One way to solve the heterogeneity problem of distributed legacy databases consists in wrapping them as objects that can be queried for retrieval and updating. This paper presents the InterDB approach for the generation of conceptual wrappers for legacy databases. The generated wrapper is a software layer that offers a conceptual interface based on the conceptual schema of the wrapped database....

The clean development mechanism (CDM) should foster sustainable development and greenhouse gas emission reductions. The design of the CDM and first experience suggest that it may not achieve these goals. Developing countries hosting CDM projects may lose cheap emission reduction possibilities for their own future use, and sustainable development and technology transfer may not take place. On th...

In this paper, we introduce a problem structuring method (PSM) called “Value Map”. Value Map is an extension to the Supplier Adopter Relationship Diagram in the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Method (SEAM). Value Map assists in understanding, analysis and design of value creation and capture in service systems. To develop the Value Map, we reviewed the literature that examine value creation a...

A serious problem facing many organizations today is the need to use information from multiple data sources that have been developed separately. Conflicts in the structure and semantics of these disparate data sources create major obstacles to effective use. We have previously described our data mediation approach to this problem in which the structure and semantics of each database is defined ...

Each structured document can be represented by means of XML and an associated DTD. The goal of this article is to present a formal model of a structured document, and to make a representation of a document described by the model with a conceptual graph and a related DTD.

This paper presents the C-VISTA model enabling viewpoint representation for improving knowledge modelling from several experts: this model can thus be used for cooperative building of an ontology. We describe the C-VISTA model in the framework of conceptual graph formalism.

Argumentation is a reasoning model based on arguments and on attacks between arguments. It consists in evaluating the acceptability of arguments, according to a given semantics. Due to its generality, Dung’s framework for abstract argumentation systems, proposed in 1995, is a reference in the domain. Argumentation systems are commonly represented by graph structures, where nodes represent argum...

A conceptual design of an organizational decision support system (ODSS) is proposed for the limited domain of hospital-based clinical decisionmaking (H-CDM). The design is a first step in the research program to evaluate the viability of an ODSS for H-CDM. The design is also used as a basis for evaluating two other issues. First, the adequacy of broader conceptualizations of ODSS proposed in pr...