Educational experiences detecting, using, and representing ternary relationships in database design

Conceptual models are applied as the first step in software design methodologies for collecting the semantics involved in the universe of discourse. Nevertheless, the abstraction process creates some misunderstandings for novice designers, such as difficulties in modeling some constructs and in understanding the semantics that they represent. This paper presents a thorough study of errors detected among Database Design students in Computer Science Engineering when they apply the abstraction process to generate a conceptual schema using a specific model. Specifically, the paper focuses on errors made in the design of ternary relationships. Some heuristics are proposed in order to help novice designers avoid these common errors, and an experimental study is presented to compare the number of errors made by the students before and after applying these heuristics. (Contains 10 figures, 2 tables, and 3 footnotes.)This work was supported in part by the Software Process Management platform project Modeling, Reuse and Measurement (TIN2004/07083), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, which supports the APEINTA research and innovation project.Publicad

Integrating intelligent methodological and tutoring assistance in a CASE platform: The PANDORA experience

Database Design discipline involves so different aspects as conceptual and logical modelling knowledge or domain understanding. That implies a great effort to carry out the real world abstraction task and represent it through a data model. CASE tools emerge in order to automating the database development process. These platforms try to help to the database designer in different database design phases. Nevertheless, this tools are frequently mere diagrammers and do not carry completely out the design methodology that they are supposed to support; furthermore, they do not offer intelligent methodological advice to novice designers. This paper introduces the PANDORA tool (acronym of Platform for Database Development and Learning via Internet) that is being developed in a research project which tries to mitigate some of the deficiencies observed in several CASE tools, defining methods and techniques for database development which are useful for students and practitioners. Specifically, this work is focused on two PANDORA components: Conceptual Modelling and Learning Support subsystems

Statistical user model supported by R-Tree structure

This paper is about developing a group user model able to predict unknown features (attributes, preferences, or behaviors) of any interlocutor. Specifically, for systems where there are features that cannot be modeled by a domain expert within the human computer interaction. In such cases, statistical models are applied instead of stereotype user models. The time consumption of these models is high, and when a requisite of bounded response time is added most common solution involves summarizing knowledge. Summarization involves deleting knowledge from the knowledge base and probably losing accuracy in the medium-term. This proposal provides all the advantages of statistical user models and avoids knowledge loss by using an R-Tree structure and various search spaces (universes of users) of diverse granularity for solving inferences with enhanced success rates. Along with the formalization and evaluation of the approach, main advantages will be discussed, and a perspective for its future evolution is provided. In addition, this paper provides a framework to evaluate statistical user models and to enable performance comparison among different statistical user models.This proposal development belongs to the research projects Thuban (TIN2008-02711), MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC- 1542) and Cadooh (TSI-020302-2011-21), supported respectively by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce.Publicad

Semantic Similarity Measures Applied to an Ontology for Human-Like Interaction

The focus of this paper is the calculation of similarity between two concepts from an ontology for a Human-Like Interaction system. In order to facilitate this calculation, a similarity function is proposed based on five dimensions (sort, compositional, essential, restrictive and descriptive) constituting the structure of ontological knowledge. The paper includes a proposal for computing a similarity function for each dimension of knowledge. Later on, the similarity values obtained are weighted and aggregated to obtain a global similarity measure. In order to calculate those weights associated to each dimension, four training methods have been proposed. The training methods differ in the element to fit: the user, concepts or pairs of concepts, and a hybrid approach. For evaluating the proposal, the knowledge base was fed from WordNet and extended by using a knowledge editing toolkit (Cognos). The evaluation of the proposal is carried out through the comparison of system responses with those given by human test subjects, both providing a measure of the soundness of the procedure and revealing ways in which the proposal may be improved.The development of this approach and its construction as part of the LaBDA-Interactor Human-Like Interaction System, part of the research projects SemAnts (TSI-020110-2009-419) and THUBAN (TIN2008-02711) and CADOOH (TSI-020302-2011-21), is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce and the Spanish Ministry of Education, respectively. Besides, the knowledge bases were populated using the COGNOS toolkit developed through the research project MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542) supported by the Regional Government of Madrid.Publicad

Guidelines for representing complex cardinality constraints in binary and ternary relationships

Ternary relationships represent the association among three entities whose constraints database designers do not always know how to manage. In other words, it is very difficult for the designer to detect, represent and add constraints in a ternary relationship according to the domain requirements. To remedy the shortcomings in capturing the semantics required for the representation of this kind of relationship, the present paper discusses a practical method to motivate the designer's use of ternary relationships in a methodological framework. The method shows how to calculate cardinality constraints in binary and ternary relationships and to preserve the associated semantics until the implementation phase of the database development method.This work forms part of the ‘Thuban: Natural Interaction Platform for Virtual Attending in Real Environments’ project (TIN2008-02711), the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade through the project Semants (TSI-020100-2009-419) and also by the Spanish research projects: MA2VICMR: Improving the access, analysis and visibility of the multilingual and multimedia information in web for the Region of Madrid (S2009/TIC-1542).Publicad

Learning to teach database design by trial and error

Proceedings of: 4th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2002), Ciudad Real, Spain, April 3-6, 2002The definition of effective pedagogical strategies for coaching and tutoring students according to their needs in each moment is a high handicap in ITS design. In this paper we propose the use of a Reinforcement Learning (RL) model, that allows the system to learn how to teach to each student individually, only based on the acquired experience with other learners with similar characteristics, like a human tutor does. This technique avoids to define the teaching strategies by learning action policies that define what, when and how to teach. The model is applied to a database design ITS system, used as an example to illustrate all the concepts managed in the model

An OCL-Based approach to derive constraint test cases for database applications

The development of database applications in most CASE tools has been insufficient because most of these tools do not provide the software necessary to validate these appli-cations. Validation means ensuring whether a given application fulfils the user require-ments. We suggest validation of database applications by using the functional testing technique, which is a fundamental black-box testing technique for checking the software without being concerned about its implementation and structure. Our main contribu-tion to this work is in providing a MDA approach for deriving testing software from the OCL specification of the integrity constraints. This testing software is used to validate the database applications, which are used to enforce these constraints. The generated testing software includes three components: validation queries, test cases and initial data inserted before the testing process. Our approach is implemented as an add-in tool in Rational Rose called OCL2TestSW.This work has been partially supported by the project Thuban: Natural Interaction Platform for Virtual Attending in Real Environments (TIN2008-02711), and also by the Spanish research projects: MA2VICMR: Improving the access, analysis and visibility of the multilingual and multimedia information in web for the Region of Madrid (S2009/TIC-1542).Publicad

Metodología ABP en el contexto de la Ingeniería de la Salud: aplicación en la asignatura de Sistemas de Rehabilitación y Ayuda a la Discapacidad

Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2019-105556GB-C33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (MINDROB)European Union (UE). H2020 CHIST-ERA SMALL (PCI2019- 111841-2)Junta de Andalucía PROMETEO (AT17_5410_USE

Incidence, Clinical Characteristics and Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Spain : Large-Scale Epidemiological Study

(1) Aims: To assess the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Spain, to describe the main epidemiological and clinical characteristics at diagnosis and the evolution of the disease, and to explore the use of drug treatments. (2) Methods: Prospective, population-based nationwide registry. Adult patients diagnosed with IBD-Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) or IBD unclassified (IBD-U)-during 2017 in Spain were included and were followed-up for 1 year. (3) Results: We identified 3611 incident cases of IBD diagnosed during 2017 in 108 hospitals covering over 22 million inhabitants. The overall incidence (cases/100,000 person-years) was 16 for IBD, 7.5 for CD, 8 for UC, and 0.5 for IBD-U; 53% of patients were male and median age was 43 years (interquartile range = 31-56 years). During a median 12-month follow-up, 34% of patients were treated with systemic steroids, 25% with immunomodulators, 15% with biologics and 5.6% underwent surgery. The percentage of patients under these treatments was significantly higher in CD than UC and IBD-U. Use of systemic steroids and biologics was significantly higher in hospitals with high resources. In total, 28% of patients were hospitalized (35% CD and 22% UC patients, p < 0.01). (4) Conclusion: The incidence of IBD in Spain is rather high and similar to that reported in Northern Europe. IBD patients require substantial therapeutic resources, which are greater in CD and in hospitals with high resources, and much higher than previously reported. One third of patients are hospitalized in the first year after diagnosis and a relevant proportion undergo surgery

Correction : Chaparro et al. Incidence, Clinical Characteristics and Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Spain: Large-Scale Epidemiological Study. J. Clin. Med. 2021, 10, 2885

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]