Editorial

Citation

Khalil Ibrahim, I. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 3 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijwis.2007.36203aaa.001

Editorial

This double issue marks a new stage in the history of IJWIS. In the last two years, IJWIS has started as the official publication of the International Organization for Information Integration and Web-based Application and Services (@WAS) and was published by Troubador Publishing Limited during which IJWIS has became the premier outlet for publishing visionary concepts and stimulating ideas in web information systems at both the theory and application levels. This issue which inaugurate the third year of IJWIS is published following the recent acquisition by Emerald Group Publishing Limited of four titles from Troubador Publishing Ltd. This is a tremendous move for IJWIS as it will now benefit from the far greater market presence of one of the world's leading journals publishers and join Emerald's diverse and expanding Information and Knowledge Management portfolio. Currently, 1,600 institutions in over 200 countries access Emerald journals and databases reaching 15 million potential readers worldwide.

This double issue consists of nine papers addressing diverse interesting issues ranging from web and service oriented design to query processing and optimization, to the hot and ever interesting semantic web, to e-learning and web engineering.

The first paper “On using partial orders for web application design” by Joaquim Gabarro, Isabel Vallejo, and Fatos Xhafa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain deals with some design issues of web applications using partial orders to enhance their navigability and extensibility. They model a static web application as a deterministic labelled transition system in which states are html pages and transitions are URLS to characterize the temporal evolution of a web application and, on the other, classify web applications into several types according to the way the information is organized over the web application.

The second paper “An XML document generator for semantic query optimization experimentation” by Ke Geng and Gillian Dobbie from the University of Auckland, New Zealand describes the requirements of a generator to build data sets with specific characteristics. The main characteristics of the generator are that it is possible to adapt existing XML documents, including XML benchmarks, for experiments that evaluate XML semantic query optimization methods. With the generator, users are able to modify not only the structure of XML documents but also the content quickly and directly.

The third paper “Answering queries over incomplete data stream histories” by Alasdair J. G. Gray, Werner Nutt, M. Howard Williams from Heriot-Watt University, UK and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano develops a model for representing incomplete data streams that captures the information that is known about the missing data and extends techniques for query answering involving certain and possible answer sets so that queries over incomplete data stream histories can be answered.

The fourth paper “Product finding on the semantic web – A search agent supporting products with limitted availability” by Andreas Langegger and Wolfram Woess from Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria presents a framework based on multivariate product comparison to allow users to delegate search requests to an agent. For the core data model several OWL DL ontologies are used. The matching algorithm is based on the analytical hierarchy process and OWA operators. The proposed system supports users finding products on the web matching specific user preferences and instantly informs them when new items become available on the virtual market. As a specific use case the framework is being applied to the real estate sector, because especially for this sector several shortcomings of the current support have been identified.

The fifth paper “WSMO/X in the context of business processes: improvement recommendations” by Jšrg Nitzsche, Tammo van Lessen, Dimka Karastoyanova and Frank Leymann from the University of Stuttgart, Germany present the list of requirements business processes impose on (SOA) applications. Authors analyze the support WSMO/WSMX provides to address these requirements and compare it with the support enabled by the WS specification stack to identify major flaws in the WSMO model and its reference implementation with respect to business process support.

The sixth paper “A hidden Markov model based approach for extracting information from web news” by Brandt Tso from NDU, Taiwan presents a method based on hidden Markov models for extracting information from web news.

The seventh paper “Monitoring the health status of open source web engineering projects” by Dindin Wahyudin, Khabib Mustofa, Alexander Schatten, Stefan Biffl, A Min Tjoa from Vienna University of Technology, Austria proposes a concept of ÓhealthÓ indicators and an evaluation process that can help to get a status overview of OSS projects in a timely fashion and predict project survivability based on the project data available on web repositories. Authors apply the indicators to well-known web-based OSS projects (Apache Tomcat and Apache HTTP Server) and compare the results with challenged projects (Apache Xindice and Apache Slide).

The eighth paper “Modeling e-learning content” by Sean Wolfgand Matsui Siqueira, Maria Helena Lima Baptista Braz and Rubens Nascimento Melo from Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil proposes a modeling approach for e-learning content, describing how to structure e-learning content and also represent it in OWL DL. This proposal is based on existing standards and experience gained in previous works. It is also shown how to structure and represent the content embedded in learning objects (LOs).

The final paper “Security improvement in embedded systems via an efficient hardware bound checking architecture” by Michael Georg Grasser from Graz University of Technology, Austria focuses on the evaluation of methods for the improvement of code security through measurements in hardware that can be transparent to software developers to improve the security level in every system passively, with minor changes in hardware only. The advantages of this technique are the minor changes in the instruction set, because the necessary checking code will be generated by the compiler. Consequently, checks in software can be omitted. The final hardware implementation results in no considerable loss in computing performance and increases the system security.

Taking this opportunity, we would like to thank all the authors, referees, and the journal's new editorial board for their contributions and valuable comments on this issue. We would also like to thank the publishers Diane Heath and Georgina McKay for their continuous support, advise and hard work on completing this issue on time.

Ismail Khalil IbrahimJohannes Kepler University Linz, AustriaDavid TaniarMonash University, AustraliaEric PardedeLa Trobe University, Australia