Global Information Systems

Information technology has had a major impact on individuals, organizations and society over the past 50 years. There are few organizations that can afford to ignore IT and few individuals who would prefer to be without it. As managerial tasks become more complex, so the nature of the required information systems (IS) changes - from structured, routine support to ad hoc, complex enquiries at the highest levels of management. Global Information Systems aims to present the many complex and inter-related issues associated with culture in the management of information systems. The editors have selected a wide range of contemporary articles from leading experts in North America and Europe that represent a wide variety of different national and cultural environments. They offer valid explanations for, rather than simply pointing out cultural differences in articles that cover a variety of national cultures, including: China, Egypt, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Peru South Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirate, the UK, and the US.

Information technology has had a major impact on individuals, organizations and society over the past 50 years. There are few organizations that can afford to ignore IT and few individuals who would prefer to be without it. As managerial tasks become more complex, so the nature of the required information systems (IS) changes - from structured, routine support to ad hoc, complex enquiries at the highest levels of management. Global Information Systems aims to present the many complex and inter-related issues associated with culture in the management of information systems. The editors have selected a wide range of contemporary articles from leading experts in North America and Europe that represent a wide variety of different national and cultural environments. They offer valid explanations for, rather than simply pointing out cultural differences in articles that cover a variety of national cultures, including: China, Egypt, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Peru South Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirate, the UK, and the US.

This 2-Volume-Set, CCIS 0269-CCIS 0270, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Global Trends in Computing and Communication (CCIS 0269) and the International Conference on Global Trends in Information Systems and Software Applications (CCIS 0270), ObCom 2011, held in Vellore, India, in December 2011. The 173 full papers presented together with a keynote paper and invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 842 submissions. The conference addresses issues associated with computing, communication and information. Its aim is to increase exponentially the participants' awareness of the current and future direction in the domains and to create a platform between researchers, leading industry developers and end users to interrelate.

Many of the technological and managerial challenges of operating in the international environment are being addressed through global IT applications at the functional level of the organization. Global Information Systems and Technology: Focus on the Organization and Its Functional Areas provides a forum for identifying the specific impacts of IT in each of these areas and for understanding how the various challenges and solutions in the functional areas are being integrated via information technology. With a total of 27 chapters, this book examines several functional areas -- marketing, financial services, accounting, manufacturing and logistics, research and development, human resources -- all within the context of today's international business enterprise.

Today, information and the technologies that store and disseminate it are producing deep-rooted and widespread changes in society - changes of the same magnitude as those that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this book is to give a complete picture of the information society by examining in detail the social, economic, political, and cultural roles of information and information technology. This book is effectively a second edition of the author's classic The Information Society. In it, the author illustrates the major trends in and inter-relationships between information, information and communication technologies, and the global economy and society. In tracing the direction of information-based change he reveals the implications for ordinary citizens, for the quality of everyday life, for economic and social activity, and examines the prospects of nations and trading blocs. This book provides a new way of looking at society, one that is essential for understanding social and economic structures and processes in the information age.

"This book provides a comprehensive treatment of collaborative GIS focusing on system design, group spatial planning and mapping; modeling, decision support, and visualization; and internet and wireless applications"--Provided by publisher.

This book provides an excellent foundation in modern information systems and data communications. It has five basic themes: - Digital Information Sources and Multimedia; - The Internet, the World Wide Web and Java; - Local area Networking; - Wide area Networking; - Video Conferencing. The information sources material covers the main standards in digital information on modern computer systems. It includes the conversion of sound and images into a digital format. The networking material introduces the main local area network technologies: - Ethernet; - Token Ring; - FDDI. Modern Wide Area Network technologies like ATM are considered, also the usage of ISDN and Modems for interconnection.

This work is a revision of the doctoral dissertation of Eduardo Mena pre sented to the Department of Computer Science and System Engineering at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in November 1998 [Mena 98]. The OBSERVER system was developed as a result of this Ph.D. thesis. This book is composed of eight chapters. In Chapter 1 we introduce our rationale for writing a book about systems that process queries in global information systems. Then in Chapter 2 we review the techno logical context for our work, including distributed and heterogeneous environments and the use of ontologies. We also compare related work to our own. Chapter 3 presents our proposed global system architecture for query processing in global information systems. The main modules in the architecture and the main steps given to process a query are briefly introduced. Chapters 4 through 7 provide a detailed description of each query processing step. In Chapter 4 we detail the steps needed to access the data corre sponding to a query formulated over an ontology. All the aspects related to distribution, structural and semantic heterogeneity, and restricted query capabilities of the underlying data repositories are considered in this chapter. The main features of the mapping information that relates ontologies and data repositories are also described. Finally, we show the process of generating appropriate plans to access each involved reposi tory and the correlation of the answers coming from different reposito ries.