Incremental View Maintenance for Mobile Databases

In a mobile environment, querying a database at a stationary server from a mobile client is expensive due to the limited bandwidth of a wireless channel and the instability of the wireless network. We address this problem by maintaining a materialized view in a mobile client's local storage. Such a materialized view can be considered as a data warehouse. The materialized view contains results of common queries in which the mobile client is interested. In this paper, we address the view update problem for maintaining the consistency between a materialized view at a mobile client and the database server. The content of a materialized view could become incoherent with that at the database server when the content of the database server and/or when the location of the client is changed. Existing view update mechanisms are ‘push-based’. The server is responsible for notifying all clients whose views might be affected by the changes in database or the mobility of the client. This is not appropriate in a mobile environment due to the frequent wireless channel disconnection. Furthermore, it is not easy for a server to keep track of client movements to update individual client location-dependent views. We propose a ‘pull-based’ approach that allows a materialized view to be updated at a client in an incremental manner, requiring a client to request changes to its view from the server. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with experimental results. Received 27 January 1999 / Revised 26 November 1999 / Accepted 17 April 2000     

Incremental View Maintenance By Base Relation Tagging in Distributed Databases

The incremental view maintenance problem deals with the efficient updating of materialized views in response to updates to base relations. This paper considers the problem in a distributed database environment, with communication cost minimization as the primary objective. The views considered are defined based on the relational join operation. The approach is to use yes/no tags as auxiliary data on tuples in the base relations to indicate whether the tuples participate in joins. These tags will help avoid sending irrelevant data over the network and thus reduce the communication cost. Two basic view maintenance algorithms are proposed using the tags. In addition to reducing communication costs, an important feature of these two basic algorithms is that they derive the exact change to views without looking at the old views. This feature allows us to maintain certain aggregates on views without actually materializing the views themselves; this feature is useful in applications such as active databases where many conditions or constraints must be tested whenever updates occur, since a condition is true exactly when some corresponding view has nonzero number of tuples. The paper then combines the use of tags with the counting algorithm to derive a tagged counting algorithm that further reduces the communication cost. The paper illustrates the algorithms by examples and studies their performance via a statistical analysis. The illustrating examples and the performance analysis show that, under uniform distribution with reasonable join participation rates, the use of tags significantly improves the efficiency of view maintenance over similar algorithms without tags. The performance analysis also identifies the situations where a particular algorithm is superior to others. The use of tags for memoing values of subexpressions in a view definition is also explored in the paper.     

基于MFC的故障维修专家系统设计与实现

针对现代工业机械设备维修的复杂性,根据设备的故障现象、故障原因、故障排除的原理,结合以往维修人员的经验,采用Access数据库构建树状结构进行节点管理与节点消息响应,从而实现故障信息管理和故障信息提取。运用C＋＋语言和面向对象的方法实现了人机交互界面,开发出设备故障维修专家库系统。实际应用表明,该系统提高了维修人员的维修效率、减少了人力成本,为实际维修提供参考和指导。     

A conceptual model for the logical design of temporal databases

Although widely advocated as a tool for the conceptual modelling of data, the Entity-Relationship (E-R) model [4] and its extensions are generally lacking in constructs to model the dynamic nature of the real world, making them inadequate for designing temporal databases. This research first extends the E-R model to a Temporal Event-Entity-Relationship Model (TEERM), by introducing events as an additional construct. Second, a method is proposed for mapping this conceptual model into a temporal relational model for the logical design of temporal relational databases with a corresponding set of integrity constraints. The model is illustrated with an example and evaluated using a set of criteria proposed by ^{Batini et al. [2]}. The model appears to be expressive, simple and easy to use, and should, therefore, aid the temporal database design process significantly.     

Incremental maintenance of object-oriented data warehouses

Incremental maintenance of data warehouses has attracted a lot of research attention for the past few years. Nevertheless, most of the previous work is confined to the relational setting. Recently, object-oriented data warehouses have been regarded as a better means to integrate data from modern heterogeneous data sources. However, existing approaches to incremental maintenance of data warehouses do not directly apply to object-oriented data warehouses. In this paper, therefore, we propose an approach to incremental maintenance of object-oriented data warehouses. We focus on two primary issues specifically. First, we identify six categories of potential updates to an object-oriented view and propose an algorithm to find potential updates from the definition of the view. Second, we propose an incremental view maintenance algorithm for maintaining object-oriented data warehouses. We have implemented a prototype system for incremental maintenance of object-oriented data warehouses. Performance evaluation has been conducted, which indicates that our approach is correct and efficient.     

Incremental maintenance of semantic links in dynamically changing hypertext systems

One purported advantage of hypertext systems is the ability to move between semantically related parts of a document (or family of documents). If the document is undergoing frequent modification (for example while an author is writing a book or while a software design stored in the hypertext system is evolving) the question arises as to how to incrementally maintain semantic interconnections in the face of the modifications.

The paper presents an optimal technique for the incremental maintenance of such interconnections as a document evolves. The technique, based on theories of information retrieval based on lexical affinities and theories of incremental computation, updates semantic interconnections as nodes are checked into the hypertext system (either new or as a result of an edit). Because we use the semantic weight of lexical affinities to determine which affinities are meaningful in the global context of the document, introducing a new affinity or changing the weight of an existing affinity can potentially have an effect on any node in the system. The challenge met by our algorithm is to guarantee that despite this potentially arbitrary impact, we still update link information optimally.

Once established the semantic interconnections are used to allow the user to move from node to node based not on rigid connections but instead on dynamically determined semantic interrelationships among the nodes.     

对象粒度的概念格增量维护与关联规则更新

研究对象粒度的概念格维护和关联规则更新是动态环境下概念格应用的实际需要。研究了概念格更新的规律,证明了加入新的对象时概念的生成及其插入位置只与最新生成的概念有关,与先前生成的大量概念无关。发现了概念的内涵缩减可以决定这个概念蕴涵的关联规则,同时发现了概念的内涵缩减由这个概念和其父概念的内涵差集决定。根据上述观点提出了基于对象粒度的概念格关联规则更新的方法。     

核电厂维修文件管理系统的研发

核电厂维修工作的重要性不言而喻,而维修文件是维修工作的参考依据.但核电厂维修文件种类很多,为了能够正确地选择维修活动的依据文件,有必要对电厂所有的维修文件进行相互关联,并建立一套维修文件管理系统.该系统不仅能够实现数据的导入、导出、查询、修改等功能,还能够链接某项维修活动相关的所有维修文件,方便维修人员选择,同时实现了维修规程编制计划、工作任务提醒、权限分配及用户管理等功能.     

地市级气象基础数据库的升级改造与运行维护

随着气象现代化的不断推进,气象业务体系的不段完善和发展,各种新的气象服务手段的不断涌现,地市州一级气象基础数据的需求越来越大。以德阳为例仅直接调用SQL数据库的应用就多达20种,如何保障基础气象数据库的正常运行,是目前需要解决的一个问题。我局建立了多个基础气象数据库服务器,按照应用的资源占有率合理将应用分配大各个服务器上,以保证基础气象数据数据库正常运行。本文主要以德阳市气象局为例,介绍了我局为保证气象基础数据库正常运行采取的一些措施。     

Specification of temporal properties with OCL

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is widely used to express static constraints on models and object-oriented systems. However, the notion of dynamic constraints, controlling the system behavior over time, has not been natively supported. Such dynamic constraints are necessary to handle temporal and real-time properties of systems.In this paper, we first add a temporal layer to the OCL language, based syntactically on Dwyer et al.'s specification patterns. We enrich it with formal scenario-based semantics and integrate it into the current Eclipse OCL plug-in. Second, we translate, with a compositional approach, OCL temporal properties into finite-state automata and we connect our framework to automatic test generators. This way, we create a bridge linking model driven engineering and usual formal methods.     

Expressing and organizing real-time specification patterns via temporal logics

Formal specification models provide support for the formal verification and validation of the system behaviour. This advantage is typically paid in terms of effort and time spent in learning and using formal methods and tools. The introduction and usage of patterns have a double impact. They stand for examples on how to cover classical problems with formal methods in many different notations, so that the user can shorten the time to understand if a formal method can be used to meet his purpose and how it can be used. Furthermore, they are used for shortening the specification time, by reusing and composing different patterns to cover the specification, thus producing more understandable specifications which refer to commonly known patterns. For these reasons, both interests in and usage of patterns are growing and a higher number of proposals for patterns and pattern classification/organization has appeared in the literature. This paper reports a review of the state of the art for real-time specification patterns, so as to organize them in a unified way, while providing some new patterns which complete the unified model. The proposed organization is based on some relationships among patterns as demonstrated in the paper. During the presentation the patterns have been formalized in TILCO-X, whereas in appendix a list of patterns with formalizations in several different logics such as TILCO, LTL, CTL, GIL, QRE, MTL, TCTL and RTGIL, is provided disguised as links to the locations where such formalizations can be recovered and/or are directly reported, if found not accessible in the literature; this allows the reader to have a detailed view of all the classified patterns, including the ones already added. Furthermore, an example has been proposed to highlight the usefulness of the new identified patterns completing the unified model.     

含聚集物化视图的增量维护方法

针对含聚集物化视图的增量维护问题,提出了一种基于逐步更新思想的增量维护模型和方法.该方法建立了聚集函数计算前查询结果与基表记录之间的映射关系表,并根据映射关系表的增量变化更新物化视图的聚集函数.针对之前方法对于MAX/MIN聚集函数增量更新的不足,在仅利用增量数据不能更新聚集函数值时,采用仅重新计算映射关系表中相关行的MAX/MIN函数值的方法,极大地减小了更新MAX/MIN聚集函数的计算量.在OSCAR数据库的应用表明了该方法的有效性和高效性.     

Study and implementation of the virtual view in unix

The security of information systems is important. protecting them from the viewpoint of methodology has become the critical task of their planners and implementers. This article proposes a new idea about the virtual view based upon unix stemming from the usual view concept,analyzes the characteristics of the virtual view,and finally gives the way of realization of the virtual view.     

Combining automatic acquisition of knowledge with machine learning approaches for multilingual temporal recognition and normalization

This paper presents an improvement in the temporal expression (TE) recognition phase of a knowledge based system at a multilingual level. For this purpose, the combination of different approaches applied to the recognition of temporal expressions are studied. In this work, for the recognition task, a knowledge based system that recognizes temporal expressions and had been automatically extended to other languages (TERSEO system) was combined with a system that recognizes temporal expressions using machine learning techniques. In particular, two different techniques were applied: maximum entropy model (ME) and hidden Markov model (HMM), using two different types of tagging of the training corpus: (1) BIO model tagging of literal temporal expressions and (2) BIO model tagging of simple patterns of temporal expressions. Each system was first evaluated independently and then combined in order to: (a) analyze if the combination gives better results without increasing the number of erroneous expressions in the same percentage and (b) decide which machine learning approach performs this task better. When the TERSEO system is combined with the maximum entropy approach the best results for F-measure (89%) are obtained, improving TERSEO recognition by 4.5 points and ME recognition by 7.     

一种基于频繁序列树的增量式序列模式挖掘算法

针对目前现有的增量式序列模式挖掘算法没有充分利用先前的挖掘结果,当数据库更新时,需要对数据库进行重复挖掘的问题。本文提出一种基于频繁序列树的增量式序列模式挖掘算法(ISFST),ISFST采用频繁序列树作为序列存储结构,当数据库发生变化时,ISFST算法分两种情况对频繁序列树进行更新操作,通过遍历频繁序列树得到满足最小支持度的所有序列模式。实验结果表明,ISFST算法在时间性能上优于PrefixSpan算法和IncSpan算法。     

教研室教学管理系统的设计与应用

为提高教研室教学管理效率，将数据库技术引入教学管理中，利用Office中的Access开发教学管理软件，提高了教学管理水平。     

Expressiveness of temporal query languages: on the modelling of intervals, interval relationships and states

Storing and retrieving time-related information are important, or even critical, tasks on many areas of computer science (CS) and in particular for artificial intelligence (AI). The expressive power of temporal databases/query languages has been studied from different perspectives, but the kind of temporal information they are able to store and retrieve is not always conveniently addressed. Here we assess a number of temporal query languages with respect to the modelling of time intervals, interval relationships and states, which can be thought of as the building blocks to represent and reason about a large and important class of historic information. To survey the facilities and issues which are particular to certain temporal query languages not only gives an idea about how useful they can be in particular contexts, but also gives an interesting insight in how these issues are, in many cases, ultimately inherent to the database paradigm. While in the area of AI declarative languages are usually the preferred choice, other areas of CS heavily rely on the extended relational paradigm. This paper, then, will be concerned with the representation of historic information in two well known temporal query languages: Templog in the context of temporal deductive databases, and TSQL2 in the context of temporal relational databases. We hope the results highlighted here will increase cross-fertilisation between different communities. This article can be related to recent publications drawing the attention towards the different approaches followed by the Databases and AI communities when using time-related concepts.     

Overlapping B-trees: An implementation of a transaction time access method

A new variation of Overlapping B⁺-trees is presented, which provides efficient indexing of transaction time and keys in a two dimensional key-time space. Modification operations (i.e. insertions, deletions and updates) are allowed at the current version, whereas queries are allowed to any temporal version, i.e. either in the current or in past versions. Using this structure, snapshot and range-timeslice queries can be answered optimally. However, the fundamental objective of the proposed method is to deliver efficient performance in case of a general pure-key query (i.e. ‘history of a key’). The trade-off is a small increase in time cost for version operations and storage requirements.     

From event calculus to the scheduling problem. Semantics of action and temporal reasoning in aircraft maintenance

In this work we are interested in the logical and semantical aspects of reasoning about actions in a scheduling process. We present an adaptation of the event calculus of Kowalski and Sergot to the problem of determining the temporal structure of the operations that must be performed during the realization of some complex objectives. Our application domain is aircraft maintenance. We try to reason about the actions which are performed during an overhaul in order to help to schedule them. The original model reasons about changes, i.e. events which initiate or terminate propositions. The first step of this work was to improve the initial model by adding a temporal relation between events and propositions because in our field we also have to reason about events which only inform us about some propositions without affecting them. The second step of this work is to build a set of specific rules which temporally interpret the semantics of the usual specifications of the actions to be considered. This interpretation aims to associate each action with two events and some temporal relations which are usable by the general model. Temporal reasoning uses pertinent knowledge about the specific universe (here, the aircraft that we consider and the actions which may be performed on it). We outline a generative methodology to formalize this relevant knowledge efficiently. This cognitive approach brings more informational economy in temporal reasoning because only the relevant information is considered The temporal reasoning model and the methodology have been exemplified and tested on a complex part of an aircraft. In the future, adapted tools based on this approach will be developed, in order to solve several problems of aircraft maintenance scheduling.