Storage Solutions for Big Data Systems: A Qualitative Study and Comparison

Big data systems development is full of challenges in view of the variety of application areas and domains that this technology promises to serve. Typically, fundamental design decisions involved in big data systems design include choosing appropriate storage and computing infrastructures. In this age of heterogeneous systems that integrate different technologies for optimized solution to a specific real world problem, big data system are not an exception to any such rule. As far as the storage aspect of any big data system is concerned, the primary facet in this regard is a storage infrastructure and NoSQL seems to be the right technology that fulfills its requirements. However, every big data application has variable data characteristics and thus, the corresponding data fits into a different data model. This paper presents feature and use case analysis and comparison of the four main data models namely document oriented, key value, graph and wide column. Moreover, a feature analysis of 80 NoSQL solutions has been provided, elaborating on the criteria and points that a developer must consider while making a possible choice. Typically, big data storage needs to communicate with the execution engine and other processing and visualization technologies to create a comprehensive solution. This brings forth second facet of big data storage, big data file formats, into picture. The second half of the research paper compares the advantages, shortcomings and possible use cases of available big data file formats for Hadoop, which is the foundation for most big data computing technologies. Decentralized storage and blockchain are seen as the next generation of big data storage and its challenges and future prospects have also been discussed

Development of an augmentative and alternative communication app for the Maltese language

Also published in Symposium Melitensia Vol. 15 (2019) p. 1-16Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) embodies all methods of communication, serving to augment or function as an alternative to speech. Maltese children having complex communication needs use various AAC devices on a daily basis. Their conversation skills are mainly limited by two key factors. The fact that AAC users communicate up to 20 times slower than those who use regular speech is the first of these two limiting factors. The second one is the unavailability of an AAC app for the Maltese language. This paper presents the development of an AAC app targeted for the Maltese language, which provides an intelligent word suggestion mechanism to improve AAC rates. The app is based on a trigram language model which is able to predict the subsequent word by considering the previous two. The model was trained by means of a specifically created corpus and uses the Interpolated Kneser-Ney Smoothing technique to correctly resolve contexts which were not observed during training. The app enables users to retrain and update the language model, such that it may provide additional personalised word suggestions. The app was evaluated by a number of clinicians and educators who regularly work with AAC users. They remarked that it will be potentially helpful in aiding Maltese children during intervention sessions in view of its effective features. The underlying language model features an average perplexity of 90.47 when tested with non-similar training and test data and an average perplexity of 3.61 when evaluated for highly similar training and test data. The low perplexity values suggest that the language model employed in this app is remarkably accurate and is effectively performing as other trigram language models reported in the literature.peer-reviewe

OSCP: Optimization Service Connectivity Protocol

Optimization software e.g. solvers and modelling systems, expose software and vendor specific interfacing mechanisms to client applications e.g. decision support systems, thus introducing close coupling. The ‘Optimization Service Connectivity Protocol’ (OSCP) is an abstraction of the interfaces to optimization software, which is aimed primarily at simplifying the process of integrating optimization systems into software solutions by providing an abstracted, uniform and easy to use interface to such systems, regardless of system or vendor specific requirements. This paper presents a high-level overview of OSCP including descriptions of its main interfaces, and illustrates its use via examples

Development of the Shinshu University Online System of General Academic Resources (SOAR)

This paper discusses the development of the Shinshu University Online System of General Academic Resources (SOAR). As a participant in the 2006-2007 Cyber Science Infrastructure (CSI) development project of the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Shinshu University is seeking to develop SOAR as an integrated academic resource system. In addition to developing an environment for providing accesstothe latest academic resources within the university, SOAR is intended to promulgate university research results and research activities, both within Japan and around the world, to a broad audience. Specifically, this system achieves mutual coordination by linking e-journals and the Web of Science to the researcher directory and the institutional repository—two system cornerstones. SOAR can be regarded as a potential model for future academic-resource systems. Although the Institutional Repository (SOAR-IR) was developed using existing software, the Researcher Directory (SOARRD) is a new system based on XML technology.ArticleProgress in Informatics. 5:137-151 (2008)journal articl

Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version

Specialised Government Publishing: the Law Pocket and Linked Legal Data in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands an infrastructure for collecting, linking and disseminating legal public data is gradually being created. One of the first end-user applications built on this infrastructure is the Law Pocket: a free app with which government officials, lawyers, students and citizens have the up-to-date legislation from the national and regional level always at hand. It gives access to more than 3,400 automatically updated law books, containing full texts and linked resources. The app also gives access to a growing number of manually composed books on specific topics, edited and annotated by specialised civil servants. The backgrounds of this linked data project are described, as well as the main components of the architecture and the functionalities of the Law Pocket. Also its use, future work and position on the legal information market are discusse