TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

A comprehensive evaluation framework for system modernization : a case study using data services

Modernization is a solution to migrate cumbersome existing systems to a new architecture for improved longevity of business processes. Three modernization approaches exist. White-box and black-box modernization are distinct from one another. Grey-box modernization is a hybrid of the white-box and black-box approaches. Modernization can be utilised to create data services for a Service Oriented Architecture. Since it is unclear which modernization approach is more suitable for the development of data services, a comprehensive evaluation framework is proposed to evaluate which of the white- or black-box approaches is more suitable. The comprehensive framework consists of three evaluation components. Firstly, developer effort to modernize existing code is measured by acknowledged software metrics. Secondly, the quality of the data services is measured against identified Quality of Service criteria for data services in particular. Thirdly, the effectiveness of the modernized data services is measured through usability evaluations. By inspection of the combination of application of each of the evaluation components, a recommended approach is identified for the modernization of data services. The comprehensive framework was successfully employed to compare the white-box and black-box modernization approaches applied to a case study. Results indicated that had only a single evaluation component been used, inconclusive results of the more suitable approach may have been obtained. The findings of this research contribute a comprehensive evaluation framework which can be applied to compare modernization approaches and measure modernization success

A comprehensive evaluation framework for system modernization : a case study using data services

Modernization is a solution to migrate cumbersome existing systems to a new architecture for improved longevity of business processes. Three modernization approaches exist. White-box and black-box modernization are distinct from one another. Grey-box modernization is a hybrid of the white-box and black-box approaches. Modernization can be utilised to create data services for a Service Oriented Architecture. Since it is unclear which modernization approach is more suitable for the development of data services, a comprehensive evaluation framework is proposed to evaluate which of the white- or black-box approaches is more suitable. The comprehensive framework consists of three evaluation components. Firstly, developer effort to modernize existing code is measured by acknowledged software metrics. Secondly, the quality of the data services is measured against identified Quality of Service criteria for data services in particular. Thirdly, the effectiveness of the modernized data services is measured through usability evaluations. By inspection of the combination of application of each of the evaluation components, a recommended approach is identified for the modernization of data services. The comprehensive framework was successfully employed to compare the white-box and black-box modernization approaches applied to a case study. Results indicated that had only a single evaluation component been used, inconclusive results of the more suitable approach may have been obtained. The findings of this research contribute a comprehensive evaluation framework which can be applied to compare modernization approaches and measure modernization success

Needing permission : the experience of self-care and self-compassion in nursing

In the National Health Service (NHS) there appears to be a culture of substantial change, with many nurses highlighting the impact of this on their own wellbeing (BPS, 2014). Reports following negative healthcare experiences, such as those reported at Mid Staffordshire (Francis, 2013), led to a number of initiatives emphasising the importance of nurses delivering compassionate care. However, there is a dearth of literature focusing on how nurses care for themselves as they try to provide compassionate care in a challenging job within a climate of constant change. The literature places a focus on the more negative aspects associated with providing care such as compassion fatigue, burnout and vicarious traumatisation, rather than on nurse’s ability to look after themselves through self-care and self-compassion. The purpose of this study is to focus on experiences of self-care and self-compassion in nursing and how these experiences may relate to compassionate care giving. Constructivist Grounded Theory was used, and purposive and theoretical sampling were utilised to recruit nurses working within two NHS Trusts in the UK. Semi structured interviews were undertaken with 30 nurses from general, mental health and learning disabilities and at different levels of seniority. Data analysis was conducted in line with the Constructivist Grounded Theory approach as suggested by Charmaz (2014) and resulted in the emergence and construction of three concepts: 1) ‘Hardwired to be caregivers’ – vocation versus role 2) Needing a stable base and; 3) Managing the emotions of caring. All three concepts were then linked with a core process: needing permission to self-care and be self-compassionate. Nurses needed permission from others and from themselves in order to be self-caring and self-compassionate. An inability to do this appeared to impact upon their own wellbeing and compassionate care giving to others. Nurses in this study described how they struggled particularly with self-compassion. Helping nurses to be proactively more self-caring and self-compassionate may increase their ability to manage emotions and prevent some of the more negative consequences of nursing such as burnout and compassion fatigue. Participants identified that if they had formal permission (e.g. within nursing guidance) to look after themselves then they would be more likely to engage in it and benefit from self-care and self-compassion. Future research within this field is recommended in order to gain an understanding of the effects of self-care and self-compassion initiatives

Automatically Leveraging MapReduce Frameworks for Data-Intensive Applications

MapReduce is a popular programming paradigm for developing large-scale, data-intensive computation. Many frameworks that implement this paradigm have recently been developed. To leverage these frameworks, however, developers must become familiar with their APIs and rewrite existing code. Casper is a new tool that automatically translates sequential Java programs into the MapReduce paradigm. Casper identifies potential code fragments to rewrite and translates them in two steps: (1) Casper uses program synthesis to search for a program summary (i.e., a functional specification) of each code fragment. The summary is expressed using a high-level intermediate language resembling the MapReduce paradigm and verified to be semantically equivalent to the original using a theorem prover. (2) Casper generates executable code from the summary, using either the Hadoop, Spark, or Flink API. We evaluated Casper by automatically converting real-world, sequential Java benchmarks to MapReduce. The resulting benchmarks perform up to 48.2x faster compared to the original.Comment: 12 pages, additional 4 pages of references and appendi

SNR: Software Library for Introductory Robotics

This thesis introduces SNR, a Python library for programming robotic systems in the context of introductory robotics courses. Greater demand for roboticists has pressured educational institutions to expand robotics curricula. Students are now more likely to take robotics courses earlier and with less prior programming experience. Students may be attempting to simultaneously learn a systems programming language, a library API, and robotics concepts. SNR is written purely in Python to present familiar semantics, eliminating one of these learning curves. Industry standard robotics libraries such as ROS often require additional build tools and configuration languages. Students in introductory courses frequently lack skills needed for these tools. SNR does not use any additional build tools, so students are faced with fewer compounding learning curves. SNR presents students with concepts important to robotic systems programming such as modular and event driven architectures to bridge the gap between introductory programming courses and industry standard libraries

Requirement elicitation for environmental life cycle processes

To develop a user-satisfying product the most essential ingredient is to understand user\u27s needs and expectations from the system. Lack of communication between the user and the developer results in an unsatifying output from the user\u27s point of view. Thus proper understanding between the stakeholder and the developer is the most important requirement during the development of any system. Requirement elicitation process is one such means of expressing wants and requirements from the system by both the parties. Based on Software Engineering Institute\u27s model, requirement elicitation is a web-based application that allows all the people involved in the system to specify their requirements in a more sophisticated and chronological manner. All the requirements that are specified are passed through various phases when finally a definite and a well-defined set of requirements are defined for further development of the project. An application of requirement elicitation process considered was the manufacturing of 120mm M829E3 armor piercing shell fired by the tank manufactured at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (IAAAP). The user specified various phases involved in the manufacturing with their requirements during each phase. Simultaneously developer\u27s also specified their requirements for the same. Thus by passing through all the phases of requirement elicitation a definite set of environmentally considered requirements were defined by both the teams. This thesis describes the various phases of requirement elicitation with respect to the domain of study. It also describes the software approach adopted for designing and developing this web based product

Proof Repair Infrastructure for Supervised Models: Building a Large Proof Repair Dataset

We report on our efforts building a new, large proof-repair dataset and benchmark suite for the Coq proof assistant. The dataset is made up of Git commits from open-source projects with old and new versions of definitions and proofs aligned across commits. Building this dataset has been a significant undertaking, highlighting a number of challenges and gaps in existing infrastructure. We discuss these challenges and gaps, and we provide recommendations for how the proof assistant community can address them. Our hope is to make it easier to build datasets and benchmark suites so that machine-learning tools for proofs will move to target the tasks that matter most and do so equitably across proof assistants

An investigation into the ‘I can Google it’ information seeking behaviour of the academic communities in the Maldives and Australia

This thesis is a phenomenological inquiry of the “I can Google it” information seeking behaviour in academic communities from two economically diverse countries – Maldives and Australia. It investigates how the googling phenomenon impacts the provision of academic library services