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The contents of the latest issue of:
International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach
(IJITSA)
Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association
Volume 4, Issue 1, January-June 2011
Published: Semi-Annual in Print and Electronically
ISSN: 1935-570X EISSN: 1935-5718
Published by IGI Publishing, Hershey-New York, USA
www.igi-global.com/ijitsa
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Editors-in-Chief:
Frank Stowell (Ed.) (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Manuel Mora (Ed.) (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México)

EDITORIAL PREFACE

Frank Stowell, Editor-in-Chief of IJITSA, University of Portsmouth, England
Manuel Mora, Operational Editor-in-Chief of IJITSA, Autonomous University
of Aguascalientes, México

This special issue on Service-oriented Software Engineering: Foundations,
Architectures, SDLCs and  Innovative Applications, is led by Professor
Annette Lerine Steenkamp, Lawrence Technological University, USA, and
Professor Carina Gonzalez, Universidad de la Laguna, Spain, as guest
editors. This issue includes two invited papers from Senior Researchers in
the areas of ITSM and SOA, and four regular double-blind peer-reviewed
papers. We are grateful to our colleagues Professor Steenkamp and
Professor Gonzalez for their academic effort for developing this special
issue on such a relevant topic, and helping to build a premier journal
which is focused on strengthening the research activities in Information
Systems discipline through the methodological lenses of the Systems
Approach.

To read the preface, please consult this issue of IJITSA in your library
or click here.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=47712

GUEST EDITORIAL PREFACE

Annette Lerine Steenkamp, Lawrence Technological University, USA
Carina Gonzalez, Universidad de la Laguna, Spain

To read the guest editorial preface, please consult this issue of IJITSA
in your library or click here.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=47712

PAPER ONE

Software Development Life Cycles and Methodologies: Fixing the Old and
Adopting the New

Sue Conger (University of Dallas, USA)

Information Systems as a discipline has generated thousands of research
papers, yet the practice still suffers from poor-quality applications.
This paper evaluates the current state of application development, finding
practice wanting in a number of areas. Changes recommended to fix
historical shortcomings include improved management attention to risk
management, testing, and detailed work practices. In addition, for
industry’s move to services orientation, recommended changes include
development of usable interfaces and a view of applications as embedded in
the larger business services in which they function. These business
services relate to both services provided to parent-organization customers
as well as services provided by the information technology organization to
its constituents. Because of this shift toward service orientation, more
emphasis on usability, applications, testing, and improvement of
underlying process quality are needed. The shift to services can be
facilitated by adopting tenets of IT service management and user-centered
design and by attending to service delivery during application
development.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51365

PAPER TWO

Model-Driven Engineering of Composite Service Oriented Applications

Bill Karakostas (City University London, UK)
Yannis Zorgios (CLMS Ltd., UK)

Composite applications integrate web services with other business
applications and components to implement business processes. Model-driven
approaches tackle the complexity of composite applications caused by
domain and technology heterogeneity and integration requirements. The
method and framework described in this paper generate all artefacts
(workflow, data, user interfaces, etc.), required for a composite
application from high level service oriented descriptions of the composite
application, using model transformation and code generation techniques.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51366

PAPER THREE

An Open and Service-Oriented Architecture to Support the Automation of
Learning Scenarios

Ângels Rius (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Francesc Santanach (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Jordi Conesa (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Magí Almirall (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Elena García-Barriocanal (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain)

The specifications of automated learning scenarios can lead to advantages
for virtual learning environments and important benefits for
organizations, although research in this e-learning area has not addressed
this issue. To achieve this goal, one requirement is to have an
infrastructure able to support the execution of specifications of learning
scenarios. This paper presents an open service-oriented architecture based
on the Open Services Interface Definition (OSID) specifications proposed
by the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) and other normative specifications.
The architecture is used as a technological infrastructure in a virtual
learning environment with more than 40,000 students enrolled and has been
tested as the infrastructure of a tool to automate specifications of
learning scenarios. A case study has been used to test the suitability of
the architecture and describe such a tool for the future.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51367

PAPER FOUR

Analysis of Click Stream Patterns using Soft Biclustering Approaches

P. Banu (Narasu’s Sarathy Institute of Technology, India)
H. Inbarani (Periyar University, India)

As websites increase in complexity, locating needed information becomes a
difficult task. Such difficulty is often related to the websites’ design
but also ineffective and inefficient navigation processes. Research in web
mining addresses this problem by applying techniques from data mining and
machine learning to web data and documents. In this study, the authors
examine web usage mining, applying data mining techniques to web server
logs. Web usage mining has gained much attention as a potential approach
to fulfill the requirement of web personalization. In this paper, the
authors propose K-means biclustering, rough biclustering and fuzzy
biclustering approaches to disclose the duality between users and pages by
grouping them in both dimensions simultaneously. The simultaneous
clustering of users and pages discovers biclusters that correspond to
groups of users that exhibit highly correlated ratings on groups of pages.
The results indicate that the fuzzy C-means biclustering algorithm best
and is able to detect partial matching of preferences.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51368

PAPER FIVE

Business Innovation and Service Oriented Architecture: An Empirical
Investigation

Bendik Bygstad (Norwegian School of Information Technology, Norway)
Tor-Morten Grønli (Norwegian School of Information Technology, Norway)
Helge Bergh (Norwegian ASA, Norway)
Gheorghita Ghinea (Brunel University, UK)

Recent research suggests that a strong link exists between business
innovation and service oriented IT architectures: modern IT architecture
enables business to quickly create new services. However, the relationship
between IT capabilities and business performance is not always
straightforward. How does SOA support fast innovation in practice, and
under which conditions is it effective? In this paper, the authors
investigate these issues and ask: How can a SOA architecture like the
Enterprise Service Bus support business innovation? This paper
investigates this question through a case study at an airline company.
Analyzing the relationship between innovation and IT architecture in the
company over time, the authors offer the following conclusion: ESB gives
strong support to business innovation, under two conditions. First, the
implementation of ESB has to be comprehensive, that is, it should include
the core processes of the business. Second, the top management (and
partners) need to understand the principles of ESB.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51369

PAPER SIX

A Service Oriented Architecture for Coordination in Collaborative
Environments

Beatriz Valverde (University of Granada, Spain)
Miguel Román (University of Granada, Spain)
Francisco Vela (University of Granada, Spain)
Patricia Rodríguez (University of Granada, Spain)

An important feature in collaborative environment is coordination, defined
as the act of managing interdependencies between activities performed to
achieve a goal. These interdependencies can be the result of loosely
integrated collaborative activities (the use of coordination processes
within the collaboration activities is not required) or tightly integrated
collaborative activities (sophisticated coordination mechanisms are
necessary). The existence of both activities along with the dynamic nature
of these environments adds a greater complexity to the coordination that
has not been taken into account in traditional collaborative systems. In
this work, the authors present a partially Services Oriented Architecture
(SOA) that defines and maintains dynamic coordination polities in
collaborative systems based on coordination models.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Article.aspx?TitleId=51370

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For full copies of the above articles, check for this issue of the
International Journal of Information Technologies and the Systems Approach
(IJITSA) in your institution's library. This journal is also included in
the IGI Global aggregated “InfoSci-Journals” database: 
http://www.igi-global.com/EResources/InfoSciJournals.aspx
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CALL FOR PAPERS

Mission of IJITSA:

The International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach
(IJITSA) is an academic and practitioner journal created to disseminate
and discuss high quality research results on information systems and
related upper and lower level systems as well as on its interactions with
software engineering, systems engineering, complex systems and philosophy
of systems sciences issues, through rigorous theoretical, modeling,
engineering or behavioral studies in order to explore, describe, explain,
predict, design, control, evaluate, interpret, intervene and/or develop
organizational systems where information systems are the main objects of
study and the systems approach – any variant –is the main research method
and philosophical stance used.

Coverage of IJITSA:

Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to)
the following:

Applied cases of the systems approach in CS area
Applied cases of the systems approach in IS area
Applied cases of the systems approach in SE area
Applied cases of the systems approach in SwE area
Conceptual analysis of existent research methods based in the systems
approach
Curriculum design for systems science
Design or enhancement of research methods based in the systems approach
Design, building and evaluation of components, subsystems, systems, or
systems of systems by using system methodologies/process related with IS,
SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of systemic engineering
frameworks/taxonomies for IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of systemic management
frameworks/taxonomies for IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of engineering standards and best
practices based in the systems approach applied in the solving,
dissolving, or resolving of real or theoretical systems of problems for
IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation or application of management standards and best
practices based in the systems approach applied in the solving,
dissolving, or resolving of real or theoretical systems of problems for
IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of systemic engineering
methodologies/process for IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of systemic engineering models for IS,
SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation, or application of systemic management
methodologies/process for IS, SE, SwE, or CS areas
Design, evaluation ,or application of systemic management models for IS,
SE, SwE, or CS areas
Didactical cases on the teaching of the systems approach
Evaluation or critique of research methods based in the systems approach
Formulation of systemic engineering-oriented constructs for IS, SE, SwE,
or CS areas
Formulation of systemic management -oriented constructs for IS, SE, SwE,
or CS areas
Frameworks, models and constructs for efficiency, efficacy, effectiveness,
ethical and aesthetical system measures
Integration of hard and soft systems methods
Integration of hard, soft, and critical methods
Integration of hard, soft, critical and realist methods
Integration of soft and critical methods
Philosophical studies of systems science research frameworks and paradigms
Philosophical studies of complex systems research frameworks and paradigms
based in the systems approach
Philosophical studies of interdisciplinary research for IS, SE, SwE, or CS
areas
Philosophical studies of IS research frameworks and paradigms based in the
systems approach
Philosophical studies of SE research frameworks and paradigms based in the
systems approach
Philosophical studies of SwE research frameworks and paradigms based in
the systems approach
Project management for the design of components, subsystems, systems, or
systems of systems by using system methodologies/process related with IS,
SE, SwE, or CS areas
Taxonomies of systems
Taxonomies of types of information systems based in the systems approach

Topics expected to be integrated or discussed under the perspective of the
systems approach with the long-term aim of obtaining a unified view of
information systems.

As the systems approach is an interdisciplinary one, the diverse research
methods are considered: conceptual, formal mathematical, systems
simulation (discrete, multi-agent, or hybrid), systems dynamics, soft
systems, action research, critical systems, and multi-methodology.

Interested authors should consult the journal's manuscript submission
guidelines at www.igi-global.com/ijitsa.

All inquiries and submissions should be sent to:
Editor-in-Chief: Frank Stowell at frank.stowell@port.ac.uk and Manuel Mora
at ijitsa@gmail.com
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