Staircase Join: Teach a Relational DBMS to Watch its (Axis) Steps

Relational query processors derive much of their effectiveness from the awareness of specific table properties like sort order, size, or absence of duplicate tuples. This text applies (and adapts) this successful principle to database-supported XML and XPath processing: the relational system is made tree aware, i.e., tree properties like subtree size, intersection of paths, inclusion or disjointness of subtrees are made explicit. We propose a local change to the database kernel, the staircase join, which encapsulates the necessary tree knowledge needed to improve XPath performance. Staircase join operates on an XML encoding which makes this knowledge available at the cost of simple integer operations (e.g., +, <=). We finally report on quite promising experiments with a staircase join enhanced main-memory database kernel

Illinois Technograph v. 079, iss. 6 Mar. 1964

published or submitted for publicatio

Cutting out the middle man?: disintermediation and the academic library

Big Deals, open access, and digitisation increasingly mean that selection decisions are being removed from librarians and transferred to the end user. David Ball looks at the forces pushing towards this ‘disintermediation’ and considers the future role of the academic library

Some Thoughts about Private Harold L. Green of the Scout Platoon, First Battalion, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry

Editor’s note: On 12 August the RHLI was ordered to advance towards Clair Tizon. At a small crossroads near the abandoned hamlet of Barbery, the Regiment met German resistance. As the unit moved through the wheatfields, it encountered German infantry and armour. The maelstrom that engulfed the Rileys was later described as “the most intense mortaring and shelling the unit ever witnessed.” All day long the Battalion endured German counterattacks designed to keep the Falaise pocket open. At dusk the Germans withdrew leaving the field to the Canadians. The cost of the battle was high—20 men killed and 100 wounded. Doug Shaughnessy was detailed to help recover the men killed during the battle. While carrying out this duty, Shaughnessy had the heartbreaking experience of discovering the body of his best pal and scout buddy, Private Harold L. Green, who had been felled by a German machine gunner. Shaughnessy states that this tribute to Harry was “written by a soldier who probably knew him better than most and was his closest friend at least in the last year of his life and who buried him in a soldier’s grave on a hill top above the town of Bretteville-sur-Laize in Normandy.

Contending with Putin's Russia

As President Barack Obama enters his second term, relations with Russia present him with a set of thorny problems. The first-term "reset," a fresh American posture toward the Kremlin that was designed to build productive relations by offering compromises on a range of political and geostrategic issues, has clearly run its course. The Obama administration had partly based its hope for improved ties on the ability of Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, to achieve liberal reforms, especially on freedom of expression, the rule of law, and the ability of civil society to function without state intrusion. However, substantive reforms never materialized, former president and then prime minister Vladimir Putin remained the dominant force in government, and Russia moved abruptly in a more repressive direction following his return to the presidency in May 2012. Step by step, Putin has pushed through measures to deter public demonstrations, smear and limit funding for nongovernmental organizations, and place restrictions on the internet. He has also made anti-Americanism a central part of his political message. He has accused the United States of fomenting demonstrations against election fraud, shut down all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs in Russia, withdrawn from a series of cooperative agreements with the United States, and signed a vindictive law that prohibits the adoption of Russian children by citizens of the United States.There can be little doubt that a new American policy toward the Kremlin is needed. To help inform the discussion on a new approach, Freedom House is publishing this package of materials on the state of human rights and democracy in Russia since Putin took power in 2000. In the centerpiece essay, Freedom House president David J. Kramer and Eurasia program director Susan Corke assess the nature of the Putin regime and advance a series of proposals for American policy in the coming period. Katherin Machalek, the research analyst for Freedom House's "Nations in Transit" publication, is the author of a companion piece that lays out the progressive legal restrictions on civil society organizations during the Putin era. The package also includes a chronology of selected developments in Russia from 2000 through 2012 , with a focus on the suppression of the political opposition, independent media, and civil society. The chronology, prepared by Freedom House researcher Marissa Miller, serves as a reminder that the repressive measures enacted over the past eight months do not amount to a new direction for Russia, but rather a continuation, in severe form, of trends that have dominated Russian politics throughout the Putin era. Finally, a series of graphical representations prepared by senior research assistant Bret Nelson illustrate the decline of political rights and civil liberties in Russia as measured by Freedom House's annual reports

The Cowl - v.22 - n.3 - Oct 21, 1959

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 22, Number 3 - October 21, 1959. 8 pages