Supporting Complex Scientific Database Schemas in a Grid Middleware

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/AINA.2009.129The volume of digital scientific data has increased considerably with advancing technologies of computing devices and scientific instruments. We are exploring the use of emerging Grid technologies for the management and manipulation of very large distributed scientific datasets. Taking as an example a terabyte-size scientific database with complex database schema, this paper focuses on the potential of a well-known Grid middleware - OGSA-DQP - for distributing such datasets. In particular, we investigate and extend the data type support in this system to handle a complex schema of a real scientific database - the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database

A Reference Architecture for Building Semantic-Web Mediators

The Semantic Web comprises a large amount of distributed and heterogeneous ontologies, which have been developed by different communities, and there exists a need to integrate them. Mediators are pieces of software that help to perform this integration, which have been widely studied in the context of nested relational models. Unfortunately, mediators for databases that are modelled using ontologies have not been so widely studied. In this paper, we present a reference architecture for building semantic-web mediators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reference architecture in the bibliography that solves the integration problem as a whole, contrarily to existing approaches that focus on specific problems. Furthermore, we describe a case study that is contextualised in the digital libraries domain in which we realise the benefits of our reference architecture. Finally, we identify a number of best practices to build semantic-web mediators.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2602,Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio TIN2008-04718-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-21744Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad TIN2010-09809-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-10811-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-09988-

Semantic data ingestion for intelligent, value-driven big data analytics

In this position paper we describe a conceptual model for intelligent Big Data analytics based on both semantic and machine learning AI techniques (called AI ensembles). These processes are linked to business outcomes by explicitly modelling data value and using semantic technologies as the underlying mode for communication between the diverse processes and organisations creating AI ensembles. Furthermore, we show how data governance can direct and enhance these ensembles by providing recommendations and insights that to ensure the output generated produces the highest possible value for the organisation

Optimising performance in network-based information systems: Virtual organisations and customised views

©2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Network-based information systems use well-defined standards to ensure interoperability and also have a tightly coupled relationship between their internal data representation and the external network representation. Virtual organisations (VOs), where members share a problem-solving purpose rather than a location-based or formal organisation, constitute an environment where user requirements may not be met by these standards. A virtual organisation has no formal body to manage change requests for these standards so the user requirements cannot be met. We show how the decoupling of the internal and external representations, through the use of ontologies, can enhance the operation of these systems by enabling flexibility and extensibility. We illustrate this by demonstrating a system that implements and enhances the Domain Name System, a global network-based information system. Migrating an existing system to a decoupled, knowledge-driven system is neither simple nor effortless but can provide significant benefits.Nickolas J. G. Falkner, Paul D. Coddington, Andrew L. Wendelbor

CoMMA Corporate Memory Management through Agents Corporate Memory Management through Agents: The CoMMA project final report

This document is the final report of the CoMMA project. It gives an overview of the different search activities that have been achieved through the project. First, a description of the general requirements is proposed through the definition of two scenarios. Then it shows the different technical aspects of the projects and the solution that has been proposed and implemented

Integration operators for generating RDF/OWL-based user defined mediator views in a grid environment

Research and development activities relating to the grid have generally focused on applications where data is stored in files. However, many scientific and commercial applications are highly dependent on Information Servers (ISs) for storage and organization of their data. A data-information system that supports operations on multiple information servers in a grid environment is referred to as an interoperable grid system. Different perceptions by end-users of interoperable systems in a grid environment may lead to different reasons for integrating data. Even the same user might want to integrate the same distributed data in various ways to suit different needs, roles or tasks. Therefore multiple mediator views are needed to support this diversity. This paper describes our approach to supporting semantic interoperability in a heterogeneous multi-information server grid environment. It is based on using Integration Operators for generating multiple semantically rich RDF/OWL-based user defined mediator views above the grid participating ISs. These views support different perceptions of the distributed and heterogeneous data available. A set of grid services are developed for the implementation of the mediator views

Sistema de informação laboratorial para o COVID-19

COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, first appeared in Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. It has since spread worldwide and developed into an ongoing pandemic. Currently, COVID-19 does not have a cure, and prevention is the only way to fight against it. During waves of higher infection cases, tracking the infected population becomes a difficult but crucial task. Only a COVID-19 test can diagnose a person, and RT-PCR tests are the most effective. PORTIC, the research centre for P.Porto, started using its laboratory for RT-PCR tests to diagnose COVID-19 for the P.Porto community and some health centres that belong to ARSN. During this process, the laboratory needs to manage all of the sample and testing information and report the test results. This information management became a burden, and the staff would lose most of the time with administrative tasks. This dissertation’s main objective is to develop a laboratory information system for PORTIC. This system must satisfy the elicited and specified requirements. For that purpose, multiple architectures were analysed, concluding that the clean architecture is the best option for this system. The system supports data importation from multiple external sources, report generation and exportation and the entire sample flow. Its development followed a scrum methodology where each requirement was validated through user acceptance tests at the end of each iteration. To evaluate the system’s success, the laboratory answered a questionnaire to determine the perceived usefulness and ease of use. This concluded that the system was successful since the questionnaire determined that it was extremely useful and easy to use. The developed system is an innovation on COVID-19 testing since there are no real options in the market, and different laboratories can reuse the system to tackle COVID-19 testing.A COVID-19, uma doença respiratória causada pelo SARS-CoV-2, apareceu pela primeira vez em Wuhan, China no dia 31 de dezembro de 2019. Desde então, esta doença espalhou-se por todo o mundo, devenvolvendo-se numa pandemia em curso. Atualmente, não existe cura para a COVID-19, sendo que a única maneira de resistir à doença é através da prevenção. Durante as ondas de grandes números de infeções, rastrear a população infetada transformase numa tarefa árdua mas fundamental. A única maneira de diagnósticar a doença é através de um teste de COVID-19, sendo que os testes de RT-PCR são os mais eficazes. O PORTIC, centro de pesquisa do P.Porto, começou a realizar testes de RT-PCR, no seu laboratório, para diagnosticar COVID-19 à comunidade do P.Porto e para alguns centros de saúde que pertencem à ARSN. Durante este processo, o laboratório precisa de gerir toda a informação sobre as amostras e os testes, assim como reportar os resultados dos testes. Esta gestão de informação tornou-se num incómodo e os funcionários passaram a perder a maior parte do seu tempo com tarefas administrativas. O objetivo principal desta dissertação é o desenvolvimento de um sistema de informação de laboratório para o PORTIC. Este sistema deverá cumprir os requisitos elicitados e especificados. Para esse propósito, foram analisadas diferentes arquiteturas, chegando-se à conclusão de que a clean architecture é a opção mais viável para este sistema. O sistema suporta importação de dados de múltiplas fontes externas, geração e exportação de relatórios e todo o fluxo de amostras. O desenvolvimento do sistema seguiu uma metodologia scrum onde cada requisito foi validado através de testes de aceitação do utilizador no final de cada iteração. Para avaliar o sucesso do sistema, o laboratório respondeu a um questionário para determinar a utilidade e facilidade de utilização percecionada. Isto concluiu que o sistema foi bem sucedido dado que o questionário determinou que foi extremamente útil e fácil de utilizar. O sistema desenvolvido é uma inovação em testes de COVID-19 pois não existem opções no mercado e outros laboratórios podem reutilizar o sistema para endereçar os testes de COVID-19

Flexible Integration and Efficient Analysis of Multidimensional Datasets from the Web

If numeric data from the Web are brought together, natural scientists can compare climate measurements with estimations, financial analysts can evaluate companies based on balance sheets and daily stock market values, and citizens can explore the GDP per capita from several data sources. However, heterogeneities and size of data remain a problem. This work presents methods to query a uniform view - the Global Cube - of available datasets from the Web and builds on Linked Data query approaches