Hitting Interface Specifications - The Role of Common Ground in

Data warehousing (DWH) projects are among the most expensive projects of companies in the financial industry. Problems like budget overruns and low end-user acceptance lead to the assumption that despite intensive research over the last two decades the relevant elements determining the success of such projects are not sufficiently investigated. On the basis of a case study about the implementation of a group-wide DWH the author analysis the existence of those still inadequately considered success factors. One challenging hurdle that project members have to clear is the complete fulfillment of interface specifications elaborated during conceptual modeling phase. The author chooses an interdisciplinary approach that involves established language theories and applies them to real-life observations in the case study to identify the necessary prerequisites. Subsequently rooms for improvement in the project approach are derived to guarantee a successful knowledge transfer among project members. Especially personal communication is essential to ensure the project’s success and to increase efficiency in DWH projects

Classification of Communication Defects in DWH Projects

Having completed the requirements engineering phase in a software engineering project, we usually refer to requirements as unambiguous, comprehensible and objective. In a software development case study conducted over a period of more than three years we observed several problems within and between the project teams resulting from different understandings of the software specification. Aim of the project was the implementation of a DWH that collects and evaluates significant data of an international banking institute in order to fulfill the requirements specified by Basel II. In order to classify and explain the observed communication defects that occurred during the implementation phase, we consider findings from communication theory and knowledge transfer (on the interaction setting). As a result, we propose a general schema for the classification of communication defects that may make a significant contribution to the handling of problems in communication issues

SUPPORTING FINANCIAL DATA WAREHOUSE DEVELOPMENT: A COMMUNICATION THEORY-BASED APPROACH

Data warehouses increasingly play important roles in the information technology landscape of the financial industry. However, semantic heterogeneity is high in banking – data is defined differently by different banks, business units, and users. Therefore data integration in financial data warehouse development projects relies on the knowledge, know-how, and judgment of human experts. Up to now, methodical support is missing for the communication process among experts that determine and negotiate a shared understanding of requirements. In contrast to ontologydriven or schema-matching approaches proposing the automatic resolution of differences ex-post, we introduce an approach that addresses data integration already in early project phases. Our approach supports developing shared understanding of domain concepts and data fields in financial data warehouse projects, good communication of all participants while the project progresses, and early detection of errors within projects. This way, we prevent problems that result from the ex-post resolution of semantic heterogeneity

Presentation of the 9th Edition of the Model Checking Contest.

International audience; The Model Checking Contest (MCC) is an annual competition of software tools for model checking. Tools must process an increasing benchmark gathered from the whole community and may participate in various examinations: state space generation, computation of global properties, computation of some upper bounds in the model, evaluation of reachability formulas, evaluation of CTL formulas, and evaluation of LTL formulas.For each examination and each model instance, participating tools are provided with up to 3600 s and 16 gigabyte of memory. Then, tool answers are analyzed and confronted to the results produced by other competing tools to detect diverging answers (which are quite rare at this stage of the competition, and lead to penalties).For each examination, golden, silver, and bronze medals are attributed to the three best tools. CPU usage and memory consumption are reported, which is also valuable information for tool developers

Search for charginos in e+e- interactions at sqrt(s) = 189 GeV

An update of the searches for charginos and gravitinos is presented, based on a data sample corresponding to the 158 pb^{-1} recorded by the DELPHI detector in 1998, at a centre-of-mass energy of 189 GeV. No evidence for a signal was found. The lower mass limits are 4-5 GeV/c^2 higher than those obtained at a centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV. The (\mu,M_2) MSSM domain excluded by combining the chargino searches with neutralino searches at the Z resonance implies a limit on the mass of the lightest neutralino which, for a heavy sneutrino, is constrained to be above 31.0 GeV/c^2 for tan(beta) \geq 1.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Hadronization properties of b quarks compared to light quarks in e+e- -> q qbar from 183 to 200 GeV

The DELPHI detector at LEP has collected 54 pb^{-1} of data at a centre-of-mass energy around 183 GeV during 1997, 158 pb^{-1} around 189 GeV during 1998, and 187 pb^{-1} between 192 and 200 GeV during 1999. These data were used to measure the average charged particle multiplicity in e+e- -> b bbar events, _{bb}, and the difference delta_{bl} between _{bb} and the multiplicity, _{ll}, in generic light quark (u,d,s) events: delta_{bl}(183 GeV) = 4.55 +/- 1.31 (stat) +/- 0.73 (syst) delta_{bl}(189 GeV) = 4.43 +/- 0.85 (stat) +/- 0.61 (syst) delta_{bl}(200 GeV) = 3.39 +/- 0.89 (stat) +/- 1.01 (syst). This result is consistent with QCD predictions, while it is inconsistent with calculations assuming that the multiplicity accompanying the decay of a heavy quark is independent of the mass of the quark itself.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Search for supersymmetric particles in scenarios with a gravitino LSP and stau NLSP

Sleptons, neutralinos and charginos were searched for in the context of scenarios where the lightest supersymmetric particle is the gravitino. It was assumed that the stau is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. Data collected with the DELPHI detector at a centre-of-mass energy near 189 GeV were analysed combining the methods developed in previous searches at lower energies. No evidence for the production of these supersymmetric particles was found. Hence, limits were derived at 95% confidence level.Comment: 31 pages, 14 figure

Measurement of the gluon fragmentation function and a comparison of the scaling violation in gluon and quarks jets

The fragmentation functions of quarks and gluons are measured in various three-jet topologies in Z decays from the full data set collected with the Delphi detector at the Z resonance between 1992 and 1995. The results at different values of transverse momentum-like scales are compared. A parameterization of the quark and gluon fragmentation functions at a fixed reference scale is given. The quark and gluon fragmentation functions show the predicted pattern of scaling violations. The scaling violation for quark jets as a function of a transverse momentum-like scale is in a good agreement with that observed in lower energy e+e− annihilation experiments. For gluon jets it appears to be significantly stronger. The scale dependences of the gluon and quark fragmentation functions agree with the prediction of the DGLAP evolution equations from which the colour factor ratio CA/CF is measured to be: CACF=2.26±0.09stat.±0.06sys.±0.12clus.,scale