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13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2011), Beijing, China, 8-11 June 2011
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The shift to knowledge as the primary source of value results in the new economy being led by those who manage knowledge effectively. Today’s organisations are creating and leveraging knowledge, data and information at an unprecedented... more
The shift to knowledge as the primary source of value results in the new economy being led by those who manage knowledge effectively. Today’s organisations are creating and leveraging knowledge, data and information at an unprecedented pace – a phenomenon that makes the use of technology not an option, but a necessity. Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies and are not necessarily acquired as a single software solution. Furthermore, these knowledge management software tools have the advantage of using the organisation’s existing information technology infrastructure. Organisations and business decision makers spend a great deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management. It is imperative that these investments are validated properly, made wisely and that the most appropriate technologies and software tools are selected or combined to facilitate knowledge managemen...
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The interpretation of financial data obtained from the accounting process for reporting purposes is regulated by financial accounting standards (FAS). The history and mechanisms used for the development of ʻThe Conceptual Framework for... more
The interpretation of financial data obtained from the accounting process for reporting purposes is regulated by financial accounting standards (FAS). The history and mechanisms used for the development of ʻThe Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting’ (the Conceptual Framework) as well as the financial accounting standards resulted in impressive volumes of material that guides modern financial reporting practices, but unfortunately, as is often the case with textual manuscripts, it contains descriptions that are vague, inconsistent or ambiguous. As part of the on-going initiatives to improve International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) promotes the development of principle-based IFRS, which aim to address the problems of vagueness, inconsistency and ambiguity. This paper reports on the findings of a design science research (DSR) project that, as artefact, developed a first version ontology-based formal language represen...
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Fruit fly control and management in Africa has been the topic of several scientific investigations resulting in diverse sources of knowledge on the topic. Despite the existence of this knowledge, frequently it is not readily accessible to... more
Fruit fly control and management in Africa has been the topic of several scientific investigations resulting in diverse sources of knowledge on the topic. Despite the existence of this knowledge, frequently it is not readily accessible to all targeted beneficiaries; this can be due to, for example, the remote locations of farms and the complexity of the knowledge. However, recent technological developments such as web technologies and networking allow for the engagement and participation of stakeholder groups in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and these technologies can also be applied to fruit fly knowledge. In order to facilitate this stakeholder participation in fruit fly knowledge sharing, the relevant domain knowledge needs to be available in a format that can support stakeholder engagement, preferably through the Web. Fruit fly knowledge has not been modelled in this manner and this paper reports on an investigation to model and capture the relevant domain knowledge using ontologies. The objective of this work is thus the development of the domain ontology and its evaluation using a prototype stakeholder participation system for fruit fly control and management that was capable of utilising the ontology. We describe our findings on the use of ontology technologies for representation of fruit fly knowledge, the fruit fly ontology developed, as well as a prototype Web-based system that uses the ontology as a source of knowledge.
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The South African Computer Journal, better known as SACJ, has, for the last nineteen years, been one of the most pertinent publications for the computing discipline within the South African milieu. In this paper we reflect on the topics... more
The South African Computer Journal, better known as SACJ, has, for the last nineteen years, been one of the most pertinent publications for the computing discipline within the South African milieu. In this paper we reflect on the topics of research articles published in SACJ over its first 40 volumes of the journal using the ACM Computing Classification Scheme as basis. In our analysis we divided the publications into three cycles of more or less six years in order to identify significant trends over the history of the journal. We also used the same classification scheme to analyse the publication trends of various South African tertiary education and research institutions.
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Design science research (DSR) is a relatively unfamiliar research paradigm within the computing field in South Africa. In light of recent interest in this paradigm, this study sought to explore DSR perspectives among local computing... more
Design science research (DSR) is a relatively unfamiliar research paradigm within the computing field in South Africa. In light of recent interest in this paradigm, this study sought to explore DSR perspectives among local computing researchers. Key theoretical concepts from social representations theory (SRT) such as anchoring and objectification were used to explore how researchers construct their understanding of DSR. A visual approach was used to administer drawing and association tasks to two focus groups; each focus group comprised around 25 participants ranging from doctoral students to experienced researchers. The focus group discussions invoked interesting complementary and distinctive associations about the process and content of DSR – anchored in dominant and conventional research practices. The results also illustrated several ways in which DSR is objectified by the researchers in drawings and metaphorical constructions. We conclude that SRT is useful for exploring belie...
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Educational models are used within an institution to describe different educational components and the existing relationships between them. The important components within an educational domain are in a sense similar to business... more
Educational models are used within an institution to describe different educational components and the existing relationships between them. The important components within an educational domain are in a sense similar to business environments, including institutional structures, processes and resources. In the educational domain, the developer may use educational models to gain a better understanding of the key mechanisms of the specific problem domain or as a basis for improving the current structures and operations of the different processes within the problem domain. In this paper, we introduce the educational value chain as a graphical tool that developers may use in re-engineering efforts to identify possible bottlenecks that are likely to occur, as well as providing a route to follow when determining the value that can be added by technology.
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Abstract Systematic software reuse is still the most promising strategy for increasing productivity and improving quality in the software industry. Although it is simple in concept, successful software reuse implementation is difficult in... more
Abstract Systematic software reuse is still the most promising strategy for increasing productivity and improving quality in the software industry. Although it is simple in concept, successful software reuse implementation is difficult in practice. A reason put forward for this is the dependence of software reuse on the context in which it is implemented. This paper describes an interpretive case study aimed at investigating the potential for the implementation of systematic software reuse in a project-centric company. The study ...
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With numerous enterprise architecture management (EAM) methodologies, frameworks, and tools, there are still no universally excepted standard on what Enterprise Architecture (EA) really means to practicing architects. Traditionally... more
With numerous enterprise architecture management (EAM) methodologies, frameworks, and tools, there are still no universally excepted standard on what Enterprise Architecture (EA) really means to practicing architects. Traditionally practitioners concentrated on specific aspects of EA, such as tools, repositories, components and frameworks. However, little attention was given to the architect, which completes this trio of system perspectives (people, process & technology). This paper reports on the research findings of a study that investigated diverse factors and attributes that affects the worldview and ultimately the school of thought of the practicing architect. The study used a literature analysis, an exploratory survey with practicing architect feedback and as contribution identified the dominant architect attributes that affects and influences the various schools of thought of architects. The findings may assist EA stakeholders concerned with having the right type of person acting as an architect fulfilling a specific architecture function within an EA team or EA practice.
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Abstract: Despite the large number of career-related services available on the Internet, few offer professionally based long-term career development services. Factors such as life-long learning and the growth of the Internet has... more
Abstract: Despite the large number of career-related services available on the Internet, few offer professionally based long-term career development services. Factors such as life-long learning and the growth of the Internet has influenced the popularity of career counselling services that are delivered over the Internet. In designing and developing these web enabled career guidance services, the developers should not only consider career guidance principles but also include web design principles. In this paper we identified a list of ...
ABSTRACT: Approaches used during the development of methodologies differ from analyst to analyst and depend on various factors including the application domain, the availability of existing methodologies and budget constraints. In this... more
ABSTRACT: Approaches used during the development of methodologies differ from analyst to analyst and depend on various factors including the application domain, the availability of existing methodologies and budget constraints. In this paper, the author proposes a requirements elicitation methodology that may be used by educational institutions during the requirements engineering process to gain a complete understanding of the critical processes (and their subprocesses) in the application domain. The purpose of the ...
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... Alta van der Merwe, Nita Mennega School of Computing, University of South Africa, South Africa vdmeraj@unisa.ac.za ... Harris-Bowlsbey maintains that career counsellors had not embraced the technology to the degree that industry... more
... Alta van der Merwe, Nita Mennega School of Computing, University of South Africa, South Africa vdmeraj@unisa.ac.za ... Harris-Bowlsbey maintains that career counsellors had not embraced the technology to the degree that industry leaders expected, attributing it to lack of ...
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Research Interests: Engineering, Computer Science, Software Development, Information Systems Development, Complex System, and 9 moreSystem Engineering, System Development, Information system development, Development Methodology, Competence Development, Software Systems, Development Process, Software Development Process, and Design and Implementation
... Remzi Seker Computer Science Department University of Arkansas at Little Rock Little Rock, Arkansas, USA rxseker@ualr.edu Aurona Gerber School of Computing University of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa gerbeaj@unisa.ac.za ...