<p>In the area of information systems design it is important to select an appropriate methodology in order to get an information system that functions as expected. The perspective behind the methodology is seldom stated explicitly. The epistemology that a methodology is based on has impacts on the design of the system. Therefore, the process of selecting an appropriate methodology is important. The aim of this work is to study how the process of metamodelling or metathinking is considered in the area of information systems design.</p><p>Interviews and a study of the literature have been performed in order to investigate the awareness of metamodelling thinking in the area of information systems design.In the literature we found that only a small part dealt with the process of metamodelling. The method engineering (ME) approach was found as a way of thinking that seems to consider metamodelling thinking. We have evaluated ME according to a synthesis of the works by van Gigch, Churchman, and Flood and Carson. The evaluation has shown that ME deals with metamodelling thinking. In order to improve the metamodelling thinking in ME, it is important to explicitly define how ME considers the aspect of participation of motivated actors and the iterative process. The interviews have shown that information systems designers use some kind of metamodelling thinking, but they do not seem to be aware of the process.</p><p>In an information system design process, it is important to shift perspectives from reality to modelling, and to the metamodelling level, in order to apply metamodelling thinking. Further work should be performed with the purpose of making the information systems designers aware of the importance of applying metamodelling thinking.</p>

<p>This work aims to investigate the state of the art in test case generation for real-time systems, to analyze existing methods, and to propose future research directions in this area. We believe that a combination of design for testability, automation, and sensible test case selection is the key for verifying modern real-time systems. Existing methods for system-level test case generation for real-time systems are presented, classified, and evaluated against a real-time system model. Significant for real-time systems is that timeliness is crucial for their correctness. Our system model of the testing target adopts the event-triggered design paradigm for maximum flexibility. This paradigm results in target systems that are harder to test than its time-triggered counterpart, but the model improves testability by adopting previously proposed constraints on application behavior. This work investigates how time constraints can be tested using current methods and reveals problems relating to test-case generation for verifying such constraints. Further, approaches for automating the test-case generation process are investigated, paying special attention to methods aimed for real-time systems. We also note a need for special test-coverage criteria for concurrent and real-time systems to select test cases that increase confidence in such systems. We analyze some existing criteria from the perspective of our target model. The results of this dissertation are a classification of methods for generating test cases for real-time systems, an identification of contradictory terminology, and an increased body of knowledge about problems and open issues in this area. We conclude that the test-case generation process often neglects the internal behavior of the tested system and the properties of its execution environment as well as the effects of these on timeliness. Further, we note that most of the surveyed articles on testing methods incorporate automatic test-case generation in some form, but few consider the issues of automated execution of test cases. Four high-level future research directions are proposed that aim to remedy one or more of the identified problems.</p>

<p>Data warehousing is a generally accepted method of providing corporate decision support. Today, the majority of information in these warehouses originates from sources within a company, although changes often occur from the outside. Companies need to look outside their enterprises for valuable information, increasing their knowledge of customers, suppliers, competitors etc.</p><p>The largest and most frequently accessed information source today is the Web, which holds more and more useful business information. Today, the Web primarily relies on HTML, making mechanical extraction of information a difficult task. In the near future, XML is expected to replace HTML as the language of the Web, bringing more structure and content focus.</p><p>One problem when considering XML-sources in a data warehouse context is their lack of update awareness capabilities, which restricts eligible data warehouse maintenance policies. In this work, we wrap XML-sources in order to provide update awareness capabilities.</p><p>We have implemented a wrapper prototype that provides update awareness capabilities for autonomous XML-sources, especially change awareness, change activeness, and delta awareness. The prototype wrapper complies with recommendations and working drafts proposed by W3C, thereby being compliant with most off-the-shelf XML tools. In particular, change information produced by the wrapper is based on methods defined by the DOM, implying that any DOM-compliant software, including most off-the-shelf XML processing tools, can be used to incorporate identified changes in a source into an older version of it.</p><p>For the delta awareness capability we have investigated the possibility of using change detection algorithms proposed for semi-structured data. We have identified similarities and differences between XML and semi-structured data, which affect delta awareness for XML-sources. As a result of this effort, we propose an algorithm for change detection in XML-sources. We also propose matching criteria for XML-documents, to which the documents have to conform to be subject to change awareness extension.</p>

<p>This dissertation concerns the application of a method for developing context dependent CASE-tool evaluation frameworks. Evaluation of CASE-tools prior to adoption is an important but complex issue; there are a number of reports in the literature of the unsuccessful adoption of CASE-tools. The reason for this is that the tools have often failed in meeting contextual expectations. The genuine interest and willingness among organisational stakeholder to participate in the study indicate that evaluation of CASE-tools is indeed a relevant problem, for which method support is scarce.</p><p>To overcome these problems, a systematic approach to pre-evaluation has been suggested, in which contextual demands and expectations are elucidated before evaluating technology support.</p><p>The proposed method has been successfully applied in a field study. This dissertation contains a report and reflections on its use in a specific organisational context. The application process rendered an evaluation framework, which accounts for demands and expectations covering the entire information systems development life cycle relevant to the given context.</p><p>The method user found that method transfer was indeed feasible, both from method description to the analyst and further from the analyst to the organisational context. Also, since the span of the evaluation framework and the organisation to which the method was applied is considered to be large, this indicates that the method scales appropriately for large organisations.</p>

<p>In this dissertation, we consider the problem of recovering a crashed node in a distributed database. We especially focus on real-time recovery in eventually consistent databases, where the consistency of replicated data is traded off for increased predictability, availability and performance. To achieve this focus, we consider consistency preservation techniques as well as recovery mechanisms.</p><p>Our approach is to perform a thorough literature survey of these two fields. The literature survey considers not only recovery in real-time, distributed, eventually consistent databases, but also related techniques, such as recovery in main-memory resident or immediately consistent databases. We also examine different techniques for consistency preservation.</p><p>Based on this literature survey, we present a taxonomy and state-of-the-art report on recovery mechanisms and consistency preservation techniques. We contrast different recovery mechanisms, and highlight properties and aspects of these that make them more or less suitable for use in an eventually consistent database. We also identify unexplored areas and uninvestigated problems within the fields of database recovery and consistency preservation. We find that research on real-time recovery in distributed databases is lacking, and we also propose further investigation of how the choice of consistency preservation technique affects (or should affect) the design of a recovery mechanism for the system.</p>

<p>Information systems are getting more and more multimedia-based as well as network-based. This evolution, as well as an increased rate of change, put new demands on methods and competencies required for developing future information systems. In this work, we give an overview of the different types of information systems and methods for information systems development, especially with respect to multimedia aspects. Multimedia systems development is discussed particularly with respect to the dual processes of software engineering and content development. Possible future directions are pointed out, in which information systems development seems to become an even more multidisciplinary effort. As a result we present a list of competencies required for multimedia information systems development as well as possible research areas of interest. These research areas cover the following issues regarding the development of multimedia information systems: project management, conceptual modelling, content maintenance, requirement treatment and development approaches.</p>

<p>The overall aim of the study is to get a better understanding for the relation between different forms of representation in ICT-interfaces and cognitive variation in individuals. Cognitive style is, according to Riding & Al-Hajji (2000) ”an individual’s preferred and habitual approach to both organizing and representing information”. Research of the relation between cognitive style and learning performance has shown, according to Riding & Al-Hajji (2000), that pupils learn best when the structure, the content and the mode of presentation of the material suits their style.</p><p>On the basis of an explorative pre-analysis of a multimedia program for learning mathematics, named Matador, a general hypothesis was formulated. The general hypothesis that was examined is: The Matador multimedia program can be improved as concerns the presentational formats both for pupils who are helped by and attracted by visual information and – in particular – for pupils who are helped by and attracted by verbal information. A minor user’s test with 10-15 year old pupils was carried out in order to complement the pre-analysis by testing some specific details of the program with users. The results of the study indicate that there are certain aspects that could be improved, especially for those who are helped by and attracted by verbal information.</p>

<p>Mängden information som en läkare skall beakta i sitt beslutsfattande kring patientens diagnos och behandling ökar konstant. Det finns idag datoriserade system som har förmågan att stödja läkare i beslutsprocessen kring patientens diagnostisering och behandling. Dessa systems prestanda är i nivå med en expert. Trots detta har inget system fått någon större kommersiell spridning. I denna studie undersöks läkares attityder till beslutsstödjande system och om systemen påverkar ansvarsförhållandet mellan läkare och patient. Studien bygger på tre djupintervjuer med legitimerade läkare från olika specialitéer. Resultatet visar att de intervjuade läkarna har en positiv attityd till beslutsstödjande system och att systemen skall uppfattas som hjälpmedel i processen att diagnostisera och behandla patienter. Ingen av de intervjuade ansåg att systemen påverkar ansvarsförhållandet mellan läkare och patient. De anser att systemet lämpar sig bäst på en akutavdelning eller mottagningsavdelning. Det finns ett behov av fortsatta studier på större grupper för att kunna dra några generella slutsatser.</p>

<p>Det finns olika åsikter om prototyper av låg fidelity kan användas lika effektivt för att identifiera brister och testa ett gränssitt som en prototyp av hög fidelity. De artiklar som har granskats i detta arbete har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Endel forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är lämpligast att använda under den tidiga delen av designprocessen och att prototyper av hög fidelity bör användas i den senare delen av designprocessen. Detta har på senare år diskuterats krafigt inom "the human factors community" där vissa forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är minst lika användbara under hela designprocessen. De artiklar som har analyserats i denna studie har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Vad dessa olika resultat kan bero på analyseras i denna rapport.</p>

<p>Use Case-tekniken används för kravutvinning under RE-processen. Under RE-processen utvinns och dokumenteras krav på det nya systemet. I detta arbete undersöks vilka oklarheter systemutvecklare som använder Use Case-tekniken upplever med beskrivningen av denna teknik.</p><p>Hur Use Case-tekniken utvecklats och vilken kritik som riktats mot tekniken beskrivs även detta i arbetet.</p><p>Undersökningen utgår ifrån hur de systemutvecklare som använder tekniken upplever att denna är beskriven och utfördes med enkäter och intervjuer.</p><p>Svaret på undersökningen är att de systemutvecklare som använder Use Case-tekniken upplever att denna som helhet är tydligt beskriven. På detaljnivå upplever dock de svarande att teknikens beskrivning:</p><p>* saknar stöd för på vilken nivå Use Cases skall utformas,</p><p>* saknar bra exempel,</p><p>* inte har tillräckligt fokus på syftet med Use Cases,</p><p>* saknar stöd för hur Use Cases skall utformas,</p><p>* inte beskriver skillnaden mellan generalisering och <<extend>></p><p>* inte beskriver skillnaden mellan <<include>> och <<extend>> tillräckligt väl.</p>