paper by evaluating our methods. Show more

Keywords: Collaboration, well-disciplined IDEF0, multi-context map, collaborative linkage map, E-R model

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 35-49, 2003

Authors: Dampier, David A. | Chadha, Vineet

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Software development as an enterprise is at a critical place in history. We are now developing needs for software faster than we can develop solutions. The future of software engineering is in providing computer-aided tools for automating as much of the evolution process as possible, so we can hope to meet the software needs of the future. Our argument is that software should not be built and then maintained, but should be evolved, from the first …requirements analysis, to system retirement. If we build software for evolution, it is generally easier to make changes to that software, whether they are corrective, adaptive, or perfective. This paper outlines a method of applying changes to abstract types that extends a previous change-merging method for executable prototypes written in the Prototype System Description Language (PSDL). PSDL prototypes consist of a set of operators and a set of abstract data types. Previous work focused on merging changes to PSDL prototypes consisting of only operators. Our current work is aimed at providing a model for merging changes to PSDL types as well, thus completing the change merging method for complete prototypes. The model outlined in this paper reflects our latest results in this endeavor. Show more

Keywords: Change merging, program integration, abstract data types, classes, software evolution, software automation, multiple inheritance

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 51-61, 2003

Authors: Plasil, Frantisek | Mencl, Vladimir

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Although widely used, traditional use case modeling does not provide explicit means which could be easily used for capturing and testing behavior compliance of the entities involved in a particular use case model. Specifically, a use case model (a set of use cases) related to a system under design provides neither an explicit abstraction to capture the "whole picture" of the behavior of the system, nor to cover the interactions of subsystems and internal actors with …the parent system. With the aim to allow for reasoning on the behavior, the paper introduces a simple formal model Generic UC View which identifies important abstractions and the relations upon them which target the goal. Among them, the concept of use case expression is the base for the desired reasoning on whether the behavior of an entity (such as an agent, a subsystem or a software component) complies with the composed behavior of its sub-entities, and the behavior on the communication links of two neighboring entities is compliant. As a proof of the concept, an instance of use case expressions, pro-cases is introduced. Based on behavior protocols, pro-cases can be checked for compliance via an already existing verifier. As pro-cases' syntax is simple, resembling regular-expressions, there are simple guidelines for transforming a use case written in classical textual form (based on a template) into a pro-case. Show more

Keywords: use case model, generic UC view, pro-case, behavior protocols

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 63-79, 2003

Authors: Dai, L. | Fan, L. | Sun, L.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Uncertainties and imprecise information regarding customer demands, production, inventory, and MRP are very common in performing aggregate production-planning (APP) for the manufacturing in real world. This study presents a fuzzy linear programming approach for managing the uncertainties and imprecise information involved in industrial APP applications. Detailed discussions are given to the establishment of the Fuzzy Linear Programming approach with converting the fuzzy constraints of uncertain and imprecise items into deterministic equivalents. A …mathematical model is developed for APP practice with the Fuzzy Linear Programming approach. For numerically performing an aggregate production planning with the Fuzzy Linear Programming developed, a computer simulation for an actual aggregate production-planning is presented. It is demonstrated in the study, the employment of the Fuzzy Linear Programming provides a great advantage in APP of manufacturing, if the parameters of the stochastic factors involved in the production planning are neither definitely reliable nor precise. The present study shows that the interrelated effects of the customer service level and facility capacity on the effectiveness and efficiency of aggregate production-planning is significant and should be taken into account in performing an aggregate production-planning Show more

Keywords: aggregate production-planning, fuzzy linear programming, manufacturing

Citation: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 81-95, 2003