14786371
Join operations in temporal databases
Abstract.Joins are arguably the most important relational operators. Poor implementations are tantamount to computing the Cartesian product of the input relations. In a temporal database, the problem is more acute for two reasons. First, conventional techniques are designed for the evaluation of joins with equality predicates rather than the inequality predicates prevalent in valid-time queries. Second, the presence of temporally varying data dramatically increases the size of a database. These factors indicate that specialized techniques are needed to efficiently evaluate temporal joins.We address this need for efficient join evaluation in temporal databases. Our purpose is twofold. We first survey all previously proposed temporal join operators. While many temporal join operators have been defined in previous work, this work has been done largely in isolation from competing proposals, with little, if any, comparison of the various operators. We then address evaluation algorithms, comparing the applicability of various algorithms to the temporal join operators and describing a performance study involving algorithms for one important operator, the temporal equijoin. Our focus, with respect to implementation, is on non-index-based join algorithms. Such algorithms do not rely on auxiliary access paths but may exploit sort orderings to achieve efficiency.
26280940
Database Publication Practices
There has been a growing interest in improving the publication processes for database research papers. This panel reports on recent changes in those processes and presents an initial cut at historical data for the VLDB Journal and ACM Transactions on Database Systems.
7281221
Adaptable query optimization and evaluation in temporal middleware
Time-referenced data are pervasive in most real-world databases. 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 optimization and evaluation mechanisms must be provided, either within the DBMS proper or as a source level translation from temporal queries to conventional SQL. This paper proposes a new approach: using a middleware component on top of a conventional DBMS. This component accepts temporal SQL statements and produces a corresponding query plan consisting of algebraic as well as regular SQL parts. The algebraic parts are processed by the middleware, while the SQL parts are processed by the DBMS. The middleware uses performance feedback from the DBMS to adapt its partitioning of subsequent queries into middleware and DBMS parts. The paper describes the architecture and implementation of the temporal middleware component, termed TANGO, which is based on the Volcano extensible query optimizer and the XXL query processing library. Experiments with the system demonstrate the utility of the middleware's internal processing capability and its cost-based mechanism for apportioning the processing between the middleware and the underlying DBMS.
32246529
An apples-to-apples comparison of two database journals
This paper defines a collection of metrics on manuscript reviewing and presents historical data for ACM Transactions on Database Systems and The VLDB Journal.
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.
616587
Querying the trajectories of on-line mobile objects
Position data is expected to play a central role in a wide range of mobile computing applications, including advertising, leisure, safety, security, tourist, and traffic applications. Applications such as these are characterized by large quantities of wirelessly Internet-worked, position-aware mobile objects that receive services where the objects' position is essential. The movement of an object is captured via sampling, resulting in a trajectory consisting of a sequence of connected line segments for each moving object. This paper presents a technique for querying these trajectories. The technique uses indices for the processing of spatiotemporal range queries on trajectories. If object movement is constrained by the presence of infrastructure, e.g., lakes, park areas, etc., the technique is capable of exploiting this to reduce the range query, the purpose being to obtain better query performance. Specifically, an algorithm is proposed that segments the original range query based on the infrastructure contained in its range. The applicability and limitations of the proposal are assessed via empirical performance studies with varying datasets and parameter settings.
7607582
Trust enhanced ubiquitous payment without too much privacy loss
Computational models of trust have been proposed for use in ubicomp environments for deciding whether to allow customers to pay with an e-purse or not. In order to build trust in a customer, a means to link transactions using the same e-purse is required. Roughly, trust is a result of knowledge. As the number of transactions increases, the resulting increase in knowledge about the user of the e-purse threatens privacy due to global profiling. We present a scheme (and its prototype) that mitigates this loss of privacy without forbidding the use of trust for smoothing payment by giving the opportunity to the user to divide trust (i.e. transactions) according to context (e.g. location, user's current activity or subset of shops).
14146996
Cryptographic access control in a distributed file system
Traditional access control mechanisms rely on a reference monitor to mediate access to protected resources. Reference monitors are inherently centralized and existing attempts to distribute the functionality of the reference monitor suffer from problems of scalability.Cryptographic access control is a new distributed access control paradigm designed for a global federation of information systems. It defines an implicit access control mechanism, which relies exclusively on cryptography to provide confidentiality and integrity of data managed by the system. It is particularly designed to operate in untrusted environments where the lack of global knowledge and control are defining characteristics.The proposed mechanism has been implemented in a distributed file system, which is presented in this paper along with a preliminary evaluation of the proposed mechanism.
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.
15628651
Experience in Discovering , Modeling , and Reenacting Open Source Software Development Processes
Process discovery has been shown to be a challenging problem offering limited results. This paper describes a new approach to process discovery that examines the Internet information spaces of open source software development projects. In particular, we examine challenges, strengths, weaknesses and findings when seeking to discover, model, and reenact processes associated with large, global OSSD projects like NetBeans.org. The longer-term goal of this approach is to determine the requirements and design of more fully integrated process discovery and modeling mechanisms that can be applied to Web-based, open source software development projects.
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.