Middleware-based Database Replication: The Gaps between Theory and Practice

The need for high availability and performance in data management systems has been fueling a long running interest in database replication from both academia and industry. However, academic groups often attack replication problems in isolation, overlooking the need for completeness in their solutions, while commercial teams take a holistic approach that often misses opportunities for fundamental innovation. This has created over time a gap between academic research and industrial practice. This paper aims to characterize the gap along three axes: performance, availability, and administration. We build on our own experience developing and deploying replication systems in commercial and academic settings, as well as on a large body of prior related work. We sift through representative examples from the last decade of open-source, academic, and commercial database replication systems and combine this material with case studies from real systems deployed at Fortune 500 customers. We propose two agendas, one for academic research and one for industrial R&D, which we believe can bridge the gap within 5-10 years. This way, we hope to both motivate and help researchers in making the theory and practice of middleware-based database replication more relevant to each other.Comment: 14 pages. Appears in Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Vancouver, Canada, June 200

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Novel, yet similar: A similarity-assisted product family design approach for structural aero-engine components

The aviation industry is in a state of transformation. The climate crisis has amplified the need to innovate, and consequently manufacturers in the aviation industry need to investigate new and more sustainable design concepts. This is challenging, because there is no obvious replacement for kerosene-fueled aero-engines, though there are multiple technologies in development that may potentially take its place. Examples of such technologies include electric or hybrid-electric propulsion, or combustion engines fueled by hydrogen or synthetic sustainable aviation fuels. This increases the challenge for manufacturers, who must deal with high technological uncertainty. At the same time, manufacturers need to assert that the cost of realization is feasible for new aero-engine component designs, while also fulfilling the requirements for safety and performance. There is therefore a need for methods and tools that will assist designers in making fast and efficient design evaluations, to enable the exploration of large design spaces at reduced costs and lead-times.To make design space exploration more efficient, a similarity-assisted design space exploration method is proposed. This method provides increased trustworthiness in design space exploration results, while also highlighting opportunities for reuse of knowledge and other assets from legacy designs. Additionally, a software tool for automatically generating aero-engine structural components has been developed. This software enriches all generated geometries with information used to facilitate automated manufacturability analysis, as well as evaluation of structural performance. By utilizing the automated geometry generation tool in conjunction with the proposed design space exploration method, designers can quickly and efficiently evaluate the manufacturability and structural performance of novel concepts

Freshwater ecosystem services in mining regions : modelling options for policy development support

The ecosystem services (ES) approach offers an integrated perspective of social-ecological systems, suitable for holistic assessments of mining impacts. Yet for ES models to be policy-relevant, methodological consensus in mining contexts is needed. We review articles assessing ES in mining areas focusing on freshwater components and policy support potential. Twenty-six articles were analysed concerning (i) methodological complexity (data types, number of parameters, processes and ecosystem-human integration level) and (ii) potential applicability for policy development (communication of uncertainties, scenario simulation, stakeholder participation and management recommendations). Articles illustrate mining impacts on ES through valuation exercises mostly. However, the lack of ground-and surface-water measurements, as well as insufficient representation of the connectivity among soil, water and humans, leave room for improvements. Inclusion of mining-specific environmental stressors models, increasing resolution of topographies, determination of baseline ES patterns and inclusion of multi-stakeholder perspectives are advantageous for policy support. We argue that achieving more holistic assessments exhorts practitioners to aim for high social-ecological connectivity using mechanistic models where possible and using inductive methods only where necessary. Due to data constraints, cause-effect networks might be the most feasible and best solution. Thus, a policy-oriented framework is proposed, in which data science is directed to environmental modelling for analysis of mining impacts on water ES