Cyril S. Ku

Design patterns for database pedagogy: a proposal

Courses in Relational Databases largely use a domain-specific design approach different from that used in the rest of the curriculum. Use of the Unified Process, UML, and Design Patterns as a pedagogical approach for Databases can leverage previous student experience with design, make knowledge from Database courses more immediately relevant elsewhere, and create greater continuity across the curriculum. This approach allows issues in logical design and in implementation to be more easily connected with similar concerns in other courses (for example, Software Engineering), and supports greater and easier transfer of design between Relational and Object-Oriented Databases, and between databases and embedding applications.

Information flows and risk management in innovation-driven, collaborative ventures

Risk management intertwines with information exchange in any collaborative venture. We consider four aspects of risk management (standard, compliance, security and disaster/catastrophe) with very different types of handlers, and often with different teams being responsible. Comprehensive assurance requires satisfaction of the criteria for each aspect, but each has its own perspective and knowledge base, and these are not always well-aligned or easily integrated. Creating a comprehensive risk management plan requires correlation of these aspects, and we therefore examine the information flows needed between their handlers and their respective teams. We then analyze the interaction of information flows and risk analysis in collaborative projects involving innovation, knowledge-rich environments, and knowledge-generating products such as software-intensive systems. In particular, we focus on inter-organizational ventures, in which organizational interests and perspectives form another obstacle to effective risk management, and consider other impacts on collaboration.