Earticle

Economy of scale would be one of the most important issues among organizations pursuing system integration projects. Cerntainly there are other benefits than cost reduction for achieving system integration. However, these benefits could not be achieved automatically, if system integration projects were undertaken without thoughtful planning. In this paper, we propose a framework for an effective system integration by (1) defining the objects(user interface, database, application, and server) and (2) considering the level of integration(physical integration and rational integration). Therefore, 6 types of integration can be considered. Five case studies of domestic organizaions were reviewed to suggest various issues and solutions. Based on our case studies, we discovered that five integration types - EIP, EAI, ERP, BPM and System Reconsolidation - were most widely used.

Object-oriented paradigm has required the fundamental changes in the developers' practice and orientation. However, the relevant literature has not still provided the solid practical methodology but created some myths regarding Use Case modeling. In this study, we attempt to "demythologize" some key aspects of Use Case Modeling by describing what we have observed in our research and practice. In order to identify the developers' perceptions, the survey methodology was utilized. By discussing the differences between what must be done and what has been done, this study provides rich insights into the better understanding of the Use Case modeling and the successful development of object-oriented systems.

An architectural framework is developed for integrating geospatial and temporal data with relational information from which a spatio-temporal data warehouse (STDW) system is built. In order to implement the STDW, a generic conceptual model was designed that accommodated six dimensions：spatial (map object), temporal (time), agent (contractor), management (e.g. planting) and tree species (specific species) that addressed the “where”, “when”, “who”, “what”, “why” and “how” (5W1H) of the STDW information, respectively. A formal algebraic notation was developed based on a triplet schema that corresponded with spatial, temporal, and relational data type objects. Spatial object structures and spatial operators (spatial selection, spatial projection, and spatial join) were defined and incorporated along with other database operators having interfaces via the generic model.

It is one of the crucial components of electronic logistics systems to manage logistics information of cargos and transportation companies and to mediate appropriate brokerage between them. Due to the advance of e-Commerce technologies many kinds of logistics transactions can be handled by means of EDI or XML/EDI applications, but the brokering processing relies mostly on the traditional processes and the research in this field is still at the initial stage. In this paper we study a logistics brokering system for ships and cargos and describe the design and implementation of the system. We analyze the brokering constraints for logistics of cargos and ships and construct an optimization model for their brokering. We also suggest a brokering procedure and a simple heuristic algorithm with respect to the proposed matching criteria. The experimental result shows that the proposed greedy-based heuristic algorithm performs very well. In its response time the proposed algorithm executed within a couple of seconds independently of the number of cargos and the container capacities of ships. The output of the algorithm is very close to that of the optimal solution, showing higher than 95% of approximation. The proposed system is implemented for the Web environment using JSP and PL/SQL.

Online community as a business model has gotten much attention in online market. And it has been recognized as an increasingly important tool for better understanding and relationships with customers. Thus, There are needs for conducting researches, such as those being performed in social psychology area. Due to the lack of current researches on online community, variables that have been considered in social science and factors in relationship marketing are adopted in this study. The primary purpose of this research is to develop and test a model that explains the process of how sense of online community through relationship quality influences customer loyalty. The major findings of this study are as follows：First, sense of online community was found to have a positive influence on relationship quality. Second, relationship quality was found to have a strong positive effect on customer loyalty. Finally, relationship quality was found to have a mediation effect between the sense of online community and the customer loyalty. Implications of these findings are discussed for researchers and practitioners.

The reason why modern companies adopt cutting-edge technologies aggressively is mainly due to maintain the competitiveness in this cut-throat business environment. One of the most important technology factors to maintain the competitiveness in this modern e-business era is how to adopt and apply information technology(IT). More and more companies are trying to implement their management strategies by applying IT, and therefore it is now important to understand IT strategy. Many of leading-edge companies believe that they need a structured and systematic approach, called ISP (Information Strategy Planning), to secure competitive IT capability, and heavily invest their resources to achieve the excellence in IT. However, eventual effects from those investments are not always proportional since every investment has its own investment parameters and objectives. In this research, we tried to develop a systematic model to verify the relation between the business competitiveness and ISP. First, in order to include the factor "ISP", we modified the models suggested by past research results, and then analyzed the influences from IT investments and quality of ISP on the IT excellence of businesses. To prove the validity of the developed model, several sets of surveys were performed for 66 companies in various industries including electronics, manufacturing, finance, and service. The result of the research has shown that the quality of ISP impacts more on a corporate's business competitiveness, but none on business output.

Many indexing methods were proposed so that process moving object efficiently. Among them, indexing methods like the 3D R-tree treat temporal and spatial domain as the same. Actually, however, both domain had better process separately because of difference in character and unit. Especially in this paper we deal with limited region such as indoor environment since spatial domain is limited but temporal domain is grown. In this paper we present a novel indexing structure, namely STS-tree(Separation of Time and Space tree), based on limited region. STS-tree is a hybrid tree structure which consists of R-tree and one-dimensional TB-tree. The R-tree component indexes static object and spatial information such as topography of the space. The TB-tree component indexes moving object and temporal information.

Nowadays, we have many embedded systems which store and process multimedia data. For multimedia systems using hard disks as storage media such as DVR, existing file systems are not the right choice to store multimedia data in terms of cost, performance and reliability. In this study we designed a reliable file system with very high performance for embedded multimedia applications. The proposed file system runs with quite simple disk layout to reduce time to initialize and to recover after power failures, uses a large data block to speed up the sequential accesses, incorporates a time-based indexing scheme to improve the time-based random accesses and boosts reliability by backing up the important meta data on a small NVRAM. We implemented the file system on a Linux-based DVR and verified the performance by comparing with existing file systems.

It is very important that sellers provide reasonable reserve prices for auction items in internet auction systems. Recently, an agent has been proposed to generate reserve prices automatically based on the case similarity of information retrieval theory and the moving average of time series analysis. However, one problem of the previous approaches is that the recent trend of auction prices is not well reflected on the generated reserve prices, because it simply provides the bid price of the most similar item or an average price of some similar items using the past auction data. In this paper, in order to overcome the problem, we propose a method that generates reserve prices based on the moving average, the exponential smoothing, and the least square of time series analysis. Through performance experiments, we show that the successful bid rate of the new method can be increased by preventing sellers from making unreasonable reserve prices compared with the previous methods.

Recently, location-based service (LBS) is a hot issue in the field of computer applications. So many papers introducing new techniques of implementing a LBS and new application fields of LBS have been published recently. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of them discusses feasibility test in the prior to the implementation. The importance of a feasibility test for a design prior to the implementation cannot be overemphasized. This paper presents a method of feasibility test for a LBS design. Our method performs three steps. At the first step, we build a Petri net model of the LBS system which is depicted in natural language. The second step is to analyse the Petri net to find errors and flaws in the design. We also improve the Petri net model by fixing the errors and flaws in this step. A feasibility test is the third and final step. In this step, we verify if the design satisfies the user's requirement in the senses of quality of service (QoS) and of minimizing the implementation cost. The third step is performed in the manner of mathematical analysis of the Petri net.

The technology acceptance model (TAM) is a lot of cited in information technology adoption and usage researches. TAM has a base in psychological research, is parsimonious, explains usage behavior quite well, and can be operationalized with valid and reliable instruments. But TAM has been conducted primarily in volitional environments of the adoption of new technology. This paper discusses technology acceptance in accounting information systems to examine TAM with subjective norm and perceived behavioral control in mandated using environments. The results show that in mandatory environments such as accounting information systems, subjective norm is not a significant effect on the behavioral intention. Perceived usefulness and perceived behavioral control are significant the factor on the behavioral intention. The implications of finding are that perceived usefulness and perceived behavioral control play major role in technology acceptance rather than subjective norm in accounting information systems with mandatory environments.

This study investigates the decision criteria used in the context of IT investment decision making and empirically analyzes the impact of IT project size and types on the importance of decision criteria. 5 criteria which have been extracted from the previous studies and industry practices are budget, financial benefits, strategic value, risk, and the degree of proposer’s eagerness. Data of 120 IT project proposals have been collected from 5 companies including bank, insurance, and stock trading company. As results of ANOVA test, 7 out of 10 hypothesis have been accepted statistically. That is, the bigger the project size, the higher the evaluation weight of project budget and risk criteria and the lower the weight of proposer’s eagerness. And in case of the infrastructure investment type, the emphasis is placed more on strategic value and risk criteria and less on financial benefit and proposer’s eagerness. These findings provide insights for both IT practitioners and researchers.

Cost overrun or schedule delay of the software development project happens frequently despite that software developers continue to make every effort for the effective management of the projects. Previous researches have ascertained that these problems are ascribed to the uncertainty of projects and the improper management of the projects. The purposes of this research are to investigate the impacts of user participation and task interdependence on the performance of the projects and also to find out the appropriate project management method to improve the project performance. Even though the model fitness of the path model is proved to be very high, the verification of the hypotheses showed a variety of results including the four verifications and the one refutation of the hypotheses as well as the suggestion of one alternative hypothesis. The contribution of this research is that the integration model is proposed and verified, comprising the relationship among the user participation, the task interdependence, and the performance of software development projects. A project manager can utilize the implication of this research for an effective management of software development project.

This paper describes a new algorithm for pixel-based skin color detection to differentiate human form in color images by the ratio of R to H. In order to detect skin color efficiently, we examine the distribution of the R, G and B color elements combining to constitute the skin color in various color images. It shows that R is located in a narrower area than G and B on the RGB color space. And skin color is more related to R than G and B. Meanwhile, when the color image is transformed to the HSI color space, the S is variously changed in accordance with skin colors. The I is changed in accordance with the quantity and angle of light. But the H is less influenced by other conditions except for color. On the basis of the aforementioned study, we propose that the threshold for skin color detection is decided by the ratio of R to H. The proposed method narrows down the range of threshold, detects more skin color and reduces mis-detection of skin color in comparison to detection by R or H. In experimentation, it shows that the proposed algorithm overcomes changes of brightness and color to detect skin color in color images.

This study explores a model of partnership to the success of outsourcing CTI(computer telephony integration) based customer service centers of a telecommunication service company. The motivation of the study is to extend the research on IT outsourcing to IT-enabled BPO of customer service centers as a specific IT outsourcing practice. Previous research on IT outsourcing partnership and success is reviewed for developing an a research model of IT-enabled BPO. This model is proposed based on the previous partnership success models in information systems research. The results of the study confirm major factors related to successful IT-enabled BPO in previous research. Especially, the specificity of a contract and strategic collaboration in partnership are found to be influential on the success of IT-enabled BPO.