Larry Kerschberg

Advanced Transaction Models and Architectures

Preface. Part I: Workflow Transactions. 1. Transactions in Transactional Workflows D. Worah, A. Sheth. 2. WFMS: The Next Generation of Distributed Processing Tools G. Alonso, C. Mohan. Part II: Tool-Kit Approaches. 3. The Reflective Transaction Framework R.S. Barge, C. Pu. 4. Flexible Commit Protocols for Advanced Transaction Processing L. Mancini, et al. Part III: Long Transactions and Semantics. 5. Con Tracts Revisited A. Reuter, et al. 6. Semantic-Based Decomposition of Transactions P. Ammann, et al. Part IV: Concurrency Control and Recovery. 7. Customizable Concurrency Control for Persistent Java L. Daynes, et al. 8. Toward Formalizing Recovery of (Advanced) Transactions C.P. Martin, K. Ramamritham. Part V: Transaction Optimization. 9. Transaction Optimization Techniques A. Helal, et al. Part VI: ECA Approach. 10. An Extensible Approach to Realizing Advanced Transaction Models E. Anwar, et al. Part VII: OLTP/OLAP. 11. Inter- and Intra-Transaction Parallelism for Combined OLTP/OLAP Workloads C. Hasse, G. Weikum. Part VIII: Real-Time Data Management. 12. Towards Distributed Real-Time Concurrency and Coordination Control P. Jensen, et al. Part IX: Mobile Computing. 13. Transaction Processing in Broadcast Disk Environments J. Shanmugasundaram, et al. References. Contributing Authors. Index.

Mining for Knowledge in Databases: The INLEN Architecture, Initial Implementation and First Results

The architecture of an intelligent multistrategy assistant for knowledge discovery from facts, INLEN, is described and illustrated by an exploratory application. INLEN integrates a database, a knowledge base, and machine learning methods within a uniform user-oriented framework. A variety of machine learning programs are incorporated into the system to serve as high-levelknowledge generation operators (KGOs). These operators can generate diverse kinds of knowledge about the properties and regularities existing in the data. For example, they can hypothesize general rules from facts, optimize the rules according to problem-dependent criteria, determine differences and similarities among groups of facts, propose new variables, create conceptual classifications, determine equations governing numeric variables and the conditions under which the equations apply, deriving statistical properties and using them for qualitative evaluations, etc. The initial implementation of the system, INLEN 1b, is described, and its performance is illustrated by applying it to a database of scientific publications.

Developing knowledge-based systems: reorganizing the system development life cycle

Through methodological evolution, the development of the Knowledge-Based Development Life Cycle is supported. In this methodology, processes replace phases and stages and during system development, dynamic activation of processes allows the system to evolve.

BitCube: A Three-Dimensional Bitmap Indexing for XML Documents

XML is a new standard for exchanging and representing information on the Internet. Documents can be hierarchically represented by XML-elements. In this paper, we propose that an XML document collection be represented and indexed using a bitmap indexing technique. We define the similarity and popularity operations suitable for bitmap indexes. We also define statistical measurements in the BitCube: center, and radius. Based on these measurements, we describe a new bitmap indexing based technique to cluster XML documents. The techniques for clustering are motivated by the fact that the bitmap indexes are expected to be very sparse.Furthermore, a 2-dimensional bitmap index is extended to a 3-dimensional bitmap index, called the BitCube. Sophisticated querying of XML document collections can be performed using primitive operations such as slice, project, and dice. Experiments show that the BitCube can be created efficiently and the primitive operations can be performed more efficiently with the BitCube than with other alternatives.

An algebra of quotient relations

An algebra which operates on partitioned relations is developed. Relation partitioning is achieved by defining equivalence relations on n-ary relations. It is shown that the algebra is as powerful as the original relational algebra, having the advantage of a set-processing capability. This feature provides both greater flexibility in query specification and efficient query processing.

Data architecture and data model considerations

The Data Base Management System is now a well established part of information systems technology, but the many architectures and their plethora of data models are confusing to both the practitioner and researcher. In the past, attempts have been made to compare and contrast some of these systems, but the greatest difficulty arises in seeking a common basis. This paper attempts to show how a generalized data system (GDS), represented by two different models, could form such a basis; it then proposes that data policy definitions can restrict the GDS to a specialized model, such as a relational or DBTG-like model. Finally, it proposes that this concept forms a better basis for data structure design of specific system applications.

Query optimization in star computer networks

Query processing is investigated for relational databases distributed over several computers organized in a star network. Minimal response-time processing strategies are presented for queries involving the select, project, and join commands. These strategies depend on system parameters such as communication costs and different machine processing speeds; database parameters such as relation cardinality and file size; and query parameters such as estimates of the size and number of tuples in the result relation. The optimal strategies specify relation preparation processes, the shipping strategy, serial or parallel processing, and, where applicable, the site of join filtering and merging. Strategies for optimizing select and join queries have been implemented and tested.

Cooperative Information Agents IV - The Future of Information Agents in Cyberspace

The research reported in this paper has both a scientific and a commercial aim. The scientific interest is to explore the use of contexts in order to improve the quality of information brokering. In this paper it is shown that contexts in information brokering can be exploited to enable four directions of query reformulation: up and down (standard query expansion) and sideway reformulations of the user request that can even involve going from one context to another.Personal Information Agents on the Internet.- Adding Life-Like Synthetic Characters to the Web.- Affective Computing for Future Agents.- Agent-Based Information Gathering and Mediation.- Knowledge Agents on the Web.- ICEBERG: Exploiting Context in Information Brokering Agents.- A Dynamic Access Planning Method for Information Mediator.- What Is Query Rewriting?.- Applying Agents to Bioinformatics in GeneWeaver.- Rational Information Agents for E-Commerce.- Economic Incentives for Information Agents.- Auctio-Based Agent Negotiation via Programmable Tuple Spaces.- Task Assignment in Multiagent Systems Based on Vickrey-Type Auctioning and Leveled Commitment Contracting.- Bilateral Negotiation with Incomplete and Uncertain Information: A Decision-Theoretic Approach Using a Model of the Opponent.- On Ensuring Lower Bounds of Negotiation Results.- Towards an Experience Based Negotiation Agent.- Societies of Information Agents.- Emergen Societies of Information Agents.- A Social Mechanism of Reputation Management in Electronic Communities.- A Cybernetic Approach to the Modeling of Agent Communities.- Role of Acquaintance Models in Agent-Based Production Planning System.- Issues of Communication and Collaboration.- Agent Communication and Cooperative Information Agents.- Towards Information Agent Interoperability.- Exploiting the Ontological Qualities of Web Resources: Task-Driven Agents Structure Knowledge for Problem Solving.- Automatic Ontology Construction for a Multiagent-Based Software Gathering Service.- Information Agents: Future Inspirations and Design.- Inspiration for Future Autonomous Space Systems.- Mobile Information Agents for Cyberspace - State of the Art and Visions.- Design of Collaborative Information Agents.

Knowledge Management in Heterogeneous Data Warehouse Environments

This paper addresses issues related to Knowledge Management in the context of heterogeneous data warehouse environments. The traditional notion of data warehouse is evolving into a federated warehouse augmented by a knowledge repository, together with a set of processes and services to support enterprise knowledge creation, refinement, indexing, dissemination and evolution.

A semantic taxonomy-based personalizable meta-search agent

We address the problem of specifying Web searches and retrieving, filtering and rating Web pages so as to improve the relevance and quality of hits, based on the users search intent and preferences. We present a methodology and architecture for an agent-based system, called WebSifter II, that captures the semantics of a users decision-oriented search intent, transforms the semantic query into target queries for existing search engines, and then ranks the resulting page hits according to a user-specified weighted-rating scheme. Users create personalized search taxonomies via our weighted semantic-taxonomy tree. Consulting a Web taxonomy agent such as Wordnet helps refine the terms in the tree. The concepts represented in the tree are then transformed into a collection of queries processed by existing search engines. Each returned page is rated according to user-specified preferences such as semantic relevance, syntactic relevance, categorical match, page popularity and authority/hub rating.