Jose A. Moinhos Cordeiro

Software and Data Technologies

This book constitutes the best papers of the First International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, ICSOFT 2006, held in Setbal, Portugal, September 11-14, 2006. The 25 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 187 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on programming languages, software engineering, distributed and parallel systems, information systems and data management, as well as knowledge engineering.

Comparative Analysis of Ontology Charts and other Modelling Techniques

Ontology Charting (OC) is an Organisational Semiotics (OS) technique for the representation of the requirements of organisational information systems, based on Semiotic theories, incorporating technical and social aspects. The application of Semiotics to the design of Information Systems (IS) competes with other methods; This paper presents a comparative analysis of the modelling techniques used by some of these methods, applied to a case-study, discussing each model’s characteristics and expressive power. A framework to guide this comparison is also introduced.

Organizational Semiotics: A Normative Agent-Based Approach to VE Modelling

Organizational Semiotics is the branch of Semiotics that studies the application of the Theory of Signs in organizational contexts. Organizations are based upon co-coordinated patterns of behavior, including social norms. To achieve the required efficacy, an organization may use both norms and communication to co-ordinate the different agents involved in organizational behavior. The formalization of normative agent behavior can be done using Deontic Agency Logic. The implementation can be done using agent-oriented programming. We propose to combine Ontology Charts, Norm Analysis, Deontic Agency Logic and Agent-Oriented Programming in order to create normative agent-based models of the structure and the dynamics of Virtual Enterprises (VE). This approach seems to be more resistant to organizational change than pure technology-oriented approaches.

Enterprise Information Systems: 16th International Conference, ICEIS 2014, Lisbon, Portugal, April 27-30, 2014, Revised Selected Papers

This book contains substantially extended and revised versions of the best papers from the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, ICEIS 2013, held in Angers, France, in July 2013.The 29 full and two invited papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 321 submissions. They reflect state-of-the-art research focusing mainly on real-world applications and highlight the benefits of information systems and technology for industry and services, thus connecting academia with the world of real enterprises.The topics covered are: databases and information systems integration, artificial intelligence and decision support systems, information systems analysis and specification, software agents and Internet computing, humancomputer interaction, and enterprise architecture.

Enterprise Information Systems: 17th International Conference, ICEIS 2015, Barcelona, Spain, April 27-30, 2015, Revised Selected Papers

This book contains revised papers from the 17thInternational Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, ICEIS 2015, held in Barcelona, Spain, in April 2015. The 31 paperspresented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 327 submissions. The book also contains one full-paper invited talk. The selected papers reflect state-of-the-art research that is oriented toward real-world applications and highlight the benefits of information systems and technology for industry and services. They are organized in topical sections on databases and information systems integration, artificial intelligence and decision support systems, information systems analysis and specification, software agents and Internet computing, humancomputer interaction, and enterprise architecture.

Software Technologies: 9th International Joint Conference, ICSOFT 2014, Vienna, Austria, August 29-31, 2014, Revised Selected Papers

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies, ICSOFT 2014, held in Vienna, Austria, in August 2014. The 15 revised full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions. The papers focus on enterprise software technologies; software engineering and systems security; distributed systems; and software project management.

Innovative learning techniques and educational technologies

This special issue of the Journal Education and Information Technologies dedicates its thematic section on Innovative Learning Techniques and Educational Technologies. Innovative technologies for learning and education are being developed and introduced at a rapid rate. Perhaps the most common of these are Learning Management Systems and E-Learning platforms, also known as Course Management Systems or Virtual Learning Environments. The Web is currently a preferred medium for distance learning and the learning practice in this context is usually referred to as e-learning or technologyenhanced learning. Many systems enable sharing and distributing information between students and educators and allow working collaboratively. Options exists to increase engagement among participants and to enable collaborative learning and information sharing for instance with video and web conference systems, forums, chats, file sharing and social media. Educators and students have access to many often freely available tools and open source systems; however the selection of suitable tools becomes a challenge. At the same time, open source software, education systems and technological innovations offer a variety of tools and options to let educators to improve learning approaches and teaching methods. Programming assignments and tools using open software is one such example. In addition, approaches to make learning more attractive and interactive include project based software platforms and gaming approaches. Tools can help to produce content material and prepare assignments. Platforms such asMoodle have recently become ubiquitous in education, with many institutions using some form of learning technology and learning platform. Educ Inf Technol (2013) 18:271–274 DOI 10.1007/s10639-013-9255-y

Web Information Systems and Technologies

Debugging Web applications is difficult because of their distributed nature but also because of the programming languages and tools commonly used to develop them. Taking benefit of the multitier aspect of the Hop programming language, we have built a new debugger for Web applications that copes with the server-side and the client-side of the executions. Its advantage over most debuggers for the Web is that it reports the full stack trace containing all the server-side and client-side frames that have conducted to an error. An error is reported on its actual position on the source code, wherever it occurs on the server or on the client. To help detecting errors as early as possible, the Hop debugger is accompanied with a debugging execution mode where types are checked before data structures are accessed, argument numbers are verified before functions are called, and array bounds are checked before vectors are accessed. Combining the debugger and the debugging mode makes errors of Web applications easier to understand and easier to localize. Hopefully they also become easier to fix.