Australian Computer Society: ACS Digital Library
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Efficient Mobile Client Caching Supporting Transaction Semantics
Get PDFIn mobile client-server database systems, caching of frequently accessed data is an important technique that will reduce the contention on the narrow bandwidth wireless channel. As the server in mobile environments may not have any information about the state of its clients' cache(stateless server), using broadcasting approach to transmit the updated data lists to numerous concurrent mobile clients is an attractive approach. In this paper, a caching policy is proposed to maintain cache consistency for mobile computers. The proposed protocol adopts asynchronous(non-periodic) broadcasting as the cache invalidation scheme, and supports transaction semantics in mobile environments. With the asynchronous broadcasting approach, the proposed protocol can improve the throughput by reducing the abortion of transactions with low communication costs. We study the performance of the protocol by means of simulation experiments
Adding Conflict Resolution Features to a Query Language for Database Federations
Get PDFA main problem of data integration is the treatment of conflicts caused by different modeling of realworld entities, different data models or simply by different representations of one and the same object. During the integration phase these conflicts have to be identified and resolved as part of the mapping between local and global schemata. Therefore, conflict resolution affects the definition of the integrated view as well as query transformation and evaluation, in this paper we present a SQL extension for defining and querying database federations. This language addresses in particular the resolution of integration conflicts by providing mechanisms for mapping attributes, restructuring relations as well as extended integration operations. Finally, the application of these resolution strategies is briefly explained by presenting a simple conflict resolution method
Arguing for PhD Coursework
Get PDFThe lone-scholar reputation of the traditional UK style PhD program is the result or a misunderstanding by some course designers. Getting a PhD is as much about making friends, forming a collegiate group, as it is about writing a book. The loneliness should be about being an independent thinker, not to being physically lonely. An increasing number of researchers are now reasserting Aristotle's calls for informed public argument to advance inquiry. Research is an argumentative process, requiring claims and a universal audience of independent thinkers to constructively question those claims. This paper argues for the establishment of semi-structured programs for PhD students, but importantly, one that undergrirds any program with an appreciation that research is an argumentative process, trying to develop knowledgeable audiences, and thus a social activity
Incorporating Database Design in Warnier Method
Get PDFThe Warnier method, a highly prescriptive program design approach for file-oriented solutions, has been criticized for its lack of a database design component. This paper addresses this weakness by incorporating a logical database design step in Warnier method. Specifically, the paper presents rules for transforming the information in a Warnier diagram into a set of relations. With this extension the Wamier method complements the entity-relationship approach for data analysis and logical database design
Adapting the Locales Framework for Heuristic Evaluation of Groupware
Get PDFHeuristic evaluation is a rapid, cheap and effective way for identifying usability problems in single user systems. However, current heuristics do not provide guidance for discovering problems specific to groupware usability. In this paper, we take the Locales Framework and restate it as heuristics appropriate for evaluating groupware. These are: 1) Provide locales; 2) Provide awareness within locales; 3) Allow individual views; 4) Allow people to manage and stay aware of their evolving interactions; and 5) Provide a way to organize and relate locales to one another. To see if these new heuristics are useful in practice, we used them to inspect the interface of Teamwave Workplace, a commercial groupware product. We were successful in identifying the strengths of Teamwave as well as both major and minor interface problems
Issues of Page Representation and Organisation in Web Browser's Revisitation Tools
Get PDFMany commercial and research WWW browsers include a variety of graphical revisitation tools that let users return to previously seen pages. Examples include history lists, bookmarks and site maps. In this paper, we examine two fundamental design and usability issues that all graphical tools for revisitation must address. First, how can individual pages be represented to best support page identification? We discuss the problems and prospects of various page representations: the pages themselves, image thumbnails, text labels, and abstract page properties. Second, what display organisation schemes can be used to enhance the visualisation of large sets of previously visited pages? We compare temporal organisations, hub-and spoke dynamic trees, spatial layouts and site maps
Transitioning Existing Content: inferring organisation-specific documents
Get PDFA definition for a document type within an organization represents an organizational norm about the way the organizational actors represent products and supporting evidence of organizational processes. Generating a good organization-specific document structure is, therefore, important since it can capture a shared understanding among the organizational actors about how certain business processes should be performed. Current tools that generate document type definitions focus on the underlying technology, emphasizing tags created in a single instance document. The tools, thus, fall short of capturing the shared understanding between organizational actors about how a given document type should be represented. We propose a method for inferring organization-specific document structures using multiple instance documents as inputs. The method consists of heuristics that combine individual document definitions, which may have been compiled using standard algorithms. We propose a number of heuristics utilizing artificial intelligence and natural language processing techniques. As the research progresses, the heuristics will be tested on a suite of test cases representing multiple instance documents for different document types. The complete methodology will be implemented as a research prototyp
Evolution of Web-Based Applications Using Domain-Specific Markup Languages
Get PDFThe lifecycle of Web-based applications is characterized by frequent changes to content, user interface, and functionality. Updating content, improving the services provided to users, drives further development of a Web-based application. The major goal for the success of a Web-based application becomes therefore its evolution. Though, development and maintenance of Web-based applications suffers from the underlying document-based implementation model. A disciplined evolution of Web based applications requires the application of software engineering practice for systematic further development and reuse of software artifacts. In this contribution we suggest to adopt the component paradigm to development and evolution of Web-based applications. The approach is based on a dedicated component technology and component-software architecture. It allows abstracting from many technical aspects related to the Web as an application platform by introducing domain specific markup languages. These languages allow the description of services, which represent domain components in our Web-component-software approach. Domain experts with limited knowledge of technical details can therefore describe application functionality and the evolution of orthogonal aspects of the application can be de-coupled. The whole approach is based on XML to achieve the necessary standardization and economic efficiency for the use in real world projects
Ecological Interface Design for Anaesthesia Monitoring
Get PDFThe operating theatre is a noisy place with many uninformative and redundant alarms. Using data from a recent observational study, we demonstrate that anaesthetists actively respond to only 3.4% of all audible alarms. We outline a range of possible solutions to the alarm problem. Ecological Interface Design (EID) helps to outline the requirements for an information environment for anaesthetists and to indicate the possible benefits of continuous auditory signals. Our observational data are then "reworked" to give an indication of possible benefits of a continuous auditory display. Finally we indicate steps we are taking to test these ideas empiricall