A logical approach to the management of object identifiers in non-conventional database management systems

Non-conventional database management systems are used to achieve a better performance when dealing with complex data. One fundamental concept of these systems is object identity (OID), because each object in the database has a unique identifier that is used to access and reference it in relationships to other objects. Two approaches can be used for the implementation of OIDs: physical or logical OIDs. In order to manage complex data, was proposed the Multimedia Data Manager Kernel (NuGeM) that uses a logical technique, named Indirect Mapping. This paper proposes an improvement to the technique used by NuGeM, whose original contribution is management of OIDs with a fewer number of disc accesses and less processing, thus reducing management time from the pages and eliminating the problem with exhaustion of OIDs. Also, the technique presented here can be applied to others OODBMSs. © 2011 IEEE.

Use of Dynamic Technologies for Web-enabled Database Management Systems

In this paper we consider two computer systems and the dynamic Web technologies they are using. Different contemporary dynamic web technologies are described in details and their advantages and disadvantages have been shown. Specific applications are developed, clinic and studying systems, and their programming models are described. Finally we implement these two applications in the students education process: Online studying has been tested in the Technical University – Varna, Web based clinic system has been used for practical education of the students in the Medical College - Sofia, branch V. Tarnovo

Design principles of semantic binary database management systems

The Semantic Binary Data Model (SBM) is a viable alternative to the now-dominant relational data model. SBM would be especially advantageous for applications dealing with complex interrelated networks of objects provided that a robust efficient implementation can be achieved. This dissertation presents an implementation design method for SBM, algorithms, and their analytical and empirical evaluation. Our method allows building a robust and flexible database engine with a wider applicability range and improved performance. ^ Extensions to SBM are introduced and an implementation of these extensions is proposed that allows the database engine to efficiently support applications with a predefined set of queries. A New Record data structure is proposed. Trade-offs of employing Fact, Record and Bitmap Data structures for storing information in a semantic database are analyzed. ^ A clustering ID distribution algorithm and an efficient algorithm for object ID encoding are proposed. Mapping to an XML data model is analyzed and a new XML-based XSDL language facilitating interoperability of the system is defined. Solutions to issues associated with making the database engine multi-platform are presented. An improvement to the atomic update algorithm suitable for certain scenarios of database recovery is proposed. ^ Specific guidelines are devised for implementing a robust and well-performing database engine based on the extended Semantic Data Model. ^

AgroDB - integration of database management systems with crop models.

2016

Learning Analytics: Challenges and Future Research Directions

In recent years, learning analytics (LA) has attracted a great deal of attention in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) research as practitioners, institutions, and researchers are increasingly seeing the potential that LA has to shape the future TEL landscape. Generally, LA deals with the development of methods that harness educational data sets to support the learning process. This paper provides a foundation for future research in LA. It provides a systematic overview on this emerging field and its key concepts through a reference model for LA based on four dimensions, namely data, environments, context (what?), stakeholders (who?), objectives (why?), and methods (how?). It further identifies various challenges and research opportunities in the area of LA in relation to each dimension.

Improving reporting management with relational database management system

Data management consists of collecting, storing, and processing the data into the format which provides value-adding information for decision-making process. The development of data management has enabled of designing increasingly effective database management systems to support business needs. Therefore as well as advanced systems are designed for reporting purposes, also operational systems allow reporting and data analyzing. The used research method in the theory part is qualitative research and the research type in the empirical part is case study. Objective of this paper is to examine database management system requirements from reporting managements and data managements perspectives. In the theory part these requirements are identified and the appropriateness of the relational data model is evaluated. In addition key performance indicators applied to the operational monitoring of production are studied. The study has revealed that the appropriate operational key performance indicators of production takes into account time, quality, flexibility and cost aspects. Especially manufacturing efficiency has been highlighted. In this paper, reporting management is defined as a continuous monitoring of given performance measures. According to the literature review, the data management tool should cover performance, usability, reliability, scalability, and data privacy aspects in order to fulfill reporting managements demands. A framework is created for the system development phase based on requirements, and is used in the empirical part of the thesis where such a system is designed and created for reporting management purposes for a company which operates in the manufacturing industry. Relational data modeling and database architectures are utilized when the system is built for relational database platform.

Knowledge assisted data management and retrieval in multimedia database systems

With the proliferation of multimedia data and ever-growing requests for multimedia applications, there is an increasing need for efficient and effective indexing, storage and retrieval of multimedia data, such as graphics, images, animation, video, audio and text. Due to the special characteristics of the multimedia data, the Multimedia Database management Systems (MMDBMSs) have emerged and attracted great research attention in recent years. Though much research effort has been devoted to this area, it is still far from maturity and there exist many open issues. In this dissertation, with the focus of addressing three of the essential challenges in developing the MMDBMS, namely, semantic gap, perception subjectivity and data organization, a systematic and integrated framework is proposed with video database and image database serving as the testbed. In particular, the framework addresses these challenges separately yet coherently from three main aspects of a MMDBMS: multimedia data representation, indexing and retrieval. In terms of multimedia data representation, the key to address the semantic gap issue is to intelligently and automatically model the mid-level representation and/or semi-semantic descriptors besides the extraction of the low-level media features. The data organization challenge is mainly addressed by the aspect of media indexing where various levels of indexing are required to support the diverse query requirements. In particular, the focus of this study is to facilitate the high-level video indexing by proposing a multimodal event mining framework associated with temporal knowledge discovery approaches. With respect to the perception subjectivity issue, advanced techniques are proposed to support users' interaction and to effectively model users' perception from the feedback at both the image-level and object-level.

Built heritage management systems : the framework of a digital tool for the conservation of Brisbane City Hall

Brisbane City Hall (BCH) is arguably one of Brisbane’s most notable and iconic buildings. Serving as the public’s central civic and municipal building since 1930, the importance of this heritage listed building to cultural significance and identity is unquestionable. This attribute is reflected within the local government, with a simplified image of the halls main portico entrance supplying Brisbane City Council with its insignia and trademark signifier. Regardless of these qualities, this building has been neglected in a number of ways, primarily in the physical sense with built materials, but also, and just as importantly, through inaccurate and undocumented works. Numerous restoration and renovation works have been undertaken throughout BCH’s lifetime, however the records of these amendments are far and few between. Between 2010 and 2013, BCH underwent major restoration works, the largest production project undertaken on the building since its initial construction. Just prior to this conservation process, the full extent of the buildings deterioration was identified, much of which there was little to no original documentation of. This has led to a number of issues pertaining to what investigators expected to find within the building, versus what was uncovered (the unexpected), which have resulted directly from this lack of data. This absence of record keeping is the key factor that has contributed to the decay and unknown deficiencies that had amassed within BCH. Accordingly, this raises a debate about the methods of record keeping, and the need for a more advanced process that is able to be integrated within architectural and engineering programs, whilst still maintaining the ability to act as a standalone database. The immediate objective of this research is to investigate the restoration process of BCH, with focus on the auditorium, to evaluate possible strategies to record and manage data connected to building pathology so that a framework can be developed for a digital heritage management system. The framework produced for this digital tool will enable dynamic uses of a centralised database and aims to reduce the significant data loss. Following an in-depth analysis of this framework, it can be concluded that the implementation of the suggested digital tool would directly benefit BCH, and could ultimately be incorporated into a number of heritage related built form.

Access path query language for relational database systems

Database management systems offer a very reliable and attractive data organization for fast and economical information storage and processing for diverse applications. It is much more important that the information should be easily accessible to users with varied backgrounds, professional as well as casual, through a suitable data sublanguage. The language adopted here (APPLE) is one such language for relational database systems and is completely nonprocedural and well suited to users with minimum or no programming background. This is supported by an access path model which permits the user to formulate completely nonprocedural queries expressed solely in terms of attribute names. The data description language (DDL) and data manipulation language (DML) features of APPLE are also discussed. The underlying relational database has been implemented with the help of the DATATRIEVE-11 utility for record and domain definition which is available on the PDP-11/35. The package is coded in Pascal and MACRO-11. Further, most of the limitations of the DATATRIEVE-11 utility have been eliminated in the interface package.

The use of learning management systems: A Longitudinal Case Study

In this article the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) at the School of Engineering, University of Borås, in the year 2004 and the academic year 2009-2010 is investigated. The tools in the LMS were classified into four groups (tools for distribution, tools for communication, tools for interaction and tools for course administration) and the pattern of use was analyzed. The preliminary interpretation of the results was discussed with a group of teachers from the School of Engineering with long experience of using LMS. High expectations about LMS as a tool to facilitate flexible education, student centered methods and the creation of an effective learning environment is abundant in the literature. This study, however, shows that in most of the surveyed courses the available LMS is predominantly used to distribute documents to students. The authors argue that a more elaborate use of LMS and a transformation of pedagogical practices towards social constructivist, learner centered procedures should be treated as an integrated process of professional development.

Semantic wrapping for heterogeneous database management

Query processing is a commonly performed procedure and a vital and integral part of information processing. It is therefore important and necessary for information processing applications to continuously improve the accessibility of data sources as well as the ability to perform queries on those data sources. ^ It is well known that the relational database model and the Structured Query Language (SQL) are currently the most popular tools to implement and query databases. However, a certain level of expertise is needed to use SQL and to access relational databases. This study presents a semantic modeling approach that enables the average user to access and query existing relational databases without the concern of the database's structure or technicalities. This method includes an algorithm to represent relational database schemas in a more semantically rich way. The result of which is a semantic view of the relational database. The user performs queries using an adapted version of SQL, namely Semantic SQL. This method substantially reduces the size and complexity of queries. Additionally, it shortens the database application development cycle and improves maintenance and reliability by reducing the size of application programs. Furthermore, a Semantic Wrapper tool illustrating the semantic wrapping method is presented. ^ I further extend the use of this semantic wrapping method to heterogeneous database management. Relational, object-oriented databases and the Internet data sources are considered to be part of the heterogeneous database environment. Semantic schemas resulting from the algorithm presented in the method were employed to describe the structure of these data sources in a uniform way. Semantic SQL was utilized to query various data sources. As a result, this method provides users with the ability to access and perform queries on heterogeneous database systems in a more innate way. ^

DIMUSE: An integrated framework for distributed multimedia system with database management and security support

With the recent explosion in the complexity and amount of digital multimedia data, there has been a huge impact on the operations of various organizations in distinct areas, such as government services, education, medical care, business, entertainment, etc. To satisfy the growing demand of multimedia data management systems, an integrated framework called DIMUSE is proposed and deployed for distributed multimedia applications to offer a full scope of multimedia related tools and provide appealing experiences for the users. This research mainly focuses on video database modeling and retrieval by addressing a set of core challenges. First, a comprehensive multimedia database modeling mechanism called Hierarchical Markov Model Mediator (HMMM) is proposed to model high dimensional media data including video objects, low-level visual/audio features, as well as historical access patterns and frequencies. The associated retrieval and ranking algorithms are designed to support not only the general queries, but also the complicated temporal event pattern queries. Second, system training and learning methodologies are incorporated such that user interests are mined efficiently to improve the retrieval performance. Third, video clustering techniques are proposed to continuously increase the searching speed and accuracy by architecting a more efficient multimedia database structure. A distributed video management and retrieval system is designed and implemented to demonstrate the overall performance. The proposed approach is further customized for a mobile-based video retrieval system to solve the perception subjectivity issue by considering individual user's profile. Moreover, to deal with security and privacy issues and concerns in distributed multimedia applications, DIMUSE also incorporates a practical framework called SMARXO, which supports multilevel multimedia security control. SMARXO efficiently combines role-based access control (RBAC), XML and object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) to achieve the target of proficient security control. A distributed multimedia management system named DMMManager (Distributed MultiMedia Manager) is developed with the proposed framework DEMUR; to support multimedia capturing, analysis, retrieval, authoring and presentation in one single framework.