The Semantic Web attempts to reach a state in the future where everything on the Web will no longer be only machine-readable, but also machine-understandable. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. A conceptualization is an abstract, simplified…

Knowledge-intensive processes are widely used to recover from errors, handle exceptional cases and complaints, and to improve or adapt a process itself. In this context, evolved Business-Process Reengineering (BPR) techniques are changing to give some answers to this reality. In…

Software tools processing partially common set of data should share an understanding of what these data mean. Since ontologies have been used to express formally a shared understanding of information, we argue that they can be used to improve integration…

With the growing complexity of window based software and the use of object-oriented, the development of software is getting more complex than ever. Based on that, this article intends to present a methodology for software documentation and to analyze our…

This book provides an excellent foundation for the principles of database and data management. It explains some of the more difficult concepts fairly well. The book is meant for an introductory course in database management which is usually required as…

Software based systems incrementally provide critical services to users. Mobile telephone systems, for example, are used in circumstances in which the malfunctioning may have disastrous consequences.
During the last years, software has been incorporated in devices used in daily life,…

The term “Federated Databases” refers to the data integration of distributed, autonomous and heterogeneous databases. However, a federation can also include information systems, not only databases. When integrating data, several issues must be addressed. Here, we focus on the problem…

Product-line architectures, i.e. a software architecture and component set shared by a family of products, represents a promising approach to achieving reuse of software. Several companies are initiating or have recently adopted a product-line architecture. However, little experience is available…

Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks, such as unknown quality properties of the…

During the last years a lot of projects and lines of research have emerged from different proposals trying to find the best way to reach data integration. Two powerful techniques have appeared separately – ontology and contextual information – in…