Prefetching techniques for client server object-oriented database systems

The performance of many object-oriented database applications suffers from the page fetch latency which is determined by the expense of disk access. In this work we suggest several prefetching techniques to avoid, or at least to reduce, page fetch latency. In practice no prediction technique is perfect and no prefetching technique can entirely eliminate delay due to page fetch latency. Therefore we are interested in the trade-off between the level of accuracy required for obtaining good results in terms of elapsed time reduction and the processing overhead needed to achieve this level of accuracy. If prefetching accuracy is high then the total elapsed time of an application can be reduced significantly otherwise if the prefetching accuracy is low, many incorrect pages are prefetched and the extra load on the client, network, server and disks decreases the whole system performance. Access pattern of object-oriented databases are often complex and usually hard to predict accurately. The ..

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 1997

One of the ways we recognize our faculty at the University of New Mexico is through this annual publication which highlights our faculty\u27s scholarly and creative activities and achievements and serves as a compendium of UNM faculty efforts during the 1997 calendar year. Faculty Publications and Creative Works strives to illustrate the depth and breadth of research activities performed throughout our University\u27s laboratories, studios and classrooms. We believe that the communication of individual research is a significant method of sharing concepts and thoughts and ultimately inspiring the birth of new of ideas. In support of this, UNM faculty during 1997 produced over 2,770 works, including 2,398 scholarly papers and articles, 72 books, 63 book chapters, 82 reviews, 151 creative works and 4 patents. We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty which are in part reflected in this book, which illustrates the diversity of intellectual pursuits in support of research and education at the University of New Mexico. Nasir Ahmed Interim Associate Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studie

Reasoning in Description Logic Ontologies for Privacy Management

A rise in the number of ontologies that are integrated and distributed in numerous application systems may provide the users to access the ontologies with different privileges and purposes. In this situation, preserving confidential information from possible unauthorized disclosures becomes a critical requirement. For instance, in the clinical sciences, unauthorized disclosures of medical information do not only threaten the system but also, most importantly, the patient data. Motivated by this situation, this thesis initially investigates a privacy problem, called the identity problem, where the identity of (anonymous) objects stored in Description Logic ontologies can be revealed or not. Then, we consider this problem in the context of role-based access control to ontologies and extend it to the problem asking if the identity belongs to a set of known individuals of cardinality smaller than the number k. If it is the case that some confidential information of persons, such as their identity, their relationships or their other properties, can be deduced from an ontology, which implies that some privacy policy is not fulfilled, then one needs to repair this ontology such that the modified one complies with the policies and preserves the information from the original ontology as much as possible. The repair mechanism we provide is called gentle repair and performed via axiom weakening instead of axiom deletion which was commonly used in classical approaches of ontology repair. However, policy compliance itself is not enough if there is a possible attacker that can obtain relevant information from other sources, which together with the modified ontology still violates the privacy policies. Safety property is proposed to alleviate this issue and we investigate this in the context of privacy-preserving ontology publishing. Inference procedures to solve those privacy problems and additional investigations on the complexity of the procedures, as well as the worst-case complexity of the problems, become the main contributions of this thesis.:1. Introduction 1.1 Description Logics 1.2 Detecting Privacy Breaches in Information System 1.3 Repairing Information Systems 1.4 Privacy-Preserving Data Publishing 1.5 Outline and Contribution of the Thesis 2. Preliminaries 2.1 Description Logic ALC 2.1.1 Reasoning in ALC Ontologies 2.1.2 Relationship with First-Order Logic 2.1.3. Fragments of ALC 2.2 Description Logic EL 2.3 The Complexity of Reasoning Problems in DLs 3. The Identity Problem and Its Variants in Description Logic Ontologies 3.1 The Identity Problem 3.1.1 Description Logics with Equality Power 3.1.2 The Complexity of the Identity Problem 3.2 The View-Based Identity Problem 3.3 The k-Hiding Problem 3.3.1 Upper Bounds 3.3.2 Lower Bound 4. Repairing Description Logic Ontologies 4.1 Repairing Ontologies 4.2 Gentle Repairs 4.3 Weakening Relations 4.4 Weakening Relations for EL Axioms 4.4.1 Generalizing the Right-Hand Sides of GCIs 4.4.2 Syntactic Generalizations 4.5 Weakening Relations for ALC Axioms 4.5.1 Generalizations and Specializations in ALC w.r.t. Role Depth 4.5.2 Syntactical Generalizations and Specializations in ALC 5. Privacy-Preserving Ontology Publishing for EL Instance Stores 5.1 Formalizing Sensitive Information in EL Instance Stores 5.2 Computing Optimal Compliant Generalizations 5.3 Computing Optimal Safe^{\exists} Generalizations 5.4 Deciding Optimality^{\exists} in EL Instance Stores 5.5 Characterizing Safety^{\forall} 5.6 Optimal P-safe^{\forall} Generalizations 5.7 Characterizing Safety^{\forall\exists} and Optimality^{\forall\exists} 6. Privacy-Preserving Ontology Publishing for EL ABoxes 6.1 Logical Entailments in EL ABoxes with Anonymous Individuals 6.2 Anonymizing EL ABoxes 6.3 Formalizing Sensitive Information in EL ABoxes 6.4 Compliance and Safety for EL ABoxes 6.5 Optimal Anonymizers 7. Conclusion 7.1 Main Results 7.2 Future Work Bibliograph

Eine Basis für effiziente Konsistenzprüfung

In diesem Bericht wird eine Uebersetzungstechnik fuer effiziente Konsistenztests in Datenbanken vorgestellt. Waehrend die meisten Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der Konsistenzpruefung eine Interpretation der vereinfachten Konsistenzbedingungen zur Laufzeit durchfuehren, wird hier eine Uebersetzungstechnik verwendet, welche deklarativ beschriebene Konsistenzbedingungen in eine erweiterte relationale Algebra uebersetzt. Da fuer die Uebersetzung der Konsistenzbedingungen in eine algebraische Darstellung zahlreiche Moeglichkeiten existieren, ist eine Optimierung, beispielsweise durch Ausnutzung statistischen Wissens, moeglich. Ein weiterer Vorteil des Ansatzes ergibt sich aus den Erweiterungen der Algebra. Typische algebraische Operatoren haben zwei Eingabemengen und nur eine Ausgabemenge. Werden dagegen mehr als eine Ausgabemenge und mehr als zwei Eingabemengen zugelassen, verbessern sich die Kommunikations- und Ausdrucksfaehigkeiten der Operatoren.Die Verwendung dieser als Bypass-Technik bezeichneten Methode ermoeglicht einerseits schnelle Konsistenztests zur Laufzeit und bildet andererseits die Basis fuer eine weitere Effizienzsteigerung durch bessere grobkoernige Parallelisierung der resultierenden algebraischen Ausdruecke. Anhand eines Kostenmodells und mittels Messungen auf einer Hauptspeicherdatenbank werden die Vorteile der Bypass-Technik gezeigt

Les versions dans les bases de données orientées objet : modélisation et manipulation

This thesis concerns object oriented databases; it proposes solutions to model and manage databases integrating versions. The concept of version is needed in various application fields such as technical documentation management, computer aided design and software engineering. Versions permit notably to keep and manage the evolution of the real world entities handled in such fields. There are different ways for versioning. Some works chose to describe the global evolution of a database; they manage versions of the whole database or versions of a database subpart. Our study focuses on representing independently the evolution of each entity described in the database. On the one hand, we propose a conceptual model extended to the versioning of objects and classes. Composition and relationship links, whose semantics are refined by cardinalities, integrate versioning for complex entities. Such links, including versions, induce complex contraints for structural integrity. On the other hand, we propose a language to manage this kind of databases. Particularly, this language provide a SelectFromWhere-type querying which take into account the specificities of versions; a query can take the most of the different abstraction levels related to versions that is to say derivation forests, trees and versions. The model and the language are realized within a prototype. This prototype is an end-user interface which provides a graphical management of databases integrating versions.Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le domaine des bases de données orientées objet ; elle propose des solutions pour décrire et manipuler des bases de données intégrant des versions. Le concept de version est nécessaire dans de nombreux domaines d'application comme la gestion de documentations techniques, la conception assistée par ordinateur et le génie logiciel. Les versions permettent notamment de conserver et manipuler l'évolution des entités du monde réel gérées dans de tels domaines. Différentes gestions de versions sont possibles. Certains travaux gèrent des versions de base ou d'une partie de base pour décrire l'évolution globale d'une base de données ; notre étude s'intéresse, quant à elle, à la représentation de l'évolution de chaque entité décrite dans la base, de manière indépendante. Nous proposons, d'une part, un modèle conceptuel intégrant la gestion de versions d'objets et de classes. Les relations de composition et d'association, dont la sémantique est affinée à l'aide de cardinalités, intègrent les versions pour des entités complexes. De telles relations, incluant les versions, induisent des contraintes d'intégrité structurelle complexes, dont nous faisons l'étude. D'autre part, nous proposons un langage pour manipuler ce type de bases de données. Ce langage permet notamment une interrogation de type Select From Where qui prend en compte les spécificités liées aux versions ; les différents niveaux d'abstraction liés aux versions c'est-à-dire les forêts de dérivation, les arbres et les versions, peuvent être exploités lors d'une interrogation. Une réalisation du modèle et du langage est effectuée au sein d'un prototype. Ce prototype est une interface destinée à des utilisateurs occasionnels, en permettant de manipuler graphiquement une base de données intégrant des versions

Modélisation et manipulation d'entrepôts de données complexes et historisées

Le mémoire de cette thèse traite de la modélisation conceptuelle et de la manipulation des données (par des algèbres) dans les systèmes d'aide à la décision. Notre thèse repose sur la dichotomie de deux espaces de stockage : l'entrepôt de données regroupe les extraits des bases sources utiles pour les décideurs et les magasins de données sont déduits de l'entrepôt et dédiés à un besoin d'analyse particulier.Au niveau de l'entrepôt, nous définissons un modèle de données permettant de décrire l'évolution temporelle des objets complexes. Dans notre proposition, l'objet entrepôt intègre des états courants, passés et archivés modélisant les données décisionnelles et leurs évolutions. L'extension du concept d'objet engendre une extension du concept de classe. Cette extension est composée de filtres (temporels et d'archives) pour construire les états passés et archivés ainsi que d'une fonction de construction modélisant le processus d'extraction (origine source). Nous introduisons également le concept d'environnement qui définit des parties temporelles cohérentes de tailles adaptées aux exigences des décideurs. La manipulation des données est une extension des algèbres objet prenant en compte les caractéristiques du modèle de représentation de l'entrepôt. L'extension se situe au niveau des opérateurs temporels et des opérateurs de manipulation des ensembles d'états.Au niveau des magasins, nous définissons un modèle de données multidimensionnelles permettant de représenter l'information en une constellation de faits ainsi que de dimensions munies de hiérarchies multiples. La manipulation des données s'appuie sur une algèbre englobant l'ensemble des opérations multidimensionnelles et offrant des opérations spécifiques à notre modèle. Nous proposons une démarche d'élaboration des magasins à partir de l'entrepôt.Pour valider nos propositions, nous présentons le logiciel GEDOOH (Générateur d'Entrepôts de Données Orientées Objet et Historisées) d'aide à la conception et à la création des entrepôts dans le cadre de l'application médicale REANIMATIC

An exploration of the potential of music and narrative song as an instrument for learning, with a focus on distance education.

This thesis uses the qualitative research methodologies of Educational Criticism and Grounded Theory to explore whether expressive culture in the form of popular narrative song can play a constructive role as an instrument or agent for learning in the context of distance adult education. In chapter one, the author provides a theoretical framework for incorporating popular narrative song into the distance adult learning experience. Chapter two reviews the research literature related to the themes discovered through the interview process involving eighteen individuals that served as the foundation for this study and the research literature associated with several theories of adult learning. In chapter three, the methodology of Educational Criticism and Grounded Theory is explained, the informants and the research sites are described. In chapter four, the themes that evolved as a result of the researcher’s interviews are analysed and presented. Chapter five provides an examination of the relationship between the eight themes that were discovered through analysis and several adult learning theories. In the final chapter, the author reflects on the implications of the relationship between popular narrative song and distance adult learning, and draws conclusions regarding the use of popular narrative song and distance adult education. Conclusions drawn from the research are discussed in portions entitled “Theme 8: Overcomes Distance,” and “Implications of this Research to the Field of Distance Adult Learning.” The chapter closes with recommendations for further study and with reflections on the research. The author suggests that there is sufficient justification, supported by research literature, and brought to life by the experiences, thoughts and reflections of those with an intimate knowledge of song for incorporating popular narrative song into appropriate distance adult learning experiences. Also included are the lyrics to twenty-two songs either connected in some way to the comments made by, or specifically cited by the informants of this study