An Internet accounting system, where transactions are entered on the spot and business data created by transactions are distributed to appropriate staff of the company, becomes more important for companies operating worldwide. The Internet accounting system described in this paper consists of a three-tier structure: Web, application and database servers. The accounting system provides complete accounting functions including general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, purchase order, sales order, inventory management, fixed assets, temporary payment, multi-users, multi-currencies, multi-companies, and multi-languages allowing customer relation management, partner relation management, supply chain management and performance analysis. A prototype system has been completed and a full-scale system is now under development.
Kenneth M. Anderson, Aaron Andersen, Neet Wadhwani, Laura M. Bartolo
The Metis project is developing workflow technology designed for use in digital libraries by avoiding the assumptions made by traditional workflow systems. In particular, digital libraries have highly distributed sets of stake-holders who nevertheless must work together to perform shared activities. Hence, traditional assumptions that all members of a workflow belong to the same organization, work in the same fashion, or have access to similar computing platforms are invalid. The Metis approach makes use of event-based workflows to support the distributed nature of digital library workflow and employs techniques to make the resulting technology lightweight, flexible, and integrated with the Web. This paper describes the conceptual framework behind the Metis approach as well as a prototype which implements the framework. The prototype represents a proof-of-concept of the Metis framework and approach as we show how it can both model and execute a peer review workflow drawn from a real-world digital library. After describing related work, the paper concludes with a discussion of future research opportunities in the area of digital library workflow and outlines how Metis is being deployed to a small set of digital libraries for additional evaluation.
FlexiInternational develops and maintains FlexiFinancials, a suite of object-oriented, client/server software products for accounting. These interacting applications support general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, purchasing, fixed assets, order processing, inventory maintenance, and workflow functions. This paper describes a distributed component, transaction-based architecture that comprises the foundation for future development.
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A proof is whatever convinces me. Shimon Even (1935–2004) The glory attached to the creativity involved in finding proofs makes us forget that it is the less glorified process of verification that gives proofs their value. Conceptually speaking, proofs are secondary to the verification process, whereas technically speaking, proof systems are defined in terms of their verification procedures. The notion of a verification procedure presumes the notion of computation and furthermore the notion of efficient computation. This implicit stipulation is made explicit in the definition of NP , where efficient computation is associated with deterministic polynomial-time algorithms. However, as argued next, we can gain a lot if we are willing to take a somewhat non-traditional step and allow probabilistic verification procedures. In this chapter, we shall study three types of probabilistic proof systems, called interactive proofs, zero-knowledge proofs , and probabilistic checkable proofs . In each of these three cases, we shall present fascinating results that cannot be obtained when considering the analogous deterministic proof systems. Summary: The association of efficient procedures with deterministic polynomial-time procedures is the basis for viewing NP-proof systems as the canonical formulation of proof systems (with efficient verification procedures). Allowing probabilistic verification procedures and, moreover, ruling by statistical evidence gives rise to various types of probabilistic proof systems. Indeed, these probabilistic proof systems carry a probability of error (which is explicitly bounded and can be reduced by successive applications of the proof system), yet they offer various advantages over the traditional (deterministic and errorless) proof systems. […]