THE ISSUE OF SITE AUTONOMY IN DISTRIBUTED DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

With the increasing trend towards distributed systems, the administration of distributed databases has become very important. A key issue in this environment is the degree of autonomy for each participating site. This paper classifies the degree of site autonomy into three different levels and provides some guidelines for determining the appropriate degree of site autonomy from both organizational and technological perspectives. The alternative organizational structure for database administration and the specific tasks assigned to a Global DBA and Local DBAs under different site autonomy policies is discussed. Finally, the three site autonomy policies are compared

GIS Application to Support Land Administration Services in Ghana: Institutional Factors and Software Developments

In June 1999, the Ghanaian Government launched a new land policy document that sought to address some fundamental problems associated with land administration and management in the country. The document identified the weak land administration system as a particular problem and recommended the introduction of computer-aided information systems in the ‘lands sector’. In 2001, the Government made further proposals to prepare and implement a Land Administration Programme (LAP) to provide a better platform for evolving an efficient land administration that would translate the ‘National Land Policy’ into action. Thus, an up-to-date land information system (LIS), supporting efficient management of land records, is to be constructed, which provides a context for the research reported in this paper. We document two aspects of our research on the adoption of GIS by the Lands Commission Secretariat (LCS) which form part of a pilot project in GIS diffusion. Part one of the paper mainly outlines the empirical results arising from fieldwork undertaken during 2001 to determine the information and GIS requirements of the LCS in relation to their routine administrative processes and to identify the critical factors that are required to ensure that any new GIS applications are successfully embraced. Part two explains the prototype software system developed using ArcView 3.2 and Access that provides the LCS with a means to automate some of the routine administrative tasks that they are required to fulfil. The software has been modified and upgraded following an initial evaluation by LCS employees also conducted as part of the fieldwork in Accra

Protocols for Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases

A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected database systems that primarily operate independently but cooperate to a certain extent. Global integrity constraints can be very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. This paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) The problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated. (2) A family of protocols for constraint checking is presented. (3) The differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed by the protocols, and processing and communication costs. Thus, our work yields a suite of options from which a protocol can be chosen to suit the system capabilities and integrity requirements of a particular federated database environment

Policy Standardization Implementation Guarantying at the Private University in Semarang City

The purpose of this research is designed to describe and analyze the implementation of the quality assurance policy at a private college in the city of Semarang and the identification of those aspects that support and hinder the implementation of a quality assurance policy at a private University in the city of Semarang. As for specific targets to be achieved in the research is to formulate quality assurance policy implementation model for effective education (proposed model) and corresponding needs in supporting improved quality of education at Private Colleges in the city of Semarang. The study was designed with a qualitative research approach and use descriptive analysis. The analysis of the data collected is done after through interviews and observations directly in the field. Because it uses a qualitative approach then the data analysis processes in inductive data collection method in dept Interview, observation, documentation, and test the validity of library studies with data using two methods, namely the technique of triangulation and peer debriefing. The activity of this data analysis consists of, i.e., data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. To test the design quality assurance policy implementation model at a private college in the city of Semarang using consultation with experts guarantee quality (peer debriefing) for evaluation and improvement be alternative models. The next stage of the evaluation with Focus Group Discussion (FGD) by presenting a quality assurance team of experts from several universities to discuss alternative models these models are proposed so that/later can be implemented at private colleges. The location of the research done at Private Colleges include: Dian Nuswantoro University Semarang (UDINUS), Republic Indonesia Semarang Teachers Union University (UPGRIS), a high school computer (STEKOM), Indonesia Cruise Academy (AKPELNI), the maritime high school (STIMART) and site Quality Assurance Agency on research at the private University

Managing Dynamic User Communities in a Grid of Autonomous Resources

One of the fundamental concepts in Grid computing is the creation of Virtual Organizations (VO's): a set of resource consumers and providers that join forces to solve a common problem. Typical examples of Virtual Organizations include collaborations formed around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. To date, Grid computing has been applied on a relatively small scale, linking dozens of users to a dozen resources, and management of these VO's was a largely manual operation. With the advance of large collaboration, linking more than 10000 users with a 1000 sites in 150 counties, a comprehensive, automated management system is required. It should be simple enough not to deter users, while at the same time ensuring local site autonomy. The VO Management Service (VOMS), developed by the EU DataGrid and DataTAG projects[1, 2], is a secured system for managing authorization for users and resources in virtual organizations. It extends the existing Grid Security Infrastructure[3] architecture with embedded VO affiliation assertions that can be independently verified by all VO members and resource providers. Within the EU DataGrid project, Grid services for job submission, file- and database access are being equipped with fine- grained authorization systems that take VO membership into account. These also give resource owners the ability to ensure site security and enforce local access policies. This paper will describe the EU DataGrid security architecture, the VO membership service and the local site enforcement mechanisms Local Centre Authorization Service (LCAS), Local Credential Mapping Service(LCMAPS) and the Java Trust and Authorization Manager.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures. PSN TUBT00

Development of grid frameworks for clinical trials and epidemiological studies

E-Health initiatives such as electronic clinical trials and epidemiological studies require access to and usage of a range of both clinical and other data sets. Such data sets are typically only available over many heterogeneous domains where a plethora of often legacy based or in-house/bespoke IT solutions exist. Considerable efforts and investments are being made across the UK to upgrade the IT infrastructures across the National Health Service (NHS) such as the National Program for IT in the NHS (NPFIT) [1]. However, it is the case that currently independent and largely non-interoperable IT solutions exist across hospitals, trusts, disease registries and GP practices – this includes security as well as more general compute and data infrastructures. Grid technology allows issues of distribution and heterogeneity to be overcome, however the clinical trials domain places special demands on security and data which hitherto the Grid community have not satisfactorily addressed. These challenges are often common across many studies and trials hence the development of a re-usable framework for creation and subsequent management of such infrastructures is highly desirable. In this paper we present the challenges in developing such a framework and outline initial scenarios and prototypes developed within the MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project [2]

Measures for assessing the impact of ICT use on attainment

"Building on ImpaCT2, this study aims to design a measure or measures capable of tracking 'snapshot' data, such that it will be possible to monitor the development of ICT use to support attainment" -- page 4