Software evolution is a crucial activity for software organizations. A specifc type of software evolution is the integration of previously isolated systems. The need for integration is often a consequence of different organizational changes, including merging of previously separate organizations. One goal of software integration is to increase the value to users of several systems by combining their functionality, another is to reduce functionality overlap. If the systems are completely owned and controlled in-house, there is an additional advantage in rationalizing the use of internal resources by decreasing the amount of software with essentially the same purpose. Despite in-house integration being common, this topic has received little attention from researchers. This thesis contributes to an increasing understanding of the problems associated with in-house integration and provides guidelines to the more efficient utilization of the existing systems and the personnel. In the thesis, we combine two perspectives: software architecture and processes. The perspective of software architecture is used to show how compatibility analysis and development of integration alternatives can be performed rapidly at a high level of abstraction. The software process perspective has led to the identification of important characteristics and practices of the integration process. The guidelines provided in the thesis will help those performing future in-house integration to make well-founded decisions timely and efficiently. The contributions are based on several integration projects in industry, which have been studied systematically in order to collect, evaluate and generalize their experiences.

The need for aggregating privacy policies is present in a variety of application areas today. In traditional client/server models, websites host services along with their policies in different private domains. However, in a cloud-computing platform where aggregators can merge multiple services, users often face complex decisions in terms of choosing the right services from service providers. In this computing paradigm, the ability to aggregate policies as well as services will be useful and more effective for users that are privacy conscious regarding their sensitive or personal information. This thesis studies the problems associated with the Platform for Privacy Preference (P3P) language, and the present issues with communicating and understanding the P3P language. Furthermore, it discusses some efficient strategies and algorithms for the matching and the merging processes, and then elaborates on some privacy policy conflicts that may occur after merging policies. Lastly, the thesis presents a tool for matching and merging P3P policies. If successful, the merge produces an aggregate policy that is consistent with the policies of all participating service providers.

With the rapid growth of XML documents to serve as a popular and major media for storage and interchange of the data on the Web, there is an increasing interest in using existing traditional relational database techniques to store and/or query XML data. Since XQuery is becoming a standard XML query language, significant effort has been made in developing an efficient and comprehensive XQuery-to-SQL query processor. In this thesis, we design and implement an <em>XQuery-to-SQL Query Processor</em> based on the <em>Dynamic Intervals</em> approach. We also provide a comprehensive translation for XQuery basic operations and FLWR expressions. The query processor is able to translate a complex XQuery query, which might include arbitrarily composed and nested FLWR expressions, basic functions, and element constructors, into a single SQL query for RDBMS and a physical plan for the <em>XQuery-enhanced Relational Engine</em>. In order to produce efficient and concise SQL queries, succinct XQuery to SQL translation templates and the optimization algorithms for the SQL query generation are proposed and implemented. The preferable <em>merge-join</em> approach is also proposed to avoid the inefficient <em>nested-loop</em> evaluation for FLWR expressions. <em>Merge-join</em> patterns and query rewriting rules are designed to identify XQuery fragments that can utilize the efficient <em>merge-join</em> evaluation. Proofs of correctness of the approach are provided in the thesis. Experimental results justify the correctness of our work.

In this thesis, a new algorithm has been proposed to segment the foreground of the fingerprint from the image under consideration. The algorithm uses three features, mean, variance and coherence. Based on these features, a rule system is built to help the algorithm to efficiently segment the image. In addition, the proposed algorithm combine split and merge with modified Otsu. Both enhancements techniques such as Gaussian filter and histogram equalization are applied to enhance and improve the quality of the image. Finally, a post processing technique is implemented to counter the undesirable effect in the segmented image. Fingerprint recognition system is one of the oldest recognition systems in biometrics techniques. Everyone have a unique and unchangeable fingerprint. Based on this uniqueness and distinctness, fingerprint identification has been used in many applications for a long period. A fingerprint image is a pattern which consists of two regions, foreground and background. The foreground contains all important information needed in the automatic fingerprint recognition systems. However, the background is a noisy region that contributes to the extraction of false minutiae in the system. To avoid the extraction of false minutiae, there are many steps which should be followed such as preprocessing and enhancement. One of these steps is the transformation of the fingerprint image from gray-scale image to black and white image. This transformation is called segmentation or binarization. The aim for fingerprint segmentation is to separate the foreground from the background. Due to the nature of fingerprint image, the segmentation becomes an important and challenging task. The proposed algorithm is applied on FVC2000 database. Manual examinations from human experts show that the proposed algorithm provides an efficient segmentation results. These improved results are demonstrating in diverse experiments.

With the rapid growth of XML documents to serve as a popular and major media for storage and interchange of the data on the Web, there is an increasing interest in using existing traditional relational database techniques to store and/or query XML data. Since XQuery is becoming a standard XML query language, significant effort has been made in developing an efficient and comprehensive XQuery-to-SQL query processor. In this thesis, we design and implement an <em>XQuery-to-SQL Query Processor</em> based on the <em>Dynamic Intervals</em> approach. We also provide a comprehensive translation for XQuery basic operations and FLWR expressions. The query processor is able to translate a complex XQuery query, which might include arbitrarily composed and nested FLWR expressions, basic functions, and element constructors, into a single SQL query for RDBMS and a physical plan for the <em>XQuery-enhanced Relational Engine</em>. In order to produce efficient and concise SQL queries, succinct XQuery to SQL translation templates and the optimization algorithms for the SQL query generation are proposed and implemented. The preferable <em>merge-join</em> approach is also proposed to avoid the inefficient <em>nested-loop</em> evaluation for FLWR expressions. <em>Merge-join</em> patterns and query rewriting rules are designed to identify XQuery fragments that can utilize the efficient <em>merge-join</em> evaluation. Proofs of correctness of the approach are provided in the thesis. Experimental results justify the correctness of our work.

Lewellen ¡]1971¡^ proposed merge and acquisition ¡]M&A¡^ activity will change the tax incentives when one enterprise reorganizes its capital structure. In 1986, the empirical evidences provided by Gilson ¡]1992¡^ proved that the Tax Reform Act in U.S. was not only a critical tax incentive in M&A activities but also a superior synergy to the firms. Besides, in Lewellen¡¦s assumption, the alterations of enterprise¡¦s capital structures are the crucial elements of its tax burden, not the tax law itself. That¡¦s why accounting principle cannot be omitted in the research of capital structure. The Financial Supervisory Commission announced Taiwan will apply International Financial Report Standard ¡]IFRS¡^ in 2013. Thus, the tax issues in M&A activities will be vital for the firms due to the upcoming revolution of accounting principle in Taiwan. This document will list the tax incentives and risks after the implementation of IFRS in M&A activities. The tax incentives will not be the major motives in M&A transactions after the implementation of IFRS. If one enterprise actively manipulates the M&A activity for the tax benefits after the implementation of IFRS, the radical transaction will draw the National Tax Administration¡¦s attention and lose the goal of achieving better synergy after the M&A. Generally speaking, tax risks should be the dominant issues in M&A activities rather than the tax incentives. Due to the complicity of the tax law, identification of tax risks will be the most difficult part in the risk management process. This research will propose the concept of the Tax Risk Matrix as an instrument to identify the tax risk. The matrix is composed with the nationality of enterprise, types of transactions and taxation. For example, once the nationality of enterprise and types of transactions are determined, using this matrix can assist the management concerned to identify what kinds of tax risks they might confront. When the risks are anticipated, this research also comes up with a standard operation process for those enterprises involved in M&A as a tool to control the tax risks. For those complex and extensively different tax issues in the M&A transaction, the systematic methods proposed can decrease the tax risks for the firms. Moreover, the firms and the experts interested in M&A can also develop the best practical solutions with this process and bring up more propositions to the unreasonable and ambiguous articles in the tax law nowadays. In conclusion, the tax law should play a neutral role in the M&A activities not the favorable motives.

Recently, we observed many networked market are served almost by a single platform, and can called that situation be winner-take-all. We could observed that the top website occupy huge market, and still be the top for long time. Conversely, the other website only shares the tiny market. This paper chooses the biggest Taiwan portal Yahoo!Kimo to be the research case. In addition, the case object is its e-commerce department, which is the Yahoo! only e-commerce department worldwide. Through this case, we could find out the truth of winner-take-all. In this research, we use in-depth interview and combine with secondary data. According to past researches and the situation of Yahoo!Kimo, we address the research question as follow: (1) How does Yahoo!Kimo develop their e-store platforms to maintain their e-commerce leading position in Taiwan. (2) Is there a winner-take-all phenomenon on Yahoo!Kimo? After generalize the data, we found that although Yahoo! first time enters Taiwan not successful. Their strategy is merge different kinds website, such as the leading portal Kimo, the most visiting blog Wretch, and Monday.Tech. They got their human resource and technology sooner, then become the top one portal in Taiwan provides variety services for users. For foreign website and companies enter a new market will be a good role model. Moreover, we prove Yahoo!Kimo is role model of winner-take-all.

This thesis presents a new cascaded iterative VLSI sorting architecture that can accelerate data sorting of variable-length sequences. The proposed sorter mainly consists of a central data memory block, a core comparison unit, and a special address generation module. Many fast sorting algorithms can be represented by a network of compare-and-swap (C&S) operations which can be divided into several processing steps. Instead of using parallel C&S functional units to perform C&S operations of the same sorting step, our comparison unit is composed of cascaded C&S units connected through data commutator such that different sorting steps can be processed simultaneously. The advantage of cascaded architecture is that the number of data memory accesses can be reduced by a factor equal to the number of cascaded stages. However, how to reduce the overhead of the data commutator becomes the most critical design issue. This thesis has explored the feature of C&S operation order in Bitonic sorting such that much simpler and more regular data commutator module can be achieved compared with the previous cascade design derived based on Batcher sorting. Therefore, the cascade level of our sorter architecture can be more than 2. A sample of 4-level cascade sorter has been implemented in our thesis. To generate the address sequence suitable for the proposed cascaded comparison unit, this paper proposes a low-cost address generator design based on the bit-permutation technique. Although high cascade level can lead to significant reduction of memory access which can help reducing the power dissipation, the issues of low hardware utilization for short data sequences and the increasing commutator overhead cannot be neglected. Therefore, to achieve further speed-up, this paper also adopts another parallelism approach for data sorter design by utilizing block-level C&S units which can compare a block of data at the same time. The block-level C&S units can be designed based on traditional Batcher¡¦s sorting network. Based on the proposed Bitonic cascade and Batcher¡¦s block sorting approaches, very fast and low-power sorter hardware can be achieved.

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The reason that a firm have to run its business in diversify ways, is to extend contents that it produced, enhance its business values and gain more benefits. Diversification has two kinds of business models, which is vertical and horizontal diversification. As for a steel company, vertical diversify is use its main business as the core, then extend to other new territories of steel business. A firm, which uses internationalization strategy, has several internal and external factors. The internal factors, which are like domestic market is to small, rise to the labor costs, values of people change, traditional industries move abroad, and lack of lobar power. For external factors is free market economy, change of the business environments. To lower the cost, company has to integrate domestic and abroad advantageous resources. The firm has to advancing its own competitiveness by internationalization. Corporation merge is for the purpose of expanding the organization scale and operation abilities, and to pursue growth of external businesses. By buying target company¡¦s properties, to reach the goal of corporation merges. With the transnational merge can also achieve the internationalization strategy. The integration and re-engineering of working process, is the key task after to take over the management of the merged company. To co-operate with company strategy, review the resources needed during the integration. To plan and design the method of improves working process. And to start the implementation. To review the achievements of the integration and improvement of the working process. Can be judged by key events, which defined by different main manufacturing and managing issues. And with review in each phase, the effective of improvement could be ensured. For every company, every important decision made. Will lurking with several uncontrollable factors. To face with the risks, which are coming from any miss-judgment or fails decisions during the merging process that could ruin the whole merging process. In conclusion and suggestion section, we will discuss more about the best processing model of merging task.