Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

The Effectiveness Of Expert Support Technology For Decision Making: Individuals Versus Small Groups, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Jiye Mao, Izak Benbasat

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Expert support systems (ESSs) are increasingly used in organizations to support individuals and groups in decision making. Although ESSs have been shown to enhance the decision-making capabilities of individuals, their benefits in supporting group decision making are less clear. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical research has evaluated the effectiveness of the technology in the group setting or compared its usefulness for supporting individual versus group decision making. The results of this research show that ESSs benefit decision making of both individuals and groups and novices are able to gain more from ESSs than experts. The findings also …

Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms: Classifications, Analyses, And New Innovations, David A. Van Veldhuizen

Theses and Dissertations

This research organizes, presents, and analyzes contemporary Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) research and associated Multiobjective Optimization Problems (MOPs). Using a consistent MOEA terminology and notation, each cited MOEAs' key factors are presented in tabular form for ease of MOEA identification and selection. A detailed quantitative and qualitative MOEA analysis is presented, providing a basis for conclusions about various MOEA-related issues. The traditional notion of building blocks is extended to the MOP domain in an effort to develop more effective and efficient MOEAs. Additionally, the MOEA community's limited test suites contain various functions whose origins and rationale for use are often …

Methodology For Integrating The Scenario Databases Of Simulation Systems, Emilia M. Colonese

Theses and Dissertations

The use of many different simulation systems by the United States Department of Defense has resulted in many different scenario data representations contained in heterogeneous databases. These heterogeneous databases all represent the same data concept, but have different semantics due to intrinsic variations among the data models. In this research, I describe a unified scenario database to allow interoperability and reuse of the scenario data components while avoiding the problems of data redundancy. Using the object oriented approach, the data and schema of the scenario databases, represented in an object oriented model, are integrated into a global database also represented …

Porting The Sisal Functional Language To Distributed-Memory Multiprocessors, Jui-Yuan Ku

Dissertations

Parallel computing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in recent years. The sizes of application problems continuously increase for solving real-world problems. Distributed-memory multiprocessors have been regarded as a viable architecture of scalable and economical design for building large scale parallel machines. While these parallel machines can provide computational capabilities, programming such large-scale machines is often very difficult due to many practical issues including parallelization, data distribution, workload distribution, and remote memory latency.

This thesis proposes to solve the programmability and performance issues of distributed-memory machines using the Sisal functional language. The programs written in Sisal will be automatically parallelized, scheduled and …

Automatic Document Classification And Extraction System (Adoces), Xuhong Li

Dissertations

Document processing is a critical element of office automation. Document image processing begins from the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) phase with complex processing for document classification and extraction. Document classification is a process that classifies an incoming document into a particular predefined document type. Document extraction is a process that extracts information pertinent to the users from the content of a document and assigns the information as the values of the “logical structure” of the document type. Therefore, after document classification and extraction, a paper document will be represented in its digital form instead of its original image file format, …

A New-Generation Class Of Parallel Architectures And Their Performance Evaluation, Qian Wang

Dissertations

The development of computers with hundreds or thousands of processors and capability for very high performance is absolutely essential for many computation problems, such as weather modeling, fluid dynamics, and aerodynamics. Several interconnection networks have been proposed for parallel computers. Nevertheless, the majority of them are plagued by rather poor topological properties that result in large memory latencies for DSM (Distributed Shared-Memory) computers. On the other hand, scalable networks with very good topological properties are often impossible to build because of their prohibitively high VLSI (e.g., wiring) complexity. Such a network is the generalized hypercube (GH). The GH supports full-connectivity …

Applying Neural Networks In Case-Based Reasoning Adaptation For Cost Assessment Of Steel Buldings, Essam Amin Mlotfy Abdrabou

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

How Proteins Fold, Flex, And Bind Other Molecules, Leslie A. Kuhn, Volker Schnecke, Michael L. Raymer, Paul C. Sanschagrin

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

The Dynamics Of Cyberspace: Examining And Modelling Online Social Structure, Brian S. Butler '89

Doctoral Dissertations

It has been proposed that online social structures represent new forms of organizing which are fundamentally different from traditional social structures. However, while there is a growing body of empirical research that considers behavioral aspects of online activity, research on online social structure structural remains largely anecdotal. This work consists of three papers that combine previous studies of traditional social structures, empirical analysis of longitudinal data from a sample of Internet listservs, and computational modeling to examine the dynamics of social structure development in networked environments.

The first paper (Title: When is a Group not a Group: An Empirical Examination …

Information Modeling And Method Engineering: A Psychological Perspective, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information modeling is the cornerstone of information systems analysis and design. Information models, the products of information modeling, not only provide the abstractions required to facilitate communication between the analysts and end users, but they also provide a formal basis for developing tools and techniques used in information systems development. The process of designing, constructing, and adapting information modeling methods for information systems development is known as method engineering. Despite the pivotal role of modeling methods in successful information systems development, most modeling methods are designed based on common sense and intuition of the method designers with little or no …

Pi-Web Join In A Web Warehouse, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the enormous amount of data stored in the World Wide Web, it is increasingly important to design and develop powerful web warehousing tools. The key objective of our web warehousing project, called WHOWEDA (Warehouse of Web Data), is to design and implement a web warehouse that materializes and manages useful information from the Web. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Pi-web join in the context of WHOWEDA. Pi-web join operator is a web information manipulation operator to combine relevant web information residing in two web tables. Informally, it is the combination of web join and web project …

Data Integration By Describing Sources With Constraint Databases, Xun Cheng, Guozhu Dong, Tzekwan Lau, Jianwen Su

Kno.e.sis Publications

We develop a data integration approach for the efficient evaluation of queries over autonomous source databases. The approach is based on some novel applications and extensions of constraint database techniques. We assume the existence of a global database schema. The contents of each data source are described using a set of constraint tuples over the global schema; each such tuple indicates possible contributions from the source. The “source description catalog” (SDC) of a global relation consists of its associated constraint tuples. Such a method of description is advantageous since it is flexible to add new sources and to modify existing …

Efficient Mining Of Partial Periodic Patterns In Time Series Database, Jiawei Han, Guozhu Dong, Yiwen Yin

Kno.e.sis Publications

Partial periodicity search, i.e., search for partial periodic patterns in time-series databases, is an interesting data mining problem. Previous studies on periodicity search mainly consider finding full periodic patterns, where every point in time contributes (precisely or approximately) to the periodicity. However, partial periodicity is very common in practice since it is more likely that only some of the time episodes may exhibit periodic patterns.

We present several algorithms for efficient mining of partial periodic patterns, by exploring some interesting properties related to partial periodicity, such as the Apriori property and the max-subpattern hit set property, and by shared mining …

Extensible Multi-Agent System For Heterogeneous Database Association Rule Mining And Unification, Christopher G. Marks

Theses and Dissertations

The Probabilities, Expert System, Knowledge, and Inference (PESKI) System uses the data mining of association rules to fill incompleteness in the knowledge of an expert system. The rules are mined from transactional data sources and then incorporated using an existing link to PESKI. One method of providing a system that will easily allow new data sources to be added is using an information gathering agent-based system. This research first develops a methodology for designing and creating a multi-agent system. It then applies this methodology to design a platform independent means of data mining data sources of any format. The use …

Incorporating Scene Mosaics As Visual Indexes Into Uav Video Imagery Databases, Timothy I. Page

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of large digital video archives has strengthened the need for more efficient ways of indexing video files an accessing the information contained in them. Reconnaissance platforms, such as the Predator UAV, are contributing thousands of hours of video footage that require analysis, storage, and retrieval. A process is proposed for converting a video stream into a series of mosaic and selected still images that provide complete coverage of the original video. The video mosaic images can be utilized as visual indexes into a video database. In addition, mosaic images contain information from an entire sequence of video frames …

Prestructuring Neural Networks Via Extended Dependency Analysis With Application To Pattern Classification, George G. Lendaris, Thaddeus T. Shannon, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

We consider the problem of matching domain-specific statistical structure to neural-network (NN) architecture. In past work we have considered this problem in the function approximation context; here we consider the pattern classification context. General Systems Methodology tools for finding problem-domain structure suffer exponential scaling of computation with respect to the number of variables considered. Therefore we introduce the use of Extended Dependency Analysis (EDA), which scales only polynomially in the number of variables, for the desired analysis. Based on EDA, we demonstrate a number of NN pre-structuring techniques applicable for building neural classifiers. An example is provided in which EDA …

Resource Scheduling In A High-Performance Multimedia Server, Hwee Hwa Pang, Bobby Jose, M. S. Krishnan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Supporting continuous media data-such as video and audio-imposes stringent demands on the retrieval performance of a multimedia server. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a set of data placement and retrieval algorithms to exploit the full capacity of the disks in a multimedia server. The data placement algorithm declusters every object over all of the disks in the server-using a time-based declustering unit-with the aim of balancing the disk load. As for runtime retrieval, the quintessence of the algorithm is to give each disk advance notification of the blocks that have to be fetched in the impending time periods, …

Methodology For Application Design Using Information Dissemination And Active Database Technologies, Robert H. Hartz

Theses and Dissertations

In dynamic data environments, the large volume of transactions requires flexible control structures to effectively balance the flow of information between producers and consumers. Information dissemination-based systems, using both data push and pull delivery mechanisms, provide a possible scalable solution for data-intensive applications. In this research, a methodology is proposed to capture information dissemination design features in the form of active database rules to effectively control dynamic data applications. As part of this design methodology, information distribution properties are analyzed, data dissemination mechanisms are transformed into an active rule framework, and the desired reactive behavior is achieved through rule customization. …

Customizable And Ontology-Enhanced Medical Information Retrieval Interfaces, Gondy Leroy, K.M. Tolle, Hsinchun Chen

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This paper describes the development and testing of the Medical Concept Mapper as an aid to providing synonyms and semantically related concepts to improve searching. All terms are related to the userquery and fit into the query context. The system is unique because its five components combine humancreated and computer-generated elements. The Arizona Noun Phraser extracts phrases from natural language user queries. WordNet and the UMLS Metathesaurus provide synonyms. The Arizona Concept Space generates conceptually related terms. Semantic relationships between queries and concepts are established using the UMLS Semantic Net. Two user studies conducted to evaluate the system are described.

The Internet Instructional Aid, Dohyon Donte Kim

Theses Digitization Project

The development and use of this instructional software tool for the Internet contributes broadly to the increasing sophistication and practical nature of Internet interactive development and programming and specifically to the burgeoning of interactive instructional distance technologies made available by the unique nature of the Internet.

Internet Instructional Aid (IIA) is a software package that utilizes the WEB to teach educational courses online. The purpose of this software-package is to provide an environment in which students can have additional group and individual contact with the instructor and convenient access to prior class lectures and instructional materials. Utilizing Java, the newly …

Multivalued Mappings, Fixed-Point Theorems And Disjunctive Databases, Pascal Hitzler, Anthony K. Seda

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we discuss the semantics of disjunctive programs and databases and show how multivalued mappings and their fixed points arise naturally within this context. A number of fixed-point theorems for multivalued mappings are considered, some of which are already known and some of which are new. The notion of a normal derivative of a disjunctive program is introduced. Normal derivatives are normal logic programs which are determined by the disjunctive program. Thus, the well-known single-step operator associated with a normal derivative is single-valued, and its fixed points can be found by well-established means. It is shown how fixed …

Maintaining Transitive Closure Of Graphs In Sql, Guozhu Dong, Leonid Libkin, Jianwen Su, Limsoon Wong

Kno.e.sis Publications

It is common knowledge that relational calculus and even SQL are not expressive enough to express recursive queries such as the transitive closure. In a real database system, one can overcome this problem by storing a graph together with its transitive closure and maintaining the latter whenever updates to the former occur. This leads to the concept of an incremental evaluation system, or IES.

Much is already known about the theory of IES but very little has been translated into practice. The purpose of this paper is to fill in this gap by providing a gentle introduction to and …

Data Distribution Techniques For Fault Tolerant Colored Two Dimensional Barcode, Rana Farid Mikhail

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Infoharness: Managing Distributed, Heterogeneous Information, Kshitij Shah, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Today, important information is scattered in so many places, formats, and media, that getting the right information at the right time and place is an extremely difficult task. Developing a single software product, for example, includes the creation of documents ranging from the requirements specification and project schedules to marketing presentations, multimedia tutorials, and more. Each document may be created by a different person using a different tool, and each may be stored in a different place. InfoHarness is an information integration system, platform, and tool set that addresses these problems, managing huge amounts of heterogeneous information in a distributed …

Processes Driving The Networked Economy, Amit P. Sheth, Will Van Der Aalst, I. Budak Arpinar

Kno.e.sis Publications

The authors propose that an organic workflow-process technology will power the evolution of information system architectures. The authors outline three likely stages of architectural evolution in the context of a networked economy and discuss critical gaps in the current technology with respect to their envisioned future.

Enterprise Business Objects : Design And Implementation Of A Business Object Framework, Kai-Uwe Schafer

Theses

Software components representing business entities like customer or purchase order introduce a new way of Online Transaction Processing to business applications. Collaborating business objects allow to complete whole business processes as a single distributed transaction, instead of dividing it into queued steps, which sometimes even require user intervention. This IS due to the fact that business objects contain both business data and logic and that they incorporate multiple databases from different vendors and different geographic locations in a single transaction.

Business objects cannot be used as stand-alone components, but require a framework of services that manage persistence, concurrent transactions, and …

The Nature And Structure Of Impediments To Edi Adoption And Integration: A Survey Of Small- And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Deepak Khazanchi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is a key enabling component of business-to-business electronic commerce. As firms adopt and integrate advanced information technologies such as EDI, it is important to understand the nature of challenges faced by them. This becomes especially important given the fact that nearly 99.7% of all businesses in the US can be classified as small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As costs and risks associated with implementing new information technologies decrease, these firms will surely need to focus their attention on managing impediments associated with new technology implementation and learn from the failures or successes of their peer. Consequently, …

Benchmarking Financial Operations Using The Premier Operations Outlook Database, Margaret M. Thompson

Community & Environmental Health Theses & Dissertations

Acute-care hospitals have come under increased pressure to reduce costs while increasing the quality of providing care. Historically, increasing costs of providing care has had the greatest impact on the reduction of operating margins necessary to expand capital and for repayment of debt. Facilities can benchmark internal historical data to identify areas where costs have increased and are able to explain the factors that contribute to the increases. One of the challenges facing hospitals in their efforts to reduce operating costs is how, what, and where, do they obtain comparative data to benchmark the cost of operating medical facility to …

A Study Of Single W Production In E+E- Collisions At √S = 161-183 Gev, R. Barate, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Single W production is studied in the data recorded with the ALEPH detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies between 161 and 183 GeV. The cross section is measured to be σw = 0.41 ± 0.17(stat.) ± 0.04(syst.) pb at 183 GeV, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. Limits on non-standard WWγ couplings are deduced as -1.6 γ γ = 0) and -1.6 γ γ = 1) at 95% C.L. A search for effectively invisible decays of the W boson in W pair production is performed, leading to an upper limit on the branching ratio of 1.3% (Γinv = 27 MeV) …

Determination Of The Lep Centre-Of-Mass Energy From Zγ Events, R. Barate, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A study of events with photons and missing energy has been performed with the data sample obtained with the ALEPH detector at centre-of-mass energies from 161 to 184 GeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of about 80 pb−1. The measured distributions are in agreement with Standard Model predictions, leading to constraints on WWγ gauge coupling parameters ∆κγ and λγ. The results from the fit to the cross sections and to the energy and angular distributions of the photons are: ∆κγ = 0.05+1.15 −1.10(stat)±0.25(syst) λγ = −0.05+1.55 −1.45(stat)±0.30(syst).