Howard Williams

Key Technologies for Data Management

The Web started as a simple and very usable distributed system that was rapidly adopted. The Web protocols then passed through a period of rationalization and development to separate content from presentation in order to promote the re-usability of content on different devices. Today the developments in Web technologies are addressing new opportunities in Web Services and the Semantic Web, as well as the growing cultural diversity of the Web. These developments unite in the issue of trust, of content and services available on the Web, but also in access by others to the content and services that users may own. While the Web has been rationalizing, the Grid has developed to provide academic science with easier access to services and content. The Grid is now moving to exploit the robust interoperable commodity Web Services instead of maintaining its own middle level infrastructure. As Web Services, the Grid and the Semantic Web develop they will become increasingly interdependent on each other, and indistinguishable from the mainstream Web.

A Pervasive Environment Based on Personal Self-Improving Smart Spaces

Ubiquitous computing (or ambient intelligence) has been the subject of research in the mobile telecommunications field for many years. Developments such as the Internet of Services and Grid computing have complemented and strengthened this work. The ubiquitous computing paradigm integrates information processing into the objects that surround us in our environment. One particular focus has been on the development of smart spaces in homes, offices and public areas, in which automation can be used to support the user. However, these are static spaces that offer ubiquitous characteristics in a limited environment, like islands in an ocean. When the user steps outside of this island, all of this is lost. The Persist project is investigating a novel approach which combines mobile communications with the notions of these static smart spaces to produce more general ubiquitous or pervasive systems in the form of the self-improving Personal Smart Space. The vision is that a Personal Smart Space will stay with the user as he/she moves around and provide an interface between the user and the various services and sensors which are available, either directly or indirectly, as well as with other neighbouring Personal Smart Spaces. Thus Personal Smart Spaces will be able to interface to local devices and services (even when no Internet connectivity is available to the user) and to interact with other Personal Smart Spaces to create a more powerful and flexible environment for the user and one which is more truly ubiquitous.

Dynamic Information Presentation through Web-based Personalisation and Adaptation — An Initial Review

Personalisation and adaptation of information and information presentation to reflect user needs and interests is an area in which there is considerable interest. DIP, Dynamic Information Presentation, is a research project that focuses on problems in this area. As part of this research a review has been conducted of existing Web-based information applications from a variety of domains that use such techniques, and a set of dimensions proposed as a basis for analysing andcomparing them. The applications fall naturally into three categories. The results provide a useful step towards a general framework for classifying these approaches.

Is There Really a Conflict Between Privacy and Personalisation

There is growing concern about the protection of user privacy on the Internet. Yet, through the customisation of systems to each individual user, the provision of personal information offers significant benefits in terms of usability. There would appear to be a conflict between privacy and personalisation and a need for a balance to be struck between them. This keynote argues that the apparent conflict is the result of a particular perspective on the problem, a perspective which assumes that the individual user is limited to a binary decision on whether or not to disclose items of personal information to all and sundry or to nobody. There are many reasons why this assumption is made. Investigation of these reasons indicates that they are not inescapable and reveals an alternative approach to the design of personalised systems in which the user can retain full control of what they disclose to whom.

Combining Heterogeneous Spatial Data From Distributed Sources

The general problem of retrieval and integration of data from a set of distributed heterogeneous data sources in response to a query has a number of facets. These include the breakdown of a query into appropriate subqueries that can be applied to different data sources as well as the integration of the partial results obtained to produce the overall result. The latter process is non-trivial and particularly dependent on the semantics of the data. This paper discusses an architecture developed to enable a user to query spatial data from a collection of distributed heterogeneous data sources. This has been implemented using GML to facilitate data integration. The system is currently being used to study the handling of positional uncertainty in spatial data in such a system.

CLARE—a Prolog database machine

The CLAuse Retrieval Engine (CLARE) is a coprocessor system which based on two-stage filtering, for handling large sets of disc resident clauses in Prolog database applications. The overall architecture and the timing measurements of the first stage CLARE hardware are reported. The timing measurements shows that the first stage CLARE hardware can perform search operations on data transferring at a rate up to 4.5 million double bytes per second.

User recognition and memory support in a pervasive system

Besides providing users with the ability to manage the increasingly complex environment of devices and services in which they find themselves, pervasive systems can also offer new functionality. One example of this is the identification of other users when they are nearby. This extends beyond simple identification to various forms of memory support and provides opportunities for a range of new and innovative applications that will support users and enhance their experience. This is a natural part of pervasive systems developed using the notion of Personal Smart Spaces (PSSs). This approach has been implemented in a prototype pervasive system developed by the Persist project. This paper describes this notion in detail and explains how this functionality has been achieved using it.

Message from the BNCODwebim'07 workshop chair

The World Wide Web was created in about 1990 and it is certainly still in its early years in terms of its impact on the uses of Information Technology. Currently, in the developed world the WWW carries only a small fraction of all commercial transactions and when we look at emerging nations this fraction almost vanishes. When it reaches full maturity, the significance of the Web will have expanded well beyond that which we now perceive. This potential for growth presents database researchers with many and varied opportunities ranging from how best to process Web-based information in its elementary forms to ways of establishing trust in Internet environments. BNCODwebim’07 brings together engineers, researchers and practitioners who have knowledge to exchange that covers the spectrum of development that information management needs to address to cope with the continuing expansion of the WWW.

Telemedicine in Obstetrics

Telemedicine, Project A1032 of the Advanced Informatics in Medicine (AIM) programme of the CEC, is the largest project funded under AIM with partners in seven of the member states each involved in the development of demonstrators projects at five different sites. These demonstrator are in the areas of hypertension, radiology, neurology, renal medicine and finally, the subject of this paper, a system for the monitoring of at-risk pregnancies [1].