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In the context of the increasing interest in our journal, this, the first issue of Computer Science and Information Systems in 2012, is a rare issue in the last several years consisting solely of regular papers from various fields, including personalized recommendation, text representation and mining, query optimization, routing, software maintenance, decision support, software and database modeling, information aggregation, parsing, and e-learning.
The first article, entitled “A Personalized Multimedia Contents Recommendation Using a Psychological Model,” by Won-Ik Park, Sanggil Kang, and Young-Kuk Kim, tackles the problem of searching and managing large volumes of multimedia content in a mobile device with limited resources by proposing a method for recommending multimedia content in a personal content manager that acts between content providers (servers) and mobile devices, as opposed to the popular server-side recommendation approach.
The following article, “Representation of Texts in Structured Form,” by Mladen Stanojević and Sanja Vraneš, defines crucial requirements for structured text representation with emphasis on no loss of information, and gives a brief introduction to a representation technique that fulfills the requirements, including the basic data types and learning techniques used to create, maintain and interpret the resulting representation formalism.
In “A Genetic Algorithm for the Routing and Carrier Selection Problem”, Jozef Kratica et al. present a new evolutionary approach for solving the Routing and Carrier Selection Problem (RCSP), which keeps the feasibility of individuals by using a specific representation and modified genetic operators, and compares favorably to recent heuristic approaches to solving the RCSP.
The paper “An XML-algebra for Efficient Set-at-a-time Execution” by Maxim Lukichev, Boris Novikov, and Pankaj Mehra, describes an algebraic approach to XML query optimization which, unlike earlier algebras that focused mostly on rule-based optimization and node-at-a-time execution, features only set-at-a-time operations. The algebra supports expression reduction and lazy evaluation, and produces efficient plans for queries containing complex conditional and quantified expressions.
“A Decision Support Method for Evaluating Database Designs” by Erki Eessaar and Marek Soobik, presents decision support method for comparing different database designs and selecting one of them as the best design, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process with use of pairwise comparisons.
The method can be employed in cases involving different data models, criteria, and designs.
Rabah Imache, Said Izza and Mohamed Ahmed-Nacer, in “An Enterprise Information System Agility Assessment Model,” analyze enterprise information-system agility issues by proposing a fuzzy logic-based assessment approach in order to measure, regulate and continuously preserve information-system agility. The parser also presents a prototype implementation and an application of the proposed approach to a tour operator enterprise.
The article “Selecting a Methodology for Business Information Systems Development: Decision Model and Tool Support” by Damjan Vavpotič and Olegas Vasilecas, presents a decision model and a tool to assist in finding an information systems development methodology (ISDM) for a computer-based business information system (IS) suitable to a certain IS development project or an organization dealing with IS development, which not only suggests a certain ISDM, but also proposes the properties that the ISDM should have to suit the project or the organization.
“Improving the Evaluation of Software Development Methodology Adoption and its Impact on Enterprise Performance” by Damjan Vavpotič and Tomaž Hovelja proposes a model for evaluation of the adoption of software development methodologies (SDMs) that focuses on the impact of SDMs on enterprise performance. The model was successfully empirically tested in four case studies in software development for small and medium enterprises.
In “A Framework for Developing and Implementing the Enterprise Technical Architecture,” Tiko Iyamu introduces a model which reflects the consistent approach that adaptive enterprises could employ to build, maintain, and apply technical architecture in the computing environment. The model emphasizes a holistic approach to technical architecture deployment in the organization.
Boris Milašinović and Krešimir Fertalj, in “Avoiding Unstructured Workflows in Prerequisites Modeling” present an approach workflow transformation that produces a structured workflow which, with some adjustments at runtime, corresponds to the original unstructured workflow graph. The need for such transformation stems from the integration of prerequisite relationships, partially defined as graph components, which produces a directed graph that corresponds to a well-defined and well-behaved unstructured workflow consisting only of and-splits and and-joins.
Turning to the field of software maintenance, Michal Vagač and Ján Kollár in their article “Improving Program Comprehension by Automatic Metamodel Abstraction” present a novel approach to simplification of program comprehension which facilitates metamodel creation for a selected system feature, where features represent functional aspects of the system subjected to analysis and change.
The article “An Approach to Automated Conceptual Database Design Based on the UML Activity Diagram” by Dražen BrĎanin and Slavko Marić describes an approach to automated design of the initial conceptual database model, where the UML activity diagram is used as the starting point, and formal rules cover automatic extraction of business objects and business process participants, as well as automatic generation of corresponding classes and their associations.
In “Usage of Technology Enhanced Learning Tools and Organizational Change Perception,” Mladen Čudanov, Gheorghe Savoiu and Ondrej Jaško analyze organizational changes perceived by employees in organizations where technology enhanced learning was facilitated by tools such as wiki, (we)blog, Internet forums and the social networks, often referred to as e-learning 2.0. The article focuses on the perception of influence on the organizational structure, organizational culture and the knowledge management processes in the organization, observing significant impact on the three focus areas.
Mária Bieliková, Michal Kompan and Dušan Zeleník in “Effective Hierarchical Vector-based News Representation for Personalized Recommendation” present a method for personalized content-based recommendation of news on the Web based on an effective vector representation of the news, a user model, and a hierarchical representation of similarities among items, facilitating real-time estimation of user needs and generation of personalized news item lists.
Remaining in the Web domain, “Concept Extraction and Clustering for Search Result Organization and Virtual Community Construction” by Shihn-Yuarn Chen et al. propose a concept extraction and clustering method, which improves topic keyword clustering by using log likelihood ratio for semantic correlation and Bisection K-Means for document clustering, and analyze the benefits of the method in two application scenarios: organization and visual presentation of search results by clustering and bibliographic coupling, and constructing virtual research communities and recommending significant papers to researchers.
José M. Merigó and Anna M. Gil-Lafuente, in the paper “A Method for Decision Making with the OWA Operator,” present a method for decision making that uses the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator in the aggregation of information. By using the OWA operator in conjunction with the index of maximum and minimum level (IMAM), a new aggregation operator is formed referred to as the ordered weighted averaging index of maximum and minimum level (OWAIMAM), whose main advantage is that it provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators between the minimum and the maximum, and a wide range of special cases.
“A Generic Parser for Strings and Trees” by Riad S. Jabri proposes a two-fold generic parser that simulates the behavior of multiple parsing automata, and parses strings drawn from either a context free grammar, a regular tree grammar, or from both. The proposed parser is based on an approach that defines an extended version of an automaton, called position-parsing automaton (PPA) using concepts from LR and regular tree automata, combined with a newly introduced concept, called state instantiation and transition cloning.
In “Using Lightweight Formal Methods to Model Class and Object Diagrams” Fernando Valles-Barajas presents a formal model for class and object diagrams constructed using Alloy, a three-in-one package: a modeling language that constructs software models, a formal method that guides the construction of software models and an analyzer that helps find inconsistencies in software models. The model specifies the entities that form class and object diagrams, and the rules that govern how these elements can be connected.
Chao Wang et al., in “S-TRAP: Optimization and Evaluation of Timely Recovery to Any Point-in-time (TRAP),” present S-TRAP, a novel block-level Continuous Data Protection (CDP) recovery mechanism based on TRAP, which breaks down the parity chain of TRAP generating new sub-chains, and introduces previous block cache that can reduce the negative impact on the primary storage system.
Finally, the article “A Comparative Evaluation of Effort Estimation Methods in the Software Life Cycle,” by Jovan Popović and Dragan Bojić, validate several standard functional measurement and analysis methods (IFPUG, NESMA, Mark II, COSMIC, and use case points), on a selected set of small and medium size real-world Web-based projects. The evaluation provides objective justification and guidance for the use of measurement-based estimation in these kinds of projects.
On behalf of the Editorial Board and the ComSIS Consortium, we would like to thank the authors for their high-quality contributions, and also the reviewers for the effort and time invested into the preparation of this issue of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Editor-in-Chief
Mirjana Ivanović
Managing Editor
Miloš Radovanović
