Federating Databases and Files: An Approach to a Uniform and Comfortable Interface to Heterogeneous Tourist Information Systems

In the changing digital environment, universities face the necessity of integrating heterogeneous information systems. This study focuses on a set-theoretic approach to modeling the integration of these systems. It considers the construction of a model that will effectively facilitate interaction among various information resources within the university, belonging to different platforms and formats. Special attention is paid to optimizing data exchange processes and ensuring information integrity within the common digital space of the university. This work proposes a formal integration model that allows minimizing architectural coupling and ensuring the evolutionary development of the university's digital platform. The set-theoretic apparatus is used to formalize the IT landscape. A decomposition method based on the concept of "architectural quanta" (Architectural Quantum) is applied. Metrics of structural autonomy are proposed to assess effectiveness. A formal model describing the university's information system as a collection of loosely coupled quanta is introduced. An architectural integrity condition is established, prohibiting integration through shared databases. A structural autonomy coefficient (K_sa) is developed to quantitatively assess architectural quality. The model serves as a theoretical basis for implementing automated architecture control systems based on specialized metrics (Fitness Functions) in CI/CD pipelines, which helps reduce technical debt and accelerate the launch of new educational services (Time-to-Market). The main research method employed is a set-theoretic approach to modeling the integration of heterogeneous information systems in the context of digitalization. The scientific novelty lies in applying the set-theoretic apparatus to describe and model the processes of data integration from various sources with differing structures and formats. The developed model provides a formalized representation of the integration relationships between information systems, allowing for the optimization of data exchange processes and enhancing the efficiency of the university's information resources. The research results indicate the high effectiveness of the proposed approach for creating a unified information space within the university, contributing to improved quality of education, scientific research, and managerial processes. Practical implementation of the model will enhance the university’s competitiveness in the digital economy. The feasibility of building a flexible and scalable system capable of adapting to new requirements and changes in the university's information environment is proven.

The picture archiving and communication system (PACS) originated as an image management system for improving the efficiency of radiologic practices. It has evolved into a hospital-integrated system that stores information media in many forms, including voice, text, medical records, waveform images, and video recordings. The integration of these various types of information requires the technology of multimedia, including hardware platforms, information systems and databases, communication protocols, display technology, and system interfacing and integration. The purpose of this book is to discuss the conceptual and technologic advances in PACS development for all of these previously mentioned technologies. The book also emphasizes the growing field of PACS-based imaging informatics, where existing PACS resources are used for largescale horizontal and longitudinal clinical service, research, and education applications. The book is intended for those who are involved in a health care environment that manages the everyday practical realities of PACS planning, operation, and maintenance. The book will also serve as excellent curriculum material for the training of PACS information technology personnel because the author provides comprehensive concepts that tie medical imaging, medical physics, information technology, and clinical workflow with enterprise PACS (multiple, hospital-wide PACS). The author, H. K. Huang, has been involved in PACS development since the 1980s and is a leading scientist in the field. The book is divided into five parts and 23 chapters. Part 1, titled “Medical Imaging Principles,” summarizes the history of PACS, the fundamental concepts of digital medical imaging, and the different types of modalities integrated into PACS. Part 2, titled “PACS Fundamentals,” describes in detail the PACS subsystems and industry standards (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine and Health Level 7) that are used to integrate PACS with the hospital information system and radiology information system. Part 3, titled “PACS Operation,” describes the practical problems encountered by PACS administrators and users and discusses different techniques to solve these problems, with many examples from installed PACS sites around the world. Because the author developed PACS at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1991 and the University of California, San Francisco, in 1995, he is able to draw from his expertise on the subject. The author also uses his experience from developing many state-of-theart prototypes (eg, fault tolerant storage system) funded by research grants. Part 4, titled “PACS-based Imaging Informatics,” presents image-processing techniques that can be used to mine the huge image and clinical data resources stored in the PACS archive. The analysis of lung nodules by using temporal computed tomographic and contentbased image indexing are some of the examples of advanced processing applications applied to PACS data mining. Part 5, titled “Enterprise PACS,” describes different models for implementing an enterprise PACS in terms of the architectural design of the system and financial and business models. This new book builds on two previous volumes on PACS that were written by the author. The text, image collections, and schematic diagrams in this current work achieve the author’s goal of providing up-to-date material concerning the technologic advances in PACS and imaging informatics. The text serves as a guide for those who are planning an enterprise PACS and provides teaching material for training PACS developers in industry and health care. The author has used portions of this book as lecture material for graduate courses at leading universities in the United States and abroad. The author also uses many examples to emphasize that the integration of heterogeneous health care information systems is becoming more complex and that, as more radiologists and clinicians expect higher standards in the reliability of the data, a systemic understanding of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine, Health Level 7, and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise becomes ever more important to optimize enterprise workflow. The strength of the book lies in the vast experience that the author, who has implemented PACS at numerous institutions in the United States and abroad, has transmitted into this new book. Huang has conducted first-hand analysis of the various systems from PACS manufacturers that are used in clinical operation at large medical institutions and has performed up-to-date research in data mining of the huge image and data resources stored in the PACS repository.

Intense competition drives the need for dynamic and flexible integration of dispersed and heterogeneous information systems. This paper proposes a semantic gateway architecture for system integration in networked manufacturing to solve the semantic heterogeneity problems. The system integration mode based on semantic gateway is set up to enable unified expression and analysis of the information to be integrated, so that the flexibility and transparency of integration between heterogeneous systems are significantly improved.

Each person interacts with multiple health institution’s systems along their life. These systems are usually developed to fulfill the specific needs of sanitary organizations or Web of Medical Things manufacturers. However, most of the times these information systems aren’t interconnected, making it very difficult to put in common the information of a patient scattered in various systems. Thus, it’s necessary to develop solutions that allow health information systems developers to consult all the information of an user across the multiple health’s information systems it is scattered and to offer this information organized as the Personal Health Trajectory of the user (a succession of Personal Health Records ordered by time). This paper proposes a solution for the integration of heterogeneous health information systems, the processing of their data and its provisioning in a health trajectory perspective through an API. Thus, software developers of healthcare solutions can leverage this API to develop a new generation of person-oriented solutions.

The logistics industry currently faces a prevalent "data silo" issue. This leads to information isolation and system fragmentation and severely restricts the ability of cross-platform business collaboration and intelligent decision-making. To address this problem, this paper proposes a non-intrusive logistics system architecture design for data silo integration. The architecture is based on key mechanisms such as edge access, protocol abstraction, and a unified data bus. It realizes lightweight integration of heterogeneous logistics information systems, and features low coupling, high compatibility, and strong adaptability. The designed system includes acquisition layer protocol adaptation components, transport layer edge routing mechanisms, and platform layer intelligent processing engines. It supports multi-protocol concurrent access and fault self-recovery capabilities. Deployment and testing in enterprise scenarios show that the system outperforms traditional solutions in data acquisition delay control, stability maintenance, and multi-protocol adaptation. The non-intrusive system not only leads significantly in throughput, reaching 12,000 entries per second. This is much higher than the 7,500 entries per second of traditional Application Programming Interface (API) integration and the 9,200 entries per second of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture. It also performs excellently in average response time, which is only 45 milliseconds, significantly lower than the other two solutions. In particular, this system achieves efficient integration without modifying the original systems and effectively solves the problem of coexisting multi-systems and non-interoperable data in enterprises. This paper provides a promotable reference architecture for the informatization transformation of logistics.

In this paper, a methodology for integrating heterogeneous industrial information systems is presented. The methodology is strongly based on the extensive reuse of already-made components and is conceptually divided in three levels, one for each kind of designer that is typically involved in this type of projects. To accomplish a better integration of the activities and tools necessary to develop industrial information systems with the proposed methodology, three appropriate organizational configurations are adopted.

This study aims to explain the relationship between information system (IS) integration and hospital efficiency, measured in two years, 1997 and 1998. The study used 349 urban hospitals in the analysis. The hospitals' IS integration strategy was measured by multiple indicators of the software system applications and IS resources used in 1997. Hospital performance was measured by the levels of efficiency, using technical efficiency scores computed by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for 1997 and 1998. The DEA analysis shows that, among the urban hospitals studied, the number of efficient hospitals increased during the period 1997-1998. It was found that information system integration is statistically significantly associated with the DEA technical efficiency scores in 1997 and 1998. However, system integration is negatively associated with the 1997 efficiency score and changed to a positive direction in 1998. Hospitals that deployed a highly integrated IS strategy did not show an immediate benefit. However, the IS integration strategy enhanced hospitals' technical efficiency in the next year.

This paper develops a knowledge-based model of information systems (IS) integration in acquisition-based growth programs. Previous research has found important differences in the acquirers’ abilities for acquisition IS integration, and that these differences play key roles in explaining the economic benefits of acquisition-based growth. A knowledge-based view of acquisition IS integration contributes explanation to how differences in abilities arise. Our knowledge-based model is developed by an analytic induction approach, comprising both deductive and inductive analysis of the industry group Trelleborg. The analyses yield five propositions that explain the building of knowledge for acquisition IS integration by the mechanisms of routine refinement, superstitious learning, expertise building, sub-activity refinement and related expertise building. Together, the five propositions form a knowledge-based model of acquisition IS integration. The model suggests that ‘serial acquirers’ form the knowledge necessary for attending to an IS integration challenge over a series of heterogeneous acquisitions. Differences in acquirers’ abilities for acquisition IS integration that depend on knowledge variations are therefore persistent and hard to overcome for the inexperienced acquirer.

Sequential configuration is a fundamental pattern that occurs when integrating systems that span domains and levels of abstraction. This task requires the integration of heterogeneous autonomous information systems, processes, and applications. We propose an extensible system for correlating sequential configurations across loosely-coupled systems. Our framework defines fundamental abstractions and interfaces that enable the implementation of domain-specific models. We build upon our framework to provide a suite of tools to support applications that manage the configuration lifecycle. Our implemented prototype application integrates the processes, tools, and data involved in the first two stages of the IT outsourced services contract lifecycle.

It is generally acknowledged that integration of large-scale information systems is a challenging problem. A domain that particularly encounters this problem currently is healthcare, where information systems tend to be heterogeneous and in constant evolution. A particular need for health professionals is the ability to ask medical questions across a heterogeneous information system, then visualise and analyse the results in a synthetic and coherent manner. In this paper, we present a case study of a heterogeneous data source search meta-engine framework, based on category theory. This framework addresses the problem of cross-interrogation of heterogeneous data sources, such as relational database management systems, documentary database systems, or collections of documents. It additionally attempts to address the problem of constant evolution of such information systems. The framework has been successfully applied to the biomedical data of the medical information system at the Institut Curie, a major French cancer care centre. Different aspects of this work are illustrated, such as the mathematical foundations of the Prométhée framework, the methodology used for its implementation, and the impact that Prométhée has encountered since its deployment in a hospital environment.KeywordsCategory TheoryMedical Information SystemConstant EvolutionRelational Database Management SystemHeterogeneous Data SourceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between information systems (IS) integration and business performance in the context of the ad traffic system of a media company.Design/methodology/approachA system dynamics (SD) model that shows ad traffic system structure was developed and simulation scenarios were examined.FindingsSimulation scenarios identify the dysfunctional effects of the lack of IS integration. The model shows how IS integration problems increase the dynamic complexity of business processes, resulting in poor business performance. It also shows how and why IS integration improvements can lead to superior performance.Research limitations/implicationsResearchers of business process management will benefit from a wider adoption of simulation and SD modeling approaches. The modeling process and model validation are discussed.Practical implicationsSD modeling can help organizations analyze and streamline their business processes through IT, significantly and sustainably improving their business performance.Originality/valueModeling the relationship between IS integration and business performance through time.

Production planning and controls usually involve numerous business application systems, including manufacturing execution systems (MES), enterprise resource planning (ERP), advanced planning and scheduling (APS) and other information systems. Implementing each of these systems is a complex, costly and time-consuming project. Moreover, due to the fierce competition in the global market, mass customization has become the mainstream in the demand-driven environment which increases the difficulties in the integration of heterogeneous information systems. This research adopts a case study approach to examine the business application integration processes in the demand-driven environment and to identify potential solution in the project. Specifically, this study proposes a reference framework of integrated application systems for production planning and shop-floor control, and discusses several implications of such large-project implementation.

Objectives. The study set out to develop fundamental methodological principles for the logical integration of information systems (IS) in organizations and to quantitatively assess the topological significance of the IS integration process.Methods. Methods based on expert systems were used for the logical integration of information in conjunction with data-mining approaches based on various IS. In order to quantitatively assess the topological significance of the IS integration procedure, graph theory methods were used. Discrete topology methods were also employed for calculating the topological invariants of the IS interconnection topology.Results. Issues and challenges involved in the integration of IS in large organizations are considered in terms of integration methods based on physical and logical principles. While IS integration approaches based on logical principles offer distinct advantages over physical integration approaches, new problems arising in the context of logical integration approaches require innovative solutions. The proposed scheme for the logical integration of IS includes an algebraic method for quantitatively assessing the topological significance of integration, comprising an important numerical indicator in the logical integration of IS. Methods based on learning expert systems, which represent a fundamental solution for organizing the logical integration of IS for intelligent data analysis, are reviewed.Conclusions. When integrating IS in organizations, it is advisable to use a logical integration approach that preserves the logic of existing information systems. The application of logical integration enables intelligent data analysis using various IS. The use of expert systems in logical integration enables the creation of a new logical layer for providing decision support within the organization.

PurposeThe initiative to develop integrated information systems (IIS) for the construction industry has been a strategic focus in various countries. However, the absence of a framework to plan, develop and manage IS has led to various challenges and prevented these IIS from achieving their objectives. The purpose of this paper is to propose the conceptual framework of IIS for the Indonesian construction industry.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through a questionnaire survey and then validated through the focus group discussion conducted by 14 experts whom we selected rigorously. The content and descriptive analyses were adopted to determine the level of importance and concerns for each component and factor expressed by respondents.FindingsThe conceptual framework of IIS for the Indonesian construction industry consists of five components: business environment, organization environment, information systems (IS) integration, alignment of IS with business and impact on organization or industry. By integrating business and organization environments, IS integration and alignments with business and impact, the framework offers a comprehensive systems approach to IS integration that is both practical and theoretically sound.Originality/valueThe paper offers a perspective on IIS in developing countries, focusing on Indonesia. This study provides valuable insights for construction practitioners to understand the implications of IS integration and serves as a tool to design and develop more effective information technology (IT) solutions. Additionally, it aids governmental bodies in formulating policies to support the Integrated Construction Services Information System (ICSIS) program to realize the Indonesian One Data Initiative (IODI).

This paper considers strategic Information System (IS) integration from a systems perspective. First it considers the changing role of Information Technology (IT) over the last two decades from localised technologies to process wide IS integration. A discussion of the limitations of systems methodologies follows. This discusses the use of systems modelling to aid IS integration. The paper then proposes a decision based mechanism which evaluates information flows in the business process from a holistic perspective. This mechanism consists of three modules: Audit, Assessment and Suggestion which identify information bottlenecks and appraise possible IT investments from operational, strategic and financial viewpoints.