Showing papers in "ACM Computing Surveys in 2010"

Privacy-preserving data publishing: A survey of recent developments

Abstract: The collection of digital information by governments, corporations, and individuals has created tremendous opportunities for knowledge- and information-based decision making. Driven by mutual benefits, or by regulations that require certain data to be published, there is a demand for the exchange and publication of data among various parties. Data in its original form, however, typically contains sensitive information about individuals, and publishing such data will violate individual privacy. The current practice in data publishing relies mainly on policies and guidelines as to what types of data can be published and on agreements on the use of published data. This approach alone may lead to excessive data distortion or insufficient protection. Privacy-preserving data publishing (PPDP) provides methods and tools for publishing useful information while preserving data privacy. Recently, PPDP has received considerable attention in research communities, and many approaches have been proposed for different data publishing scenarios. In this survey, we will systematically summarize and evaluate different approaches to PPDP, study the challenges in practical data publishing, clarify the differences and requirements that distinguish PPDP from other related problems, and propose future research directions.

Protein-to-protein interactions: Technologies, databases, and algorithms

Abstract: Studying proteins and their structures has an important role for understanding protein functionalities. Recently, due to important results obtained with proteomics, a great interest has been given to interactomics, that is, the study of protein-to-protein interactions, called PPI, or more generally, interactions among macromolecules, particularly within cells. Interactomics means studying, modeling, storing, and retrieving protein-to-protein interactions as well as algorithms for manipulating, simulating, and predicting interactions. PPI data can be obtained from biological experiments studying interactions. Modeling and storing PPIs can be realized by using graph theory and graph data management, thus graph databases can be queried for further experiments. PPI graphs can be used as input for data-mining algorithms, where raw data are binary interactions forming interaction graphs, and analysis algorithms retrieve biological interactions among proteins (i.e., PPI biological meanings). For instance, predicting the interactions between two or more proteins can be obtained by mining interaction networks stored in databases. In this article we survey modeling, storing, analyzing, and manipulating PPI data. After describing the main PPI models, mostly based on graphs, the article reviews PPI data representation and storage, as well as PPI databases. Algorithms and software tools for analyzing and managing PPI networks are discussed in depth. The article concludes by discussing the main challenges and research directions in PPI networks.

A survey of online failure prediction methods

Abstract: With the ever-growing complexity and dynamicity of computer systems, proactive fault management is an effective approach to enhancing availability. Online failure prediction is the key to such techniques. In contrast to classical reliability methods, online failure prediction is based on runtime monitoring and a variety of models and methods that use the current state of a system and, frequently, the past experience as well. This survey describes these methods. To capture the wide spectrum of approaches concerning this area, a taxonomy has been developed, whose different approaches are explained and major concepts are described in detail.

Business process modeling languages: Sorting through the alphabet soup

Abstract: Requirements capture is arguably the most important step in software engineering, and yet the most difficult and the least formalized one [Phalp and Shepperd 2000] Enterprises build information systems to support their business processes Software engineering research has typically focused on the development process, starting with user requirements—if that—with business modeling often confused with software system modeling [Isoda 2001] Researchers and practitioners in management information systems have long recognized that understanding the business processes that an information system must support is key to eliciting the needs of its users (see eg, Eriksson and Penker 2000]), but lacked the tools to model such business processes or to relate such models to software requirements Researchers and practitioners in business administration have long been interested in modeling the processes of organizations for the purposes of understanding, analyzing, and improving such processes [Hammer and Champy 1993], but their models were often too coarse to be of use to software engineers The advent of ecommerce and workflow management systems, among other things, has led to a convergence of interests and tools, within the broad IT community, for modeling and enabling business processes In this article we present an overview of business process modeling languages We first propose a categorization of the various languages and then describe representative languages from each family

A taxonomy of sequential pattern mining algorithms

Abstract: Owing to important applications such as mining web page traversal sequences, many algorithms have been introduced in the area of sequential pattern mining over the last decade, most of which have also been modified to support concise representations like closed, maximal, incremental or hierarchical sequences. This article presents a taxonomy of sequential pattern-mining techniques in the literature with web usage mining as an application. This article investigates these algorithms by introducing a taxonomy for classifying sequential pattern-mining algorithms based on important key features supported by the techniques. This classification aims at enhancing understanding of sequential pattern-mining problems, current status of provided solutions, and direction of research in this area. This article also attempts to provide a comparative performance analysis of many of the key techniques and discusses theoretical aspects of the categories in the taxonomy.

Location-dependent query processing: Where we are and where we are heading

Abstract: The continuous development of wireless networks and mobile devices has motivated an intense research in mobile data services. Some of these services provide the user with context-aware information. Specifically, location-based services and location-dependent queries have attracted a lot of interest.In this article, the existing literature in the field of location-dependent query processing is reviewed. The technological context (mobile computing) and support middleware (such as moving object databases and data stream technology) are described, location-based services and location-dependent queries are defined and classified, and different query processing approaches are reviewed and compared.

A survey of techniques for achieving metadata interoperability

Abstract: Achieving uniform access to media objects in heterogeneous media repositories requires dealing with the problem of metadata interoperability. Currently there exist many interoperability techniques, with quite varying potential for resolving the structural and semantic heterogeneities that can exist between metadata stored in distinct repositories. Besides giving a general overview of the field of metadata interoperability, we provide a categorization of existing interoperability techniques, describe their characteristics, and compare their quality by analyzing their potential for resolving various types of heterogeneities. Based on our work, domain experts and technicians get an overview and categorization of existing metadata interoperability techniques and can select the appropriate approach for their specific metadata integration scenarios. Our analysis explicitly shows that metadata mapping is the appropriate technique in integration scenarios where an agreement on a certain metadata standard is not possible.

Smart meeting systems: A survey of state-of-the-art and open issues

Abstract: Smart meeting systems, which record meetings and analyze the generated audio--visual content for future viewing, have been a topic of great interest in recent years. A successful smart meeting system relies on various technologies, ranging from devices and algorithms to architecture. This article presents a condensed survey of existing research and technologies, including smart meeting system architecture, meeting capture, meeting recognition, semantic processing, and evaluation methods. It aims at providing an overview of underlying technologies to help understand the key design issues of such systems. This article also describes various open issues as possible ways to extend the capabilities of current smart meeting systems.

Compiling for reconfigurable computing: A survey

Abstract: Reconfigurable computing platforms offer the promise of substantially accelerating computations through the concurrent nature of hardware structures and the ability of these architectures for hardware customization. Effectively programming such reconfigurable architectures, however, is an extremely cumbersome and error-prone process, as it requires programmers to assume the role of hardware designers while mastering hardware description languages, thus limiting the acceptance and dissemination of this promising technology. To address this problem, researchers have developed numerous approaches at both the programming languages as well as the compilation levels, to offer high-level programming abstractions that would allow programmers to easily map applications to reconfigurable architectures. This survey describes the major research efforts on compilation techniques for reconfigurable computing architectures. The survey focuses on efforts that map computations written in imperative programming languages to reconfigurable architectures and identifies the main compilation and synthesis techniques used in this mapping.

Vlogging: A survey of videoblogging technology on the web

Abstract: In recent years, blogging has become an exploding passion among Internet communities. By combining the grassroots blogging with the richness of expression available in video, videoblogs (vlogs for short) will be a powerful new media adjunct to our existing televised news sources. Vlogs have gained much attention worldwide, especially with Google's acquisition of YouTube. This article presents a comprehensive survey of videoblogging (vlogging for short) as a new technological trend. We first summarize the technological challenges for vlogging as four key issues that need to be answered. Along with their respective possibilities, we give a review of the currently available techniques and tools supporting vlogging, and envision emerging technological directions for future vlogging. Several multimedia technologies are introduced to empower vlogging technology with better scalability, interactivity, searchability, and accessability, and to potentially reduce the legal, economic, and moral risks of vlogging applications. We also make an in-depth investigation of various vlog mining topics from a research perspective and present several incentive applications such as user-targeted video advertising and collective intelligence gaming. We believe that vlogging and its applications will bring new opportunities and drives to the research in related fields.

A survey of confidential data storage and deletion methods

Abstract: As the amount of digital data grows, so does the theft of sensitive data through the loss or misplacement of laptops, thumb drives, external hard drives, and other electronic storage media. Sensitive data may also be leaked accidentally due to improper disposal or resale of storage media. To protect the secrecy of the entire data lifetime, we must have confidential ways to store and delete data. This survey summarizes and compares existing methods of providing confidential storage and deletion of data in personal computing environments.

A survey and analysis of electronic business document standards

Abstract: No document standard is sufficient for all purposes because the requirements significantly differ among businesses, industries, and geopolitical regions. On the other hand, the ultimate aim of business document interoperability is to exchange business data among partners without any prior agreements related to the document syntax and semantics. Therefore, an important characteristic of a document standard is its ability to adapt to different contexts, its extensibility, and its customization. The UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is an important landmark in this direction.In this article, we present a survey and an analysis of some of the prominent UN/CEFACT CCTS-based electronic document standards. We describe their document design principles and discuss how they handle customization and extensibility. We address their industry relevance and the recent efforts for their harmonization and convergence. We conclude by mentioning some emerging efforts for the semantic interoperability of different document standards.

A survey on the design, applications, and enhancements of application-layer overlay networks

Abstract: This article presents a survey of recent advancements in application-layer overlay networks. Some of the most important applications that have been proposed for overlays include multicast, QoS support, denial-of-service (DoS) defense, and resilient routing. We look at some of the important approaches proposed for these applications and compare the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches. We also examine some of the enhancements that have been proposed in overlay topology design, enhanced routing performance, failure resistance, and the issues related to coexistence of overlay and native layers in the Internet. We conclude the article with a comment on the purist vs pluralist argument of overlay networks that has received much debate recently. Finally, we propose a new deployment model for service overlays that seeks to interpose between these two approaches.

Electromigration for microarchitects

Abstract: Degradation of devices has become a major issue for processor design due to continuous device shrinkage and current density increase Transistors and wires suffer high stress, and failures may appear in the field In particular, wires degrade mainly due to electromigration when driving current Techniques to mitigate electromigration to some extent have been proposed from the circuit point of view, but much effort is still required from the microarchitecture side to enable wire scaling in future technologiesThis survey brings to the microarchitecture community a comprehensive study of the causes and implications of electromigration in digital circuits and describes the challenges that must be faced to mitigate electromigration by means of microarchitectural solutions