PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem, wherein it is impossible for an electronic content information provider to provide commercially secure and effective method, for a configurable general-purpose electronic commercial transaction/distribution control system. SOLUTION: In this system, having at least one protected processing environment for safely controlling at least one portion of decoding of digital information, a secure content distribution method comprises a process for encapsulating digital information in one or more digital containers; a process for encrypting at least a portion of digital information; a process for associating at least partially secure control information for managing interactions with encrypted digital information and/or digital container; a process for delivering one or more digital containers to a digital information user; and a process for using a protected processing environment, for safely controlling at least a portion of the decoding of the digital information. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a423264.pdf

Systems and Methods for Secure Transaction Management and Electronic Rights Protection

Schema matching is a basic problem in many database application domains, such as data integration, E-business, data warehousing, and semantic query processing. In current implementations, schema matching is typically performed manually, which has significant limitations. On the other hand, previous research papers have proposed many techniques to achieve a partial automation of the match operation for specific application domains. We present a taxonomy that covers many of these existing approaches, and we describe the approaches in some detail. In particular, we distinguish between schema-level and instance-level, element-level and structure-level, and language-based and constraint-based matchers. Based on our classification we review some previous match implementations thereby indicating which part of the solution space they cover. We intend our taxonomy and review of past work to be useful when comparing different approaches to schema matching, when developing a new match algorithm, and when implementing a schema matching component.

/pdf/a-survey-of-approaches-to-automatic-schema-matching-4n2e5qtrpt.pdf

A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching

Data integration is the problem of combining data residing at different sources, and providing the user with a unified view of these data. The problem of designing data integration systems is important in current real world applications, and is characterized by a number of issues that are interesting from a theoretical point of view. This document presents on overview of the material to be presented in a tutorial on data integration. The tutorial is focused on some of the theoretical issues that are relevant for data integration. Special attention will be devoted to the following aspects: modeling a data integration application, processing queries in data integration, dealing with inconsistent data sources, and reasoning on queries.

/pdf/data-integration-a-theoretical-perspective-58aesjvhuk.pdf

Data integration: a theoretical perspective

Ontologies tend to be found everywhere. They are viewed as the silver bullet for many applications, such as database integration, peer-to-peer systems, e-commerce, semantic web services, or social networks. However, in open or evolving systems, such as the semantic web, different parties would, in general, adopt different ontologies. Thus, merely using ontologies, like using XML, does not reduce heterogeneity: it just raises heterogeneity problems to a higher level. Euzenat and Shvaikos book is devoted to ontology matching as a solution to the semantic heterogeneity problem faced by computer systems. Ontology matching aims at finding correspondences between semantically related entities of different ontologies. These correspondences may stand for equivalence as well as other relations, such as consequence, subsumption, or disjointness, between ontology entities. Many different matching solutions have been proposed so far from various viewpoints, e.g., databases, information systems, and artificial intelligence. The second edition of Ontology Matching has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the most recent advances in this quickly developing area, which resulted in more than 150 pages of new content. In particular, the book includes a new chapter dedicated to the methodology for performing ontology matching. It also covers emerging topics, such as data interlinking, ontology partitioning and pruning, context-based matching, matcher tuning, alignment debugging, and user involvement in matching, to mention a few. More than 100 state-of-the-art matching systems and frameworks were reviewed. With Ontology Matching, researchers and practitioners will find a reference book that presents currently available work in a uniform framework. In particular, the work and the techniques presented in this book can be equally applied to database schema matching, catalog integration, XML schema matching and other related problems. The objectives of the book include presenting (i) the state of the art and (ii) the latest research results in ontology matching by providing a systematic and detailed account of matching techniques and matching systems from theoretical, practical and application perspectives.

Ontology Matching

Distributed computer architectures labeled "peer-to-peer" are designed for the sharing of computer resources (content, storage, CPU cycles) by direct exchange, rather than requiring the intermediation or support of a centralized server or authority. Peer-to-peer architectures are characterized by their ability to adapt to failures and accommodate transient populations of nodes while maintaining acceptable connectivity and performance.Content distribution is an important peer-to-peer application on the Internet that has received considerable research attention. Content distribution applications typically allow personal computers to function in a coordinated manner as a distributed storage medium by contributing, searching, and obtaining digital content.In this survey, we propose a framework for analyzing peer-to-peer content distribution technologies. Our approach focuses on nonfunctional characteristics such as security, scalability, performance, fairness, and resource management potential, and examines the way in which these characteristics are reflected in---and affected by---the architectural design decisions adopted by current peer-to-peer systems.We study current peer-to-peer systems and infrastructure technologies in terms of their distributed object location and routing mechanisms, their approach to content replication, caching and migration, their support for encryption, access control, authentication and identity, anonymity, deniability, accountability and reputation, and their use of resource trading and management schemes.

/pdf/a-survey-of-peer-to-peer-content-distribution-technologies-j5f2edwj5n.pdf

A survey of peer-to-peer content distribution technologies

This paper describes security issues for data warehousing and data mining. It first provides an overview of data warehousing and security issues for data warehouses. Then a discussion of data mining , security implications of data mining, as well as data mining as a tool to handle security problems are given.

Database Security

Providing an integrated access to multiple heterogeneous sources is a challenging issue in global information systems for cooperation and interoperability. In this context, two fundamental problems arise. First, how to determine if the sources contain semantically related information, that is, information related to the same or similar real-world concept(s). Second, how to handle semantic heterogeneity to support integration and uniform query interfaces. Complicating factors with respect to conventional view integration techniques are related to the fact that the sources to be integrated already exist and that semantic heterogeneity occurs on the large-scale, involving terminology, structure, and context of the involved sources, with respect to geographical, organizational, and functional aspects related to information use. Moreover, to meet the requirements of global, Internet-based information systems, it is important that tools developed for supporting these activities are semi-automatic and scalable as much as possible.The goal of this paper is to describe the MOMIS [4, 5] (Mediator envirOnment for Multiple Information Sources) approach to the integration and query of multiple, heterogeneous information sources, containing structured and semistructured data. MOMIS has been conceived as a joint collaboration between University of Milano and Modena in the framework of the INTERDATA national research project, aiming at providing methods and tools for data management in Internet-based information systems. Like other integration projects [1, 10, 14], MOMIS follows a “semantic approach” to information integration based on the conceptual schema, or metadata, of the information sources, and on the following architectural elements: i) a common object-oriented data model, defined according to the ODLI3 language, to describe source schemas for integration purposes. The data model and ODLI3 have been defined in MOMIS as subset of the ODMG-93 ones, following the proposal for a standard mediator language developed by the I3/POB working group [7]. In addition, ODLI3 introduces new constructors to support the semantic integration process [4, 5]; ii) one or more wrappers, to translate schema descriptions into the common ODLI3 representation; iii) a mediator and a query-processing component, based on two pre-existing tools, namely ARTEMIS [8] and ODB-Tools [3] (available on Internet at http://sparc20.dsi.unimo.it/), to provide an I3 architecture for integration and query optimization. In this paper, we focus on capturing and reasoning about semantic aspects of schema descriptions of heterogeneous information sources for supporting integration and query optimization. Both semistructured and structured data sources are taken into account [5]. A Common Thesaurus is constructed, which has the role of a shared ontology for the information sources. The Common Thesaurus is built by analyzing ODLI3 descriptions of the sources, by exploiting the Description Logics OLCD (Object Language with Complements allowing Descriptive cycles) [2, 6], derived from KL-ONE family [17]. The knowledge in the Common Thesaurus is then exploited for the identification of semantically related information in ODLI3 descriptions of different sources and for their integration at the global level. Mapping rules and integrity constraints are defined at the global level to express the relationships holding between the integrated description and the sources descriptions. ODB-Tools, supporting OLCD and description logic inference techniques, allows the analysis of sources descriptions for generating a consistent Common Thesaurus and provides support for semantic optimization of queries at the global level, based on defined mapping rules and integrity constraints.

Semantic integration of semistructured and structured data sources

The problem of defining global views of heterogeneous data sources to support querying and cooperation activities is becoming more and more important due to the availability of multiple data sources within complex organizations and in global information systems. Global views are defined to provide a unified representation of the information in the different sources by analyzing conceptual schemas associated with them and resolving possible semantic heterogeneity. We propose an affinity based unification method for global view construction. In the method: (1) the concept of affinity is introduced to assess the level of semantic relationship between elements in different schemas by taking into account semantic heterogeneity; (2) schema elements are classified by affinity levels using clustering procedures so that their different representations can be analyzed for unification; (3) global views are constructed starting from selected clusters by unifying representations of their elements. Experiences of applying the proposed unification method and the associated tool environment ARTEMIS on databases of the Italian Public Administration information systems are described.

Global viewing of heterogeneous data sources

Developing intelligent tools for the integration of information extracted from multiple heterogeneous sources is a challenging issue to effectively exploit the numerous sources available on-line in global information systems. In this paper, we propose intelligent, tool-supported techniques to information extraction and integration from both structured and semistructured data sources. An object-oriented language, with an underlying Description Logic, called ODLI3, derived from the standard ODMG is introduced for information extraction. ODLI3 descriptions of the source schemas are exploited first to set a Common Thesaurus for the sources. Information integration is then performed in a semiautomatic way by exploiting the knowledge in the Common Thesaurus and ODLI3 descriptions of source schemas with a combination of clustering techniques and Description Logics. This integration process gives rise to a virtual integrated view of the underlying sources for which mapping rules and integrity constraints are specified to handle heterogeneity. Integration techniques described in the paper are provided in the framework of the MOMIS system based on a conventional wrapper/mediator architecture.

Semantic integration of heterogeneous information sources

Author-X is a Java-based system that addresses the security issues of access control and policy design for XML document administration. Author-X supports the specification of policies at varying granularity levels and the specification of user credentials as a way to enforce access control. Access control is available according to both push and pull document distribution policies, and document updates are distributed through a combination of hash functions and digital signature techniques. The Author-X approach to distributed updates allows a user to verify a document's integrity without contacting the document server.

Silvana Castano

Papers

Database Security

Semantic integration of semistructured and structured data sources

Global viewing of heterogeneous data sources

Semantic integration of heterogeneous information sources

Securing XML documents with Author-X