Nowadays, data intensive applications are in constant demand and there is need of computing environments with better intelligent capabilities than those present in today's Database Management Systems (DBMS). To build such systems we need formalisms that can perform complicate inferences,…

In a scene where stakeholders are geographically distributed, communication presents new challenges for research areas. Considering the characteristics of interpersonal communication and the virtual area where it is carried out, the importance of applying interdisciplinary approaches, such as Cognitive Engineering,…

Time and change are notions that seems unavoidable in some areas of work and investigation, languages that can deal with these notions are necessary. At the same time, methods for a proper time handling are quite complex, mainly because problem’s…

A Federated System is a collection of independent, cooperative, possibly heterogeneous and autonomous computer systems (usually database systems) which allows sharing all or some of its data. A Service-oriented Architecture is an application architecture whose functionalities are defined as independent…

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…

As a part of a taxonomic revision of Ethesia Raf., a new species, E. tanquana Mart.-Azorín & M.B.Crespo, is described from the Tanqua Karoo in South Africa. This new species is at first sight similar to E. haalenbergensis (U.Müll.-Doblies &…

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…