<p>Cooperative Software Engineering (CSE) means that large-scale, software development and maintenance can be conducted in a distributed organisation or across organisations. CSE can be characterised by distributed process fragments, partly shared workspaces, cooperation planning, and frequent interactions in intra/inter-workspaces. To support CSE processes, we must deal with dynamic, unpredictable processes as well as stable, repeatable processes with totally different characteristics. Traditional workflow and process systems offer good support for stable, pre-planned processes, providing user agendas, invocation of tools, presentation of process state etc. Multi-agent systems are well suited to model and support users involved in cooperative processes. By combining these two technologies, processes with characteristics similar to cooperative software engineering processes can be modelled and supported more completely.</p><p>The thesis presents a framework called CAGIS Process Centred Environment (PCE), for combining a workflow system with a multi-agent system. These are the main parts of the thesis:</p><p>- A multi-agent architecture to support cooperative processes. This architecture is particularly useful in modelling and providing support for cooperative activities where software agents act on behalf of the user. The design and implementation of this architecture is described.</p><p>-A workflow system to support distributed mobile processes. This workflow system allows processes to be fragmented into smaller sub-processes that can be distributed over several workspaces and moved between these workspaces.</p><p>-A gluing framework to specify the interaction between the workflow system and the multi-agent architecture. The gluemodel defines the relationships between software agents and process fragments (sub-processes), and a GlueServer is used as a middleware between a workflow tool and a multi-agent system. Results from applying the GlueModel framework on a cooperative software engineering (CSE) process is also described.</p><p>- A Evaluation of the framework by modelling three practical cases:</p><p>- A conference organising process is modelled in three different process environments (including our own), and evaluated according to modelling completeness and adaptability to process changes.</p><p>- A CSE scenario describing a software and maintenance process in a Norwegian software company is modelled to show usefulness of the gluing framework.</p><p>- A project organisation scenario used to demonstrate how software agents can be used in CAGIS Process Centred Environment to deal with evolution of distributed, fragmented workflow models.</p>

<p>Detta examensarbete på D-nivå beskriver skapandet av BI-applikationer och analys av tre</p><p>olika BI-system. Projekten har givits av Cederroth International AB som är ett av Sveriges</p><p>största företag inom dagligvaruhandeln. Uppsatsen ger en inblick i vad BI är och hur BI</p><p>fungerar i företagsvärlden. Det ges även en stegvis beskrivning i hur en applikation skapas</p><p>med hjälp av BI-systemet QlikView och analyser av BI-systemen QlikView, SQL Server 2005</p><p>och BusinessObjects XI om huruvida dessa uppfyller de funktionella kraven på ett BI-verktyg.</p><p>Bakgrundsinformation om Cederroth och dess system för affärsdatahantering ges också i</p><p>uppsatsen.</p><p>Den BI-applikation som beskrivs i denna uppsats involverar finsk återförsäljningsdata.</p><p>Stegen från grunddata till färdig applikation beskrivs och förklaras ingående i uppsatsen.</p><p>Analysen av de tre BI-systemen som därefter gjorts har beskrivits i en del där</p><p>grundinformation följs av en analys med hänsyn till de funktionella aspekterna i BI-systemen.</p><p>Denna analys resulterade i ett likvärdigt resultat för de tre BI-systemen. BI-systemen hade</p><p>dock olika lösningar på de funktionella delarna.</p>

<p>Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) estimates for programs are necessary when building real-time systems. They are used to ensure timely responses from interrupts, to guarantee the throughput of cyclic tasks, as input to scheduling and schedule analysis algorithms, and in many other circumstances. Traditionally, such estimates have been obtained either by measurements or labor-intensive manual analysis, which is both time consuming and error-prone. Static worst-case execution time analysis is a family of techniques that promise to quickly provide safe execution time estimates for real-time programs, simultaneously increasing system quality and decreasing the development cost. This thesis presents several contributions to the state-of-the-art in WCET analysis.</p><p>We present an overall architecture for WCET analysis tools that provides a framework for implementing modules. Within the stable interfaces provided, modules can be independently replaced, making it easy to customize a tool for a particular target and perform performance-precision trade-offs. </p><p>We have developed concrete techniques for analyzing and representing the timing behavior of programs running on pipelined processors. The representation and analysis is more powerful than previous approaches in that pipeline timing effects across more than pairs of instructions can be handled, and in that no assumptions are made about the program structure. The analysis algorithm relies on a trace-driven processor simulator instead of a special-purpose processor model. This allows us to use existing simulators to adapt the analysis to a new target platform, reducing the retargeting effort. </p><p>We have defined a formal mathematical model of processor pipelines, which we use to investigate the properties of pipelines and WCET analysis. We prove several interesting properties of processors with in-order issue, such as the freedom from timing anomalies and the fundamental safety of WCET analysis for certain classes of pipelines. We have also constructed a number of examples that demonstrate that tight and safe WCET analysis for pipelined processors might not be as easy as once believed. </p><p>Considering the link between the analysis methods and the real world, we discuss how to build accurate software models of processor hardware, and the conditions under which accuracy is achievable.</p>

<p>In this dissertation, we present two new sorts of computer sciencelogics.</p><p>Many powerful logics exist today for reasoning about multi-agentsystems, but in most of these it is hard to reason about an infiniteor indeterminate number of agents. Also the naming schemes used inthe logics often lack expressiveness to name agents in an intuitiveway.</p><p>To obtain a more expressive language for multi-agent reasoning and abetter naming scheme for agents, we introduce in the first part of thedissertation a family of logics called term-modal logics. A mainfeature of our logics is the use of modal operators indexed by theterms of the logics. Thus, one can quantify over variables occurringin modal operators. In term-modal logics agents can be represented byterms, and knowledge of agents is expressed with formulas within thescope of modal operators.</p><p>This gives us a flexible and uniform language for reasoning about theagents themselves and their knowledge. We give examples of theexpressiveness of the languages and provide sequent-style andtableau-based proof systems for the logics. Furthermore, we giveproofs of soundness and completeness with respect to the possibleworld semantics.</p><p>In the second part of the dissertation, we treat another problem inreasoning about multi-agent systems, namely the problem of informationupdating. We develop a dynamic logic of assignments with a scopingoperator instead of quantifiers. Function, relation symbols and logicvariables are all rigidly interpreted in our semantics, while programvariables are non-rigid. The scoping operator is used to distinguishbetween the value of a program variable before and after the executionof a program.</p><p>We provide a tableau proof system for the logic. First, the system isproved complete without the star operator, and then with the staroperator using an omega rule. The full logic is shown to beundecidable, while some interesting fragments are decidable.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2007. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-211).

<p>SAMMANFATTNING</p><p>Syfte och frågeställningar</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur datorerna som finns i skolan används.</p><p>* Kan man se några tydliga skillnader mellan en innerstadsskola och en förortsskola?</p><p>* Hur ser elevernas datavanor ut?</p><p>Metod</p><p>Min uppsats är en kvantitativ studie. För att besvara mina frågeställningar har jag använt mig av en enkät. Enkäten som jag har gjort är till stora delar hämtad från examensarbetet Datorer i skolan som skrevs på Idrottshögskolan för 10 år sedan. Jag tyckte att många av deras frågor var intressanta och fortfarande aktuella.</p><p>Resultat</p><p>Svaren från enkäten visade att datorn används mest i ämnen som matematik, svenska och engelska i förortsskolan medan i innerstadsskolan har man använt datorn i svenska, engelska och bild. I innerstaden använder man ofta datorn till att hämta information från Internet och göra presentationer i t.ex. PowerPoint. Förortseleverna använder också datorn till att hämta information från Internet. En annan skillnad mellan de två skolorna är att man i förorten låter eleverna i högre grad använda datorn även till annat än skolarbete medan det sällan händer i innerstaden.</p><p>Det fanns många fler likheter än olikheter mellan skolorna. Alla barnen i båda skolorna tyckte om att arbeta med datorer vilket inte är så förvånande i dessa tider då datorerna har blivit så vanliga.</p><p>Slutsats</p><p>Datorn har blivit en naturlig del i elevernas sökning efter information. Datorn används också mycket till att jobba med skolans kärnämnen som t.ex. matematik, svenska och engelska vilket är bra för den ökade måluppfyllelsen som det ofta pratas om i dagens skola. Mycket hänger dock på lärarens datautbildning och inställning till att integrera datorn i undervisningen.</p> / Grundskollärarutbildningen 1999-2003

Cooperative Software Engineering (CSE) means that large-scale, software development and maintenance can be conducted in a distributed organisation or across organisations. CSE can be characterised by distributed process fragments, partly shared workspaces, cooperation planning, and frequent interactions in intra/inter-workspaces. To support CSE processes, we must deal with dynamic, unpredictable processes as well as stable, repeatable processes with totally different characteristics. Traditional workflow and process systems offer good support for stable, pre-planned processes, providing user agendas, invocation of tools, presentation of process state etc. Multi-agent systems are well suited to model and support users involved in cooperative processes. By combining these two technologies, processes with characteristics similar to cooperative software engineering processes can be modelled and supported more completely. The thesis presents a framework called CAGIS Process Centred Environment (PCE), for combining a workflow system with a multi-agent system. These are the main parts of the thesis: - A multi-agent architecture to support cooperative processes. This architecture is particularly useful in modelling and providing support for cooperative activities where software agents act on behalf of the user. The design and implementation of this architecture is described. -A workflow system to support distributed mobile processes. This workflow system allows processes to be fragmented into smaller sub-processes that can be distributed over several workspaces and moved between these workspaces. -A gluing framework to specify the interaction between the workflow system and the multi-agent architecture. The gluemodel defines the relationships between software agents and process fragments (sub-processes), and a GlueServer is used as a middleware between a workflow tool and a multi-agent system. Results from applying the GlueModel framework on a cooperative software engineering (CSE) process is also described. - A Evaluation of the framework by modelling three practical cases: - A conference organising process is modelled in three different process environments (including our own), and evaluated according to modelling completeness and adaptability to process changes. - A CSE scenario describing a software and maintenance process in a Norwegian software company is modelled to show usefulness of the gluing framework. - A project organisation scenario used to demonstrate how software agents can be used in CAGIS Process Centred Environment to deal with evolution of distributed, fragmented workflow models.

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This research is to do a study on the technology sourcing strategy for the information technology or the technology of information products while the high-tech domestic corporations are choosing to develop the information system technology. These three strategies are: the way of technology sourcing, the characteristics of technology, and the factors that are beyond the products. To discuss the strategic affected factors while choosing the technology sourcing strategy is the main thesis.The information electronic industry is the main object in this research. Each corporation discusses for the mode of information system technology sourcing. The result shows that ¡§the in-housing R&D ¡¨ is the priority to be considered while high-tech domestic corporations are thinking about information system technology sourcing. But the result also shows that professional knowledge in cost and in the information system technology personnel is insufficient. The studied corporations used the way of ¡§in-housing R&D¡¨ at the beginning, and then they get the technology via outsourcing. The main reason for that is to shorten the period of research time and make the cost lower. In the affected factors among the decided ways of information system technology, the most conspicuous way is the ¡§availability of licensing-in¡¨. The author through deeply interviewing with studied corporations found out that the technology sourcing strategies of information system are multi-channel. The ¡§technology outsourcing¡¨ and ¡§in-house R&D¡¨ are not substitute, however, are complementary. Among the technology sourcing strategies, ¡§the availability and urgency of licensing-in¡¨ plays an important role, that is, the main part of transaction cost items of each cost. As a whole, transaction cost theory could explain the evaluation while the corporations are making the information system strategy.

­^¤åºK­n¡GInformation Technology (IT) as a competition advantage of the organization or individual has been widely welcome in the market. Orlikowski & Gash (1994) proposed the Theory of Technological Frame revealed that the organizational context affected the assumption and expectation of the technology. Furthermore, these assumption and expectation impacted the organization behavior. Thus, study the technological frame becomes a critical issue in understanding the IT development of the organization. We adopt the Theory of Technological Frame (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994) and make some reinforcement in the domain and category as the research model. This base guided us in understanding both the groups¡¦ and individual¡¦s behaviors of introduction and implementation of a groupware (Product Data Management, PDM) in the case study. In the data analyzing process, we employed the hermeneutic method to interpret and organize our finding. The research results indicated that the users hold positive perspective of PDM effectives in the following constructs¡G1. Reducing development time of new product¡F 2. Increasing the productivity of product design ¡F3. Increasing the accuracy of manufacturing and product design¡F4. Increasing and promoting the skill of working team¡F5. Assuring the data integrality and security¡F6. Building the data standard of aerospace. We believe that the consequence of research is useful for managers to understand the technological frame is important for enterprise¡¦s competitive capacity. Furthermore, understanding how to diagnosis, explanation and anticipation around information technology such change processes in organization. Keyword: information technology, Theory of Technological Frame