Searching electronic marketplaces

The main objective of this thesis was to analyze the usability of registers and indexes of electronic marketplaces. The work is focused on UDDI-based electronic marketplaces, which are standardized by the W3C. UDDI-registers are usable in intranets, extranets and in Internet. Using UDDI-registers Web-services can be searched in many ways, including alphabetical and domain specific searches. Humans and machines can use the features UDDI-registers. The thesis deals the design principles, architectures and specifications of UDDI-registers. In addition, the thesis includes the design and the specifications of an electronic marketplace developed for supporting electronic logistics services.

Software process improvement using an electronic process guide

Kasvava kiinnostus ohjelmistojen laatua kohtaan on herättänyt ohjelmistoprosesseihin ja niiden kehittämiseen kohdistuvaa huomiota viime vuosina. Ohjelmistoyritykset ympäri maailmaa ovat ottaneet käyttöön ohjelmistoprosessin kehittämismalleja, kuten CMM ja SPICE, pyrkiessään kohti parempilaatuisia ohjelmistotuotteita. Samalla on huomattu, että tehokas prosessien parantaminen ja suorittaminen tarvitsee tuekseen kuvauksen prosessista, jotta prosessin perusteellinen ymmärtäminen ja kommunikointi olisi mahdollista. Ohjelmistoprosesseja voidaan kuvata monilla eri tavoilla. Prosessiopas on prosessin esitysmuoto, jonka päätarkoituksena on helpottaa prosessin ymmärtämistä ja kommunikointia. Elektroninen prosessiopas on Web-teknologiaa hyödyntävä prosessiopas. Tässä työssä luodaan kehitysympäristö elektronisille prosessioppaille, joiden tarkoituksena on tukea ohjelmistoprosessin kehittämistä ja suorittamista. Ympäristö mahdollistaa ohjelmistoprosessinmallintamisen sekä yksilöllisten oppaiden luomisen ja muokkaamisen. Kehitysympäristöä käytetään mallintamaan tietoliikenneohjelmistoja valmistavan yrityksen ohjelmistoprosessia sekä luomaan elektronisia prosessioppaita tukemaan prosessin kehitystä ja suorittamista. Lopuksi pohditaan prosessioppaiden tarjoamaa tukea sekä mahdollisuuksia kohdeyrityksessä.

Electronic Data Interchange in Logistics Processes

Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena oli tehdä selvitys EDI:in liittyvistä vaikutuksista, tarpeista ja eduista sekä valmistella Oracle Applications- toiminnanohjausjärjestelmän EDI Gateway- modulin ottamista tuotantokäyttöön. Tietoa tarvekartoitukseen saatiin keskustelujen avulla. Uusia kaupallisista lähtökohdista johdettuja, yritysten väliseen kaupankäyntiin ja internet-teknologian hyödyntämiseen kehitettyjä aloitteita käsiteltiin EDI-näkökulmasta tulevaisuutta varten. Ajankohtaisinta tietoa tätä diplomityötä varten löydettiin myös internetistä. Tämän jälkeen oli mahdollista toteuttaa sopivan laaja mutta rajattu EDI pilottiprojekti EDI-konseptin luomista varten. EDI:n vaikutuksiin ostossa keskityttiin tässä diplomityössä enemmän ja EDI:ä päätettiin soveltaa aluksi ostotilauksissa. EDI:n hyötyjä on vaikea mitata numeerisesti. Suurta määrää rahaa tai tuoteyksiköitä on käsiteltävä EDI-partnerin kanssa riittävän usein. EDI:n käyttöönottovaiheessa pääongelmat ovat sovelluksiin liittyviä tietotekniikkaongelmia. Selvityksistä ja EDI-projektista saatu tieto on mahdollista hyödyntää jatkokehityksessä. Lisätoimenpiteitä tarvitaan kokonaan toimivan järjestelmän luomiseksi.

Hybrid LC Filter for Power Electronic Drives: Theory and Implementation

Power electronic converter drives use, for the sake of high efficiency, pulse-width modulation that results in sequences of high-voltage high-frequency steep-edged pulses. Such a signal contains a set of high harmonics not required for control purposes. Harmonics cause reflections in the cable between the motor and the inverter leading to faster winding insulation ageing. Bearing failures and problems with electromagnetic compatibility may also result. Electrical du/dt filters provide an effective solution to problems caused by pulse-width modulation, thereby increasing the performance and service life of the electrical machines. It is shown that RLC filters effectively decrease the reflection phenomena in the cable. Improved (simple, but effective) solutions are found for both differential- and common-mode signals; these solutions use a galvanic connection between the RLC filter star point and the converter DC link. Foil chokes and film capacitors are among the most widely used components in high-power applications. In actual applications they can be placed in different parts of the cabinet. This fact complicates the arrangement of the cabinet and decreases the reliability of the system. In addition, the inductances of connection wires may prevent filtration at high frequencies. This thesis introduces a new hybrid LC filter that uses a natural capacitance between the turns of the foil choke based on integration of an auxiliary layer into it. The main idea of the hybrid LC filter results from the fact that both the foil choke and the film capacitors have the same roll structure. Moreover, the capacitance between the turns (“intra capacitance”) of the foil inductors is the reason for the deterioration of their properties at high frequencies. It is shown that the proposed filter has a natural cancellation of the intra capacitance. A hybrid LC filter may contain two or more foil layers isolated from each other and coiled on a core. The core material can be iron or even air as in the filter considered in this work. One of the foils, called the main foil, can be placed between the inverter and the motor cable. Other ones, called auxiliary foils, may be connected in star to create differential-mode noise paths, and then coupled to the DC link midpoint to guarantee a traveling path, especially for the common-mode currents. This way, there is a remarkable capacitance between the main foil and the auxiliary foil. Investigations showed that such a system can be described by a simple equivalent LC filter in a wide range of frequencies. Because of its simple hybrid construction, the proposed LC filter can be a cost-effective and competitive solution for modern power drives. In the thesis, the application field of the proposed filter is considered and determined. The basics of hybrid LC filter design are developed further. High-frequency behaviour of the proposed filter is analysed by simulations. Finally, the thesis presents experimental data proving that the hybrid LC filter can be used for du/dt of PWM pulses and reduction of common-mode currents.

Software Licensing: Implementing Electronic Licensing in Medical Technology Company

The purpose of this thesis is to examine software licensing, how a software developer can benefit from it and to define specifications for licensing system of software based medical technology product. The thesis has been divided into theoretical and empirical parts. In the theoretical part the concept of software licensing and different aspects that are connected to it are examined with a help of research material. On the ground of this research, in the empirical part, a licensing system for a medical software product called iCentral is designed. The empirical part is based on interviews, questionnaire and on authors own experience gained while working for the case-company.The thesis has great practical importance for the case-company by proposing both an ideal, and more importantly, practical implementation for a licensing system of a product. Thesis shows that electronic licensing is a viable option to sell medical technology products without a need to revise existing procedures or the enterprise resource system in the case company.

Licensing of eResources - views from Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF)

Bo Öhrströmin esitys Kirjastoverkkopäivillä 27.10.2011 Helsingissä.

Usable Privacy Preservation in Mobile Electronic Personality

Personalised ubiquitous services have rapidly proliferated due technological advancements in sensing, ubiquitous and mobile computing. Evolving societal trends, business and the economic potential of Personal Information (PI) have overlapped the service niches. At the same time, the societal thirst for more personalised services has increased and are met by soliciting deeper and more privacy invasive PI from customers. Consequentially, reinforcing traditional privacy challenges and unearthed new risks that render classical safeguards ine ective. The absence of solutions to criticise personalised ubiquitous services from privacy perspectives, aggravates the situation. This thesis presents a solution permitting users' PI, stored in their mobile terminals to be disclosed to services in privacy preserving manner for personalisation needs. The approach termed, Mobile Electronic Personality Version 2 (ME2.0), is compared to alternative mechanisms. Within ME2.0, PI handling vulnerabilities of ubiquitous services are identi ed and sensitised on their practices and privacy implications. Vulnerability where PI may leak through covert solicits, excessive acquisitions and legitimate data re-purposing to erode users privacy are also considered. In this thesis, the design, components, internal structures, architectures, scenarios and evaluations of ME2.0 are detailed. The design addresses implications and challenges leveraged by mobile terminals. ME2.0 components and internal structures discusses the functions related to how PI pieces are stored and handled by terminals and services. The architecture focusses on di erent components and their exchanges with services. Scenarios where ME2.0 is used are presented from di erent environment views, before evaluating for performance, privacy and usability.

From electronic spare part catalog to eBusiness: Finding the best practices

Companies and organizations business activities rely on information. IT systems that manage master data must provide the highest level of service, world-class scalability and reliable information. This study discusses product information and how it can support the creation of a spare part catalog and the launching of eBusiness. The study consists of a theoretical and empirical part. The theoretical part contains a literature review and a framework for the analysis. For the empirical study two companies were selected and their information management processes were studied and analyzed based on the framework. The empirical results indicate that the challenges the companies face reflect the ones that can be found in the literature study. The results of the empirical study also show that the companies had recognized the issues which need to be developed and had recognized trends in eBusiness and product information management.

Regioselective modification of galactose-containing polysaccharides in aqueous media

Biorefining is defined as sustainable conversion of biomass into marketable products and energy. Forests cover almost one third of earth’s land area, and account for approximately 40% of the total annual biomass production. In forest biorefining, the wood components are, in addition to the traditional paper and board products, converted into chemicals and biofuels. The major components in wood are cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. The main hemicellulose in softwoods, which are of interest especially for the Nordic forest industry, is O-acetyl galactoglucomannan (GGM). GGM can be isolated in industrial scale from the waste waters of the mechanical pulping process, but is not yet today industrially utilized. In order to attain desired properties of GGM for specific end-uses, chemical and enzymatic modifications can be performed. Regioselective modifications of GGM, and other galactose-containing polysaccharides were done by oxidations, and by combining oxidations with subsequent derivatizations of the formed carbonyl or carboxyl groups. Two different pathways were investigated: activation of the C-6 positions in different sugar units by TEMPO-mediated oxidation, and activation of C-6 position in only galactose-units by oxidation catalyzed by the enzyme galactose oxidase. The activated sites were further selectively derivatized; TEMPO-oxidized GGM by a carbodiimide-mediated reaction forming amides, and GO-oxidized GGM by indium-mediated allylation introducing double or triple bonds to the molecule. In order to better understand the reaction, and to develop a MALDI-TOF-MS method for characterization of regioselectively allylated GGM, α-D-galactopyranoside and raffinose were used as model compounds. All reactions were done in aqueous media. To investigate the applicability of the modified polysaccharides for, e.g., cellulose surface functionalization, their sorption onto pulp fibres was studied. Carboxylation affects the sorption tendency significantly; a higher degree of oxidation leads to lower sorption. By controlling the degree of oxidation of the polysaccharides and the ionic strength of the sorption media, high degrees of sorption of carboxylated polysaccharides onto cellulose could, however, be obtained. Anionic polysaccharides were used as templates during laccase-catalyzed polymerization of aniline, offering a green, chemo-enzymatic route for synthesis of conducting polyaniline (PANI) composite materials. Different polysaccharide templates, such as, native GGM, TEMPO-oxidized GGM, naturally anionic κ-carrageenan, and nanofibrillated cellulose produced by TEMPO-oxidation, were assessed. The conductivity of the synthesized polysaccharide/PANI biocomposites varies depending on the polysaccharide template; κ-CGN, the anionic polysaccharide with the lowest pKa value, produces the polysaccharide/PANI biocomposites with the highest conductivity. The presented derivatization, sorption, and polymerization procedures open new application windows for polysaccharides, such as spruce GGM. The modified polysaccharides and the conducting biocomposites produced provide potential applications in biosensors, electronic devices, and tissue engineering.

Integration of Electronic Commerce and Enterprise Systems

The necessity of EC (Electronic Commerce) and enterprise systems integration is perceived from the integrated nature of enterprise systems. The proven benefits of EC to provide competitive advantages to the organizations force enterprises to adopt and integrate EC with their enterprise systems. Integration is a complex task to facilitate seamless flow of information and data between different systems within and across enterprises. Different systems have different platforms, thus to integrate systems with different platforms and infrastructures, integration technologies, such as middleware, SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture), and B2B (Business-to-Business) integration standards are required. Huge software vendors, such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and SAP suggest various solutions to address EC and enterprise systems integration problems. There are limited numbers of literature about the integration of EC and enterprise systems in detail. Most of the studies in this area have focused on the factors which influence the adoption of EC by enterprise or other studies provide limited information about a specific platform or integration methodology in general. Therefore, this thesis is conducted to cover the technical details of EC and enterprise systems integration and covers both the adoption factors and integration solutions. In this study, many literature was reviewed and different solutions were investigated. Different enterprise integration approaches as well as most popular integration technologies were investigated. Moreover, various methodologies of integrating EC and enterprise systems were studied in detail and different solutions were examined. In this study, the influential factors to adopt EC in enterprises were studied based on previous literature and categorized to technical, social, managerial, financial, and human resource factors. Moreover, integration technologies were categorized based on three levels of integration, which are data, application, and process. In addition, different integration approaches were identified and categorized based on their communication and platform. Also, different EC integration solutions were investigated and categorized based on the identified integration approaches. By considering different aspects of integration, this study is a great asset to the architectures, developers, and system integrators in order to integrate and adopt EC with enterprise systems.

The Finnish Electronic Library - Basic Research Infrastructure

Kristiina Hormia-Poutasen esitys KRE-konferenssissa 2013.