February 2005: ARTstor Adds to Panoply of Databases

http://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/dacusfocus/1027/thumbnail.jpg

Intrinsic and relational perspectives of relationship value: an integrated framework in buyer-supplier relationships

O relacionamento entre firmas vem sendo estudado como um fator que amplia os limites do valor criado pelas firmas individualmente, por meio da construção conjunta de benefícios que não poderia ocorrer caso o relacionamento não se estabelecesse. O valor total criado no nível da díade, que é capturado pelas partes, é o valor do relacionamento. Os benefícios obtidos transcendem as características financeiras da transação, podendo converter-se em outros aspectos da relação entre as firmas, tais como capacitação técnica, oferta de serviços, capacidade de inovação e reputação. Os recursos compartilhados e trocados entre as partes são fontes de criação de valor no relacionamento, mas originam-se de duas perspectivas diferentes. Eles podem pertencer previamente a uma delas, compondo um valor que é intrínseco, ou desenvolverem-se ao longo do relacionamento em si, resultando numa parcela de valor relacional. Neste contexto, este estudo propõe-se a investigar as diferentes características das partes que são fonte de criação de valor em um relacionamento, bem como analisar os aspectos que influenciam sua captura pelas partes. O estudo envolveu três etapas. A primeira, de cunho teórico, visou a explorar as dimensões do valor do relacionamento, no que se refere à sua definição e suas fontes. As duas etapas seguintes objetivaram testar empiricamente o efeito das fontes do valor do relacionamento na criação e captura de valor, por meio de uma survey transversal e um estudo de casos múltiplos. A perspectiva teórica que permeia o estudo é a Visão Baseada em Recursos, uma vez que ela pressupõe que os recursos das firmas produzem valor econômico que transcende os limites delas e é capturado por seus clientes e fornecedores. A abordagem ontológica é a do realismo crítico, a qual permite um melhor entendimento dos acontecimentos empiricamente observados. Os resultados contribuem para um melhor entendimento teórico sobre valor do relacionamento, uma vez que os construtos de valor intrínseco e valor relacional integram diferentes fontes de benefícios que podem advir de relacionamentos. A relação entre esses construtos e sua influência individual na captura de valor também trazem uma contribuição teórica ao estudo de relacionamentos comprador-fornecedor. As principais contribuições gerenciais dizem respeito ao fato de que é possível capturar valor mesmo que o relacionamento não seja colaborativo. Adicionalmente, os resultados enfatizam que as empresas deveriam explorar mais como fazer para extrair mais benefícios da outra parte e do relacionamento em si, em especial de fontes não-financeiras.

Relational value creation and appropriation in buyer supplier relationships

his paper bridges the gap between the buyer-supplier literature and the definition of competitive advantage as value creation found in the strategic management literature. This study proposes and tests an integrative definition of the relational value that is created and appropriated in a dyad

Relational resources: do they create value for both buyer and suppliers?

The study tested the relationship between relational resources and value creation and appropriation. A survey with suppliers and buyers provided evidence that interorganizational fit and knowledge sharing have impact on the relational benefit and the share captured by each organization, but also indicated that each echelon has a different perception

Using Neo4J geospatial data storage and integration

Online geographic-databases have been growing increasingly as they have become a crucial source of information for both social networks and safety-critical systems. Since the quality of such applications is largely related to the richness and completeness of their data, it becomes imperative to develop adaptable and persistent storage systems, able to make use of several sources of information as well as enabling the fastest possible response from them. This work will create a shared and extensible geographic model, able to retrieve and store information from the major spatial sources available. A geographic-based system also has very high requirements in terms of scalability, computational power and domain complexity, causing several difficulties for a traditional relational database as the number of results increases. NoSQL systems provide valuable advantages for this scenario, in particular graph databases which are capable of modeling vast amounts of inter-connected data while providing a very substantial increase of performance for several spatial requests, such as finding shortestpath routes and performing relationship lookups with high concurrency. In this work, we will analyze the current state of geographic information systems and develop a unified geographic model, named GeoPlace Explorer (GE). GE is able to import and store spatial data from several online sources at a symbolic level in both a relational and a graph databases, where several stress tests were performed in order to find the advantages and disadvantages of each database paradigm.

Relational learning in children with deafness and cochlear implants

This four-experiment series sought to evaluate the potential of children with neurosensory deafness and cochlear implants to exhibit auditory-visual and visual-visual stimulus equivalence relations within a matching-to-sample format. Twelve children who became deaf prior to acquiring language (prelingual) and four who became deaf afterwards (postlingual) were studied. All children learned auditory-visual conditional discriminations and nearly all showed emergent equivalence relations. Naming tests, conducted with a subset of the: children, showed no consistent relationship to the equivalence-test outcomes.. This study makes several contributions: to the literature on stimulus equivalence. First; it demonstrates that both pre- and postlingually deaf children-can: acquire auditory-visual equivalence-relations after cochlear implantation, thus demonstrating symbolic functioning. Second, it directs attention to a population that may be especially interesting for researchers seeking to analyze the relationship. between speaker and listener repertoires. Third, it demonstrates the feasibility of conducting experimental studies of stimulus control processes within the limitations of a hospital, which these children must visit routinely for the maintenance of their cochlear implants.

SKPDB: A structural database of shikimate pathway enzymes

Background: The functional and structural characterisation of enzymes that belong to microbial metabolic pathways is very important for structure-based drug design. The main interest in studying shikimate pathway enzymes involves the fact that they are essential for bacteria but do not occur in humans, making them selective targets for design of drugs that do not directly impact humans.Description: The ShiKimate Pathway DataBase (SKPDB) is a relational database applied to the study of shikimate pathway enzymes in microorganisms and plants. The current database is updated regularly with the addition of new data; there are currently 8902 enzymes of the shikimate pathway from different sources. The database contains extensive information on each enzyme, including detailed descriptions about sequence, references, and structural and functional studies. All files (primary sequence, atomic coordinates and quality scores) are available for downloading. The modeled structures can be viewed using the Jmol program.Conclusions: The SKPDB provides a large number of structural models to be used in docking simulations, virtual screening initiatives and drug design. It is freely accessible at http://lsbzix.rc.unesp.br/skpdb/. © 2010 Arcuri et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.