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The growth of online shopping has allowed e-commerce to become a usual concept. However, companies still have little knowledge about their customers and the most appropriate and effective processes to create a perfect fit between... more
The growth of online shopping has allowed e-commerce to become a usual concept. However, companies still have little knowledge about their customers and the most appropriate and effective processes to create a perfect fit between costumers' needs and companies' interests. To solve this problem, it is important to join e-commerce with Business Intelligence (BI). This paper provides a survey of the most popular business intelligence and e-commerce open source platforms and proposes an architecture to combine e-commerce with business intelligence. We study Pentaho and SpagoBI business intelligence platforms and Magento and OpenCart e-commerce platforms. An integration model of e-commerce and BI platforms is also proposed using an API and communication mechanisms.
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Many Information Extraction (IE)applications are available, in several domains, to handle the increasingly volume of data. This paper reviews applications and methods used for IE and performs an analysis with the objective of... more
Many Information Extraction (IE)applications are available, in several domains, to handle the increasingly volume of data. This paper reviews applications and methods used for IE and performs an analysis with the objective of understanding which applications have already been used for clinical trials and applications that although they were not and would have an easy adaptation to be used as well.
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Transformers are models that implement a mechanism of self-attention, individually weighting the importance of each part of the input data. Their use in image classification tasks is still somewhat limited since researchers have so far... more
Transformers are models that implement a mechanism of self-attention, individually weighting the importance of each part of the input data. Their use in image classification tasks is still somewhat limited since researchers have so far chosen Convolutional Neural Networks for image classification and transformers were more targeted to Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a literature review that shows the differences between Vision Transformers (ViT) and Convolutional Neural Networks. The state of the art that used the two architectures for image classification was reviewed and an attempt was made to understand what factors may influence the performance of the two deep learning architectures based on the datasets used, image size, number of target classes (for the classification problems), hardware, and evaluated architectures and top results. The objective of this work is to identify which of the architectures is the best for image classification ...
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Mobile development is increasingly integrated into software development companies. Customers are currently expecting applications with good performance in less time and at lower cost. The demand for a hybrid solution which allows the... more
Mobile development is increasingly integrated into software development companies. Customers are currently expecting applications with good performance in less time and at lower cost. The demand for a hybrid solution which allows the development of applications for both platforms with the same code is no longer new. React Native is a recent framework that has emerged to bridge the gaps presented by previous solutions, combining JavaScript development, which is now considered the best solution for frontend development. In this article, a comparative analysis of the development time of the main functionalities of an audio-guide application for Java (Android), Swift (iOS) and React Native (Android and iOS) is made. This work shows that Swift is the solution with the lowest development time, while React Native and Java have very similar overall development times, however with the particularity that React Native supports both the two main mobile operating systems.
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The volume of data is growing exponentially and becoming more valuable to organizations that collect it, from e-commerce data, shipping, audio and video logs, text messages, internet search queries, stock market activity, financial... more
The volume of data is growing exponentially and becoming more valuable to organizations that collect it, from e-commerce data, shipping, audio and video logs, text messages, internet search queries, stock market activity, financial transactions, the Internet of Things, and various other sources. The major challenges are related with the way to extract insights from such a rich data environment and whether Deep Learning can be successful with Big Data. To get some insight on these topics, social network data are employed as a case study on how sentiments can affect decisions in stock market environments. In this paper, we propose a generalized Deep Learning-based classification framework for Stock Market Sentiment Analysis. This work comprises the study, the development, and implementation of an automatic classification system based on Deep Learning and the validation of its adequacy and efficiency in any scenario, particularly Stock Market Sentiment Analysis. Distinct datasets and s...
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The mobile applications development is composed by three groups: natives, hybrids and web. In this paper a comparison between the native and hybrid mobile applications build on JavaScript (Reactive Native, NativeScript and Ionic) is done.... more
The mobile applications development is composed by three groups: natives, hybrids and web. In this paper a comparison between the native and hybrid mobile applications build on JavaScript (Reactive Native, NativeScript and Ionic) is done. The analysis is done using the 7 more relevant principles to the mobile applications development. This paper shows that React Native exhibits the best results in all the analyzed principles and still having benefits in the hybrid development in relation to native. With the emergence of frameworks for mobile development, some of them with a little more than a year of existence, there is the difficulty to perceive which are the most advantageous for a given business objective, this article shows the best options among the frameworks used, always comparing with the native development.
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With the increasing expansion of the open source tools in our daily life it is crucial to realize which are the best tools of the immensity that exist. In order to compare open source management tools, it is recommended to use a... more
With the increasing expansion of the open source tools in our daily life it is crucial to realize which are the best tools of the immensity that exist. In order to compare open source management tools, it is recommended to use a methodology such as QSOS that help to evaluate and choose which tool best suits our objectives. This paper describes some of the most commonly used open source project management tools such as GanttProject, OpenProject, and ProjectLibre and then compares them using QSOS methodology.
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Nowadays organizations look for Big Data as an opportunity to manage and explore their data with the objective to support decisions within its different operational areas. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse several concepts about Big... more
Nowadays organizations look for Big Data as an opportunity to manage and explore their data with the objective to support decisions within its different operational areas. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse several concepts about Big Data Analytics, including definitions, features, advantages and disadvantages. By investigating today's big data platforms, current industrial practices and related trends in the research world, it is possible to understand the impact of Big Data Analytics on smaller organizations. This paper analyses the following five open source platforms for Big Data Analytics: Apache Hadoop, Cloudera, Spark, Hortonworks, and HPCC.
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A big data warehouse enables the analysis of large amounts of information that typically comes from the organization's transactional systems (OLTP). However, today's data warehouse systems do not have the capacity to handle the... more
A big data warehouse enables the analysis of large amounts of information that typically comes from the organization's transactional systems (OLTP). However, today's data warehouse systems do not have the capacity to handle the massive amount of data that is currently produced. Business intelligence (BI) is a collection of decision support technologies that enable executives, managers, and analysts to make better and faster decisions. Organizations must make good use of business intelligence platforms to quickly acquire desirable information from the huge volume of data to reduce the time and increase the efficiency of decision-making processes. In this chapter, the authors present a comparative analysis of commercial and open source BI tools capabilities, in order to aid organizations in the selection process of the most suitable BI platform. They also evaluated and compared six major open source BI platforms: Actuate, Jaspersoft, Jedox/Palo, Pentaho, SpagoBI, and Vanilla; ...
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In this paper, we present models and blog search engines that currently exist and also propose a model to search blogs -- WISE Blogs. This model uses several keyword search techniques, also based on several API's that picks up the... more
In this paper, we present models and blog search engines that currently exist and also propose a model to search blogs -- WISE Blogs. This model uses several keyword search techniques, also based on several API's that picks up the latest posts on blogging platforms, as well as the reading of RSS feeds and still uses a web crawler in strategic websites where blog contents are updated. The purpose of this model is to create a solution that is capable to catch a high number of blogs and to store its content.
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The increase of online shopping has allowed e-commerce to become an usual concept. However, companies still have little knowledge about their customers and the most appropriate and effective processes they should apply to create a perfect... more
The increase of online shopping has allowed e-commerce to become an usual concept. However, companies still have little knowledge about their customers and the most appropriate and effective processes they should apply to create a perfect fit between costumers’ needs and companies’ offers. To solve this problem, it is important to merge e-commerce with business intelligence, because this would enable to obtain knowledge about e-commerce platforms’ customers, allowing the analysis of customers’ behavior, discovering purchasing patterns, improve relationship management with customer, get better stock management, support to create marketing actions, better financial performance and so forth. This paper provides a review of the literature, suggests new research directions, and proposes an architecture to combine e-commerce with business intelligence.
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The decision about selecting the degree/institution upon application to higher education will be one of the most important one in the life of a youngster. In this paper we propose a portal that contains all the criteria and indicators... more
The decision about selecting the degree/institution upon application to higher education will be one of the most important one in the life of a youngster. In this paper we propose a portal that contains all the criteria and indicators that are available and relevant during the process of choosing a course. We provide the resources and the necessary options, so that it can be the candidates and not the State or any other entity to choose their priorities. Thus, giving more or less weight to criteria and indicators that one can consider relevant according to his/her objectives, the candidate can generate several simulations creating a personal ranking of the pair course/institution.
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In a world more and more connected with digital where the possibility of generating and analyzing big quantities of data is becoming increasingly valuable for society, every day there are new findings on opportunities and strategies in... more
In a world more and more connected with digital where the possibility of generating and analyzing big quantities of data is becoming increasingly valuable for society, every day there are new findings on opportunities and strategies in studies that cover a great treatment of data. In the era where Big Data and consequential data analysis are utilized effectively in a variety of topics, how have these behaved towards that which is one of the biggest challenges that human beings face: climate change. This literature review shows how Big Data and data analysis have interacted with the subject-matter and relate the use of these by referring to examples of how it has been implemented in the investigation of climate issues, aiming to reveal how climate change, a subject that has been exhaustively studied, has also been affected with the introduction of Big Data and that with Big Data it was possible to obtain better knowledge about the subject which is extremely important for society’s preparation and adjustment.
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The autonomy of being able to visualize and analyze existing data and the knowledge that comes from it, is fundamental for the increase of the competitive advantage of organizations. In this context, Data Visualization tools are great... more
The autonomy of being able to visualize and analyze existing data and the knowledge that comes from it, is fundamental for the increase of the competitive advantage of organizations. In this context, Data Visualization tools are great aids in decision making by following techniques of Self-Service Business Intelligence. They aim to improve agility in different business departments, enable their users to create their own reports and access data at any time without being dependent on specialists. But this choice has to be made based on a good analysis of the companies and what they need to be able to find the one that best suits their needs. In order to improve this choice, is made a comparative evaluation of the four most used Data Visualization tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Sisense e QlikView.
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Information systems provide organizations with the necessary information to achieve their goals. Relevant information is gathered and stored to allow decision makers to obtain quick and elaborated reports from the data.
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The knowledge one can extract from existing data in organizations is critical to increasing their competitive advantage in today's changing markets. In this context, the use of Business Intelligence (BI) platforms has been shown to be... more
The knowledge one can extract from existing data in organizations is critical to increasing their competitive advantage in today's changing markets. In this context, the use of Business Intelligence (BI) platforms has been shown to be an effective choice in support of decision-making. BI platforms are becoming a major asset for any Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME), as they have multiple benefits: efficient resource use, increased market share, identification of business opportunities and negative trends. Open source BI platforms provide most of the functionalities available in commercial solutions without licensing costs, and is therefore a viable alternative for SME. However, it is critical that SME choose the complete BI platform. In this paper, a comparative assessment was made of three commonly used Open Source BI platforms: Jaspersoft, Knowage (SpagoBI) and Pentaho. In this evaluation were used the criteria of Gartner, and the Knowage obtained the best results.
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The use of data security solutions like encryption significantly reduces database performance in data-intensive processing environments such as Data Warehouses. To overcome this issue this paper proposes a transparent lightweight... more
The use of data security solutions like encryption significantly reduces database performance in data-intensive processing environments such as Data Warehouses. To overcome this issue this paper proposes a transparent lightweight encryption technique based on alternating sequences of eXclusive Or (XOR) and bit switching operations. The technique aims to achieve high performance while providing significant levels of security strength, attaining better security-performance tradeoffs than most commercial encryption solutions and those proposed by the research community. The experimental evaluation conducted using the TPC-DS benchmark shows that the proposed technique adds lower database performance overhead when comparing with the AES standard encryption algorithm and with other encryption solutions such as OPES, Salsa20, TEA and SES-DW.
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The use of Business Intelligence (BI) platforms is an effective choice to support decision-making. BI platforms are a major asset for any enterprise, as they have multiple benefits that become a competitive advantage. It is known that BI... more
The use of Business Intelligence (BI) platforms is an effective choice to support decision-making. BI platforms are a major asset for any enterprise, as they have multiple benefits that become a competitive advantage. It is known that BI implementation costs are one of the top factors for the non BI spread over Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Open source BI platforms provide most of the functionalities available in commercial solutions without increasing costs for organizations. Another factor also known to keep BI aside from SMEs: the complexity of implementation. This paper intends to answer the question that arises when the SME decides to move forward: can we implement a BI system? How complex will it be? It is conducted a case study where a prototype implementation of Pentaho BI platform takes place using a real case and data. The aim is to verify the complexity level of this implementation process and if it is within reach of an SME. The overall conclusion is that even though the process is not that complex, it should be managed by someone with knowledge in this area, either from the organization or from external.
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The present competitive marketplace, significant development of information technology, increase of customer expectations, and economic globalization, has caused a huge impact on the way companies and the different business sectors manage... more
The present competitive marketplace, significant development of information technology, increase of customer expectations, and economic globalization, has caused a huge impact on the way companies and the different business sectors manage data produced from their daily operations. Supply chain professionals are being faced with an explosive increase in the amount of data being generated and this is causing them to struggle to handle such an enormous amount of data to accomplish a more productive, flexible, and cost-efficient way of manufacturing and delivering products. The current situation that supply chain professionals are in has created the need to acquire, develop and adapt to new mechanisms that can efficiently help with the evaluation and interpretation of excessive volume of data. The implementation of Big Data Analytics (BDA) is now serving as a powerful strategy that companies and supply chain professionals can use to solve this issue. There is a variety of means provided by big data analytics that can be used to obtain useful information from a large volume of data. The present work seeks to explore how big data analytics is performing in the context of Supply Chain Management (SCM). This research begins with the fundamentals of supply chain management and big data analytics, followed by the implementation of BDA in the different areas of SCM, and then benefits of big data on supply chain management are presented. Finally, issues and challenges of adopting and practicing BDA and future trends are also discussed.
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Portugal 2020 is a programme to support the country's strategy for implementing European funds between 2014-2020, with a total allocation of funds of 25 billion divided by 16 programmes to promote the competitiveness of the regional... more
Portugal 2020 is a programme to support the country's strategy for implementing European funds between 2014-2020, with a total allocation of funds of 25 billion divided by 16 programmes to promote the competitiveness of the regional economy. The study presented here is based on the analysis of how the funds from the European Union are being applied in the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM). In this way, and so that the process of visualisation and subsequent analysis of the data is less time-consuming and complex, we resort to the development of dashboards to visualise the most relevant information in a single layout. Microsoft Power BI was used to develop the project, transform the data and build the dashboard. We built three dashboards, based on various interactions that allow us to analyse the allocation of funds by year, by category, by thematic objective, and by municipality. Once the dashboards are built, the information provided on them is an added value for decision maki...
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We currently live in the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution - or digital age - where data processing has taken on a fundamental role in creating value. The rapid technological advance brought to the discussion concepts such as the... more
We currently live in the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution - or digital age - where data processing has taken on a fundamental role in creating value. The rapid technological advance brought to the discussion concepts such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and Precision Agriculture that contributed to the evolution of the sector through the practice of a more controlled and precise agriculture. The use of Business Analytics’ technologies allows the agricultural entrepreneur to make easier and better decisions based on information. This work aims to sensitize farmers to the importance of adopting data-driven solutions to address the needs of this sector. This article exposes the advantages of data analysis and the implementation of IoT technologies in agriculture. At the same time, it aims to understand how farmers may use information created to manage efficiently the available of resources, increase productivity and sustainability, and to reduce costs.
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are essential tools for business innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), supporting almost all tasks, which allows to obtain large amounts of structured and unstructured data for... more
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are essential tools for business innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), supporting almost all tasks, which allows to obtain large amounts of structured and unstructured data for future data analysis, which helps to facilitate decision making. Being portuguese business essentially composed of SMEs, it is important to invest in solutions that integrate decision making in ERPs, adapting them to change processes. Through literature review, such as conference articles and magazines, critical factors were defined that influence the choice of ERPs by SMEs, the benefits of incorporation with Business Intelligence that assumes a fundamental role in the current competitive environment and a comparison between several tools of BI.