Distributed and Parallel Databases 

About: Distributed and Parallel Databases is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Data structure & Scalability. It has an ISSN identifier of 0926-8782. Over the lifetime, 584 publications have been published receiving 16721 citations.

An overview of workflow management: from process modeling to workflow automation infrastructure

Abstract: Today's business enterprises must deal with global competition, reduce the cost of doing business, and rapidly develop new services and products. To address these requirements enterprises must constantly reconsider and optimize the way they do business and change their information systems and applications to support evolving business processes. Workflow technology facilitates these by providing methodologies and software to support (i) business process modeling to capture business processes as workflow specifications, (ii) business process reengineering to optimize specified processes, and (iii) workflow automation to generate workflow implementations from workflow specifications. This paper provides a high-level overview of the current workflow management methodologies and software products. In addition, we discuss the infrastructure technologies that can address the limitations of current commercial workflow technology and extend the scope and mission of workflow management systems to support increased workflow automation in complex real-world environments involving heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed information systems. In particular, we discuss how distributed object management and customized transaction management can support further advances in the commercial state of the art in this area.

OBSERVER: An Approach for Query Processing in Global Information Systems Based on Interoperation Across Pre-Existing Ontologies

Abstract: There has been an explosion in the types, availability and volume of data accessible in an information system, thanks to the World Wide Web (the Web) and related inter-networking technologies. In this environment, there is a critical need to replace or complement earlier database integration approaches and current browsing and keyword-based techniques with concept-based approaches. Ontologies are increasingly becoming accepted as an important part of any concept or semantics based solution, and there is increasing realization that any viable solution will need to support multiple ontologies that may be independently developed and managed. In particular, we consider the use of concepts from pre-existing real world domain ontologies for describing the content of the underlying data repositories. The most challenging issue in this approach is that of vocabulary sharing, which involves dealing with the use of different terms or concepts to describe similar information. In this paper, we describe the architecture, design and implementation of the OBSERVER system. Brokering across the domain ontologies is enabled by representing and utilizing interontology relationships such as (but not limited to) synonyms, hyponyms and hypernyms across terms in different ontologies. User queries are rewritten by using these relationships to obtain translations across ontologies. Well established metrics like precision and recall based on the extensions underlying the concepts are used to estimate the loss of information, if any.

Real-time databases

Abstract: Data in real-time databases has to be logically consistent as well as temporally consistent. The latter arises from the need to preserve the temporal validity of data items that reflect the state of the environment that is being controlled by the system. Some of the timing constraints on the transactions that process real-time data come from this need. These constraints, in turn, necessitate time-cognizant transaction processing so that transactions can be processed to meet their deadlines.

What's in a Service?

Abstract: A proper understanding of the general nature, potential and obligations of electronic services may be achieved by examining existing commercial services in detail. The everyday services that surround us, and the ways in which we engage with them, are the result of social and economic interaction that has taken place over a long period of time. If we attempt to provide electronic services, and do not take this history into account, then we will fail. Any attempt to provide automated electronic services that ignores this history will deny consumers the opportunity to negotiate and refine, over a large range of issues, the specific details of the actual service to be provided. To succeed, we require a rich and accurate means of representing services. An essential ingredient of service representation is capturing the non-functional properties of services. These include the methods of charging and payment, the channels by which the service is requested and provided, constraints on temporal and spatial availability, service quality, security, trust and the rights attached to a service. Not only are comprehensive descriptions essential for useful service discovery, they are also integral to service management, enabling service negotiation, composition, and substitution. This paper builds on an understanding of services and their interactions, to outline the non-functional properties of services and their uses.

An Overview of Standards and Related Technology in Web Services

Abstract: The Internet is revolutionizing business by providing an affordable and efficient way to link companies with their partners as well as customers. Nevertheless, there are problems that degrade the profitability of the Internet: closed markets that cannot use each other's servicess incompatible applications and frameworks that cannot interoperate or built upon each others difficulties in exchanging business data. Web Services is a new paradigm for e-business that is expected to change the way business applications are developed and interoperate. A Web Service is a self-describing, self-contained, modular application accessible over the web. It exposes an XML interface, it is registered and can be located through a Web Service registry. Finally, it communicates with other services using XML messages over standard Web protocols. This paper presents the Web Service model and gives an overview of existing standards. It then sketches the Web Service life-cycle, discusses related technical challenges and how they are addressed by current standards, commercial products and research efforts. Finally it gives some concluding remarks regarding the state of the art of Web Services.