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Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to document

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Thesis (Ph.D.) in Spatial Information Science and Engineering--University of Maine, 2006. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-285).

<p>The aim of this study was to investigate if there exists a prototypical example of the notion <em>game</em> in two cultures, Sweden and Minnesota, USA, and in that case, if it is the same or if possible similarities are greater within generations, regardless of nationality.</p><p>A questionnaire asking informants to name, in their eyes, typical games was sent to 48 Americans and 53 Swedes. The informants from each country were divided into age groups. The answers were analyzed and compared in different ways. Five out of six groups showed a great similarity in mentioning the game <em>Monopoly</em> as a typical game. Differences were also found. For example, sports were brought up to a higher degree in Minnesota than in Sweden, and the young groups differed from the other groups in the way that many respondents mentioned <em>Computer games </em>and <em>Video games.</em></p>

Patterns are used as building blocks for design and construction in many fields such as architecture, music, literature, etc. Researchers and practitioners in the information systems area have been exploring patterns and using them in system analysis and design. Patterns found in the analysis stage, when analysts create conceptual models to abstractly represent domain reality, are call business patterns or analysis patterns. Although various business patterns were proposed in previous studies, we found that business semantics were missing in these patterns. These business patterns failed to show functionalities that is essential to patterns in general. Most of these patterns were also not capable of describing business activities, the dynamic aspect of business. This study is conducted to address these issues. In this thesis, we provide a brief literature review on business patterns, and discuss the major problems we found in these studies. Then we introduce our research approach and the major outcomes. We propose a new definition of business patterns with business semantics, which enables us to recover the missing functionality in business patterns. We suggest the key elements to represent business patterns, and propose a two-level template (functional and operational) to describe these elements. Based on theR²M approach, we propose a modeling method with graphical notations to describe the operational level of patterns, where business activities can be modeled. Examples and a case study are provided in this thesis to demonstrate how to use the modeling method and how to use business patterns in practice.

Huge amount of data flows around the Internet every second, but for the data to be useful at its destination, it must be presented in a way such that the target has little problem interpreting it. Current data exchange technologies may rearrange the structure of data to suit expectations at the target. However, there may be semantics behind data (e.g. knowing the title of a book can determine its #pages) that may be violated after data translation. These semantics are expressed as integrity constraints (IC) in a database. Currently, there is no guarantee that the exchanged data conforms to the target’s ICs. As a result, existing applications (e.g. user queries) that assume such semantics will no longer function correctly. Current constraint repair techniques deal with data after it has been translated; thus take no consideration of the integrity constraints at the source. Moreover, such constraint repair methods usually involve addition/deletion/modification of data, which may yield incomplete or false data. We consider the constraints of both source and target schemas; together with the mapping, we can efficiently detect which constraint is violated and suggest ways to correct the mappings.