具有全序时态类型集时态函数依赖集的研究

好的数据库逻辑设计目标是消除数据冗余以及插入、删除和更新异常.对于时态数据库,可以通过具有多时间粒度的时态函数依赖(TFDs)约束对时态数模式进行规范化.但是由于时间维的引入和多时间粒度的使用而给数据库设计带来巨大的复杂性.一般来说,系统所能处理的和相当多的应用所涉及到的时态类型集满足全序关系,并且具有全序时态类型集的TFD集的推导规则与传统函数依赖(FDs)的Armstrong公理有着紧密的联系.通过分析TFDs与FDs之间存在的联系,利用传统FD集的相应算法,提出了成员籍、有限属性闭包等TFD集的一些重要算法.这些算法是时态数据库进一步规范化的基础.     

Discovering Frequent Generalized Episodes When Events Persist for Different Durations

This paper is concerned with the framework of frequent episode discovery in event sequences. A new temporal pattern, called the generalized episode, is defined, which extends this framework by incorporating event duration constraints explicitly into the pattern's definition. This new formalism facilitates extension of the technique of episodes discovery to applications where data appears as a sequence of events that persist for different durations (rather than being instantaneous). We present efficient algorithms for episode discovery in this new framework. Through extensive simulations, we show the expressive power of the new formalism. We also show how the duration constraint possibilities can be used as a design choice to properly focus the episode discovery process. Finally, we briefly discuss some interesting results obtained on data from manufacturing plants of General Motors.     

A Mixed Closure-CSP Method for Solving Scheduling Problems

Scheduling problems can be viewed as a set of temporal metric and disjunctive constraints and so they can be formulated in terms of CSP techniques. In the literature, there are CSP-based methods which sequentially interleave search efforts with the application of consistency enforcing mechanisms and variable/ordering heuristics. Therefore, the number of backtrackings needed to obtain a solution is reduced. In this paper, we propose a new method that effectively integrates the CSP process into a limited closure process: not by interleaving them but rather as a part of the same process. Such an integration allows us to define more informed heuristics. These heuristics are used to limit the complete closure process to a maximum number of disjunctions, thereby reducing its complexity while at the same time reducing the search space. Some open disjunctive solutions can be maintained in the CSP process, limiting the number of backtrackings necessary, and avoiding having to know all the problem constraints in advance. Our experiments with flow-shop and job-shop instances show that this approach obtains a feasible solution/optimal solution without having to use backtracking in most cases. We also analyze the behaviour of our algorithm when some constraints are known dynamically and we demonstrate that it can provide better results than a pure CSP process.     

时态类型集的封闭集

好的数据库逻辑设计目标是消除数据冗余以及插入和删除异常。对于时态数据库，可以利用具有多时间粒度的时态函数依赖（TFDs）约束对时态数据库进行规范化。要进行有效的数据库设计，需要解决有限属性闭包和成员籍等一些有关TFD的问题。为了方便计算机对时态类型的处理和找到有效的解决TFD的相关问题的算法，该文提出了封闭时态类型集的概念，并且给出了一个求给定TFD集的封闭集的算法。     

Seed Selection for Spread of Influence in Social Networks: Temporal vs. Static Approach

The problem of finding optimal set of users for influencing others in the social network has been widely studied. Because it is NP-hard, some heuristics were proposed to find sub-optimal solutions. Still, one of the commonly used assumption is the one that seeds are chosen on the static network, not the dynamic one. This static approach is in fact far from the real-world networks, where new nodes may appear and old ones dynamically disappear in course of time. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse how the results of one of the typical models for spread of influence - linear threshold - differ depending on the strategy of building the social network used later for choosing seeds. To show the impact of network creation strategy on the final number of influenced nodes - outcome of spread of influence, the results for three approaches were studied: one static and two temporal with different granularities, i.e. various number of time windows. Social networks for each time window encapsulated dynamic changes in the network structure. Calculation of various node structural measures like degree or betweenness respected these changes by means of forgetting mechanism - more recent data had greater influence on node measure values. These measures were, in turn, used for node ranking and their selection for seeding. All concepts were applied to experimental verification on five real datasets. The results revealed that temporal approach is always better than static and the higher granularity in the temporal social network while seeding, the more finally influenced nodes. Additionally, outdegree measure with exponential forgetting typically outperformed other time-dependent structural measures, if used for seed candidate ranking.     

全序时态模块模式的TO_TSNF分解问题研究

在许多时态数据库应用中,都存在着涉及多时间粒度的约束。但是,具有多时问粒度的时态数据库的设计相当复杂,甚至难以实现,而现实世界中的许多应用所涉及到的时态类型集都能满足全序关系。同时,具有全序时态类型集的全序时态模块模式有着良好的特性,因此本文提出了全序时态模块模式、时刻关系模式、全序时态模块投影、全序时态简单候选关键字、全序时态三范式（TO_T3NF）和全序时态简单范式（TO_TSNF）等概念,并给出了全序时态简单范式的分解算法,对其正确性进行了证明,并对时间复杂度进行了分析。     

基于有序事件列表的高效复杂事件匹配算法

针对现有的复杂事件匹配处理方法存在的匹配代价高的问题,提出了一种利用事件缓冲区（有序事件列表）进行递归遍历的复杂事件匹配算法ReCEP。不同于现有方法利用自动机在事件流上进行匹配,该算法将复杂事件查询模式中的约束条件分解为不同类型,再在有序列表上对不同约束分别进行递归校验。首先,根据查询模式将相关事件实例按照事件类型进行缓存;其次,在有序列表上对事件实例执行查询过滤操作,并给出了一种基于递归遍历的算法来确定初始事件实例并且获取候选序列;最后,对候选序列的属性约束进行进一步的校验。基于股票交易模拟数据进行的实验测试和分析的结果表明,与当前主流的匹配方法 SASE和Siddhi相比,ReCEP算法能够有效地减少查询匹配的处理时间,总体性能上均更优,查询匹配效率提升了8.64%以上。可见,所提出的复杂事件匹配方法能够有效提高复杂事件匹配的效率。     

Evaluating Steiner-tree heuristics and diameter variations for application layer multicast

Latency reduction in distributed interactive applications has been studied intensively. Such applications may have stringent latency requirements and dynamic user groups. We focus on application-layer multicast with a centralized approach to the group management. The groups are organized in overlay networks that are created using graph algorithms that create a tree structure for the group. A tree has no cycles and uses a small routing table, as opposed to a connected overlay mesh.We investigated a group of spanning tree problems that are referred to as Steiner-tree problems, and we have a particular focus on reducing the diameter of a tree, which is the maximum pairwise latency in a tree. In addition, we focus on reducing the time it takes to execute membership changes. In that context, we use core-selection heuristics to find well-placed client nodes, and edge-pruning algorithms to reduce the number of edges in an otherwise fully meshed overlay. Our edge-pruning algorithms strongly connect well-placed client nodes to the remaining group members, to create new and pruned group graphs. Consequently, when a tree algorithm is applied to a pruned group graph, it is manipulated into creating trees with a smaller diameter.We devised new Steiner-tree heuristics that reduced the diameter, and also proposed new edge-pruning algorithms to make the tree construction faster. These heuristics and algorithms were implemented and analyzed experimentally along with several spanning-tree and core-selection heuristics found in the literature. We found that a full-mesh of shortest paths makes it difficult for Steiner-tree heuristics to find better trees than spanning tree algorithms. The network seen from the application layer is in fact a full mesh of shortest paths. In addition, we found that faster Steiner-tree heuristics that do not explicitly optimize the diameter are able to compete with slower heuristics that do optimize it.     

具有多时间粒度的时态数据库初等关键字、简单范式分解问题研究

一个好的数据库逻辑设计目标是消除数据冗余以及插入、删除和更新异常．对于时态数据库也是如此．提出了时态初等函数依赖、时态初等关键字、时态简单关键字等概念,在此基础上利用具有多时间粒度的时态函数依赖（TFD）约束对时态数据库进行了规范化研究,提出了规范程度高于时态三范式低于时态Boyce—Code范式的时态初等关键字范式（TEKNF）及时态简单范式（TSNF）,并研究了时态初等关键字范式和时态简单范式的分解问题,给出了相关分解算法,并对算法的可终止性、正确性进行了证明,对时间复杂度进行了分析．     

Mining frequent arrangements of temporal intervals

The problem of discovering frequent arrangements of temporal intervals is studied. It is assumed that the database consists of sequences of events, where an event occurs during a time-interval. The goal is to mine temporal arrangements of event intervals that appear frequently in the database. The motivation of this work is the observation that in practice most events are not instantaneous but occur over a period of time and different events may occur concurrently. Thus, there are many practical applications that require mining such temporal correlations between intervals including the linguistic analysis of annotated data from American Sign Language as well as network and biological data. Three efficient methods to find frequent arrangements of temporal intervals are described; the first two are tree-based and use breadth and depth first search to mine the set of frequent arrangements, whereas the third one is prefix-based. The above methods apply efficient pruning techniques that include a set of constraints that add user-controlled focus into the mining process. Moreover, based on the extracted patterns a standard method for mining association rules is employed that applies different interestingness measures to evaluate the significance of the discovered patterns and rules. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated and compared with other approaches on real (American Sign Language annotations and network data) and large synthetic datasets.     

Finding Essential Attributes from Binary Data

We consider data sets that consist of n-dimensional binary vectors representing positive and negative examples for some (possibly unknown) phenomenon. A subset S of the attributes (or variables) of such a data set is called a support set if the positive and negative examples can be distinguished by using only the attributes in S. In this paper we study the problem of finding small support sets, a frequently arising task in various fields, including knowledge discovery, data mining, learning theory, logical analysis of data, etc. We study the distribution of support sets in randomly generated data, and discuss why finding small support sets is important. We propose several measures of separation (real valued set functions over the subsets of attributes), formulate optimization models for finding the smallest subsets maximizing these measures, and devise efficient heuristic algorithms to solve these (typically NP-hard) optimization problems. We prove that several of the proposed heuristics have a guaranteed constant approximation ratio, and we report on computational experience comparing these heuristics with some others from the literature both on randomly generated and on real world data sets.     

A general framework for time granularity and its application to temporal reasoning

This paper presents a general framework to define time granularity systems. We identify the main dimensions along which different systems can be characterized, and investigate the formal relationships among granularities in these systems. The paper also introduces the notion of a network of temporal constraints with (multiple) granularities emphasizing the semantic and computational differences from constraint networks with a single granularity. Consistency of networks with multiple granularities is shown to beNP‐hard in general and approximate solutions for this problem and for the minimal network problem are proposed. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

时间约束混合流水车间调度问题综述

车间调度是智能制造领域中的核心问题之一, 在经典流水车间调度中, 所有工件按照相同的加工顺序在指 定机床上加工. 混合流水车间调度(HFS)作为流水车间调度的特例, 相比前者增加了机床选择的灵活性, 可以显著 优化系统目标, 但同时也增加了问题求解的难度. 由于时间约束HFS相比基本HFS问题更贴近实际生产过程, 近年 来, 综合考虑各类时间相关约束的HFS问题得到了深入研究. 因此, 本文围绕基本HFS、有限等待时间HFS、带准备 时间HFS、模糊/随机加工时间HFS、多时间约束HFS、时间约束相关多目标HFS等问题开展研究. 针对每一类时间 约束HFS问题, 按照问题规模对当前研究成果进行分类描述, 按照确定性算法、启发式方法、元启发式方法、算法混 合对相关成果进行算法分类, 按照实际工业应用对文献进行归类分析. 另一方面, 围绕交货期、能耗、成本等3类性 能指标, 分析了在各类时间约束HFS问题中的多目标优化相关成果. 最后详细分析了带时间约束HFS问题在问题层 面、算法层面和应用层面存在的挑战性问题和未来研究的方向.     

Using a Local Discovery Ant Algorithm for Bayesian Network Structure Learning

Bayesian networks (BNs) are knowledge representation tools capable of representing dependence or independence relationships among random variables. Learning the structure of BNs from datasets has received increasing attention in the last two decades, due to the BNs' capacity of providing good inference models and discovering the structure of complex domains. One approach for BNs' structure learning from data is to define a scoring metric that evaluates the quality of the candidate networks, given a dataset, and then apply an optimization procedure to explore the set of candidate networks. Among the most frequently used optimization methods for BN score-based learning is greedy hill climbing (GHC) search. This paper proposes a new local discovery ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm and a hybrid algorithm max-min ant colony optimization (MMACO), based on the local discovery algorithm max-min parents and children (MMPC) and ACO to learn the structure of a BN. In MMACO, MMPC is used to construct the skeleton of the BN and ACO is used to orientate the skeleton edges, thus returning the final structure. The algorithms are applied to several sets of benchmark networks and are shown to outperform the GHC and simulated annealing algorithms.      

Using search-based algorithms for Ajax event sequence generation during testing

Modern Web applications offer a rich and unique user experience by taking advantages of the so called Web 2.0 technologies, among which Ajax. Ajax supports the intensive use of asynchronous communication between client-pages and the Web server and it allows on-the-fly manipulations of client-pages content and structure to realize a rich, dynamic and interactive user interface. Correspondingly, new types of faults that cannot be easily revealed by existing Web testing techniques are associated with modern Ajax-based applications. In our previous investigations, we used state-based testing for event sequence generation and it proved to be quite effective in exposing Ajax specific faults. However, the search space of the semantically interacting event sequences is huge, as it can grow exponentially with the event sequence length. In this paper, we apply search-based algorithms, namely hill climbing and simulated annealing, to the problem of generating maximally diverse event sequences of various lengths. In this way, we control the size of the generated test suites, while keeping the included test cases as diverse as possible. We evaluate the performance of the algorithms on two open source Ajax applications.     

Improving the performance of OCL constraint solving with novel heuristics for logical operations: a search-based approach

A common practice to specify constraints on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) models is using the Object Constraint Language (OCL). Such constraints serve various purposes, ranging from simply providing precise meaning to the models to supporting complex verification and validation activities. In many applications, these constraints have to be solved to obtain values satisfying the constraints, for example, in the case of model-based testing (MBT) to generate test data for the purpose of generating executable test cases. In our previous work, we proposed novel heuristics for various OCL constructs to efficiently solve them using search algorithms. These heuristics are enhanced in this paper to further improve the performance of OCL constraint solving. We performed an empirical evaluation comprising of three case studies using three search algorithms: Alternating Variable Method (AVM), (1?+?1) Evolutionary Algorithm (EA), and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and in addition Random Search (RS) was used as a comparison baseline. In the first case study, we evaluated each heuristics using carefully designed artificial problems. In the second case study, we evaluated the heuristics on various constraints of Cisco’s Video Conferencing Systems defined to support MBT. Finally, the third case study is about EU-Rent Car Rental specification and is obtained from the literature. The results of the empirical evaluation showed that (1?+?1) EA and AVM with the improved heuristics significantly outperform the rest of the algorithms.     

Feasible Sequential Decisions and a Flexible Lagrangean-Based Heuristic for Dynamic Multi-Level Lot Sizing

We propose an extended model for dynamic multi-level lot sizing with general acyclic product structure and unconstrained resources (MLUR, including additional constraints on lot sizes and cumulative production. These allow for interactive decisions and flexible planning sequences. For three types of decisions we examine the space of feasible decisions, the main part being dedicated to single-product decisions, In order to be able to solve the single-product problems with the algorithm by Chen et al. ( Journal of Global Optimization , 4(4 , 397–413. We focus on the case where the decision space can be given by upper and lower bound constraints on lot sizes and cumulative production. We establish a characterization of this case as well as sufficient conditions of wide applicability and give algorithms to compute the bounds. As an application, we formulate a Lagrangean-based heuristic using a primal procedure with flexible planning sequence. Extensive testing on classical MLUR problems shows consistent improvement in solution quality compared with other heuristics.     

Automated discovery of local search heuristics for satisfiability testing

The development of successful metaheuristic algorithms such as local search for a difficult problem such as satisfiability testing (SAT) is a challenging task. We investigate an evolutionary approach to automating the discovery of new local search heuristics for SAT. We show that several well-known SAT local search algorithms such as Walksat and Novelty are composite heuristics that are derived from novel combinations of a set of building blocks. Based on this observation, we developed CLASS, a genetic programming system that uses a simple composition operator to automatically discover SAT local search heuristics. New heuristics discovered by CLASS are shown to be competitive with the best Walksat variants, including Novelty+. Evolutionary algorithms have previously been applied to directly evolve a solution for a particular SAT instance. We show that the heuristics discovered by CLASS are also competitive with these previous, direct evolutionary approaches for SAT. We also analyze the local search behavior of the learned heuristics using the depth, mobility, and coverage metrics proposed by Schuurmans and Southey.     

Fast,effective heuristics for the 0–1 multi-dimensional knapsack problem

The objective of the multi-dimensional knapsack problem (MKP) is to find a subset of items with maximum value that satisfies a number of knapsack constraints. Solution methods for MKP, both heuristic and exact, have been researched for several decades. This paper introduces several fast and effective heuristics for MKP that are based on solving the LP relaxation of the problem. Improving procedures are proposed to strengthen the results of these heuristics. Additionally, the heuristics are run with appropriate deterministic or randomly generated constraints imposed on the linear relaxation that allow generating a number of good solutions. All algorithms are tested experimentally on a widely used set of benchmark problem instances to show that they compare favourably with the best-performing heuristics available in the literature.     

一个多时间粒度下时态函数依赖的有限属性闭包算法

为了有效地进行时态数据库设计,支持多时间粒度的时态函数依赖(TFDs)被用于时态模式的规范化．时态模式规范化所要解决的一个关键问题是求解时态函数依赖的有限属性闭包问题．由于多时间粒度的使用,使得有限属性闭包问题变得非常复杂．实际上,TFDs与传统的函数依赖(FDs)之间存在着密切的联系．通过分析这些联系和封闭时态类型集的特性,利用传统FDs的相关算法提出一个有效的求解有限属性闭包的算法．通过分析和与相关算法的实验比较,该算法更加有效．