8742753
Towards interoperable heterogeneous information systems: an experiment using the DIOM approach
The Distributed Interoperable Object Model (DIOM) [5] introduced the approach tha t expficitly defines the interfaces of an in format ion consumer and an informat ion producer , match ing t h e m dynamical ly to achieve interoperabi l i ty in he terogeneous in format ion sys tems wi th growing number of au tonomous da t a sources as components . In this paper , we describe an exper imenta l implementa t ion of a cooperative in format ion sys tem, built on web browser interfaces, the Oracle da t abase manager , and CGI scripts. This initial implementa t ion d e m o n s t r a t e s the pract ical feasibifity of building DIOM-based cus tomizable and scalable solutions for in terconnect ing informat ion consumers with informat ion producers . Highlights of this simple sys tem include: (1) a demons t r a t i on of the D I O M query mediat ion componen t with interact ive query tracing, (2) a generic wrapper c o n s t ruc t ion library, and (3) a demo accessible over the Internet . 1 DIOM System Architecture The DIOM system architecture, first introduced in [5], is a twotier architecture offering services at both the mediator level and the wrapper level. Figure 1 presents a sketch of the Diorama architecture, which conforms to the 13 mediator-based reference framework [2]. Mediators in DIOM are application-specific. Each mediator consists of a consumer's domain model and many information producer 's source models and are described in terms of the DIOM interface definition language (DIOM IDL) [5]. The consumer's domain model specifies the querying interests of the consumer and the preferred query result representation. The producer's source models describe the information sources in terms of DIOM internal object representation generated by the DIOM interface manager. The consumer's domain model and the information producer's source models consti tute the general knowledge of a mediator and are used to determine how a consumer's information request is processed. The main task of the mediator sub-system is *The first two authors are partially supported by NSERC grant OGP-0172859 and NSERC grant STR-0181014. eThis author is partially supported by DARPA grant N00014-94-10845, NSF grant IRI-9510112, grants from the Hewlett-Packard Company and Tektronix. "'Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work tbr personal or classroom use is granted without tee provided that copies are not made or distributed Ibr profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the lhll citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a lee." ("1997 ACM 0-89791-850-9 97 0002 3.50 .......... ...... ! __c!__. I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,
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.
13182282
InfoFilter: Supporting quality of service for fresh information delivery
With the explosive growth of the Internet and World Wide Web comes a dramatic increase in the number of users that compete for the shared resources of distributed system environments. Most implementations of application servers and distributed search software do not distinguish among requests to different web pages. This has the implication that the behavior of application servers is quite unpredictable. Applications that require timely delivery of fresh information consequently suffer the most in such competitive environments. This paper presents a model of quality of service (QoS) and the design of a QoS-enabled information delivery system that implements such a QoS model. The goal of this development is two-fold. On one hand, we want to enable users or applications to specify the desired quality of service requirements for their requests so that application-aware QoS adaptation is supported throughout the Web query and search processing. On the other hand, we want to enable an application server to customize how it should respond to external requests by setting priorities among query requests and allocating server resources using adaptive QoS control mechanisms. We introduce the Infopipe approach as the systems support architecture and underlying technology for building a QoS-enabled distributed system for fresh information delivery.
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.
599285
Differential evaluation of continual queries
We define continual queries as a useful tool for monitoring of updated information. Continual queries are standing queries that monitor the source data and notify the users whenever new data matches the query. In addition to periodic refresh, continual queries include Epsilon Transaction concepts to allow users to specify query refresh based on the magnitude of updates. To support efficient processing of continual queries, we propose a differential re-evaluation algorithm (DRA), which exploits the structure and information contained in both the query expressions and the database update operations. The DRA design can be seen as a synthesis of previous research on differential files, incremental view maintenance, and active databases.
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.
2115447
Security and privacy requirements analysis within a social setting
Security issues for software systems ultimately concern relationships among social actors stakeholders, system users, potential attackers - and the software acting on their behalf. We propose a methodological framework for dealing with security and privacy requirements based on i*, an agent-oriented requirements modeling language. The framework supports a set of analysis techniques. In particular, attacker analysis helps identify potential system abusers and their malicious intents. Dependency vulnerability analysis helps detect vulnerabilities in terms of organizational relationships among stakeholders. Countermeasure analysis supports the dynamic decision-making process of defensive system players in addressing vulnerabilities and threats. Finally, access control analysis bridges the gap between security requirement models and security implementation models. The framework is illustrated with an example involving security and privacy concerns in the design of agent-based health information systems. In addition, we discuss model evaluation techniques, including qualitative goal model analysis and property verification techniques based on model checking.
18506816
Manifold Parameterization
Manifold parameterization considers the problem of parameterizing a given triangular mesh onto another mesh surface, which could be particularly plane or sphere surfaces. In this paper we propose a unified framework for manifold parameterization between arbitrary meshes with identical genus. Our approach does this task by directly mapping the connectivity of the source mesh onto the target mesh surface without any intermediate domain and partition of the meshes. The connectivity graph of source mesh is used to approximate the geometry of target mesh using least squares meshes. A subset of user specified vertices are constrained to have the geometry information of the target mesh. The geometry of the mesh vertices is reconstructed while approximating the known geometry of the subset by positioning each vertex approximately at the center of its immediate neighbors. This leads to a sparse linear system which can be effectively solved. Our approach is simple and fast with less user interactions. Many experimental results and applications are presented to show the applicability and flexibility of the approach.
17453773
Automatic 3D to 2D registration for the photorealistic rendering of urban scenes
This paper presents a novel and efficient algorithm for the 3D range to 2D image registration problem in urban scene settings. Our input is a set of unregistered 3D range scans and a set of unregistered and uncalibrated 2D images of the scene. The 3D range scans and 2D images capture real scenes in extremely high detail. A new automated algorithm calibrates each 2D image and computes an optimized transformation between the 2D images and 3D range scans. This transformation is based on a match of 3D with 2D features that maximizes an overlap criterion. Our algorithm attacks the hard 3D range to 2D image registration problem in a systematic, efficient, and automatic way. Images captured by a high-resolution 2D camera, that moves and adjusts freely, are mapped on a centimeter-accurate 3D model of the scene providing photorealistic renderings of high quality. We present results from experiments in three different urban settings.
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.
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.