Informatica Economica Vol. 20 No. 1/2016

Issue Topic: Business Intelligence

CONTENTS

In memoriam: Luminița STATE (1948 –2016) 5


The Business Intelligence Based Business Process Management Challenge
Oliver KOPF, Daniel HOMOCIANU 7
The present paper is trying to bring some solid arguments concerning the common part, the re-lation and a few limitations when trying to bring together two recent fields of interest, namely Business Intelligence and Business Process Management. The approach is new only in terms of number and combination of reasons and the references are meant to support our ideas when trying to explain certain features. The entire content of the paper is based on
putting together relevant theoretical ideas from the literature and some conclusions derived from the experience of authors and other industry representatives with different kinds of
technologies and tools with many applications in these fields.
Keywords: Decision Support Systems, Business Intelligence, Business Process Management


Face Detection and Face Recognition in Android Mobile Applications
Octavian DOSPINESCU, Iulian POPA 20
The quality of the smartphone’s camera enables us to capture high quality pictures at a high resolution, so we can perform different types of recognition on these images. Face detection is one of these types of recognition that is very common in our society. We use it every day on Facebook to tag friends in our pictures. It is also used in video games alongside Kinect concept, or in security to allow the access to private places only to authorized persons. These are just some examples of using facial recognition, because in modern society, detection and facial recognition tend to surround us everywhere. The aim of this article is to create an appli-cation for smartphones that can recognize human faces. The main goal of this application is to grant access to certain areas or rooms only to certain authorized persons. For example, we can speak here of hospitals or educational institutions where there are rooms where only certain employees can enter. Of course, this type of application can cover a wide range of uses, such as helping people suffering from Alzheimer's to recognize the people they loved, to fill gaps persons who can’t remember the names of their relatives or for example to automatically capture the face of our own children when they smile.
Keywords: Face Recognition, Face Detection, Mobile Applications And Face Detection, Mo-bile Applications And Face Detection


Data Security in Smart Cities: Challenges and Solutions
Daniela POPESCUL, Laura Diana RADU 29
The purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive overview of security-related problems in the context of smart cities, seen as huge data consumers and producers. Trends as hyper connectivity, messy complexity, loss of boundary and industrialized hacking transform smart cities in complex environments in which the already-existing security analysis are not useful anymore. Specific data-security requirements and solutions are approached in a four-layer framework, with elements considered to be critical to the operation of a smart city: smart things, smart spaces, smart systems and smart citizens. As urban management should pay close attention to security and privacy protection, network protocols, identity management, standardization, trusted architecture etc., the paper will serve them as a start point for better decisions in security design and management.
Keywords: Data security, Smart cities, Internet of Things, Smart things, ePrivacy


Traditional Enterprise Business Intelligence Software Compared to Software as a Service Business Intelligence
Marian Pompiliu CRISTESCU 39
The focus of this paper is on the one hand on the importance of business intelligence in large and medium-sized businesses and on the other side on the evaluation and implementation of Business Intelligence. It shows how companies make better and faster decisions regarding their customers, partners and operations by converting data into valuable business information. The paper describes how to bring business intelligence information, people and technology together to help to create a successful business strategy. The conclusion of the paper is the assessment of the possibility of business intelligence to develop projects in large and medium-sized companies and the discussion of the possible alternatives with respect to the different functions.
Keywords: Business Intelligence Solutions, Business Processes, Data Warehouse, Cloud Data, Process


Data Processing Languages for Business Intelligence. SQL vs. R
Marin FOTACHE 48
As data centric approach, Business Intelligence (BI) deals with the storage, integration, processing, exploration and analysis of information gathered from multiple sources in various formats and volumes. BI systems are generally synonymous to costly, complex platforms that require vast organizational resources. But there is also an-other face of BI, that of a pool of data sources, applications, services developed at different times using different technologies. This is “democratic” BI or, in some cases, “fragmented”, “patched” (or “chaotic”) BI. Fragmentation creates not only integration problems, but also supports BI agility as new modules can be quickly developed. Among various languages and tools that cover large extents of BI activities, SQL and R are instrumental for both BI platform developers and BI users. SQL and R address both monolithic and democratic BI. This paper compares essential data processing features of two languages, identifying similarities and differences among them and also their strengths and limits.
Keywords: Business Intelligence, Data Processing, SQL, R


E-Commerce Performance. Shopping Cart Key Performance Indicators
Mihaela I. MUNTEAN, Diana TÂRNĂVEANU, Alina Raluca ION 62
In an e-commerce performance framework is important to identify the key performance indica-tors that measure success and together provide the greatest context into the business perfor-mance. Shopping carts are an essential part of ecommerce, a minimal set of key performance indicators being the subject of our debate. The theoretical approach is sustained by a case study, an e-shop implemented using PHP and MySQL, for simulating main business processes within the considered performance framework. Our approach opens a perspective for future research using additional indicators in order to properly evaluate the global performance of any e-shop.
Keywords: Performance, E-Commerce, KPI, Shopping Cart


Big Data Components for Business Process Optimization
Mircea Răducu TRIFU, Mihaela-Laura IVAN 72
In these days, more and more people talk about Big Data, Hadoop, noSQL and so on, but very few technical people have the necessary expertise and knowledge to work with those concepts and technologies. The present issue explains one of the concept that stand behind two of those keywords, and this is the map reduce concept. MapReduce model is the one that makes the Big Data and Hadoop so powerful, fast, and diverse for business process optimization. MapReduce is a programming model with an implementation built to process and generate large data sets. In addition, it is presented the benefits of integrating Hadoop in the context of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing applications. The concepts and technologies behind big data let organizations to reach a variety of objectives. Like other new information technologies, the main important objective of big data technology is to bring dramatic cost reduction.
Keywords: Big Data, Hadoop, MapReduce Model, Business Intelligence, Business Analytics


Publishing Guide for Authors 79


INFOREC Association 81