Special Issue: Modern Hardware

While database systems have long enjoyed a “free ride” with ever-increasing clock cycles of the CPU, in the last decade this increase stalled. On the computational side, we have seen an ever-increasing number of cores as well as the advent of specialized computing units ranging from GPUs via FPGA to chips with specific extensions. On the memory side, we not only observe a significant growth of the capacity of main memory, but a continued large performance impact of RAM latency on data access cost, recently aggravated by increasing NUMA effects. Storage-wise we have witnessed the introduction of NAND devices (e.g., SSDs) impacting the established role of magnetic disk drive. These advances taken together impact current database architectures and ask for adjustments, extensions or even a complete re-write in order to establish a scalable, affordable, and flexible foundation for data management systems of the future. This special issue focuses on conceptual and systems-architecture research related to the exploitation of modern hardware infrastructure for data management tasks. The five papers we finally selected for this special issue all went through a major revision in April–May 2015, and then a minor revision in July–August 2015, before being accepted in October–November 2015. We next present a brief summary of the accepted papers

The Development of Color Based Visual Search Utility

During the past few years, much attention has been paid to manage the overwhelming accumulation of rich digital images. In order to improve the traditional text-based or (Structured-Query-Language) SQL-based databases, researches focused on accessing large image databases by the contents of images, such as colors, shapes, and textures. As a result, several content- based image searching systems or met hods were developed. In this thesis, the issue of color-based image search was addressed with special emphasis on color feature. An introduction to color perception, the theoretical foundations of the human image retrieving process, and the content-based image systems and their uses was presented. Several systems were developed. These systems modelled image data using features such as color, texture and shape. Such features are usually extracted from images and stored into database index. Color is one of the most recognisable features exercised by people for visual distinction. Based on observations on how humans measure the perceptual similarity of images, recent studies concluded that human beings have a limited color perception range. Expediting these conclusions, firstly, perceptual color palettes to be used as the perceptual threshold were defined. Secondly, the color algorithm was developed to interpret natural expressions of content such as 10%, 20%, etc. The database-indexing algorithm designed to be independent to the database. Finally, a binary search algorithm was used to match and display images requested. This approach is unique because it is based on hybrid approach to the color based image search. This developed system can be used for any real-world online database. The system was implemented using Microsoft Visual C++ programming language and HTML. Using 200 images as an experimental database, results of the prototype software demonstrated the achievement of the perceptual concept in image content search

Creating a Religious Properties Database for the City of New Bedford: an Analysis of Best Practices and Available Systems

This policy analysis was written to provide the city of New Bedford, the Waterfront Historic Area League, Inter-church Council of Greater New Bedford, and the congregations with possible database systems to consider in creating their historic religious properties database. It also provides the best methodology to use when choosing a database. Deciding on who will be involved in the choosing process, determining a budget, and listing the mandatory requirements the database should provide are all important to consider in the decision making process

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

ADO-Tutor: Intelligent Tutoring System for leaning ADO.NET

This paper describes an Intelligent Tutoring System for helping users with ADO.NET called ADO-Tutor. The Intelligent Tutoring System was designed and developed using (ITSB) authoring tool for building intelligent educational systems. The user learns through the intelligent tutoring system ADO.NET, the technology used by Microsoft.NET to connect to databases. The material includes lessons, examples, and questions. Through the feedback provided by the intelligent tutoring system, the user's understanding of the material is assessed, and accordingly can be guided to different difficulty level of exercises and/or the lessons. The Intelligent Tutoring System was evaluated by a group of users and the results were more than satisfactory in terms of the quality of the material and the design of the system