Workflow management systems (WFMS) are enjoying increasing popular ity due to their ability to coordinate and streamline complex organizational processes within organizations of all sizes. Organizational processes are de scriptions of an organization's activities engineered to fulfill its mission such as completing a business contract or satisfying a specific customer request. Gaining control of these processes allows an organization to reengineer and improve each process or adapt them to changing requirements. The goal of WFMSs is to manage these organizational processes and coordinate their execution. was demonstrated in the first half The high degree of interest in WFMSs of the 1990s by a significant increase in the number of commercial products (once estimated to about 250) and the estimated market size (in combined $2 billion in 1996. Ensuing maturity product sales and services) of about is demonstrated by consolidations during the last year. Ranging from mere e-mail based calendar tools and flow charting tools to very sophisticated inte grated development environments for distributed enterprise-wide applications and systems to support programming in the large, these products are finding an eager market and opening up important research and development op portunities. In spite of their early success in the market place, however, the current generation of systems can benefit from further research and develop ment, especially for increasingly complex and mission-critical applications.

This book compiles contributions from renowned researchers covering all aspects of conceptual modeling, on the occasion of Arne Sølvberg’s 67th birthday. Friends of this pioneer in information systems modeling contribute their latest research results from such fields as data modeling, goal-oriented modeling, agent-oriented modeling, and process-oriented modeling. The book reflects the most important recent developments and application areas of conceptual modeling, and highlights trends in conceptual modeling for the next decade.

Handbook of Database Security: Applications and Trends provides an up-to-date overview of data security models, techniques, and architectures in a variety of data management applications and settings. In addition to providing an overview of data security in different application settings, this book includes an outline for future research directions within the field. The book is designed for industry practitioners and researchers, and is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science.

We can now say that it is really a big pleasure for us to welcome all of you to the proceedings of CAiSE 2005 which was held in Porto.

This proceeding represents state-of-the-art trends and developments in the emerging field of engineering asset management as presented at the Eight World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM). The Proceedings of the WCEAM 2013 is an excellent reference for practitioners, researchers and students in the multidisciplinary field of asset management, covering topics such as: Asset condition monitoring and intelligent maintenance, 2. Asset data warehousing, data mining and fusion, 3. Asset performance and level-of-service models, 4. Design and life-cycle integrity of physical assets, 5. Deterioration and preservation models for assets, 6. Education and training in asset management, 7. Engineering standards in asset management, 8. Fault diagnosis and prognostics, 9. Financial analysis methods for physical assets, 10. Human dimensions in integrated asset management, 11. Information quality management, 12. Information systems and knowledge management, 13. Intelligent sensors and devices, 14. Maintenance strategies in asset management, 15. Optimisation decisions in asset management, 16. Risk management in asset management, 17. Strategic asset management, 18. Sustainability in asset management. King WONG served as Congress Chair for WCEAM 2013 and ICUMAS 2013 is the President of the Hong Kong Institute of Utility Specialists (HKIUS) and Convener of International Institute of Utility Specialists (IIUS). Peter TSE is the Director of the Smart Engineering Asset Management laboratory (SEAM) at the City University of Hong Kong and served as the Chair of WCEAM 2013 Organising Committee. Joseph MATHEW served as the Co-Chair of WCEAM 2013 is also WCEAM’s General Chair. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Asset Institute, Australia.

Access control is one of the fundamental services that any Data Management System should provide. Its main goal is to protect data from unauthorized read and write operations. This is particularly crucial in today's open and interconnected world, where each kind of information can be easily made available to a huge user population, and where a damage or misuse of data may have unpredictable consequences that go beyond the boundaries where data reside or have been generated. This book provides an overview of the various developments in access control for data management systems. Discretionary, mandatory, and role-based access control will be discussed, by surveying the most relevant proposals and analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of each paradigm in view of the requirements of different application domains. Access control mechanisms provided by commercial Data Management Systems are presented and discussed. Finally, the last part of the book is devoted to discussion of some of the most challenging and innovative research trends in the area of access control, such as those related to the Web 2.0 revolution or to the Database as a Service paradigm. This book is a valuable reference for an heterogeneous audience. It can be used as either an extended survey for people who are interested in access control or as a reference book for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in data security with a special focus on access control. It is also useful for technologists, researchers, managers, and developers who want to know more about access control and related emerging trends. Table of Contents: Access Control: Basic Concepts / Discretionary Access Control for Relational Data Management Systems / Discretionary Access Control for Advanced Data Models / Mandatory Access Control / Role-based Access Control / Emerging Trends in Access Control