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This paper aims to present a new approach for developing a framework based on a model driven architecture (MDA) for the modelling of technology‐independent collaborative processes.

The paper suggests a new collaborative process modelling approach based on an MDA and a metamodelling technique. The research method, based on the design science approach, was started by identifying the characteristics of the collaborative processes, which distinguish them from the classical intraorganizational ones. Then, the generic collaborative business process (CBP) modelling framework is developed based on MDA approach and definition of a set of transformation rules through three layers: business, process, and technical. After that, the core component of the framework was the proposition of a generic CBP metamodel at PIM/MDA level. The specific collaboration participant's business processes (expressed as BPMN model) are generated from the generic CBP model represented as an UML2 Profile activity diagram, which is compliant to CBP metamodel. Finally, as proof‐of‐concept, the architecture of an Eclipse‐based open development platform is developed implementing an e‐Procurement collaborative process.

The proposed framework for CBP modelling and the generic CBP metamodel contribute towards a more efficient methodology and have consequences for BPM‐related collaboration, facilitating the B2B processes modelling and implementation. In order to demonstrate and evaluate the practical applicability of the framework, the architecture of an Eclipse‐based open development platform is developed implementing a collaborative business application on the basis of an e‐Procurement use case.

There is a need to focus future research efforts on the improvement of the semi‐automatic transformation phase from public to private processes which needs human intervention by adding a suitable interfaces at both sides of the B2B interaction. In addition, the problem of semantic heterogeneities regarding the partner's business process elements (business documents, activity/task names) should be tackled by developing an approach that uses ontology.

Business processes developers find a B2B technology‐independent solution for implementing and using interorganizational information systems.

The paper provides a framework that enables the CBP modelling and integrates a generic CBP metamodel. Currently, to the best of the authors' knowledge, such a generic metamodel and his instantiation have not so far been developed.

The definition of modeling languages is a key‐prerequisite for model‐driven engineering. In this respect, Domain‐Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs) defined from scratch in terms of metamodels and the extension of Unified Modeling Language (UML) by profiles are the proposed options. For interoperability reasons, however, the need arises to bridge modeling languages originally defined as DSMLs to UML. Therefore, the paper aims to propose a semi‐automatic approach for bridging DSMLs and UML by employing model‐driven techniques.

The paper discusses problems of the ad hoc integration of DSMLs and UML and from this discussion a systematic and semi‐automatic integration approach consisting of two phases is derived. In the first phase, the correspondences between the modeling concepts of the DSML and UML are defined manually. In the second phase, these correspondences are used for automatically producing UML profiles to represent the domain‐specific modeling concepts in UML and model transformations for transforming DSML models to UML models and vice versa. The paper presents the ideas within a case study for bridging ComputerAssociate's DSML of the AllFusion Gen CASE tool with IBM's Rational Software Modeler for UML.

The ad hoc definition of UML profiles and model transformations for achieving interoperability is typically a tedious and error‐prone task. By employing a semi‐automatic approach one gains several advantages. First, the integrator only has to deal with the correspondences between the DSML and UML on a conceptual level. Second, all repetitive integration tasks are automated by using model transformations. Third, well‐defined guidelines support the systematic and comprehensible integration.

The paper focuses on the integrating direction DSMLs to UML, but not on how to derive a DSML defined in terms of a metamodel from a UML profile.

Although, DSMLs defined as metamodels and UML profiles are frequently applied in practice, only few attempts have been made to provide interoperability between these two worlds. The contribution of this paper is to integrate the so far competing worlds of DSMLs and UML by proposing a semi‐automatic approach, which allows exchanging models between these two worlds without loss of information.

More and more organizations make parts of their information systems available to their business partners and often face integration and interoperability issues. To counter these problems, web services appeared as a promising technology to bridge the gap between organizations and their partners. While web services generally focus on the implementation of functional concerns (FC) such as ordering of goods, the reservation of flights, etc. also non‐functional concerns (NFC) such as security, reliable messaging, performance, and availability have to be addressed appropriately. The purpose of this paper is to identify web services' requirements.

In this paper the authors provide a survey on works in the area of NFCs in web services. After presenting a common terminology, the most important requirements in that context are presented. Further, the authors assess these works against the requirements.

The evaluation reveals that there is no approach that supports the requirements to a satisfying degree. Based on that, the authors motivate the need for a novel holistic approach to NFCs in web services.

The paper presents an extended version of one of the papers presented at iiWAS2010.

In many settings, the users are mobile (e.g. away from their desks) while high quality multimedia telephony equipment has fixed locations. This may result in unsuccessful multimedia calls and motivates a context aware system which supports session mobility. This paper aims to address these issues.

The approach is to utilize state‐of‐the‐art in‐context awareness and integrate this into a real time telecom system based on SIP. System requirements are formulated and the system is designed, implemented and (technically) tested.

The paper contains a thorough analysis of why baseline SIP and SIP REFER alone cannot solve our case and why a new SIP extension is introduced. The solution is evaluated and compared to solutions such as “virtual terminals”.

It is pointed out that the context model does not directly support roaming between two different business domains. This issue is however of limited impact in an enterprise setting. The current prototype is thoroughly tested from a technical viewpoint, but user studies in real organizations are recommended as further work.

The paper shows that human issues and issues relating to computer mediated communication (CMC) are strongly linked to technical details in SIP. In practice this means that researchers in CMC and CSCW should look more into building prototypes where real time conversational features are supported together with dynamic change of media types.

The main value of the paper is a thorough described technical realization of the context aware multimedia application ENriched MEdia (ENME). The background material and the appendix should be of value to anyone interested in convergence between computing and communication.

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources. Conversely, since the introduction of EXtensible Markup Language (XML), it is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, and interchanging data among various web and heterogeneous data sources. In combination with XML Schema, XML provides rich facilities for defining and constraining user‐defined data semantics and properties, a feature that is unique to XML. In this context, it is interesting to investigate traditional database features, such as view models and view design techniques for XML. However, traditional view formalisms are strongly coupled to the data language and its syntax, thus it proves to be a difficult task to support views in the case of semi‐structured data models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Layered View Model (LVM) for XML with conceptual and schemata extensions. Here our work is three‐fold; first we propose an approach to separate the implementation and conceptual aspects of the views that provides a clear separation of concerns, thus, allowing analysis and design of views to be separated from their implementation. Secondly, we define representations to express and construct these views at the conceptual level. Thirdly, we define a view transformation methodology for XML views in the LVM, which carries out automated transformation to a view schema and a view query expression in an appropriate query language. Also, to validate and apply the LVM concepts, methods and transformations developed, we propose a viewdriven application development framework with the flexibility to develop web and database applications for XML, at varying levels of abstraction.

Today, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, representing and interchanging data among various enterprises systems and databases in the context of complex web enterprises information systems (EIS). Conversely, for web EIS (such as ecommerce and portals) to be successful, it is important to apply a high level, model driven solutions and meta‐data vocabularies to design and implementation techniques that are capable of handling heterogonous schemas and documents. For this, we need a methodology that provides a higher level of abstraction of the domain in question with rigorously defined standards that are to be more widely understood by all stakeholders of the system. To‐date, UML has proven itself as the language of choice for modeling EIS using OO techniques. With the introduction of XML Schema, which provides rich facilities for constraining and defining enterprise XML content, the combination of UML and XML technologies provide a good platform (and the flexibility) for modeling, designing and representing complex enterprise contents for building successful EIS. In this paper, we show how a layered view model coupled with a proven user interface analysis framework (WUiAM) is utilized in providing architectural construct and abstract website model (called eXtensible Web, xWeb), to model, design and implement simple, usercentred, collaborative websites at varying levels of abstraction. The uniqueness xWeb is that the model data (web user interface definitions, website data descriptions and constraints) and the web content are captured and represented at the conceptual level using views (one model) and can be deployed (multiple platform specific models) using one or more implementation models.

The development of context-aware applications in ubiquitous environments depends not only on the user interactions but also on several context parameters. The handling of these parameters is a fundamental problem in these systems. The key purpose of this work is to enrich the unified modeling language (UML) class diagram with new constructs to provide a universal model capable of coping with the context-awareness concerns.

The authors provide a review of existing context handling approaches. Afterward, they relied on the UML extensibility mechanisms to propose a heavyweight extension for the UML class diagram. This generic approach allows describing the different context parameters since the modeling phase.

Existing solutions for context handling apply the contextual constraints on finished applications or tend to be dependent on a specific development process. This paper presents a solution based on UML, which allows dealing with context since the modeling phase, and independently of development processes. This proposal is implemented as an eclipse editor and illustrated through a case study in the healthcare field.

This paper addresses the problem of context handling, and it presents a review of the foremost existing solutions. The paper also presents a heavyweight extension for the UML class diagram, which consists in enriching it with additional constructs, capable of monitoring how applications are linked to context parameters and how the values of these parameters may affect the application behavior.