Intelligent Multimedia Processing with Soft Computing : 9783540230533

The past years have witnessed a large number of interesting applications of various soft computing techniques, such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, and evolutionary computation, to intelligent multimedia processing. This carefully edited monograph presents novel applications of soft computing in multimedia processing. It includes contributions by leading experts in their fields addressing important and timely problems in multimedia computing such as content analysis, indexing and retrieval, recognition and compression, or processing and filtering. This book is aimed at researchers, graduate students, and industrial practitioners in the broad areas of multimedia and soft computing.

Revolutionary computation, fuzzy logic, and probabilistic reasoning. As opposed to conventional "hard" computing, these techniques tolerate imprecision and uncertainty, similar to human beings. In the recent years, successful applications of these powerful methods have been published in many disciplines in numerous journals, conferences, as well as the excellent books in this book series on Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing.

This volume is dedicated to recent novel applications of soft computing in multimedia processing. The book is composed of 21 chapters written by experts in their respective fields, addressing various important and timely problems in multimedia computing such as content analysis, indexing and retrieval, recognition and compression, processing and filtering, etc.

In the chapter authored by Guan, Muneesawang, Lay, Amin, and Lee, a radial basis function network with Laplacian mixture model is employed to perform image and video retrieval. D. Androutsos, P. Androutsos, Plataniotis, and Venetsanopoulos investigate color image indexing and retrieval within a small-world framework. Wu and Yap develop a framework of fuzzy relevance feedback to model the uncertainty of users' subjective perception in image retrieval.

Incorporating probabilistic support vector machine and active learning, Chua and Feng present a bootstrapping framework for annotating the semantic concepts of large collections of images. Naphade and Smith expose the challenges of using a support vector machine framework to map low-level media features to high-level semantic concepts for the TREC 2002 benchmark corpus. Song, Lin, and Sun present a cross-modality autonomous learning scheme to build visual semantic models from video sequences or images obtained from the Internet. Xiong, Radhakrishnan, Divakaran, and Huang summarize and compare two of their recent frameworks based on hidden Markov model and Gaussian mixture model for detecting and recognizing "highlight" events in sports videos.

Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining: Proceedings of the International IIS: IIPWM´05 Conference held in Gdansk, Poland, June 13-16, 2005 : 9783540250562

This edited book contains articles accepted for presentation during the conference "Intelligent Information Systems 2005 (IIS 2005) - New Trends in Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining" held in Gdansk, Poland, on June 13-16, 2005. Special attention is devoted to the newest developments in the areas of Artificial Immune Systems, Search engines, Computational Linguistics and Knowledge Discovery. The focus of this book is also on new computing paradigms including biologically motivated methods, quantum computing, DNA computing, advanced data analysis, new machine learning paradigms, reasoning technologies, natural language processing and new optimization techniques.

The international conference Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining IIS:IIPWM’05, organized in Gdańsk-Sobieszewo on 13–16th June, 2005, was a continuation of a long tradition of conferences on applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Information Systems (IS), organized by the Institute of Computer Science of Polish Academy of Sciences in cooperation with other scientific and business institutions.

The Institute itself is deeply engaged in research both in AI and IS and many scientists view it as a leading institution both in fundamental and applied research in these areas in Poland. The originators of this conference series, Prof. M. Dąbrowski and Dr. M. Michalewicz had in 1992 a long-term goal of bringing together scientists and industry of different braches from Poland and abroad to achieve a creative synthesis. One can say that their dream has come to reality. Scientists from five continents made their submissions to this conference. A brief look at the affiliations makes international cooperation visible. The research papers have either a motivation in concrete applications or are off-springs of some practical requests. This volume presents the best papers carefully chosen from a large set of submissions (about 45%). At this point we would like to express our thanks to the members of Programme Committee for their excellent job. Also we are thankful to the organizers of the special sessions accompanying this conference: Jan Komorowski, Adam Przepiórkowski, Zbigniew W. Raś, Henryk Rybiński, Roman Świniarski, Alicja Wakulicz-Deja. But first of all we are deeply indebted the contributors to this volume and those whose papers were not qualified for publication for their hard research work that made this conference such an exciting event.

Intelligent Information Integration for the Semantic Web (Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence) : 9783540229933

The Semantic Web offers new options for information processes. Dr. Visser is
dealing with two core issues in this area: the integration of data on the semantic
level and the problem of spatio-temporal representation and reasoning. He
tackles existing research problems within the field of geographic information
systems (GIS), the solutions of which are essential for an improved functionality
of applications that make use of the Semantic Web (e.g., for heterogeneous
digital maps). In addition, they are of fundamental significance for information
sciences as such.

In an introductory overview of this field of research, he motivates the necessity
for formal metadata for unstructured information in the World Wide
Web. Without metadata, an efficient search on a semantic level will turn out
to be impossible, above all if it is not only applied to a terminological level
but also to spatial-temporal knowledge. In this context, the task of information
integration is divided into syntactic, structural, and semantic integration,
the last class by far the most difficult, above all with respect to contextual
semantic heterogeneities.

A current overview of the state of the art in the field of information integration
follows. Emphasis is put particularly on the representation of spatial
and temporal aspects including the corresponding inference mechanisms, and
also the special requirements on the Open GIS Consortium.

Intelligent Enterprises of the 21st Century : 9781591402695

The purpose of this book is to bring together some high quality expository discussions from experts in this field to identify, define, and explore the subject matters closely related to the intelligent enterprises.

Intelligent enterprises are where knowledge management and other business intelligence solutions provide in-depth analytical capabilities needed to turn raw data into actionable knowledge for an enterprise. In an intelligent enterprise, various information systems are integrated with knowledge gathering and analyzing tools for data analysis and dynamic end-user querying from a variety of enterprise data sources. These solutions enable an enterprise to improve customer service and partner relationships and to create marketable knowledge products from a firm's own internal data. Creating intelligent enterprises will not be an easy exercise as organizations will have to overcome tremendous hurdles in bringing disparate data sources into a cohesive data warehouse or knowledge management system.

The purpose of this book is to bring together some high quality expository discussions from experts in this field to identify, define, and explore the subject matters closely related to the intelligent enterprises. It will include the methodologies, systems, and approaches needed to create and manage intelligent enterprises of the 21st century. For the first time, it will bring all these concepts, tools, and techniques into one volume so that the reader can comprehend the requirements to create an intelligent enterprise.

Intelligent Document Retrieval: Exploiting Markup Structure : 9781402037672

Collections of digital documents can nowadays be found everywhere in institutions, universities or companies. Examples are Web sites or intranets. But searching them for information can still be painful. Searches often return either large numbers of matches or no suitable matches at all. Such document collections can vary a lot in size and how much structure they carry. What they have in common is that they typically do have some structure and that they cover a limited range of topics. The second point is significantly different from documents on the Web in general. The type of search system that we propose in this book can suggest ways of refining or relaxing the query to assist a user in the search process. In order to suggest sensible query modifications we would need to know what the documents are about. Explicit knowledge about the document collection encoded in some electronic form is what we need. However, typically such knowledge is not available. This book describes how that knowledge can be contructed automatically. This book demonstrates how document markup structure can be used to construct domain models for collections of partially structured documents shows how such knowledge can be utilized when searching the document collections presents two implemented search systems which demonstrate the usefulness of this approach.

We are witnessing a massive growth of electronic natural language resources. Most noticeable is the development of the Web, with online newspapers, product catalogues, data archives etc. Millions of users access the Web or other electronic document collections every day. In this book we look at a single aspect of this rather complex area: How can we help a user to navigate a document collection easily, and how can we assist a user who wants to search a collection for documents that satisfy some information need?

We will not look at general Web search, but instead we will concentrate on smaller collections such asWeb sites or collections of classified advertisements. They represent much narrower domains unlike the broad coverage of the Web. One reason for considering this area a worthwhile research issue is the fact that searches in document collections often return either large numbers of matches or no suitable matches at all. We acknowledge that Web search algorithms have matured significantly over the past few years and that a search request submitted to Google1 typically returns excellent matches for a user query. Nevertheless, this is not always the case if the collection is only a fraction the size of the Web and the documents cover a much smaller range of topics. Such collections are very common in institutions, universities or companies.

Intelligent Databases: Technologies and Applications : 9781599041209

Computer-based information technologies have been extensively used to help many organizations, private companies, and academic and education institutions manage their processes and information systems hereby become their nervous center. Information systems are used to manage data. The explosion of massive data sets created by businesses, science and governments necessitates intelligent and more powerful computing paradigms so that users can benefit from this data. This information needs to be summarized and synthesized to support effective problem solving and decision making. Various techniques have been proposed for intelligent data processing and analysis in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Machine learning, for example, would implement various forms of learning, in particular mechanisms capable of inducing knowledge from examples or data.

Databases are designed to support the data storage, processing, and retrieval activities related to data management in information systems. Database management systems provide efficient task support and tremendous gain in productivity is hereby accomplished using these technologies. Database systems are the key to implementing data management. Data management requires database technique support. Database technology is typically application-oriented. With advances and in-deep applications of computer technologies, in particular, the extensive applications of Web technology in various areas, databases have become the repositories of large volumes of data. It is very critical to manage and use the worth data resource for effective problem solving and decision making. The research and development of intelligent databases are hereby emerging as a new discipline and are receiving increasing attention. The knowledge discovery in databases and data mining has witnessed it.

Intelligent Data Mining: Techniques and Applications (Studies in Computational Intelligence) : 9783540262565

"Intelligent Data Mining – Techniques and Applications" is an organized edited collection of contributed chapters covering basic knowledge for intelligent systems and data mining, applications in economic and management, industrial engineering and other related industrial applications. The main objective of this book is to gather a number of peer-reviewed high quality contributions in the relevant topic areas. The focus is especially on those chapters that provide theoretical/analytical solutions to the problems of real interest in intelligent techniques possibly combined with other traditional tools, for data mining and the corresponding applications to engineers and managers of different industrial sectors. Academic and applied researchers and research students working on data mining can also directly benefit from this book.

In today’s information-driven economy, companies may benefit a lot from suitable information management. Although information management is not just a technology-based concept rather a business practice in general, the possible and even indispensable support of IT-tools in this context is obvious. Because of the large data repositories many firms maintain nowadays, an important role is played by data mining techniques that find hidden, non-trivial, and potentially useful information from massive data sources. The discovered knowledge can then be further processed in desired forms to support business and scientific decision making.

Data mining (DM) is also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases Following a formal definition by W. Frawley, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro and C. Matheus (in AI Magazine, Fall 1992, pp. 213–228), DM has been defined as “The nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data.” It uses machine learning, statistical and visualization techniques to discover and present knowledge in a form that is easily comprehensible to humans. Since the middle of 1990s, DM has been developed as one of the hot research topics within computer sciences, AI and other related fields. More and more industrial applications of DM have been recently realized in today’s IT time.

Intelligent Bioinformatics: The Application of Artificial Intelligence Techniques to Bioinformatics Problems : 9780470021750

Bioinformatics is contributing to some of the most important advances in medicine and biology. At the forefront of this exciting new subject are techniques known as artificial intelligence which are inspired by the way in which nature solves the problems it faces. This book provides a unique insight into the complex problems of bioinformatics and the innovative solutions which make up intelligent bioinformatics Intelligent Bioinformatics requires only rudimentary knowledge of biology, bioinformatics or computer science and is aimed at interested readers regardless of discipline. Three introductory chapters on biology, bioinformatics and the complexities of search and optimisation equip the reader with the necessary knowledge to proceed through the remaining eight chapters, each of which is dedicated to an intelligent technique in bioinformatics. The book also contains many links to software and information available on the internet, in academic journals and beyond, making it an indispensable reference for the 'intelligent bioinformatician'. Intelligent Bioinformaticswill appeal to all postgraduate students and researchers in bioinformatics and genomics as well as to computer scientists interested in these disciplines, and all natural scientists with large data sets to analyse.

Bioinformatics, the cross-disciplinary union of computer science and biology, is contributing to some of the most important advances in medicine and biology. At the forefront of this exciting new subject are techniques known as artificial intelligence which are inspired by the way in which nature - from genes and cells to organisms including human beings - solves the problems it faces. This book provides a unique insight into the complex problems of bioinformatics and the innovative solutions which make up 'intelligent Bioinformatics'.

The book requires only rudimentary knowledge of biology, bioinformatics or computer science and is aimed at interested readers regardless of discipline. Three introductory chapters on biology, bioinformatics and the complexities of search and optimization equip the reader with the necessary knowledge to proceed through the remaining eight chapters, each of  which is dedicated to an intelligent technique in bioinformatics. Each of these self-contained chapters contains a detailed description of the technique, application guidelines, and a history of the technique along with the latest application to problems in bioinformatics. The book also contains many links to software and information available on the internet, in academic journals and beyond, making it an indispensable reference for the intelligent bioinformatician.

The book will appeal to all postgraduate students and researchers in bioinformatics and genomics as well as to computer scientists interested in these disciplines, and all natural scientists with large data sets to analyze.

Intelligent Assistant Systems: Concepts, Techniques and Technologies : 9781591408789

Information is becoming the raw material of modern society. That “difference that makes a difference” (Bateson, 1979) is the driving force of modern service industry. Our information spaces have been technologized and their size as well as their complexity increased. Access to information spaces and the capability to use them effectively and efficiently has become a key economical success factor. An information dilemma has been diagnosed (Kuhlen, 1999). The alternatives are (1) to search the information spaces oneself and spend an increasing amount of time for satisfying one’s information needs; and (2) to delegate the searching task to an information assistant the performance of which is time-consuming to control and the effectiveness of which is hard to assess. The first choice dominates currently. However, using such an information assistant must be the ultimate goal, as one cannot reasonably expect that technologization will stop or even be undone. In fact technologizing of the world has a long history. It is inextricably connected with technologizing the word, (Ong, 1996, p. 101), as “(s)poken words are always modifications of a total situation which is more than verbal. They never occur alone, in a context simply of words.” Technologization has significantly restructured human consciousness Ong (1996). What we are witnessing right now should be understood as the latest step in the process of technologizing the word. That process began with the invention of script (about 3200-3100 BCE), and was followed by the invention of letters (about 1500 BCE), and print (1540 CE) (Ifrah, 2000, pp. 3-25).1 The latest step is the automation of uttering and understanding words and text in which we here include calculation and computation. This sums up the capability of verbally controlling processes of all kinds. Enzensberger (1970) reports the analogy that El Lissitsky drew in 1923 between language use and modes of transportation and, in particular, vehicles. He related articulated language to upright gait; writing to the wheel; and the printing press to animal powered carts. El Lissitzky did not suggest analogies in language use for automobiles and airplanes. One is tempted to suggest that computers correspond to automobiles, and the Web to airplanes. Would it be venturing too far to relate intelligent assistants to space crafts?

Intelligent Agents for Data Mining and Information Retrieval : 9781591401940

There is a large increase in the amount of information available on the World Wide Web and also in the number of online databases. This information abundance increases the complexity of locating relevant information. Such complexity drives the need for improved and intelligent systems for search and information retrieval. Intelligent Agents are currently used to improve the search and retrieval information on the World Wide Web. The use of existing search and retrieval engines with the addition of intelligent agents allows a more comprehensive search with a performance that can be measured. Intelligent Agents for Data Mining and Information Retrieval discusses the foundation as well as the practical side of intelligent agents and their theory and applications for web data mining and information retrieval. The book can be used for researchers at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels as well as a reference of the state-of-the-art for cutting edge researchers.

About the Editor

Masoud Mohammadian is a member of over 30 international conferences and he has chaired several international conferences in computational intelligence and intelligent agents. He is currently a senior lecturer at the school of computing at the University of Canberra in Australia. He is currently the vice chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) ACT section.

Intelligence in Communication Systems: IFIP International Conference on Intelligence in Communication Systems, INTELLCOMM 2005, Montreal, Canada, October : 9780387291215

Communication systems are now ubiquitous and making them more intelligent remains very challenging.  The IFIP International Conference on Intelligence in Communication Systems is an effort to bring together researchers and practitioners who represent the latest developments in this area.  This volume contains selected papers from the conference in the following focus areas: ad hoc networks / hybrid networks / WLAN; security, privacy and consumer protection; adaptive architectures and protocols; flexible QoS and QoS management; flexible service specification, validation, searching and querying; service composition and Web services; personal, terminal and node mobility; programmable and active networks.

Any of the research areas mentioned above include a plethora of topics. Ad hoc networks, programmable and active networks, adaptive protocols are among the topics which make the adaptable networks research area. Semantic Web is also very rich as research area. It includes knowledge representation languages, tools and methodologies; ontologies; semantic brokering; large scale knowledge management; and semantic interoperability.

Intellectual Property Rights in a Networked World: Theory and Practice : 9781591405764

Intellectual Property Rights in a Networked World is a collection of recent essays offering fresh perspectives on the scope and future of intellectual property rights. The tripartite division of the book is designed to make this inter-disciplinary topic more accessible and intelligible to readers of diverse backgrounds. Part I consists of a single essay that provides a broad overview of the main themes in intellectual property scholarship, such as normative intellectual property theory and the legal infrastructure for property protection. The second section of the book presents several essays that are intended to deepen the reader's understanding of intellectual property theory and show how it can help us to grapple with the proper allocation of property rights in cyberspace. And the final section further develops the themes in Part II but in greater detail and with a more practical orientation. While intellectual property rights create dynamic incentive effects, they also entail social costs, and they are sometimes in tension with the development of a robust public domain.

About the Author
Dr. Richard A. Spinello is an Associate Research Professor in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College where he teaches courses on information technology ethics, social issues in management, and corporate strategy. Prior to joining the faculty Dr. Herman T. Tavani is Chair of the Philosophy Department and Director of the Liberal Studies Program at Rivier College, Nashua, NH. He is Co-Executive Director of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT) and Secretary/T

Intellectual Capital for Communities: Nations, Regions, and Cities : 9780750677738

"a welcome and timely overview of a new and vibrant Intellectual Capital frontier. The chapters are fresh and topical. This is required reading!"
Karl-Erik Sveiby, Professor at Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland

"Bounfour and Edvinsson's extension of the burgeoning intellectual capital literature to communities/regions/nations is timely and very rewarding."
Baruch Lev, Philip Bardes Professor of Accounting and Finance, New York University

"In the 20th century, industrial society achieved remarkable growth through the dissemination of an integrated circuit, abbreviated to IC in every corner of industry. This book suggests that the knowledge-based society in the 21st century will be enriched through the spread of another IC, that is, intellectual capital in every corner of the society."
Teruyasu Murakami, Chief Counselor, Nomura Research Institute

"gives rise to invaluable new insights."
Dominique Guellec, Chief Economist, European Patent Office

"...This book offers a timely and comprehensive perspective on what it takes to accumulate and use intellectual capital, from the nation level down to local communities, primary sites for knowledge-based growth and development".
Carl J. Dahlman, Program Manager, Knowledge for Development, World Bank
Institute

"This book extends the analysis and underlines the crucial importance of intellectual capital in our economies at all levels, highlighting information and measurement challenges that have to be overcome."
Graham Vickery, Head Information Economy Group, OECD

In Intellectual Capital for Communities, Editors Ahmed Bounfour and Leif Edvinsson have brought together the best minds in intellectual capital throughout the world to focus on a new and fertile area of research: measuring and managing the intellectual capital of communities. This is a creative and cutting-edge area of research that has the potential to change how public sector planning and development is done. Once there is a clear way to identify where wealth is created in a given nation, region, or city, this process has the potential to reveal a huge knowledge repository in the public sector with a significant, but idle, potential for collective wealth creationthe wealth of nations in waiting.

Ahmed Bounfour is Associate Professor, University de Marne La Vallée, France, and can be reached at a.bounfour@wanadoo.fr.
Leif Edvinsson is the World's First Holder of Professorship of Intellectual Capital, University of Lund, Sweden.

Intel Integrated Performance Primitives: How to Optimize Software Applications Using Intel IPP : 9780971786134

Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP) is a software library for application developers that increases performance from Intel's latest microprocessors while providing time-to-market advantages and reducing the cost of development. Intel IPP provides access to advanced processor features without having to write processor-specific code.

Introducing the basics of Intel IPP, this book explores the range of possible applications, from audio processing to graphics and video. Extensive examples written in C++ illustrate ways to solve common imaging, audio/video, and graphics problems.

Inside you will learn how to:

• Become proficient using the Intel IPP library and application programming interface


• Apply Intel IPP to improve performance and speed development of your applications


• Use Intel IPP to solve common application problems

The accompanying CD-ROM includes all code examples presented in the book and an evaluation version of the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives.

Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems VI : 9781402079009

The development and integration of integrity and internal control mechanisms into information system infrastructures is a challenge for researchers, IT personnel and auditors. Since its beginning in 1997, the IICIS international working conference has focused on the following questions:

• what precisely do business managers need in order to have confidence in the integrity of their information systems and their data and what are the challenges IT industry is facing in ensuring this integrity;


• what are the status and directions of research and development in the area of integrity and internal control;


• where are the gaps between business needs on the one hand and research / development on the other; what needs to be done to bridge these gaps.

This sixth volume in the series "Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems" is a state-of-the-art collection of papers in the area of integrity within information systems and the relationship between integrity in information systems and the overall internal control systems that are established in organizations to support corporate governance codes.

Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems VI represents a continuation of the dialogue between information security specialists, internal control specialists and the business community. The objectives of this dialogue are: To present methods and techniques that will help business achieve the desired level of integrity in information systems and data; To present the results of research that may in future be used to increase the level of integrity or help management maintain the desired level of integrity; To investigate the shortcomings in the technologies presently in use, shortcomings that require attention in order to protect the integrity of systems in general. The book contains a collection of papers from the Sixth International Working Conference on Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems (IICIS), sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Lausanne, Switzerland in November 2003. It will be essential reading for academics and practitioners in computer science, information technology, business informatics, accountancy and IT-auditing.

About the Author
Dr. Sushil Jajodia is Professor and Chairman of the Dept. of Information and Software Engineering, and Director of the Center for Secure Information Systems at the George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Integration of ICT in Smart Organizations : 9781591403906

The production and service of the 21st century is based on distributed or networked organizations. The denomination of these organizations can be different (extended-, virtual-, smart-organization, etc.), but there are some main important common characteristics. In this type of organizations, flexible, independent organizational and production units are working together, reacting in an intelligent way to the challenges and uncertainty of the environment while using some type of communication network (wired or wireless). In case of the so-called “smart organizations,” the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT), knowledge and organizational networks form the background of operation.

As the base of networked organizations is the interdependent, separate production and service teams and units, the cooperation and collaboration among them is of vital importance. The structure, the communication systems, and the collaborating people, teams, and organizations that define today’s organizations characteristics must be harmonized to accomplish complex, demanding tasks. The collaboration means contacts among users, so human beings have outstanding importance in the operation.

According to experience, the improper application of this human factor can make the operation very inefficient, even in the case of the technically most advanced systems. The lowest level of connection among systems is made through protocols; the highest contact level is among the decision-makers, the human connections. A very important element of this human contact is the trust. In a smart organization, trust is the flavor, the medium in which players are moving. Only trust can bridge the cultural, geographical, and organizational distances of humans (and even of firms) avoiding problematic situations.

About the Author
Istvan Mezgar is a senior researcher at the Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary, and an associate professor at the Department of Production Informatics, Management and Control, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary. He holds a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Budapest. He is a member of the editorial board of numerous international journals, has more then 130 scientific publications at international forums. His current interests focus on smart organizations, communication networks and their security, trust building and smart card technology.

Integrating Service Level Agreements: Optimizing Your OSS for SLA Delivery : 9780471210122

Uncover a revolutionary approach to SLAs that will help you gain a competitive advantage in the field

The use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will soon become the prevailing business model for delivering a large number of products and services. SLAs offer service providers the ability to distinguish themselves from the competition in today’s volatile market while providing a measure of security for their clients. Following an innovative approach, this book will clearly show you how to implement SLAs as part of an operation support solution (OSS). The authors address the issues you should know about and show you how to integrate data from applications available at all layers of the telecommunications management network (TMN) model. By combining network management, service management, field service activities, entitlement, and rating with dynamic workflow automation and leading-edge collaboration capabilities, the authors’ revolutionary approach provides you with a complete view of the SLA environment. This hands-on guide will also help you take full advantage of current community collaboration, data interface, process automation, and Internet-based distribution and reporting technologies when developing an SLA delivery strategy.

Covering everything you need to know about drafting and utilizing SLAs, Lee and Ben-Natan include discussions on:

• The roles, objectives, and life cycle of SLAs


• The complexities in the SLA environment


• Lessons learned from the CLEC telecom bubble


• SLAs in a customer-centric approach


• Business-level SLAs as well as device-level SLAs


• The integrated SLA (ISLA) model


• Integration techniques


• Organizational issues, including the various management layers


• Operational processes, workflows, notifications, and alerts


• Metrics and performance reporting


• Notification, mobile computing, and wireless access

About the Author
JOHN J. LEE is Vice President of Strategy and Business Solutions at ViryaNet, a company that provides wireless workforce solutions. He is an expert in the development of operation and business support systems and a frequent contributor to industry publications.
RON BEN-NATAN is CTO at ViryaNet and has been building distributed systems and applications at companies like Intel, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, and AT&T Bell Labs for the past twenty years. He has authored several successful books on distributed systems and the application of advanced technologies in business environments.

Integrating Security and Software Engineering: Advances and Future Vision : 9781599041476

Protecting valuable assets from intentional harm has been a focus of human activity from time immemorial. The proliferation of computers in society has meant that many business and mission critical assets are increasingly stored and manipulated by computer-based systems. The scale of misuse of these assets has also increased, because of their worldwide accessibility through the Internet and the automation of systems.

Security is concerned with the prevention of such misuse. While no system can be made completely secure, understanding the context in which a system will be deployed and used, the risks and threats of its misuse, and the systematic development of its software, are increasingly recognized as critical to its success. The cross-fertilization of systems development techniques from software engineering and security engineering offers opportunities to minimise duplication of research efforts in both areas, and, more importantly, to bridge gaps in our knowledge of how to develop secure software-intensive systems.

This book provides one of the first attempts to collect research work that draws upon software engineering to develop such systems more effectively. Contributions to this volume draw upon research and techniques from a range of software engineering activities, such as requirements engineering and specification, software patterns and design, and method and process-driven development.

An important secondary role of this book is to reach out and appeal to the traditional security engineering community to engage with — even guide — the software engineering community, in order to focus software engineering research on key issues of secure software systems development. If successful, these collected works may well provide the foundations for some seminal work in this area.

Integrating Linux and Windows : 9780130306708

The complete solutions guide for every Linux/Windows system administrator!
This complete Linux/Windows integration guide offers detailed coverage of dualboot
issues, data compatibility, and networking. It also handles topics such as
implementing Samba file/print services for Windows workstations and providing
cross-platform database access. Running Linux and Windows in the same
environment? Here's the comprehensive, up-to-the-minute solutions guide you've
been searching for!

In Integrating Linux and Windows, top consultant Mike McCune brings together
hundreds of solutions for the problems that Linux/Windows system administrators
encounter most often. McCune focuses on the critical interoperability issues real
businesses face: networking, program/data compatibility, dual-boot systems, and
more. You'll discover exactly how to:

Use Samba and Linux to deliver high-performance, low-cost file and print
services to Windows workstations
Compare and implement the best Linux/Windows connectivity techniques: NFS,
FTP, remote commands, secure shell, telnet, and more
Provide reliable data exchange between Microsoft Office and StarOffice for Linux
Provide high-performance cross-platform database access via ODBC
Make the most of platform-independent, browser-based applications
Manage Linux and Windows on the same workstation: boot managers,
partitioning, compressed drives, file systems, and more.

For anyone running both Linux and Windows, McCune delivers honest and
objective explanations of all your integration options, plus realistic, proven
solutions you won't find anywhere else. Integrating Linux and Windows will help
you keep your users happy, your costs under control, and your sanity intact!

Integrating Excel and Access : 9780596009731

The Microsoft Office Suite is, in my opinion, the most useful set of applications in a corporate setting. Besides being easy to use and practically perfecting the "What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get" (WYSIWYG) display, the applications in Microsoft Office can work together to share information, produce reports, etc. The problem is that while there are many references available to help users develop their skills in any of the applications, there are few references available to show how to use the applications together. I did quite a bit of integration work as both a consultant and employee at various companies, and I quickly found those skills in demand in many departments—from Human Resources to Operations to Finance. As people asked me to do things that I had never done before and I figured out how to do them, I began building a base of code and knowledge that I could use to solve problems. I kept thinking, "I wish there were a book that could show me how to..." and then, when I had figured out how to do those things, I thought, "I could write that book."

Based on my experience, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel allow for the most benefit from integration, so this book focuses mainly on these applications. In addition to Access and Excel, I have included a chapter on SQL Server and a chapter on integrating with other Microsoft Office applications. In each topic, I show how integrating features in different applications can solve problems. Although the examples use rather generic data, you will be able to apply the same concepts to your own data.

The difficulty in writing a book like this lies in tailoring the skill level to fit a wide audience. For example, many of the Excel GUI features might seem very basic to some readers, while they are new to others. In addition, some readers might be very comfortable with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and others may have anywhere from no experience with VBA to experience only using the macro recorder. As much as possible, I have tried to build from the basics to the complex when covering each topic. I hope that you will be neither bored nor overwhelmed as you go through the topics.

Integrating Erp, Supply Chain Management, And Smart Materials : 9780849310768

Organizations enjoy two kinds of strategic advantages. One is transitory: being in the right place with the right products at the right time. The other comes from having first class management and instituting processes that mobilize an organization, keeping in ahead of the competition. Which would you like to count on for your organization's success? Integrating ERP, CRM, Supply Chain Management, and Smart Materials explores how to create business opportunities and reap savings by:

· Restructuring and updating of ERP and CRM software as it integrates supply chain management and delivers new killer applications

· Evolving opportunities that will develop from the implementation of smart materials, automatic identification, classification systems, and quality assurance projects

· Auditing the implementation, operation, and maintenance of ERP and CRM software as well as the corrective action taken on the basis of results Internet commerce, online supply chain, and advances in technology - all available at increasingly lower costs - make systems of the past obsolete.

However, just as new technology creates new opportunities, it can also create unforeseen consequences. By binding a wealth of interdependent issues between the covers of one book, Integrating ERP, CRM, Supply Chain Management, and Smart Materials gives you the tools you need to create proprietary, high value-added solutions.

Integrating and Extending BIRT (The Eclipse Series) : 9780321443854

The second of a two-book series about business intelligence and reporting technology, Integrating and Extending BIRT introduces programmers to BIRT architecture and the reporting framework. Built on the Eclipse platform, this exciting technology makes it possible for programmers to build and deploy customized reports using scripting and BIRT APIs. In addition, programmers can extend the BIRT framework by building new plug-ins using the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment.

This book describes the key components of BIRT architecture, applications, and engines, including installing, deploying, and troubleshooting the Reporting and Charting engines in an Enterprise Java application-server environment.For developers who wish to incorporate custom business logic in their reports or access data from Java objects, the book describes BIRT's extensive scripting capabilities in JavaScript and Java. For developers who want to extend the BIRT framework, the book describes the key extension points to use in creating customized report items, rendering extensions for generating output other than HTML or PDF, and Open Data Access (ODA) drivers for new data sources. The book provides extensive examples of how to build plug-ins to extend the features of the BIRT framework.

Topics discussed include

• Installing and deploying BIRT

• Deploying a BIRT report to an application server

• Understanding BIRT architecture

• Scripting in a BIRT report design

• Integrating BIRT functionality in applications

• Working with the BIRT extension framework

Integrated Project Management : 9780130674494

For the last half-century, people in industry and education have struggled to find better ways to plan and manage projects and to meet project goals on time and within budget. There is no agreed-upon way of doing this. Only a small percentage of projects achieve all their goals and one third of projects never get finished.

The problem that leads to inadequacy is that project management in action and literature is piecemeal. Project management will always be confusing and will frequently be unsuccessful as long as it is treated as a multi-part process.

Integrated project management is what works. It is what this book is about, and it is what makes it unique in its field. Microsoft Project software pushes users toward integration. Project managers who are unfamiliar with project management software will find themselves further and further behind in the field.

Integrated Project Management : 9780071466264

Successfully Integrate Project Management Systems Throughout the Corporate Enterprise

An essential guide for project management professionals, those working toward the PMI PMP certification, and business managers responsible for multiproject programs, Integrated Project Management shows you how to weave PM tools and techniques into the entire fabric of your company and its markets. This landmark book fully addresses the challenge of project integration and thoroughly explains the new PMI PMBOK standard on project integration management. The author explains how to overcome organizational and departmental barriers in order to achieve completely integrated, enterprise-wide PM success and takes you step by step through the integration of PM projects and processes into every area of your company.

Filled with detailed cases and applications, Integrated Project Management equips you with:

• Methods for implementing business plans using PM tools and techniques


• A simple conceptual framework for understanding PM integration tools


• Guidelines for preparing and presenting integrated project proposals to a wide audience of stakeholders and sponsors


• Presentation and illustration of the new Project Management Institute Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) knowledge area on project integration manaagement

Get Everything You Need to Achieve Integrated PM:

• The PMI PMBOK Standard for Project Integration


• Case Study of PMBOK Implementation: Integrated Transportation System


• Case Application: Integration Issues in Portfolio and Project Planning Life Cycles


• A Program Management Manual for Integrated Project Management


• Technical Program and Project Integration Tools


• Quality and Project Integration


• Creating a Quality Organization in the New Millennium


• Risk and Project Integration


• Strategic Integration: The Eastern Case


• How to Use the Integration Tools in Microsoft Project


• Tools in Building an Integrated Project Management System

Integrated It Project Management: A Model-Centric Approach : 9781580538282

This book is a compilation ofmyextensive project management, enterprise
architecture, and applications development knowledge, skills, and industry
experiences gained during my 28 years as an information technology (IT)
professional in Canada and the United States. It is not intended to be another
theoretical book on project management. There are many excellent books on
project management concepts and theory, some of which are mentioned in
the selected bibliographies at the end of each chapter. If you are in search of a
book on Project Management 101, Elementary Project Management, then
this is not the book for you. This book assumes a certain level of understanding
of basic project management concepts and theory.

The purpose of this book is to provide my view from an IT industry perspective
as to how to address these issues and the integration imperative by
providing an integrated framework of processes, practices, and real-world
scenarios based my 28 years as an IT professional in Canada and United
States. I compiled these practical experiences into a single comprehensive
volume—this book—in the hope that IT professionals involved in project
management practices will understand and use the components of this integrated
project management framework as a valuable reference guide during
the management and delivery of IT projects.