0000000000033335
AUTHOR
Airi Salminen
A Method for Designing Tools for Information Retrieval from Documents
The paper describes an experimental document database language. It consists of document database extensions to Prolog. An extended Prolog is suitable for specifying, prototyping, and in some cases also for implementing information retrieval tools.
Visualization of EDI messages
Multi-organizational EDI message networks are complicated communication environments with various standards and technologies. The role of third party message exchange hubs has become more important and their tasks more difficult. Current development activities for supporting the utilization of XML in electronic commerce focuses on message standardization and specification of common business architectures, processes, and web practices. A need to visualize EDI messages in different contexts to human readers has received insufficient attention in ongoing activities. In this paper we discuss problems and approaches related to the visualization of EDI messages in XML format. An idea of a standar…
The visual query language CQL for transitive and relational computation
Abstract Classification query language (CQL) is a high-level visual query language with a great expressive power. In CQL the processing of ordinary relations and classifications based on transitive relationships is integrated seamlessly. Relations and classifications are represented in the visual interface in a uniform way through relation and classification skeletons. All query formulation in CQL is QBE-like – based on the intuitive way of filling constants and sample values into the skeletons. In order to guarantee great expressive power, relational and classification expressions can be nested freely with each other at unlimited nesting levels. Recursive definition of transitive processin…
Building Digital Government by XML
Continuing innovations in information and communication technologies offer powerful tools for building digital government but, at the same time, in many environments they have lead into a number of heterogeneous, expensive, and inconsistent solutions. XML offers a common metalanguage and terminology to develop means for system and data integration, and for gradual transfer to more consistent formats in information assets. The paper describes ways for the use of XML in public administration and gives examples of the use, particularly, in Finland. The paper introduces XML standardization levels and types in public administration. Experiences of the long-term standardization of the Finnish par…
Internet Adoption at the User Level: Empirical Evidence from The Gambia
The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) are used to investigate technology adoption. However, its application in Sub-Saharan Africa is rare and barely extended to the validation phase. In this paper, we introduce six new moderating factors for UTAUT core determinants and two other direct determinants of Internet adoption. The objective of this approach is to identify relevant elements of Internet adoption at the user level in The Gambia. Moderating factors are interacting terms used when the relationship between independent and dependent variable is weak, inconsistent or non-existent. A case study research design was employed and the data were gathered in Autumn of 20…
Accessibility of Public Web Services: A Distant Dream?
Part 1: Long and Short Papers; International audience; Today, many public services are available online through Web sites. The accessibility of the sites, also to people with disabilities, is important because the accessibility concerns equality of citizens, a cornerstone of democracy. In the current study we carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies concerning the accessibility of the Web sites of public administration. Furthermore, we assessed the accessibility of Web pages of 12 ministries of the Finnish government. The assessments were based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The results showed that in terms of the WCAG guidelines, the average accessibility of public We…
A Life Cycle Model of XML Documents
Electronic documents produced in business processes are valuable information resources for organizations. In many cases they have to be accessible long after the life of the business processes or information systems in connection with which they were created. To improve the management and preservation of documents, organizations are deploying Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a standardized format for documents. The goal of this paper is to increase understanding of XML document management and provide a framework to enable the analysis and description of the management of XML documents throughout their life. We followed the design science approach. We introduce a document life cycle model…
Unifying Access to Heterogeneous Document Databases through Contextual Metadata
Document databases available on the Internet carry massive information resources. To a person needing a piece of information on a specific domain, finding the piece, however, is often quite problematic even though there were a representative collection of databases available on the domain. The languages used in the content, the names of document types, their structures, the ways documents are organized and their retrieval techniques often vary in the databases. The databases containing legal information on the Internet offer a typical example. For finding relevant documents and for being able to interpret the content of the documents correctly, the user may need information about the contex…
Why Use XML?
Since its inception a decade ago, XML has become a standard technology for software engineers, all Web browsers are able to parse and show XML documents, and huge XML data resources are available from the Internet. Many of the documents are in XHTML, but other XML applications are quite common as well. XML has also become a format that is increasingly common in the files of local disks. This success would not have been possible without collaborative efforts throughout the Web community. Such world-wide collaborative development has included standards, software applications, and case implementations that can serve as models when developing new solutions. In this chapter we consider what ki…
Two-dimensional filters for structured text
The paper introduces a method for defining filters for structured text. In the method, the text structure is originally defined by a grammar consisting of a set of productions. To describe the information interests, a two-dimensional template is first created interactively from the grammar to show the structure of a set of textual elements, at a chosen level of detail. The template depicts the hierarchical structure of the elements and indicates also optionality, alternatives, and iteration in the structure. Then, the template is filled by constraints and annotations. The constraints allow giving conditions to the content of parts, to the position of parts in an ordered set of parts, and to…
Introduction to the Enterprise Content Management and XML Minitrack
Content management in contemporary enterprises concerns a variety of information resources: documents in different forms, databases, and metadata such as ontologies, annotations, and indexes. XML and the web are important technologies used to support both resource integration and distribution.
Deliberate and Emergent Changes on a Way Toward Document Management
A unit of Fortum Service Ltd. operates and maintains the Rauhalahti power plant in Central Finland. In 1996-97, the unit launched a project pursuing coordinated organization-wide electronic document management (EDM). This case follows deliberate and emergent changes related to document management in the organization since the initiation of the project until February 2000. New information technologies were adopted, and responsibilities for continuous improvement of EDM were assigned. The continuous improvement was implemented as an extension of the ISO 9002 quality system earlier adopted for process improvement. The case shows that a shift from the paper-based era towards organization-wide E…
Contextual Metadata for Document Databases
Metadata has always been an important means to support accessibility of information in document collections. Metadata can be, for example, bibliographic data manually created for each document at the time of document storage. The indexes created by Web search engines serve as metadata about the content of Web documents. In the semantic Web solutions, ontologies are used to store semantic metadata (Berners-Lee et al., 2001). Attaching a common ontology to a set of heterogeneous document databases may be used to support data integration. Creation of the common ontology requires profound understanding of the concepts used in the databases. It is a demanding task, especially in cases where the …
Graphical information models as interfaces for Web document repositories
In interorganisational processes, documents are used to record information created during the processes. Legislative processes involving several legislative organisations, or manufacturing processes involving complicated networks of companies and officials are examples of such processes. In the contemporary computerised environments a great deal of the recorded information is scattered in different kinds of Web repositories with different kinds of interfaces. The repositories should serve as valuable knowledge assets but their use may be difficult and even the knowledge about the kinds of repositories available may be insufficient. The paper presents a method for improving information manag…
The role of trust in enhancing Internet use in a high-risk society
Purpose – This paper aims to determine the key trust antecedents that influence Internet users’ trust level toward Internet service providers (ISPs) in a high-risk society. It also investigates trust-building process, major causes of its violation, their potential implications and restoration. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-method approach was used in collecting data in Kenya in 2014 by using questionnaire and interview techniques. The former was administered to 250 (with 81 per cent response rate) randomly selected Internet users at Kenyatta University while the latter focused on key decision-makers from four randomly selected ISPs in Nairobi. Findings – The results show that Inter…
Data-Centric and Multimedia Components
The content of XML documents is often primarily plain text, interspersed with various headers and perhaps some lists and tables. However, there are many applications for which the content of documents is not primarily narrative in nature, but instead includes (portions of) data records that are subject to storage and computational manipulation. The latter documents are sometimes referred to as data-centric or record-like, and they rely extensively on precise descriptions of the forms of data that can appear. In this chapter we first introduce the data type definition capabilities in XML Schema. We then consider the types of data very common in traditional databases: numeric data, dates, and…
Deliberate and Emergent Changes on a Way Towards Electronic Document Management
A unit of Fortum Service Ltd. operates and maintains the Rauhalahti power plant in Central Finland. In 1996-97, the unit launched a project pursuing coordinated organizationwide electronic document management (EDM). This case follows deliberate and emergent changes related to document management in the organization since the initiation of the project until February 2000. New information technologies were adopted, and responsibilities for continuous improvement of EDM were assigned. The continuous improvement was implemented as an extension of the ISO 9002 quality system earlier adopted for process improvement. The case shows that a shift from the paper-based era towards organizationwide EDM…
A relational model for unstructured documents
The logical structure of a document is usually a tree in which the order of the nodes is important at least at some level of the tree. We call a document unstructured if its structure is a single-level ordered tree. The purpose of this paper is to present a many-sorted algebra for handling unstructured documents. The documents in the model are represented by relations. An algebra for handling documents of one type can be extended to an algebra for handling documents of several types. Further, an algebra for handling documents can be extended by the relational algebra for handling documents and relations in a common algebra. The model of this paper can be regarded as a part of a general docu…
Grammars++ for modelling information in text
Abstract Grammars provide a convenient means to describe the set of valid instances in a text database. Flexibility in choosing a grammar can be exploited to provide information modelling capability by designing productions in the grammar to represent entities and relationships of interest to database applications. Additional constraints can be specified by attaching predicates to selected nonterminals in the grammar. When used for database definition, grammars can provide the functionality that users have come to expect of database schemas. Extended grammars can also be used to specify database manipulation, including query, update, view definition, and index specification.
Content Production Strategies for E-Government
The terms electronic government (e-government) and digital government are used to refer to the utilization of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) effectively in public sectors. In e-government development activities, the concern is often in building new means to support and strengthen democracy (e.g., Watson, Alselsen, Evjemo, & Aarsæther, 1999). In other cases, the main concern may be in supporting the work of people in public sectors (e.g., Mustajärvi, 2003), or in building new kinds of services for citizens (e.g., Lyytikäinen, Tiitinen, & Salminen, 2000). Common to most development activities is the need to have the content of public sector inf…
Requirements for XML document database systems
The shift from SGML to XML has created new demands for managing structured documents. Many XML documents will be transient representations for the purpose of data exchange between different types of applications, but there will also be a need for effective means to manage persistent XML data as a database. In this paper we explore requirements for an XML database management system. The purpose of the paper is not to suggest a single type of system covering all necessary features. Instead the purpose is to initiate discussion of the requirements arising from document collections, to offer a context in which to evaluate current and future solutions, and to encourage the development of proper …
EDIFACT for business computers
Challenges in the Redesign of Content Management
The Finnish Centre for Pensions (FCP) is a government organization acting as the central body for private pension institutions in Finland. One of its central tasks is to produce and publish guideline documents for ensuring that the pension institutions carry out pension provisioning in a unified way. Due to problems in the maintenance of the documents and requests for faster information delivery by the Internet, FCP carried out a content management development initiative during 2002-2004. The case follows the changes in components of the content management environment: in the activities of work processes, actor roles, systems, and content items. The case shows that in content management red…
Adopting XML for Large-Scale Information
This book has presented many different ways to encode information in XML format and the purposes for doing so. In this concluding chapter we consider problems related to managing XML information assets and the methods available to address those problems. Approaches for persistently storing XML data can be divided into file storage and database storage, and the research community has been especially active in designing new solutions for XML databases. However, adoption of XML often means massive migration procedures from some legacy data into the XML format; examples of migration cases are given. While describing the problems related to adopting XML, we give examples of the kinds of data fo…
Hypertext support for the information needs of software maintainers
Making changes safely to programs requires program comprehension and satisfaction of the information needs of software maintainers. In this paper we provide insights into improving hypertext-based software maintenance support by analyzing those information needs. There exists a series of four earlier, detailed-level empirical studies on the information needs of professional C program maintainers. We focus on these studies, synthesize their results and determine sources from which the required information might be attained. An experimental research tool, the HyperSoft system, is used to demonstrate the satisfaction of information needs and the system is analytically evaluated against the nee…
Semantic Portal for Legislative Information
Semantic portals enabled by Semantic Web technologies have been suggested to provide a point of access to an integrated body of information about some domain. In the area of e-Government there are multiple possible domains for semantic portals, one of them being legislative work. In this paper we propose a semantic portal based on a rich metadata repository to support the retrieval of legislative information. The portal provides process oriented semantic browsing capabilities. A prototype of the portal has been implemented for the retrieval of Finnish legislative information.
ICT Barriers and Critical Success Factors in Developing Countries
Since the early 1990s, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been perceived as a catalyst for development. However, the UNICEF State of the World’s Children Report 2011 acknowledges that the poor in many developing countries remain largely excluded from ICT and its benefits. This paper aims to address three issues. Firstly, identify ICT barriers in the literature from 2000 to 2011. Secondly, identify ICT barriers through empirical findings and thirdly, categorize these barriers into critical success factors. These aims are achieved by comparing the findings in the literature to our recent empirical results. Two methodologies are used in this study, namely, a systematic literatu…
Introduction to the enterprise content management minitrack
Enterprise content management (ECM) focuses on the management of textual and multimedia content across and between enterprises, emphasizing the coexistence of technical and social aspects within the content management. Methods and techniques applicable for managing textual and multimedia information with all sizes of content units, ranging from XML and database structures through web pages and documents to document collections, are studied as well as approaches focusing on specific content structures. In a piece of ECM research, multiple of the perspectives may be covered, or one of the perspectives is chosen as the major view to the area: • the technical perspective including the developme…
Putting documents into their work context in document analysis
In trying to achieve document standardization the goal is to find more effective, consistent, and standardized ways to utilize information technology. The specification and implementation of document standards may take several years requiring a profound analysis and understanding of document management practices. Document standardization does not concern documents only: it concerns workers, their work, business partners, and future systems as well. In this paper we discuss two ways of describing the work context of documents: process modelling and life cycle modelling. In process modelling, documents are regarded as resources produced and used in inter- or intra-organizational business proc…
Implementing Digital Government in the Finnish Parliament
The Finnish Parliament has been active in utilizing information and communication technologies in the parliamentary work as well as in communicating with citizens and other organizations. As common in public sectors, work, knowledge management, and communication in the environment is document-centric. A strategic issue in implementing digital government has been SGML/XML standardization. The Finnish Parliament has been a pioneer in the adoption of SGML/XML technologies. The chapter reports experiences from the standardization efforts. The implications of the standardization will be examined from the viewpoints of documents, information technology, work with documents, the Finnish Parliament…
specification of a tool for viewing program text
The maintenance of large programs is a demanding process where lot of information is needed. Much of this information is in the program text. However, the finding of the needed information may be very difficult. It seems evident that more powerful tools are needed for helping the maintainers to find the information they need.
Facing the Challenges of Multi-Channel Publishing in a Newspaper Company
The study describes the transfer from paper-based publishing to multi-channel publishing in a Finnish newspaper publishing company and how this was experienced by the participants. The case analysis covers the news products of the company, the editorial processes, actors in the processes, the tools used to produce and manage news content, and the problems faced.