Frank Dignum Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Title:	"Agents and E-commerce: Hype and Reality"
Abstract:	Agents can be used in many ways in electronic commerce. In order to use them as mediators it is almost always necessary to create a context in which the trading of the agents takes place. nly when the procedures of the trading are well defined it is feasible to delegate the actual trading task to an agent. This context can be provided in the form of an institution. Institutions determine the way e-commerce transactions are conducted and the required infrastructures to implement them. They give a predefined structure for specifying the product and also facilitate the negotiation process (about the price of the product). The institutions should be flexible enough to provide different types of scenarios. Depending on the type of product and market situation a certain type of trading can be chosen. This means that gents should be able to select the proper (most efficient or profitable) trading procedure for the case in hand. If the chosen procedure allows some freedom within the interaction (e.g. negotiating in different ways) the agent should agree with the other party on a common acceptable way of interacting. One cannot expect all agents to have the same capabilities, therefore agents should be designed in such a way that they can deal with both simple and complex agents in the context of the same institution. A new challenge will be to design trading agents that function as intermediaries for the trading procedure. They have specialized knowledge on strategies and trading protocols, such that the agents of the trading parties only have to have product and market knowledge and can leave the burden of finding the suitable trading procedure to the trading agent. In this talk we want to discuss in a systematic way, which types of (electronic) commerce transactions can be distinguished and what is the role of agents for these types. Depending on the role of the agents they should meet certain requirements. Specifically we will look at the requirements on the ability of the agent to communicate with its environment. In the first part of the talk, we will take a look at some theory about markets and institutions. In the second part, we will look at the interactions of agents within these electronic markets and institutions. In the last part we will look at the future roles that agents can fulfil in electronic commerce transactions and which research questions are of interest in this context.
Biography:	FRANK DIGNUM (dignum@cs.uu.nl) got his Ph.D. in 1989 from the Free University of Amsterdam. After this he set up the Computer Science department of the University of Swaziland. After one year in the AI department of the Technical University of Lisbon he has worked at the Eindhoven University of Technology until September 2000. In Eindhoven he initiated an e-commerce research programme ("Enabling e-commerce") and also initiated an Esprit project (MeMo) that is geared to support SME's on electronic marketplaces. Since September 2000 he is an associate professor at the Utrecht University. His main research interests lay in the area of formal models of communication and social relations. The use of several modal logics is of prime importance in this research. The results are applied in the area of electronic commerce and multi-agent systems.
Stuart Madnick MIT, Sloan School of Management, USA
Title:	"The Misguided Silver Bullet: What XML Will and Will NOT Do to Help Information Integration"
Abstract:	The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) offers many important benefits and improvements over its predecessor, HTML. But, articles have appeared about XML with exaggerated claims of it being a "Rosetta Stone" with "miraculuous ways" to almost automatically provide information integration. These claims are actually being believed by some executives. It is almost surprising that no one has claimed that XML can cure cancer and provide world peace! In reality, XML must face many of the same challenges that plagued Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and database integration efforts of the past. To a large extent, there are both managerial and technical challenges - much related to the difficulties of attaining universally accepted semantically-rich standards. In this presentation, these challenges will be discussed with specific emphasis on the issue of dealing with a real-world with multiple "contexts." Some promising research directions, overlapping with the "semantic web" effort, will be presented.
Biography:	Madnick finds ways to integrate information systems in order to give organisations a more global view of their operations. His research interests include information technology strategy, connectivity among disparate distributed information systems, database technology, and software project management. He is the author or co-author of over 250 books, articles, or reports on these subjects, including the classic textbook, "Operating Systems" (McGraw-Hill), and the book, "The Dynamics of Software Development" (Prentice-Hall). He is currently co-heading a project that develops new technologies for gathering, aggregating, and analyzing information from many different sources, including conventional databases and the Web. He is testing these new technologies in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, logistics, and transportation. He has been active in industry, making significant contributions as one of the key designers and developers of projects such as IBM's VM/370 operating system and Lockheed's DIALOG information retrieval system. He has served as the head of MIT's top-ranked Information Technologies Group for more than a decade. Dr. Madnick has degrees in Electrical Engineering (B.S. and M.S.), Management (M.S.), and Computer Science (Ph.D.) from MIT. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), University of Newcastle (England), Technion (Israel), and Victoria University (New Zealand).
Ramakoti Sadananda Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
Title:	"Implications of Convergence on Education"
Abstract:	The predictions such as long before the year 2000, the entire antiquated structure of college degrees, majors and credit will be in shambles” have not come true as of now. These are in spite of all indications, and good reasoning by the best of minds. The radical developments of technology at times counter our deeply established beliefs and at time reinforce them. The expansion of connectivity, bandwidth and access, resulting in the intense interactions lead the processes of Computing, Communication and Content, into a convergence of some kind the description of which is yet to arrive. These are not just convergences of technologies, but along with the convergence, the pervasiveness brings in paradigm shifts. The paradigms that were once the considerations of academics, the philosophers and the thinkers, are with the pervasiveness of technology become the concerns of common people. Several problem solving examples show that the solution of a problem depends a great deal on the way the problem is posed and communicated, and on the efficiencies of these processes. A given education system puts in pressures to learn as well as, pressures to unlearn ways of representation and thus problem solving. These pressures, while existed all the same, would have different manifestations with the increased efficiency of knowledge generation and access. An education system is a social process and is founded on a social infrastructure, the fabric of which is profoundly affected by the way know the world and share that knowledge. Thus is a cyclic process. In this discussion we look at the issues from the first principles, and attempt to identify the basic novelties of our times in the history of technology, make comparisons with earlier technological waves to see if there are lessons to be learnt and outline possible scenario.
Biography:	Education: Post Doctoral: University of Texas, Austin, USA, 1978-79. Ph.D.: Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, 1977, Major: Computer Science, Minor: Communication Systems. M.E.: University of Roorkee, Roorkee, India, 1969, Major: Electrical Machinery. B.E.: Karnataka Regional Engineering College, University of Mysore, India, 1967, Major: Electrical Engineering. Awards: Senior Fulbright Fellowship - 1978-79, Sophia University Award 1991, Jackson Memorial Award 1992, Deutsher Akamischer Austaushdienst (DAAD) Award 1997. Professional: Elected Senior Member, IEEE, 1992 Research Interests: Evolutionary Computing, Relationships between Symbolic Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network Paradigms, Self-Organization Schemes, Genetic Algorithms, and their Application in Software Re-use, Knowledge Discovery, VLSI Design and other application domains; Epistemology of Computer Science, Blackboard Architectures and Mechanical Proof Procedures, Convergence of Technologies. Publications: Edited six volumes including one published by the IEEE Computer Society Press. Chapters for five books. Over seventy papers published in refereed journals and proceedings of international conferences, and fifteen papers published in national journals. Nineteen technical reports prepared for the United Nations and other organizations Teaching Interests: Teaching since 1969 spanning a number of topics in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at undergraduate level and at graduate level-Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Operating Systems, Pattern Recognition, Software Engineering, Information Theory, Theories of Computation and Communication Systems. Experience (Academic): Asian Institute of Technology - 1985 - to date; Sirindorn International Institute of Technology (Thailand), July 1966 - November 1966; University of Texas (USA), 1977-78, Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), 1974-85; Birla institute of Technology and Science (India), 1974; Indian Institute of Technology (India) 1970-74; H.B. Technological Institute (India), 1969-70. Experience (Sabbatical): National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (India)-1984; Sophia University (Japan)-1991; Griffith University (Australia)-1992; Curtin University (Australia)-1997, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI (France)-1997, Technical University of Hamburg- Harburg(Germany) 1997. Experience (Academic Administration): Co-ordinator Computer Science Program, AIT, 1995; Co-ordinator Computer Science and Information Management Program, AIT, 1996; Dean, School of Computer and Systems Science, JNU, 1983-84; Provost, JNU 1983-84; Warden, JNU 1974-75. Experience (United Nations): Chief Technical Advisor and Trainer (UNDP)-on Computing for the Least Developed Countries 1988-90; Several short contracts. Organization of National and International Conferences: Served as General Chair for four major International Conferences, including the International Conference on Expert Systems for Development, 1994 Organized several national and regional conferences, including the National Conventions of Computer Society of India. Served as Regional Chair for Asia in Second, Third and Fourth World Congresses on Expert Systems. Professional Societies: Member of six professional international societies Served and serving as member of several professional committees including the IEEE award committees Serving on the board of editors for Cognizant Publishers Committees: The Faculty Representative and Member of the Board of Trustees of Asian Institute of Technology. Member of scores of other internal committees. Supervision: Over twenty doctoral research and over hundred master level theses have been supervised.
Tok Wang Ling National University of Singapore, Singapore
Title:	"Applications of ORA-SS: An Object-Relationship-Attribute Data Model for Semistructured Data"
Abstract:	Semistructured data is becoming increasingly important with the introduction of XML and related languages and technologies. The recent shift from DTDs (document type definitions), a schema definition language, to XML-Schema, a more expressive schema definition language, for XML data highlights the importance of a schema definition for semistructured data applications. At the same time, there is a move to extend semistructured data models to express richer semantics. In this talk we highlight the most important concepts in ORA-SS (Object-Relationship-Attribute model for Semistructured data), a semantically rich data model for semistructured data, and through examples demonstrate the importance of ORA-SS. ORA-SS not only reflects the nested structure of semistructured data, but it also distinguishes between object classes, relationship sets, and attributes. It is possible to specify the participation constraints of object classes in relationship sets, and distinguish between attributes of relationship sets and attributes of object classes. Such information is lacking in existing semistructured data models, and is essential information for many purposes, such as designing efficient and non-redundant storage organization for semistructured data, defining meaningful semistructured views, view updatability and maintenance.
Biography:	Tok Wang LING is a Professor of Department of Computer Science and a Vice-Dean of the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. His research interests include Data Modeling, Entity-Relationship Approach, Object-Oriented Data Model, Normalization Theory, Logic and Database, Integrity Constraint Checking, semistructured data model, and Data Warehousing. He has published papers in database design (such as improved 3NF, normal form ER diagram, normal form OODB schema), integrity constraint checking, and detecting trigger termination, and view updates. He serves/served on the program committees of 15 international database conferences held in year 2001, including vldb, ER, DASFAA, DEXA, CIKM, etc. He was a program committee co-chair of 3 international database conferences, namely DASFAA'95, DOOD'95, and ER'98. He is the chair and vice chair of the steering committees of International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER) and International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), respectively. He was a steering committee member of International Conference on Deductive and Object-Oriented Databases (DOOD). He is an editorial board member of four journals, namely, Knowledge and Data Engineering, Journal of Systems Integration, International Journal on Cooperative Information Systems, and Journal of Database Management. He is an advisor of ACM Transactions on Internet Technology.
A Min Tjoa, Alexander Schatten and Amin Anjomshoaa Technical University of Vienna, Austria
Title:	"Building an Web-based Open Source Tool to Enhance Project Management, Monitoring and Collaboration in Scientific Projects"
Abstract:	Scientific Cooperation, especially when co-workers and teams are dislocated, requires support for project management to distribute information to all members of the team. Such a support should allow project monitoring for team leaders and the management of resources, communication and documentation. In early 2000 the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Research and Culture launched a project for the management and support work of bilateral scientific projects between Austria and partner countries. This paper will describe the architecture and results of this project. The Institute for Software Technology develops an open source web application to enhance these cooperative tasks. The "Scientific Workplace"-tool allows management of users and skills, projects, tasks, to-do lists, resources (e.g. documents) and access control, project monitoring and messaging. The software will be distributed as open source application and is built itself upon open source server tools (application server, database, web-server) and uses open communication protocols (SOAP) and XML file-formats. The server application as well as the administration application and the user front-end are implemented in a platform independent way. This increases the flexibility of use as well as the spread of the application as there are no hurdles in terms of license fees or option to make modifications/adaptations.
Biography:
Günther Pernul University of Essen, Germany
Title:	"Trusted Electronic Commerce Transactions"
Abstract:	the dramatic changes in telecommunications and computing technology as evidenced in the Internet and World Wide Web have sparked a revolution in electronic commerce (e-commerce) and e-commerce applications. But in spite of the well-publicised success stories, many businesses and consumers are still cautious about participating in e-commerce, and security concerns are often cited as being the single most important barrier. In this talk we focus on two main issues that might help in building trusted e-commerce transactions: 1. COPS, a technical infrastructure for building adaptable electronic markets with main focus on security and fairness, and 2. MOSS, a business process reengineering methodology for analysing and modelling the security semantics of electronic commerce transactions. Both, COPS and MOSS are helpful to control the risks involved in dealing (trading) with untrusted parties in an open electronic commerce environment.
Biography:	Günther Pernul is full professor at the Department of Information Systems at the University of Essen, Germany. Prior to that he was with the Department of Applied Computer Sciences at the University of Vienna. During 1990 and 1991 he was post doctoral scholar at the Database Systems Research and Development Centre at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, as well as at the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. His research interests are electronic commerce and new media, information systems security, advanced database applications, applied cryptography. Günther Pernul is co-author of a database text book, has edited or co-edited four books, published in scientific journals and conference proceedings on various information systems topics and participated in several European funded research projects.
Ullas Nambiar, Zoe Lacroix, Stephane Bressan , Mong Li Lee, Yingguang Li National University of Singapore, Singapore
Title:	"XML Benchmarks Put to the Test"
Abstract:	The effectiveness of existing XML query languages has been studied by many who focused on the comparison of linguistic features, implicitly reflecting the fact that most XML tools exist only on paper. In this paper, with a focus on efficiency and concreteness, we propose a pragmatic first step toward the systematic benchmarking of XML query processing platforms. We begin by identifying the necessary functionalities an XML data management system should support. We review existing approaches for managing XML data and the query processing capabilities of these approaches. We then compare three XML query benchmarks XMach­1, XMark and XOO7 and discuss the applicability, strengths and limitations of these benchmarks. We highlight the bias of these benchmarks towards the data centric view of XML and motivate our selection of XOO7 to extend with document centric queries. We complete XOO7 to capture the information retrieval capabilities of XML management systems. Finally we summarize our contributions and discuss future directions.
Biography:	Dr. Stephane Bressan is a senior fellow in the Computer Science department of the School of Computing (SoC) of the National University of Singapore. He joined the National University of Singapore in 1998. He is the coordinator of the Electronic Commerce Laboratory at SoC. He graduated in 1987 with a degree in Computer Science, Electronics and Process Automation from the Ecole Universitaire D'Ingenieurs de Lille (France) and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1992 from the Laboratoire D'informatique Fondamentale of the University of Lille. From 1988 to 1994, he taught Database Systems, Expert Systems, Knowledge Representation, and Logic Programming at several institutions including the Ecole Universitaire d'Ingenieurs de Lille, the Centre National des Arts et Métiers, the Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes DOcumentaires, or the D.E.A. de Technologies Biomedicales de Lille. In 1990, he joined the European Computer-industry Research Centre (ECRC) of Bull, ICL, and Siemens in Munich (Germany). In 1994, he was appointed site leader of the Database Platform project and principal investigator and work-package manager for the European IDEA ESPRIT project on Intelligent Databases. From 1996 to 1998, he was a research associate at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working on the Intelligent Integration of Information. Dr. Bressan's main areas of research are information and knowledge management, Web applications and services, the integration of distributed and heterogeneous information systems, the design and implementation of databases management systems. His work has been published and presented at various occasions including the 1995 G7 summit on the Information Society, the 1995, 1997 and 2000 ACM-SIGMOD conference on the management of data, or the 1996 and 2000 conference on Extending DataBase Technology. He is also a reviewer for several conferences and journals.