Growth is high on the agenda of companies around the world today. This book, based on several years of new research by the world's leading management consultants McKinsey & Company, presents powerful new insights into sustained profitable growth.
Information granules, as encountered in natural language, are implicit in nature. To make them fully operational so they can be effectively used to analyze and design intelligent systems, information granules need to be made explicit. An emerging discipline, granular computing focuses on formalizing information granules and unifying them to create a coherent methodological and developmental environment for intelligent system design and analysis. Granular Computing: Analysis and Design of Intelligent Systems presents the unified principles of granular computing along with its comprehensive algorithmic framework and design practices. Introduces the concepts of information granules, information granularity, and granular computing Presents the key formalisms of information granules Builds on the concepts of information granules with discussion of higher-order and higher-type information granules Discusses the operational concept of information granulation and degranulation by highlighting the essence of this tandem and its quantification in terms of the associated reconstruction error Examines the principle of justifiable granularity Stresses the need to look at information granularity as an important design asset that helps construct more realistic models of real-world systems or facilitate collaborative pursuits of system modeling Highlights the concepts, architectures, and design algorithms of granular models Explores application domains where granular computing and granular models play a visible role, including pattern recognition, time series, and decision making Written by an internationally renowned authority in the field, this innovative book introduces readers to granular computing as a new paradigm for the analysis and synthesis of intelligent systems. It is a valuable resource for those engaged in research and practical developments in computer, electrical, industrial, manufacturing, and biomedical engineering. Building from fundamentals, the book is also suitable for readers from nontechnical disciplines where information granules assume a visible position.
This book is about Granular Computing (GC) - an emerging conceptual and of information processing. As the name suggests, GC concerns computing paradigm processing of complex information entities - information granules. In essence, information granules arise in the process of abstraction of data and derivation of knowledge from information. Information granules are everywhere. We commonly use granules of time (seconds, months, years). We granulate images; millions of pixels manipulated individually by computers appear to us as granules representing physical objects. In natural language, we operate on the basis of word-granules that become crucial entities used to realize interaction and communication between humans. Intuitively, we sense that information granules are at the heart of all our perceptual activities. In the past, several formal frameworks and tools, geared for processing specific information granules, have been proposed. Interval analysis, rough sets, fuzzy sets have all played important role in knowledge representation and processing. Subsequently, information granulation and information granules arose in numerous application domains. Well-known ideas of rule-based systems dwell inherently on information granules. Qualitative modeling, being one of the leading threads of AI, operates on a level of information granules. Multi-tier architectures and hierarchical systems (such as those encountered in control engineering), planning and scheduling systems all exploit information granularity. We also utilize information granules when it comes to functionality granulation, reusability of information and efficient ways of developing underlying information infrastructures.
Principles of Transaction Processing is a comprehensive guide to developing applications, designing systems, and evaluating engineering products. The book provides detailed discussions of the internal workings of transaction processing systems, and it discusses how these systems work and how best to utilize them. It covers the architecture of Web Application Servers and transactional communication paradigms.The book is divided into 11 chapters, which cover the following: Overview of transaction processing application and system structureSoftware abstractions found in transaction processing systemsArchitecture of multitier applications and the functions of transactional middleware and database serversQueued transaction processing and its internals, with IBM's Websphere MQ and Oracle's Stream AQ as examplesBusiness process management and its mechanismsDescription of the two-phase locking function, B-tree locking and multigranularity locking used in SQL database systems and nested transaction lockingSystem recovery and its failuresTwo-phase commit protocolComparison between the tradeoffs of replicating servers versus replication resourcesTransactional middleware products and standardsFuture trends, such as cloud computing platforms, composing scalable systems using distributed computing components, the use of flash storage to replace disks and data streams from sensor devices as a source of transaction requests. The text meets the needs of systems professionals, such as IT application programmers who construct TP applications, application analysts, and product developers. The book will also be invaluable to students and novices in application programming. - Complete revision of the classic "non mathematical" transaction processing reference for systems professionals - Updated to focus on the needs of transaction processing via the Internet-- the main focus of business data processing investments, via web application servers, SOA, and important new TP standards - Retains the practical, non-mathematical, but thorough conceptual basis of the first edition
Companies face major challenges as they seek to flourish in competitive global markets, fuelled by developments in technology, from the Internet to grid computing and Web services. In this environment, service orientation - aligning business processes to the changing demands of customers - is emerging as a highly effective approach to increasing efficiency. In this book, Paul Allen provides an accessible guide to service orientation, showing how it works and highlighting the benefits it can deliver. The book provides an integrated approach: after covering the basics of service orientation, he discusses key issues such as business agility, designing quality-of-service infrastructure, implementing service-level agreements, and cultural factors. He provides roadmaps, definitions, templates, techniques, process patterns and checklists to help you realize service orientation. These resources are reinforced with detailed case studies, from the transport and banking sectors. Packed with valuable insights, the book will be essential reading for CIOs, IT architects and senior developers. IT facing business executives will also benefit from understanding how software services can enable their business strategies. Paul Allen is a principal business-IT strategist at CA and is widely recognized for his innovative work in component-based development (CBD), business-IT alignment and service-oriented architecture. With over thirty years experience of large-scale business systems, he is an established author whose previous book was the critically acclaimed Realizing e-Business with Components. Sam Higgins is now with Forrester Research Inc.; formerly he managed the Innovation and Planning Unit of Queensland Transport's Information Services Branch. Paul McRae is the application architect in the Innovation and Planning Unit of Queensland Transport's Information Services Branch. Hermann Schlamann is a senior architect in the architecture group of Credit Suisse.
While growth is a top priority for companies of all sizes, it can be extremely difficult to create and maintain—especially in today’s competitive business environment. The Granularity of Growth will put you in a better position to succeed as it reveals why growth is so important, what enables certain companies to grow so spectacularly, and how to ensure that growth comes from multiple sources as you take both a broad and a granular view of your markets.
The four-volume set LNAI 6276--6279 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, KES 2010, held in Cardiff, UK, in September 2010. The 272 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 360 submissions. They present the results of high-quality research on a broad range of intelligent systems topics.
This edition describes a process based on employing use cases to gather and define software requirements. Use cases, roughly defined, involve the process of figuring out exactly how end-users will "use" a software system when it is completed before coding begins. Both the process and its presentation have been thoroughly revised based on the authors' more recent consulting experience and on feedback gathered from readers of the first edition over the past three years.
With the proliferation of citizen reporting, smart mobile devices, and social media, an increasing number of people are beginning to generate information about events they observe and participate in. A significant fraction of this information contains multimedia data to share the experience with their audience. A systematic information modeling and management framework is necessary to capture this widely heterogeneous, schemaless, potentially humongous information produced by many different people. This book is an attempt to examine the modeling, storage, querying, and applications of such an event management system in a holistic manner. It uses a semantic-web style graph-based view of events, and shows how this event model, together with its query facility, can be used toward emerging applications like semi-automated storytelling. Table of Contents: Introduction / Event Data Models / Implementing an Event Data Model / Querying Events / Storytelling with Events / An Emerging Application / Conclusion
Modeling and management of credit risk are the main topics within banks and other lending institutions. Historical experience shows that, in particular, concentration of risk in credit portfolios has been one of the major causes of bank distress. Therefore, concentration risk is highly relevant to anyone who wants to go beyond the very basic portfolio credit risk models. The book gives an introduction to credit risk modeling with the aim to measure concentration risks in credit portfolios. Taking the basic principles of credit risk in general as a starting point, several industry models are studied. These allow banks to compute a probability distribution of credit losses at the portfolio level. Besides these industry models the Internal Ratings Based model, on which Basel II is based, is treated. On the basis of these models various methods for the quantification of name and sector concentration risk and the treatment of default contagion are discussed. The book reflects current research in these areas from both an academic and a supervisory perspective