Contributions in Merlin

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Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) has evolved during the last years and reached a mature stage offering plenty of operators to solve complex tasks. User support for building workflows, in contrast, has not increased proportionally. The large number of operators available in current KDD systems make it difficult for users to successfully analyze data. Moreover, workflows easily contain a large number of operators and parts of the workflows are applied several times, thus it is hard for users to build them manually. In addition, workflows are not checked for correctness before execution. Hence, it frequently happens that the execution of the workflow stops with an error after several hours runtime. In this paper we address these issues by introducing a knowledge-based representation of KDD workflows as a basis for cooperative-interactive planning. Moreover, we discuss workflow templates that can mix executable operators and tasks to be refined later into sub-workflows. This new representation helps users to structure and handle workflows, as it constrains the number of operators that need to be considered. We show that workflows can be grouped in templates enabling re-use and simplifying KDD worflow construction in RapidMiner.

Questions of Internet jurisdiction have attracted research ever since the Internet has become popular. Despite a long track of existing work in the area, a number of key issues remains unanswered to date. In particular, the subject matter of Internet jurisdiction has to be presented from an integrated international viewpoint. A structured,embracing, and consistent approach in assessing the subject matter needs to be determined. And a focus specific to characteristics of the Internet and electronic business in the Internet as of today needs to be adopted. Consequently, this paper conducts a comparative Private International Law study considering connecting factors and service provider market activities constituting jurisdiction in major Internet markets (European Union, United States of America, China). Identified connecting factors are related to market activities and assessed by means of a common structuring scheme developed. This is followed by the set of market activities-driven challenges determined. These challenges are identified based on a scenario reflecting a service provider with connection to several markets. An in-depth discussion reveals by which connecting factors — and the respectively reflected market activities — a service provider might avail itself to urisdiction in a market. This is complemented by the respective recommendations developed on how to address techno-legal implications with respect to Internet jurisdiction.

Die geringe Zufriedenheit von Anlegern mit ihren Finanzdienstleistern - auch durch die jüngste Finanzkrise verursacht - ruückt mehr denn je das Differenzierungspotential an der Kundenschnittstelle in das Zentrum des Interesses. In diesem Beitrag präsentieren wir Anforderungen an die Konzeption und Entwicklung IT-gestützter Services in der Finanzberatung, welche auf eine Verbesserung des Einbezugs des Kunden sowie seiner Interaktions- und Kooperationsmöglichkeiten mit dem Berater fokussieren. Wir gründen diese Überlegungen auf einer Studie zur Beratungsqualität in Schweizer Banken und leiten daraus Anforderungen zu den drei Aspekten (1) Nutzer und Nutzungskontext, (2) System sowie (3) Organisation ab. Zu den Anforderungen präsentieren wir mögliche Lösungsansätze und stellen dabei fest, dass zur Gestaltung der Beratungsschnittstelle nicht nur die Interaktion und der kooperative Austausch von Berater und Kunde über IT-Systeme gestaltet werden müssen, sondern insbesondere auch das der Beratung zugrunde liegende organisatorische Gefüge.

Applications that have been a huge success in private collaboration - such as video conferencing, application sharing or social tagging systems -, have been failures in business collaboration. The benefits of Collaborative Information Technology (CIT) have been discussed in research and acknowledged by many companies for quite some time. However, the usage of such technology in business context is still surprisingly low. Explanations have been sought through the investigation of CIT in various settings. These studies have been mostly conducted in the specific context of a single CIT tool and/or task, whereas in some businesses several CIT tools are used concurrently when attempting to achieve a certain goal. In this paper we aim for a more holistic view of CIT usage by relating task, CIT functionality and its impacts. We followed a qualitative approach and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with team leaders of collocated teams in 10 different companies. Our preliminary results show that this approach has promise to further explain the usage of CIT tools and that CITs are used opportunistically. The employee seems to rather use a few established functionalities for different tasks than substituting functionalities and therefore changing her habit, even though new functionalities might better suit a task at hand.

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Household borrowing in a foreign currency is a widespread phenomenon in Austria. Thirteen percent of Austrian households report their housing loan to be denominated in foreign currency, mostly Swiss franc. Yet, despite its importance, peculiar character, and acute policy concerns, we know little about the attitudes and characteristics of the households involved in this type of carry trade. We analyze a uniquely detailed financial wealth survey of 2556 Austrian households to sketch a comprehensive profile of the attitudes and characteristics of the households involved. We employ both univariate tests and multivariate multinomial logit models. The survey data suggest that risk seeking, affluent, and married households are more likely to take a housing loan in a foreign currency. Financially literate or high-income households are more likely to take a housing loan in general. These findings partially assuage policy concerns about household default risk on foreign-currency housing loans or household retirement security.