Information Science and Technology

When people contemplate how insects are marketed as consumer products, images of novelties, gimmick foods, cuddly toys, odd adornments, and cartoon images are invoked, calling forth a range of emotions from repugnance to warmth. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Insects can be very big business. They and their products are sold […]

XML Schema Integration and E-Commerce

INTRODUCTION XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used to describe semi-structured data, i.e., irregular or incomplete data whose structure may be subject to unpredictable changes. Unlike traditional semi-structured data, XML documents are self-describing, thus XML provides a platform-independent means to describe data and, therefore, can transport data from one platform to another (Bray, Paoli, & Sperberg-McQueen, […]

World Wide Web Search Technologies

INTRODUCTION The World Wide Web now holds more than six billion pages covering almost all daily issues. The Web’s fast growing size and lack of structural style present a new challenge for information retrieval (Lawrence & Giles, 1999a). Traditional search techniques are based on users typing in search keywords which the search services can then […]

Women in the IT Profession

INTRODUCTION Women have been involved with information technology (IT) since the 19th century, when Ada the Countess of Lovelace served as the first programmer of Charles Babbage’s analytical engine. Grace Murray Hopper’s contributions to COBOL and computing several decades ago are considered so significant that an annual conference is held in her honor (see www.gracehopper.org). […]

Wireless Middleware

INTRODUCTION Middleware is not a new concept in distributed computing. It was first accepted as a term used to describe distributed software architecture during the 1990s and has evolved significantly since then with the increase in computer networking and the resulting use of distributed systems. The following is aA definition of middleware that was proposed […]

Web-Based Supply Chain Strategy

INTRODUCTION: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Supply chain management is a fairly new creature and one that has evolved out of a variety of different enterprise functions over the past two decades. Traditionally, the majority of activities within supply chain management were related to the physical transport of goods from one point to another. Today, we understand […]

Web Usability

INTRODUCTION The study of computing technology and user interfaces was initiated during the 1970s when industrial research laboratories began to focus on human-computer interaction (HCI) (Badre, 2002). In the 1980s, the personal computer was introduced, thus expanding the need for designing effective user interfaces. HCI became a discipline during this time, and the Association for […]

Web-Based Distance Learning and the Second Digital Divide

INTRODUCTION In no field have we witnessed a greater impact of emerging technologies than in that of distance learning. Correspondence courses using printed material and postal mail have been replaced by Web-based courses with the potential to make learning available to anyone, anywhere at anytime. This potential cannot be realized, however, unless two digital divides […]

Web Technologies and Data Warehousing Synergies

INTRODUCTION Data warehousing is an emerging technology that greatly extends the capabilities of relational databases specifically in the analysis of very large sets of time-oriented data. The emergence of data warehousing has been somewhat eclipsed over the past decade by the simultaneous emergence of Web technologies. However, Web technologies and data warehousing have some natural […]

Web Tools for Molecular Biological Data Analysis

INTRODUCTION Bioinformatics means solving problems arising from biology using methods from computer science. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (www.ncbi.nih.gov) defines bioinformatics as: “…the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge into a single discipline…There are three important sub-disciplines within bioinformatics: the development of new algorithms and statistics with which […]