Storage Solutions for Big Data Systems: A Qualitative Study and Comparison

Big data systems development is full of challenges in view of the variety of application areas and domains that this technology promises to serve. Typically, fundamental design decisions involved in big data systems design include choosing appropriate storage and computing infrastructures. In this age of heterogeneous systems that integrate different technologies for optimized solution to a specific real world problem, big data system are not an exception to any such rule. As far as the storage aspect of any big data system is concerned, the primary facet in this regard is a storage infrastructure and NoSQL seems to be the right technology that fulfills its requirements. However, every big data application has variable data characteristics and thus, the corresponding data fits into a different data model. This paper presents feature and use case analysis and comparison of the four main data models namely document oriented, key value, graph and wide column. Moreover, a feature analysis of 80 NoSQL solutions has been provided, elaborating on the criteria and points that a developer must consider while making a possible choice. Typically, big data storage needs to communicate with the execution engine and other processing and visualization technologies to create a comprehensive solution. This brings forth second facet of big data storage, big data file formats, into picture. The second half of the research paper compares the advantages, shortcomings and possible use cases of available big data file formats for Hadoop, which is the foundation for most big data computing technologies. Decentralized storage and blockchain are seen as the next generation of big data storage and its challenges and future prospects have also been discussed

Comparative genomics of Burkholderia multivorans, a ubiquitous pathogen with a highly conserved genomic structure

The natural environment serves as a reservoir of opportunistic pathogens. A well-established method for studying the epidemiology of such opportunists is multilocus sequence typing, which in many cases has defined strains predisposed to causing infection. Burkholderia multivorans is an important pathogen in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) and its epidemiology suggests that strains are acquired from non-human sources such as the natural environment. This raises the central question of whether the isolation source (CF or environment) or the multilocus sequence type (ST) of B. multivorans better predicts their genomic content and functionality. We identified four pairs of B. multivorans isolates, representing distinct STs and consisting of one CF and one environmental isolate each. All genomes were sequenced using the PacBio SMRT sequencing technology, which resulted in eight high-quality B. multivorans genome assemblies. The present study demonstrated that the genomic structure of the examined B. multivorans STs is highly conserved and that the B. multivorans genomic lineages are defined by their ST. Orthologous protein families were not uniformly distributed among chromosomes, with core orthologs being enriched on the primary chromosome and ST-specific orthologs being enriched on the second and third chromosome. The ST-specific orthologs were enriched in genes involved in defense mechanisms and secondary metabolism, corroborating the strain-specificity of these virulence characteristics. Finally, the same B. multivorans genomic lineages occur in both CF and environmental samples and on different continents, demonstrating their ubiquity and evolutionary persistence

A study on the factors affecting job satisfaction amongst employees in construction industry workplace (Case Study Saudi Arabia)

This study examines the factors that effect on job satisfaction among employee’s in construction industry in Saudi Arabia. The aims of this study also to identify the relationship between factors of job satisfaction and job/employees performance in construction project. The factors of job satisfaction that examine in this study were salary and compensation, working conditions and workplaces safety, equipment or materials are used, safety condition of the work and attitude toward each other in construction industry, administration and supervision, the expertise of supervisors, the support from supervisors and supervisors‟ communication skills, environment and communication, work and achievement, responsibility, recognition and feedback, the timing of feedback and the chance to be recognised when you done well and lastly the advancement. Employees in construction industry or in any organizations need to be motivated to facilitate their input towards the attainment of their organizational goals. Therefore, to fulfil the gap of previous researchers, the questionnaire of this study asked employees to give their suggestion as well to improve their satisfaction of work. In this research out of 265 surveys were distributed, 117 viable questionnaires were returned. Quantitative method is used in this study and the collected data was analysed by the use of SPSS 20 software with the method of analysed that being used in this research are crosstabs, frequency, percentages, mean and rank. The findings form the study show that Construction Company should pay attention to their employee’s needs and wants to motivate them in order to increase their level of job satisfaction. The concentrates for improvement job satisfaction must focus on the important factors were suggested by responses in this survey