Patrick van Bommel

DEFINITION AND VALIDATION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING IN ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE CREATION

Gartner advises that for enterprise architecture development to be successful, it is vital that enterprise architects ensure effective communication and also form virtual teams that create and agree on enterprise architecture content. One of the ways to achieve this is to enforce Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) during enterprise architecture creation. Guided by Design Science, we are developing a method referred to as Collaborative Evaluation of (Enterprise) Architecture Design Alternatives (CEADA) to enable CDM during enterprise architecture creation. The method attempts to resolve challenges in enterprise architecting that are caused by ineffective collaboration between enterprise architects and organizational stakeholders. Requirements for CEADA have been defined based on the causality analysis theory, the generic decision-making process, enterprise architecture frameworks (and literature), and the CDM theory. In addition, Collaboration Engineering has been used to design a collaboration process to...

Towards a theory on collaborative decision making in enterprise architecture

Several challenges in enterprise architecture development indicate the need for collaborative decision making to be deployed during architecture creation However, how this should be achieved remains ad hoc This paper, therefore, presents an evolving theory that is currently being used to guide the development of a method for supporting collaborative decision making during enterprise architecture creation The first iteration to evaluate the relevance of the concepts in this theory was done using an exploratory survey, and the findings are briefly presented.

A Generic Adaptivity Model in Adaptive Hypermedia

For adaptive hypermedia there is a strong model in form of the AHAM model and the AHA! system. This model, based on the Dexter Model, however is limited to application in hypermedia systems. In this paper we propose a new Generic Adaptivity Model. This state-machine based model can be used as the basis for adaptation in all kinds of applications.

Checking the quality of clinical guidelines using automated reasoning tools

Requirements about the quality of clinical guidelines can be represented by schemata borrowed from the theory of abductive diagnosis, using temporal logic to model the time-oriented aspects expressed in a guideline. Previously, we have shown that these requirements can be verified using interactive theorem proving techniques. In this paper, we investigate how this approach can be mapped to the facilities of a resolution-based theorem prover, otter and a complementary program that searches for finite models of first-order statements, mace-2. It is shown that the reasoning required for checking the quality of a guideline can be mapped to such a fully automated theorem-proving facilities. The medical quality of an actual guideline concerning diabetes mellitus 2 is investigated in this way.

Information modeling for internet applications

An exploration of the fundamentals of Web site modelling. It covers theoretical background as well as practical modelling techniques, which assist in the planning and development of Web sites, other collections of hyper-documents and Web-based information systems in general.

Designing, formalizing and evaluating a flexible architecture for integrated service delivery: Combining event-driven and service-oriented architectures

An influx of service providers collaborate in networks to meet their clients’ demands. Integrated service delivery (ISD) is a way to let networked service providers offer services to their clients by bundling selected services offered by each provider so that clients do not have to deal with each single provider anymore. Designing such a network is a complicated endeavor as independent organizations need to collaborate and should understand how their activities are dependent on each other. Communication of events is necessary to deal with unpredictable and complex processes in such a network. In contrast with conventional event-driven architecture and service-oriented architecture (SOA) approaches, the hybrid model of event-driven interactions and SOA offers the required flexibility to realize ISD. This flexibility is realized by integrating not only services but also the processes of the different service providers to supply such services. A design science approach has been applied resulting in a detailed and formalized design of an event-driven service-oriented architecture (EDSOA). The EDSOA has been illustrated to show how ISD is realized with support of the architecture in a scenario concerning an application for a temporary residence permit by an immigrant. An evaluative workshop has been conducted which reflected that the following criteria are most important for successful organizational adoption of the EDSOA: expected usefulness, fit with organizational standards, use of trusted technology, and ease of maintenance.

Experiences with EDO: an evolutionary database optimizer

Abstract In this paper we introduce the database design tool EDO: an Evolutionary Database Optimizer. The term ‘evolutionary’ refers to a basic feature of the tool. After generating an initial pool of preliminary internal representations for a given conceptual data model, EDO allows a database designer to activate evolution strategies, modifying the preliminary internal representations into more desirable ones. The quality of the internal representations found as yet is used to perform a guided walk through the solution space of alternative internal representations for the conceptual model under consideration. This quality (called fitness) takes into account the expected storage space and the expected average response time of a candidate internal representation.

Nesting and defoliation of index expressions for information retrieval

Abstract. In this article, a formalisation of index expressions is presented. Index expressions are more expressive than keywords while maintaining a comprehensible complexity. Index expressions are well-known in Information Retrieval (IR), where they are used for characterising document contents, formulation of user interests, and matching mechanisms. In addition, index expressions have found both practical and theoretical applicability in 2-level hypermedia systems for IR. In these applications, properties of (the structure of) index expressions are heavily relied upon. However, the presupposed mathematical formalisation of index expressions and their properties still lacks. Our formalism is based on the structural notation of index expressions. It is complete in the sense that several notions of subexpressions and defoliation of index expressions are also formalised. Defoliation, which plays an important role in defining properties of index expressions, is provided as a recursively defined operator. Finally, two other representational formalisms for index expressions are compared to ours.

Personalized Search Support for Networked Document Retrieval Using Link Inference

Constructing a query consisting of a set of terms or descriptors is often an iterative process. To the user, the starting query and the final result could be strongly related. These two queries could even be worthy of a link between them. This paper presents a method for deciding when a link between two descriptors is justified. The decision hinges on the way in which the user has moved from one to the other. In order to allow for users with different levels of experience and different backgrounds, we introduce a number of parameters with which the inference process can be controlled.

A standard language for service delivery: Enabling understanding among stakeholders

In Integrated Service Delivery (ISD), multiple service providers have to collaborate in order to serve as a one-stop shop for their clients. Although technical standards have been met, collaboration is difficult. Service providers do not know what kind of information other providers need, are not aware of each others processes or simply do not understand each other due to the use of ambiguous terms. In this paper, foundations for a language are developed to specify the requirements for ISD and enable the unambiguous understanding of these requirements. A combination of the standards Object-Role Modeling (ORM) and Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) is used to ensure human readability and to have the full expressive power of formal languages. Composed expressions are developed to express logical, temporal, and geographical requirements. This enables service providers to understand how, when, and where services need to be integrated. By utilizing these foundations to generate a standard language for ISD, service providers can collaborate and they can understand complex client requirements which lead to improved ISD.