Preface
Abstract
This special issue of Serdica Journal of Computing is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Department of Informatics at the Faculty of >Informatics of the University of Economics - Varna, Bulgaria. The department was established in 1969 and was initially called "Organization of the Machine Processing of Economic Information". At the same time the university created and started admission to an academic programme in the field of information technology.
During its development through the years, the department and the offered programme were renamed several times to match the advancements in the sphere.
Currently the Department of Informatics at the University of Economics - Varna offers several bachelor, master and PhD programmes in the field of computer science. Since its establishment, the department has trained more than 5000 BSc and MSc students, as well as more than 30 PhD students. Over the years 60 professors, associate professors and assistants have worked full-time at the department and more than 50 lecturers and business experts have also participated in the academic process. The high quality of education is the result of the high level of theoretical and applied research carried out at the department with over 1000 publications. The main research areas are the application of information and communication technologies in business and education, mobile and web technology, databases, e-business, e-finance, business modelling, business intelligence, virtualization.
The seven articles in this issue present results obtained by researchers at the Department of Informatics at the University of Economics - Varna, or scholars collaborating with the Department.
"Some Approaches for Sharing Logistics Information from Manufacturing Enterprises with Downstream Supply Chain Partners" states that sharing logistics information can improve the efficiency of relationships between a production enterprise and a corporate client. One approach - sending an XML file with free capacity by days from a manufacturing enterprise to its corporate customers - is described in detail.
Two articles cover research in the area of ontology engineering and applications.
"Enriching Domain Ontologies with Knowledge-based Semantics" describes an original approach for enrichment of subject ontologies with a set of computed and pruned association rules extracted as result of practical machine learning.
"A Set of Conceptual Guidelines for Reverse Engineering Using Ontology-based Materialized Views" discusses a methodology for using ontologies in the process of reverse engineering for software systems.
"Correlation Between Storage Device and Backup and Restore Efficiency in MS SQL Server" examines some problems associated with the selection of a storage device for backup and restore in MS SQL Server. The performed tests evaluate the impact of the storage device characteristics on efficiency of the backup and restore operations. The shared test results can support the decision making process so as to choose the most suitable device.
"Implementation of GDPR Requirements in the Information Systems of Consumer Financing Companies" demonstrates a feasible approach to ensuring the compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation in information systems and other applications, especially developed for the needs of the consumer financing area.
"An Approach to Storing Data Based on the Data Lake Concept to Facilitate Intelligence Data Analysis" explains why and how the Data Lake structure can be used (separately or combined) to save data necessary for the intelligent business analysis.
"Various Methods for ABC Analysis of Inventory in MS Excel with Examples" describes a step-wise procedure for implementing the ABC Analysis of inventory within the environment of MS Excel. The proposed approach is convenient for both educational and real-life applications.
Neli Maneva, Vladimir Sulov, Editors of this issue
