Modeling an engineering design application using extended object-oriented concepts

This paper presents an approach to extend object-oriented data models, in which versions of an object are allowed to appear at different levels of an inheritance hierarchy, in contrast to the known approaches where they are admitted only at one leveI. This approach allows the design and instantiation of objects to beco me very natural, starting with the design of an object in a class and refining it, adding properties to the subclasses. Versions of objects can be defined in a subclass, having ascendant versions/objects associated to the superclasses. The paper also discusses how the extended model can be used to model engineering applications, fulfilling their requirements. The application is the STAR frarnework, which implements an innovative and flexible data model that allows the user to define an object schema for each design object. Design alternatives and views can be created during the design process and are represented in the object schema. Versioning appears in the STAR model not only for the real design data, but also for alternatives and views in the object schema. This requirement is not naturally modeled by the existing version models in object-oriented databases

Versions and configurations in object-oriented database systems : a uniform treatment

Object-oriented database models usually allow versions only at the most specialized type/c1ass in an inheritance hierarchy. The possibility of having versions at different levels of abstraction provides a richer model and allows a more natural representation of the reality. The presence of objects and its corresponding sets of versions at different levels of a type/class hierarchy introduces the need for handling version mappings. Integrity constraints can be associated to these mappings, restricting the set of possible combinations of versions appearing at different levels of the hierarchy. Sets of versions associated with each levei of an object hierarchy often represent a very large set of possible configurations for that object, which is difficult to be handled directly by the user. In this context, adequate mechanisms are very important to define and build object configurations by means of selections applied to the set of all possible configurations, defined by the combinations of versions. This paper proposes an approach in which versions and configurations may appear at different levels of an inheritance hierarchy, and a uniform treatment is given to these two concepts

A Temporal Web Ontology Language

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is the most expressive standard language for modeling ontologies on the Semantic Web. In this paper, we present a temporal extension of the very expressive fragment SHIN(D) of the OWL-DL language resulting in the tOWL language. Through a layered approach we introduce 3 extensions: i) Concrete Domains, that allows the representation of restrictions using concrete domain binary predicates, ii) Temporal Representation, that introduces timepoints, relations between timepoints, intervals, and Allen’s 13 interval relations into the language, and iii) TimeSlices/Fluents, that implements a perdurantist view on individuals and allows for the representation of complex temporal aspects, such as process state transitions. We illustrate the expressiveness of the newly introduced language by providing a TBox representation of Leveraged Buy Out (LBO) processes in financial applications and an ABox representation of one specific LBO

Uma abordagem multi-nivel para suporte a versoes em bancos de dados orientados a objetos

O uso de Sistemas de Bancos de Dados em aplicações não convencionais evidenciou requisitos não atendidos pelos sistemas tradicionais, motivando pesquisas em torno do Paradigma da Orientação a Objetos. Destaca-se o requisito de liberação do número de possíveis instâncias associadas a um mesmo objeto, para a representação do histórico de um objeto, ou para um tratamento flexível da evolução de esquemas, ou, ainda, para manutenção da consistência dos dados em utilização concorrente. Esta liberação conduziu ao conceito de versão. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise do conceito de versão frente aos demais conceitos já incorporados ao paradigma de orientação a objetos, discutindo a necessidade dos novos conceitos. São consideradas as relações entre versões, bem como os condicionamentos impostos pelas hierarquias de classes e tipos sobre as versões de objetos ascendentes ,e descendentes. É proposta uma arquitetura na qual é admitido o versionamento de objetos em qualquer nível da hierarquia de herança, em contraposição aos modelos que admitem apenas o versionamento nas folhas da hierarquia. É mostrado como o modelo proposto descreve com mais propriedade várias situações encontradas em aplicações.The use of Database Management Systems to support non conventional applications put in evidence a set of requirements not supported by the traditional database systerns, and strongly motivated research work towards object oriented database systems. In this context, it was evident the need to liberate the number of instances associated to one database object, to represent the history of the object, to gain flexibility in schema evolution, ar to maintain data consistency, in concurrent access environments, originating the version concept. This work presents an analysis of the version concept, when integrated with the already incorporated concepts of the object-oriented paradigm and discusses the need for new concepts. Aspects considered include: relationships between versions, as well as the conditions imposed by the class and type hierarchies over the versioning of objects and its ascendants and descendants. A multi-Ievel architecture is proposed, which allows versioned objects to appear in any levei of a type ar class hierarchy. This approach is compared with the traditional one, in which versions appear only at the leaves of the hierarchies. It is shown how the proposed architecture allows modeling of many situations of real world applications in a more natural way

Towards a Framework for Comparing Object-Oriented Systems

Choosing a suitable object-oriented system for a particular application domain is very hard, at least in part because the object-oriented research community has not yet converged on what is meant by "object-oriented system". In order to solve this selection problem, a comparison framework is proposed to evaluate a range of object-oriented systems. We then use this framework to consider three different systems, MELD, MARVEL, and VBASE, which represent several quite different design choices for object-oriented systems. We also show the advantages as well as disadvantages about such a framework, and discuss future extensions

Query processing in temporal object-oriented databases

This PhD thesis is concerned with historical data management in the context of objectoriented databases. An extensible approach has been explored to processing temporal object queries within a uniform query framework. By the uniform framework, we mean temporal queries can be processed within the existing object-oriented framework that is extended from relational framework, by extending the existing query processing techniques and strategies developed for OODBs and RDBs. The unified model of OODBs and RDBs in UmSQL/X has been adopted as a basis for this purpose. A temporal object data model is thereby defined by incorporating a time dimension into this unified model of OODBs and RDBs to form temporal relational-like cubes but with the addition of aggregation and inheritance hierarchies. A query algebra, that accesses objects through these associations of aggregation, inheritance and timereference, is then defined as a general query model /language. Due to the extensive features of our data model and reducibility of the algebra, a layered structure of query processor is presented that provides a uniforrn framework for processing temporal object queries. Within the uniform framework, query transformation is carried out based on a set of transformation rules identified that includes the known relational and object rules plus those pertaining to the time dimension. To evaluate a temporal query involving a path with timereference, a strategy of decomposition is proposed. That is, evaluation of an enhanced path, which is defined to extend a path with time-reference, is decomposed by initially dividing the path into two sub-paths: one containing the time-stamped class that can be optimized by making use of the ordering information of temporal data and another an ordinary sub-path (without time-stamped classes) which can be further decomposed and evaluated using different algorithms. The intermediate results of traversing the two sub-paths are then joined together to create the query output. Algorithms for processing the decomposed query components, i. e., time-related operation algorithms, four join algorithms (nested-loop forward join, sort-merge forward join, nested-loop reverse join and sort-merge reverse join) and their modifications, have been presented with cost analysis and implemented with stream processing techniques using C++. Simulation results are also provided. Both cost analysis and simulation show the effects of time on the query processing algorithms: the join time cost is linearly increased with the expansion in the number of time-epochs (time-dimension in the case of a regular TS). It is also shown that using heuristics that make use of time information can lead to a significant time cost saving. Query processing with incomplete temporal data has also been discussed

Management and Visualisation of Non-linear History of Polygonal 3D Models

The research presented in this thesis concerns the problems of maintenance and revision control of large-scale three dimensional (3D) models over the Internet. As the models grow in size and the authoring tools grow in complexity, standard approaches to collaborative asset development become impractical. The prevalent paradigm of sharing files on a file system poses serious risks with regards, but not limited to, ensuring consistency and concurrency of multi-user 3D editing. Although modifications might be tracked manually using naming conventions or automatically in a version control system (VCS), understanding the provenance of a large 3D dataset is hard due to revision metadata not being associated with the underlying scene structures. Some tools and protocols enable seamless synchronisation of file and directory changes in remote locations. However, the existing web-based technologies are not yet fully exploiting the modern design patters for access to and management of alternative shared resources online. Therefore, four distinct but highly interconnected conceptual tools are explored. The first is the organisation of 3D assets within recent document-oriented No Structured Query Language (NoSQL) databases. These "schemaless" databases, unlike their relational counterparts, do not represent data in rigid table structures. Instead, they rely on polymorphic documents composed of key-value pairs that are much better suited to the diverse nature of 3D assets. Hence, a domain-specific non-linear revision control system 3D Repo is built around a NoSQL database to enable asynchronous editing similar to traditional VCSs. The second concept is that of visual 3D differencing and merging. The accompanying 3D Diff tool supports interactive conflict resolution at the level of scene graph nodes that are de facto the delta changes stored in the repository. The third is the utilisation of HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for the purposes of 3D data management. The XML3DRepo daemon application exposes the contents of the repository and the version control logic in a Representational State Transfer (REST) style of architecture. At the same time, it manifests the effects of various 3D encoding strategies on the file sizes and download times in modern web browsers. The fourth and final concept is the reverse-engineering of an editing history. Even if the models are being version controlled, the extracted provenance is limited to additions, deletions and modifications. The 3D Timeline tool, therefore, implies a plausible history of common modelling operations such as duplications, transformations, etc. Given a collection of 3D models, it estimates a part-based correspondence and visualises it in a temporal flow. The prototype tools developed as part of the research were evaluated in pilot user studies that suggest they are usable by the end users and well suited to their respective tasks. Together, the results constitute a novel framework that demonstrates the feasibility of a domain-specific 3D version control

Implementation des ATKIS in GIS mit relationaler Attributverwaltung unter dem Aspekt der Fortführung

Das Amtliche Topographisch-Kartographische Informationssystem (ATKIS) ist ein Vorhaben der Landesvermessungsverwaltungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zum Aufbau digitaler Landschaftmodelle (DLM) und digitaler Kartenmodelle (DKM). In der Arbeit werden zunächst die Grundideen von ATKIS und von temporalen Datenmodellen dargestellt. Auf Grund einer Analyse des ATKIS-Objektartenkatalogs wurde ein Metainformationssystem DST entwickelt und mit Unterstützung des Instituts für Angewandte Geodäsie / Außenstelle Leipzig (IfAG) praktisch eingeführt. Weiterhin wurden Vorschläge für temporale Erweiterungen des DLM unterbreitet, die insbesondere die Gewinnung inkrementeller Fortführungsinformationen unterstützen

Development of a network-integrated feature-driven engineering environment

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

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