Using web engineering and programming languages in documents management.

Cioca, Lucian-Ionel ; Cioca, Marius ; Cioca, Adrian 等

1. INTRODUCTION

The conference and electronic publication management system presented in this paper employs Open-Source development environments such as: the PHP application server in conjunction with the MySQL database server and the Apache web server on any platform: UNIX/Linux, Windows, MacOS.

These technologies have been chosen due to their reliability, flexibility, portability and safety, the easiness they provide in application development and last but not least due to the fact that they do not require additional costs related to user licenses.

The system is initially created in Romanian but it is easy to provide versions in other languages. We will also consider, besides general elements, the issues related to information endurance, security and safety, as well as the ergonomics of the interfaces utilized within the product. Such a system would be fully accessible anytime, anywhere. We will manage pages by means of a relatively new additional technology, Ajax, in order to simplify administrative requirements and to accelerate response times (Buraga & Cioca, 2005), (Buraga & Cioca, 2007).

Three stages are required for the implementation of this system: the installation and configuration of the product/application; training for the efficient use of the product; and creating a user's guide focused on both application management and on the client (reviewer and author).

The necessity of developing such a digital infrastructure for the management of conferences and electronic publications emerged due to the following reasons:

--First, the increasing number of conferences, symposiums and workshops organized in Romania by educational institutions, research centers, and other institutions and organizations (for example, the "Lucian Blaga" University, Sibiu, organized in 2006 around 35 such events, and 82 in 2007); this number is increasing exponentially up to almost 1000 events per year;

--Another reason is the increasing number of publications that are "willing" or "required" to be present on the INTERNET (we have used the term "required" thinking only to the CNCSIS Branked journals and which have, in order to aspire to the A category, to meet among other criteria the one referring to their presence on the INTERNET); (for example, the "Lucian Blaga" University, Sibiu has 17 CNCSIS accredited journals and 10 journals registered only within the University of which none is using such a system of dynamic information generation; thus, they are not updated on time and sometimes they are not updated at all, which makes them of no use for the researchers in those respective fields, who stop accessing them via the NET);

--Another reason resulted from the analysis of other similar systems on the market which are either too expensive or they (the freeware versions) do not provide increased flexibility and do not meet the criteria required by the users (Buraga & Cioca, 2005);

--A very important fact is that the system allows easy integration of its data with other applications in Romania due to the XML meta-language used for data handling. Thus, data may be exported or imported in/from other databases such as for example the reviewers' database, a national database containing all reviewers licensed by the competent authorities. We could provide more examples but the main idea has already been pointed out, namely integrating the system with any other application (registry etc.) managed at a national scale.

Therefore, we consider the development of such a digital infrastructure for conference and electronic publication management extremely suitable for supporting the abovementioned activities (Cioca & Buraga, 2005), (Cioca & Buraga, 2005), (Cioca & Cioca, 2006).

2. TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

The electronic publication and conference management digital infrastructure consists of four modules (configuration, management, client [authors and reviewers] and reporting) and there are also some aspects related to endurance (in order to provide access for as many users as possible at a given moment), aspects related to information security and safety as well as aspects related to the interface design (interface ergonomics in order to provide an intuitive/efficient and easier use). (Daconta et al., 2003), (Davies et al., 2004).

3. TECHNOLOGICAL REGUIREMENTS

3.1 Technologies

We are targeting low costs and acceptable performance and stability.

* Operating System: Linux Based

* Programing Language: PHP 5.x

* SGBD: MySQL 5.x

* WEB Server: Apache 2.x

3.2 Fundamental architecture

* Client--Server

* Protocol: Http (Https)

3.3 Network access

Intranet as well as Internet, no restrictions in this respect.

3.4. Software packages required, host system configuration

* Web browser (Firefox, Internet explorer >5.5, nescape)

* Access to host server(intranet, Internet)

4. REQUIREMENTS / FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF THE SOFTWARE SYSTEM

4.1 Basic functions of the system

Fig. 1 presented the basic architecture for conference

* Paper (author) registration. Register paper (author) into the system. This is to be performed by means of a registration interface (IR01).

* Reviewing paper. This section is for reviewing submitted paper(s).

* Management:

--Papers (authors). Paper management within the system (activation, deactivation);

--Reviewers. Reviewer management within the system (activation, deactivation);

--Other users. Management of other reviewers (responsible for content, assigning reviewers, defining conferences, etc);

--The Conference, reviewing criteria.

4.2 Management of conference validity data, reviewing criteria, etc.;

* Log. Log system in which registered users may schedule the publication of a paper;

* Public presentation, notification. Public notification system through articles, important notices, on the home page of the system.

* Personal notification. Notifying system users about changes of objects in the system.

4.3 Actors. Brief overview

Actors are groups of users who access the system Authors. Special users who post or change papers (Geroimenko, 2004).

* Reviewers. Users selected by specific procedures who, according to previously

* established criteria, review papers. They mark each paper and thus developing a

* hierarchy of the papers uploaded into the system.

* Administrators. Users responsible for the management of system's internal processes,

* from defining access rules to deleting/registering user accounts (Smith et al, 2004), (Stetiu & Cioca, 2003).

--General Administrators

--Content Administrators

--Administrators responsible for assigning / reassigning

--User Administrators

--Activity Assessment Administrators

* Guest users (anonymous users). Users that belong to no category. They enjoy restricted access to public news and notices.

5. CONCLUSIONS

Such a conference and electronic publications management system is a necessity given the fact that a growing volume of data on the INTERNET has to be dealt with in an elegant, effective and timely manner. Without such a system, data (related to a conference or an electronic publication) management is difficult and in most cases almost impossible, which affects the prestige of a huge number of educational events (conferences / workshops) organized each year and electronic publications, which scholars from all fields are using more and more in their research.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been financed by the PNCDII, Innovare Program, Contract no. 23/24.09.2007.

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7. REFERENCES

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