Pricing of Information Services Using Real-Time Databases: A Framework for Integrating User Preferences and Real-Time Workload (Best Paper Runner Up)

Many revolutionary information products are being offered or envisioned in electronic commerce setting. Since an economic paradigm and mass customization are implicit in electronic commerce, these products must be produced and delivered at appropriate prices with user desired service characteristics such as response time, correctness, and completeness. In this research, we investigate the information services pricing with response time (or delay) as the only service characteristic since response time can implicitly characterize other quality attributes such as correctness. In order to recognize customers’ preferences, real-time databases, where transaction processing is time-cognizant, are central to information providers and can be thought of as “manufacturers” of customized products. We propose to capture user preferences by a priority pricing mechanism based on economic theory. This pricing is concerned with database access and is independent of content pricing. Our approach has a natural overload1 management and admission control2 techniques that can potentially increase collective benefits. Our model is evaluated using simulation and is shown to outperform a system without access pricing mechanism with respect to both system wide benefits and RTDB performance

A real-time active database for high transaction loads and moderate deadlines

A large class of real-time database problems has very high transaction loads and moderate deadlines. Traditional approaches have not been designed to handle such problems. A model based on the use of encapsulated events and rule objects has been developed. The model describes an active, real-time, object-oriented, memory-resident database environment (REACT). A system based on the model has been designed and implemented. A concurrency control algorithm was developed that uses the extra information available from the object-oriented and active features of REACT to pre-process the database and speed up concurrency control. Analysis was done for both single and multiple processor systems. For multiprocessor analysis a simulator was developed to verify the performance of REACT on a multiprocessor system. Examples of all the features needed for an actual system are given along with examples of how REACT can be used to solve real-world control and monitoring problems. Algorithms have been developed to allow users to test that the properties termination, confluence, and observable determinism hold for a target REACT database