2311941
A Foundation for Conventional and Temporal Query Optimization Addressing Duplicates and Ordering
Most real-world databases contain substantial amounts of time-referenced, or temporal, data. Recent advances in temporal query languages show that such database applications may benefit substantially from built-in temporal support in the DBMS. To achieve this, temporal query representation, optimization, and processing mechanisms must be provided. This paper presents a foundation for query optimization that integrates conventional and temporal query optimization and is suitable for both conventional DBMS architectures and ones where the temporal support is obtained via a layer on top of a conventional DBMS. This foundation captures duplicates and ordering for all queries, as well as coalescing for temporal queries, thus generalizing all existing approaches known to the authors. It includes a temporally extended relational algebra to which SQL and temporal SQL queries may be mapped, six types of algebraic equivalences, concrete query transformation rules that obey different equivalences, a procedure for determining which types of transformation rules are applicable for optimizing a query, and a query plan enumeration algorithm.
45102117
Temporal specialization
The authors explore a variety of temporal relations with specialized relationships between transaction and valid time. An example is a retroactive temporal event relation, where the event must have occurred before it was stored, i.e., the valid time-stamp is restricted to be less than the transaction time-stamp. The authors discuss many useful restrictions, defining a large number of specialized types of temporal relations, and indicate some of their applications. A detailed taxonomy of specialized temporal relations is presented. This taxonomy may be used during database design to specify the particular time semantics of temporal relations.<<ETX>>
1723263
Multidimensional data modeling for location-based services
Abstract.With the recent and continuing advances in areas such as wireless communications and positioning technologies, mobile, location-based services are becoming possible.Such services deliver location-dependent content to their users. More specifically, these services may capture the movements and requests of their users in multidimensional databases, i.e., data warehouses, and content delivery may be based on the results of complex queries on these data warehouses. Such queries aggregate detailed data in order to find useful patterns, e.g., in the interaction of a particular user with the services.The application of multidimensional technology in this context poses a range of new challenges. The specific challenge addressed here concerns the provision of an appropriate multidimensional data model. In particular, the paper extends an existing multidimensional data model and algebraic query language to accommodate spatial values that exhibit partial containment relationships instead of the total containment relationships normally assumed in multidimensional data models. Partial containment introduces imprecision in aggregation paths. The paper proposes a method for evaluating the imprecision of such paths. The paper also offers transformations of dimension hierarchies with partial containment relationships to simple hierarchies, to which existing precomputation techniques are applicable.
44396365
Specification-based data reduction in dimensional data warehouses
Presents a powerful and easy-to-use technique for aggregation-based data reduction that enables the gradual change of the data from being detailed to being increasingly aggregated. The technique enables huge storage gains while retaining the data that is essential to the users, and it preserves the ability to query original and reduced data in an integrated manner.
1655888
Supporting imprecision in multidimensional databases using granularities
Online analytical processing (OLAP) technologies are being used widely, but the lack of effective means of handling data imprecision, which occurs when exact values are not known precisely or are entirely missing, represents a major obstacle in applying these technologies in many domains. The paper develops techniques for handling imprecision that aim to maximally reuse existing OLAP modeling constructs such as dimension hierarchies and granularities. With imprecise data available in the database, queries are tested to determine whether or not they may be answered precisely given the available data; if not, alternative queries unaffected by the imprecision are suggested. When processing queries affected by imprecision, techniques are proposed that take into account the imprecision in the grouping of the data, in the subsequent aggregate computation, and in the presentation of the imprecise result to the user. The approach is capable of exploiting existing OLAP query processing techniques such as pre-aggregation, yielding an effective approach with low computational overhead and that may be implemented using current technology.
1348801
Using differential technlques to efficiently support transaction time
We present an architecture for query processing in the relational model extended with transaction time. The architecture integrates standard query optimization and computation techniques with new differential computation techniques. Differential computation computes a query incrementally or decrementally from the cahced and indexed results of previous computations. The use of differential computation techniques is essential in order to provide efficient processing of queries that access very large temporal relations. Alternative query plans are integrated into a state transition network, where the state space includes backlogs of base relations, cached results from previous computations, a cache index, and intermediate results; the transitions include standard relational algebra operators, operators for constructing differential files, operators for differential computation, and combined operators. A rule set is presented to prune away parts of state transition networks that are not promising, and dynamic programming techniques are used to identify the optimal plans from the remaining state transition networks. An extended logical access path serves as a “structuring” index on the cached results and contains, in addition, vital statistics for the query optimization process (including statistics about base relations, backlogs, and queries-previously computed and cached, previously computed, or just previously estimated).
14551885
A unified security framework for networked applications
Various security models have been proposed for different types of applications and numerous types of execution environments. These models are typically reinforced by adding code to the application, which authenticates principals, authorises operations and establishes secure communication among distributed software components (e.g., clients and servers). This code is often application and context-specific, which makes it difficult to integrate an application with other each other.In this paper we propose a new unified access control mechanism that supports most of the existing security models and offers a number of additional controls that are not normally provided by security mechanisms. Moreover, the proposed mechanism integrates well with existing programming paradigms for distributed application, e.g., client/server technology and component based programming. This means that it can be seamlessly integrated with most existing distributed applications. We have implemented the proposed mechanism in a framework, that can be instantiated to implement different security models and policies. We present a qualitative evaluation that demonstrates the framework's ability to support a wide range of security policies and a preliminary performance evaluation of the framework.
16785661
Partial outsourcing: a new paradigm for access control
Various security models have been proposed in recent years for different purposes. Each of these aims to ease administration by introducing new types of security policies and models. This increases the complexity a system administrator is faced with. Ultimately, the resources expended in choosing amongst all of these models leads to less efficient administration.In this paper, we propose a new access control paradigm, which is already well established in virus and SPAM protection as partial delegation of administration to external expertise centres. Well-known vulnerabilities can be filtered out and known sources of attacks can be automatically blocked. We describe how partial outsourcing can be achieved in a secure way. A framework, which enables this process has already been developed.
28565174
Trust Evolution Policies for Security in Collaborative Ad Hoc Applications
The vision of pervasive computing has introduced the notion of a vast, networked infrastructure of heterogeneous entities interact through collaborative applications, e.g., playing a multi-player online game on the way to work. This will require interactions between users who may be marginally known or completely unknown to each other, or in situations where complete information is unavailable. This introduces the problem of assigning access rights to such marginally known or unknown entities. Explicit trust management has emerged as a solution to the problem of dealing with partial information about other users and the context in which the interaction takes place. We have implemented an access control mechanism based on the human notion of trust, where recommendations or initial participation in low risk interactions will allow entities to slowly build trust in each other. As the trust between two entities grows, interactions that entail a higher degree of risk may be allowed to proceed. We have used this mechanism in a simple role-based access control mechanism that uses trust to assign roles to users in a distributed blackjack card game application. This application allows us to experiment with different policies for trust-based admission control and trust evolution. In this paper we present an evaluation of policies specifying trust dynamics, which shows that our prototype reacts appropriately to the behaviour of other users and that the system updates trust values and implements admission policies in a manner similar to what would be expected from human trust assessment. This indicates that trust evolution policies can replace explicit human intervention in application scenarios that are similar to the evaluated prototype.
2014239
Process modeling across the web information infrastructure
Web-based open source software development (OSSD) project communities provide interesting and unique opportunities for software process modeling and simulation. While most studies focus on analyzing processes in a single organization, we focus on modeling software development processes both within and across three distinct but related OSSD project communities: Mozilla, a Web artifact consumer; the Apache HTTP server that handles the transactions of Web artifacts to consumers such as the Mozilla browser; and NetBeans, a Java-based integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Web artifacts and application systems. In this article, we look at the process relationships within and between these communities as components of a Web information infrastructure. We employ expressive and comparative techniques for modeling such processes that facilitate and enhance understanding of the software development techniques utilized by their respective communities and the collective infrastructure in creating them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
604106
Protection reconfiguration for reusable software
Secure distributed applications often include code to authenticate users, verify access rights, and establish secure communication channels between software components (e.g., clients and servers). This code is often specific to the application and to the context in which the application is used. Embedding protection definitions in the application code makes it difficult to reuse because different applications often have very different protection constraints. We argue that protection definitions should be specified separately from application code in order to facilitate protection reconfiguration and software reuse. This separation may be achieved by specifying protection definitions in a Protection Interface Definition Language, and is implemented by proxies installed between software components that are executing in different protection contexts (e.g., between client and server). Mechanisms for creation and dynamic installation of protection proxies have been implemented in a distributed shared memory system, and the viability of our solution is demonstrated by a simple name server, which is currently being reused in three different protection contexts.