15505874
An XJML-based wrapper generator for Web information extraction
There has been tremendous interest in information integration systems that automatically gather, manipulate, and integrate data from multiple information sources on a user's behalf. Unfortunately, web sites are primarily designed for human browsing rather than for use by a computer program. Mechanically extracting their content is in general a rather di cult job if not impossible [4]. Software systems using such web information sources typically use hand-coded wrappers to extract information content of interest from web sources and translate query responses to a more structured format (e.g., relational form) before unifying them into an integrated answer to a user's query. The most recent generation of information mediator systems (e.g., Ariadne [3], CQ [5, 7], Internet Softbots [4], TSIMMIS [2]) addresses this problem by enabling a pre-wrapped set of web sources to be accessed via database-like queries. However, hand-coding a wrapper is time consuming and error-prone. We have also observed that, by using a good design methodology, only a relatively small part of the code deals with the source-speci c access details, the rest of the code is either common among wrappers or can be expressed in a high level, more structured fashion. As the Web grows, maintaining a reasonable number of wrappers becomes impractical. First, the number of information sources of interest to a user query can be quite large, even within a particular domain. Second, new information sources are constantly added on the Web. Thirdly, the content and presentation format of the existing information sources may change frequently and autonomously. With these observations in mind, we have developed a wrapper generation system, called XWrap, for semi-automatic construction of wrappers for Web information sources. The system contains a library of commonly used functions, such as receiving queries from applications, handling of lter queries, and packaging results. It also contains some source-speci c facilities that are in charge of mapping a mediator query to a remote connection call to fetch the relevant pages and translating the retrieved page(s) into a more structured format (such as XML documents or relational tables). A distinct feature of our wrapper generator is its ability to provide an XML-enabled, feedback-based, interactive wrapper construction facility for Internet information sources. By XML-enabled we mean that the extraction of information content from the Web pages will be captured in XML form and the process of lter queries is performed against XML documents. By feedback-based we mean that the wrapper construction process will be revisited and tuned according to the feedback received by the wrapper manager.
3582970
Building a Semantic Web System for Scientific Applications: An Engineering Approach
This paper presents an engineering experience for building a Semantic Web compliant system for a scientific application – agricultural zoning. First, we define the concept of ontological cover and a set of relationships between such covers. These definitions, based on domain ontologies, can be used, for example, to support the discovery of services on the Web. Second, we propose a semantic acyclic restriction on ontologies which enables the efficient comparison of ontological covers. Third, we present different engineering solutions to build ontology views satisfying the acyclic restriction in a prototype. Our experimental results unveil some limitations of the current Semantic Web technology to handle large data volumes, and show that the combination of such technology with traditional data management techniques is an effective way to achieve highly functional and scalable solutions.
33902172
An Object-Centered Approach for Manipulating Hierarchically Complex Objects
We present an object-centered approach for manipulating hierarchically complex objects, which covers an extended object model and an object-centered query algebra. Extensions of the object model are mainly based on a separation of structural and semantic elements in modeling complex objects, including a general distinction between aggregation reference and association reference, an introduction of type inheritance into aggregation hierarchies and a support for combination of aggregation inheritance with subtype inheritance. Based on the extensions, we develop a query algebra as an integral part of the model. Unlike most of existing algebra-based query languages, our object algebra takes complex object collectively as a unit of high level queries and allows complex objects to be accessed at all levels of aggregation hierarchies without having resort to any kind of path expressions. Features of aggregation hierarchies, such as acyclicity and aggregation inheritance, have played important roles in such a development. We have also formally described the output type of each operator in order for dynamic classification of query results in the IsA type/class lattice. Although the design is based on the chosen object-oriented model, other object-oriented databases are possible. We feel that the proposal largely covers the query requirements for complex objects, and meanwhile provides users with an opportunity to remain within the framework of the model of complex objects while querying database. As a consequence, the flexibility and adaptability of the object-oriented model against schema changes are increased.
12589406
VISTA: Validating and Refining Clusters Via Visualization
Clustering is an important technique for understanding of large multidimensional datasets. Most of clustering research to date has been focused on developing automatic clustering algorithms and cluster validation methods. The automatic algorithms are known to work well in dealing with clusters of regular shapes, for example, compact spherical shapes, but may incur higher error rates when dealing with arbitrarily shaped clusters. Although some efforts have been devoted to addressing the problem of skewed datasets, the problem of handling clusters with irregular shapes is still in its infancy, especially in terms of dimensionality of the datasets and the precision of the clustering results considered. Not surprisingly, the statistical indices works ineffective in validating clusters of irregular shapes, too. In this paper, we address the problem of clustering and validating arbitrarily shaped clusters with a visual framework (VISTA). The main idea of the VISTA approach is to capitalize on the power of visualization and interactive feedbacks to encourage domain experts to participate in the clustering revision and clustering validation process. The VISTA system has two unique features. First, it implements a linear and reliable visualization model to interactively visualize multi-dimensional datasets in a 2D star-coordinate space. Second, it provides a rich set of user-friendly interactive rendering operations, allowing users to validate and refine the cluster structure based on their visual experience as well as their domain knowledge.
17104606
Distributed Query Scheduling Service: An Architecture and Its Implementation
We present the systematic design and development of a distributed query scheduling service (DQS) in the context of DIOM, a distributed and interoperable query mediation system.26 DQS consists of an extensible architecture for distributed query processing, a three-phase optimization algorithm for generating efficient query execution schedules, and a prototype implementation. Functionally, two important execution models of distributed queries, namely moving query to data or moving data to query, are supported and combined into a unified framework, allowing the data sources with limited search and filtering capabilities to be incorporated through wrappers into the distributed query scheduling process. Algorithmically, conventional optimization factors (such as join order) are considered separately from and refined by distributed system factors (such as data distribution, execution location, heterogeneous host capabilities), allowing for stepwise refinement through three optimization phases: Compilation, parallelization, site selection and execution. A subset of DQS algorithms has been implemented in Java to demonstrate the practicality of the architecture and the usefulness of the distributed query scheduling algorithm in optimizing execution schedules for inter-site queries.
9143242
Update Monitoring: The CQ Project
In rapidly growing open environments such as the Internet, users experience information starvation in the midst of data overload, due to difficulties similar to finding the needle in a haystack. Update monitoring is a promising area of research where we bring the right information to the user at the right time, instead of forcing the user through manual browsing or repeated submission of queries. As an example of update monitoring research, we outline our work in the Continual Queries (CQ) project, including its basic concepts, software architecture, and current implementation status.
10661094
Designing information systems in social context: a goal and scenario modelling approach
In order to design a better information system, a designer would like to have notations to visualize how design experts' know-how can be applied according to one's specific social and technology situation. We propose the combined use of a goal-oriented requirements language (GRL) and a scenario-oriented notation Use Case Maps (UCM) for representing design knowledge of information systems. Goal-oriented modelling is used throughout the requirements and design process. In GRL, goals are used to depict business objectives and system requirements, both functional and non-functional. Tasks are used to represent different ways for achieving goals. Means-ends reasoning is used to explore alternative solutions and their operationalizations into implementable system constructs. Social context is modelled in terms of dependency relationships among agents and roles. Scenarios expressed in UCM are used to describe elaborated business processes or workflow. The complementary use of goal-oriented modelling with GRL and scenario modelling with UCM is illustrated with an example of designing a web-based training system.
16978288
Interactive modeling of tree bark
There exist many computer graphics techniques which could achieve high quality tree generation. However, only few works focus on realistic modeling of tree bark. Difficulties lie in the complex appearance of the bark surfaces from a single image. We address three main issues here: feature specification; height field assignment; and texture correction. For feature specification, we use texton channel analysis to specify a variant of common bark features, inluding ironbark, vertical and horizontal fractures, tessellation, furrowed cork, and lenticels. For height field assignment, we develop an intuitive and easy-to-use user interface (UI). Here similarity-based texture editing is used for assigning height fields within a texton channel mask. For texture correction, we use the modeled height fields to eliminate the underlying lighting effects in a captured texture. Our modeling system is image-based: it takes as input a bark image and produces as output a textured height field representing a bark sample. We demonstrate that out method is an effective and easy-to-use technique to interactively model a variety of photo realistic bark surfaces.
28219085
Reducing Parametric Automata: A Multimedia Protocol Service Case Study
The Capability Exchange Signalling (CES) protocol is a control protocol for multimedia communications developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) [3]. Our goal is to verify this protocol against the set of allowable sequences of service primitives (i.e. user observable events), known as the service language. Thus the first step to verify the CES protocol is to obtain the CES service language. By using automata reduction techniques [2], our approach is to extract the service language from the Occurrence Graph (OG) of the Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model [4] for the protocol’s service definition. The OG of a CPN model is a directed graph comprising all reachable states (nodes) and state changes (edges) of the model.
8923918
A Linear Belief Function Approach to Portfolio Evaluation
We show how to use linear belief functions to represent market information and financial knowledge, including complete ignorance, statistical observations, subjective speculations, distributional assumptions, linear relations, and empirical asset pricing models. We then appeal to Dempster's rule of combination to integrate the knowledge for assessing an overall belief on portfolio performance, and to update this belief by incorporating additional information.
24660543
A note on the lower bounds of signed domination number of a graph
Abstract Let G = (V, E) be a graph. For a function f : V → {−1, 1}, the weight of f is w(f) = Σv ∈ V f(v). For a vertex v in V, we define f[v] = Σu∈N[v] f(u). A signed dominating function of G is a function f : V → {−1, 1} such that f[v] ⩾ 1 for all v ∈ V. The signed domination number γs(G) of G is the minimum weight of a signed dominating function on G. A signed dominating function of a weight γs(G) we call a γs-function of G. In this paper, we study the signed domination problem of general graph, and obtain some lower bounds of the signed domination number of a graph, and show that these lower bounds are sharp, and extend a result in Dunbar et al. (1995).