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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.

Enterprise knowledge graphs (EKG) in resource description framework (RDF) consolidate and semantically integrate heterogeneous data sources into a comprehensive dataspace. However, to make an external relational data source accessible through an EKG, an RDF view of the underlying relational database, called an RDB2RDF view, must be created. The RDB2RDF view should be materialized in situations where live access to the data source is not possible, or the data source imposes restrictions on the type of query forms and the number of results. In this case, a mechanism for maintaining the materialized view data up-to-date is also required. The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of the efficient maintenance of externally materialized RDB2RDF views.

This paper proposes a formal framework for the incremental maintenance of externally materialized RDB2RDF views, in which the server computes and publishes changesets, indicating the difference between the two states of the view. The EKG system can then download the changesets and synchronize the externally materialized view. The changesets are computed based solely on the update and the source database state and require no access to the content of the view.

The central result of this paper shows that changesets computed according to the formal framework correctly maintain the externally materialized RDB2RDF view. The experiments indicate that the proposed strategy supports live synchronization of large RDB2RDF views and that the time taken to compute the changesets with the proposed approach was almost three orders of magnitude smaller than partial rematerialization and three orders of magnitude smaller than full rematerialization.

The main idea that differentiates the proposed approach from previous work on incremental view maintenance is to explore the object-preserving property of typical RDB2RDF views so that the solution can deal with views with duplicates. The algorithms for the incremental maintenance of relational views with duplicates published in the literature require querying the materialized view data to precisely compute the changesets. By contrast, the approach proposed in this paper requires no access to view data. This is important when the view is maintained externally, because accessing a remote data source may be too slow.

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 purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a reference framework for the major properties of performance indicators, using the formalism of the Representation Theory.

Performance indicators shown are commonly used in many different areas of operations management in order to analyse process evolution. However, in practical applications many questions arise: “How many indicators should be used for representing a given process?”, “Is there an optimal set?”, “How to check whether the indicators used suitably represent the system investigated?”, etc. In the literature these questions have been addressed in relation to a number of different application fields. This has led to a maze of classifications and properties, which may create confusion in both the academic and the practitioner communities. In a previous work, the paper carried out an analysis of the existing literature, examining and comparing different approaches. This present work identifies and analyses the major properties which effective indicators should exhibit, and suggests an operational methodology to choose the “best” set of indicators.

The findings in this paper produce a detailed analysis of the properties of indicators and establish a schematic methodology facilitating the selection and verification of indicators. To make the process clearer, properties are explained by the use of practical examples.

Indicators are utilized in many different contexts for a variety of purposes (for example, logistics, business management, manufacturing, sports competitions, etc.). The paper provides a general analysis of the most important properties of indicators, without entering into specific application contexts.

The paper proposes an operational methodology to support the selection and testing of the best indicators for a given process. This methodology may also be used for integrating other existing approaches.

Properties of indicators are examined from a mathematical/symbolic point of view, using the formalism of the Representation Theory.

It has been argued that Gödel's theorem proves the case against the possibility of artificially intelligent machines, capable of achieving the same level of intelligence as human beings. The argument is that if a human being were a logistic system L, how is possible that it can see certain theorems to be provable when Gödel shows that such a system cannot demonstrate whether such theorems are provable or not. The fallacy is that the theorems of L that the human can see to be provable are a subset L′ of L, and that for some theorems of L′ and not L the human is subject to the same limitation as the machine.

The need to flexibly react to changing demands and to cost-efficiently manage customized production even for lot size of one requires a dynamic and holistic integration of service-based processes within and across enterprises of the value chain. In this context, this paper aims at presenting ODERU, the authors’ novel pragmatic approach for automatically implementing service-based manufacturing processes at design and runtime within a cloud-based elastic manufacturing platform.

ODERU relies on a set of semantic annotations of business process models encoded into an extension of the business process model and notation (BPMN) 2.0 standard. Leveraging the paradigms of semantic SOA and XaaS, ODERU integrates pattern-based semantic composition of process service plans with QoS-based optimization based on multi-objective constraint optimization problem solving.

The successful validation of ODERU in two industrial use cases for maintenance process optimization and automotive production in the European project CREMA revealed its usefulness for service-based process optimization in general and for significant cost reductions in maintenance in particular.

ODERU provides a pragmatic and flexible solution to optimal service composition with the following three main advantages: full integration of semantic service selection and composition with QoS-based optimization; executability of the generated optimal process service plans by an execution environment as they include service assignments, data flow (variable bindings) and optimal variable assignments; and support of fast replanning in a single model and plan.

To consider whether business process and management information systems adequately generate “complete” models of the particular business environment.

A conceptual discussion and approach are taken.

Because of the flexibility and simplicity with which business system tools can be applied to modelling a system, it is quite possible to apply the wrong method to a given case; and thereby reach the wrong conclusions about the behaviour of that system. Considers that systems dynamics methods should be applied more openly in the BPM and MIS research fields. Tools and techniques available are under‐rated in terms of their applicability and capability to provide novel representations of real‐world situations.

The paper is of value to all those involved with management information.

The purpose of this article is to propose Lexicon Rhetoricae, the narrative theory of Kenneth Burke from the discipline of literary criticism, as a comprehensive model which helps to explain how symbolism and nonconscious processes influence the consumption experience, and which helps to reconcile the psychology of the consumption experience with the more observable stimuli of the marketing environment.

Lexicon Rhetoricae distinguishes two categories of literary form – symbolic and formal appeal – which describe inputs to the literary experience. A third term, eloquence, categorizes the interaction of symbolic and formal appeals, and describes how robust that experience is.

Lexicon Rhetoricae provides: a mechanism for describing how unobservable internal psychological processes (conscious or nonconscious) might work; a method for coding observable marketer‐controlled inputs to the consumption experience; and a means for demonstrating how the unobservable processes and the observable inputs interact in the consumption experience.

Lexicon Rhetoricae provides a theoretical framework for categorically combining the “black box” experiences of the consumer and the perceptible marketer‐controlled variables in the marketplace.

After discussing the characteristics of text retrieval systems, their development is outlined. An explanation is given of the information requirements of lawyers in relation to legal databases. The work undertaken by the Norwegian Research Centre (NRCCL) is described. Details are given of the use made of STATUS and the redesigned version subsequently called NOVA*STATUS, which has been used to run various services as part of the NORIS (previously JURIS) research programme for text retrieval systems. Various research results from the NORIS work are described. Details are given of the controlled experiments in evaluating text retrieval systems performance and the ways of formulating searches. Results are discussed in terms of precision and recall. A particular feature of the investigations relate to the use of ranked output and the criteria for ranking. A new software package called SIFT is how being developed for use on a NOR minicomputer, in the light of the experiences with STATUS and the NORIS research results. 17 refs.

This paper aims to draw attention to a unique paradox concerning doing an autoethnography as a PhD. On the one hand, a student may feel a pull towards revealing a vulnerable, intimate, autoethnographic self, yet on the other hand she may be pushed away from this because the oral/viva voce examination process may deny the student anonymity. Through the telling of this tale the complexities concerning self‐disclosure and student autoethnography reveal are explored.

The tale is autoethnographic: a fictionalised account based on real events and co‐constructed from substantial field notes, personal diaries, e‐mails, and reports.

This paper contributes to relational ethics concerned with self‐disclosure and the “I” of a reveal, and highlight the possibilities for developing Medford's notion of mindful slippage as a strategy for removing highly personal and possibly harmful elements within student autoethnography.

The paper provides a preliminary theoretical framework that has not been empirically tested and is situated within “introspective” autoethnographic research.

The paper takes an innovative approach to autoethnography, addressing ethical value systems specifically within a PhD context.