λ-DB

This paper reports our experiences building the query optimizer for TI's Open OODB system. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first working object query optimizer to be based on a complete extensible optimization framework including logical algebra, execution algorithms, property enforcers, logical transformation rules, implementation rules, and selectivity and cost estimation. Our algebra incorporates a new materialize operator with its corresponding logical transformation and implementation rules that enable the optimization of path expressions. Initial experiments on queries obtained from the object query optimization literature demonstrate that our optimizer is able to derive plans that are as efficient as, and often substantially more efficient than, the plans generated by other query optimization strategies. These experiments demonstrate that our initial choices for populating each part of our optimization framework are reasonable. Our experience also shows that having a complete optimization framework is crucial for two reasons. First, it allows the optimizer to discover plans that cannot be revealed by exploring only the alternatives provided by the logical algebra and its transformations. Second, it helps and forces the database system designer to consider all parts of the framework and to maintain a good balance of choices when incorporating a new logical operator, execution algorithm, transformation rule, or implementation rule. The Open OODB query optimizer was constructed using the Volcano Optimizer Generator, demonstrating that this second-generation optimizer generator enables rapid development of efficient and effective query optimizers for non-standard data models and systems.

Professor James (“Jim”) F. Crow (Figure 1) died on January 4, 2012, of natural causes in Madison, Wisconsin, two weeks before his 96 birthday. Born in Phoenixville (Pennsylvania) on January 18, 1916, Professor Crow earned a B.A. in Chemistry and Biology from Friends University in 1937 and a Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Texas in Austin under the supervision of Professor J. T. Patterson. His dissertation was on hybridization and isolating mechanisms in the mulleri group of Drosophila. From 1941 to 1948 he taught at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) before moving to the University of Wisconsin (UW) in Madison, where he worked formally from 1948 as an assistant professor until his retirement in 1986 as a senior distinguished research professor and afterwards as a retired UW emeritus professor. Two weeks before he passed away he was at his UW office working on a new paper. At UW he was the main person responsible for the creation of the Laboratory of Genetics and for maintaining its high standards. Besides attracting to it an exceptionally competent group of geneticists that transformed the department into a center of international excellence (in the sixties it was considered the best genetics center in the world), he was during many years head and chair of the Genetics and Medical Genetics departments and acting dean of the Medical School. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, World Academy of Art and Science, Genetics Society of America, American Society for Human Genetics, Royal Society (England), Japan Academy, Genetics Society of Japan, and Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He was also an accomplished musician, having had formal education and training in violin and piano playing; he played viola at the Madison Symphony Orchestra, to which he belonged from 1949 to 1987 (president, 1984-1986). He was also a former president of the Madison Civic Association. It was when studying music that he met his lifelong wife Ann Crockett Crow (then a clarinet student), who died in 2001. He is survived by three children, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Given his expertise in several areas of genetics, especially population genetics, human genetics, and radiation biology, since 1955 he was a scientific advisor to the National Academy of Sciences and the Congress of the United States, acting in Official Committees (in many as chair) on themes such as effects, risks, and impact of ionizing radiation and chemical mutagens, nuclear and alternative energy systems, and standardization of forensic genetic procedures. He had almost uncanny didactic and teaching skills and was regularly consulted on several issues dealing with undergraduate and graduate education policies, both at national as well as international levels. He wrote three fabulous textbooks, “Genetics Notes”, “An Introduction to Theoretical Population Genetics”, and “Basic Concepts in Population, Evolutionary and Quantitative Genetics”; more recently, he published, together with Genetics and Molecular Biology, 35, 1, 200-201 (2012) Copyright © 2012, Sociedade Brasileira de Genetica. Printed in Brazil www.sbg.org.br

Despite the proliferation of Web services, the field of service research is still in its infancy, where there has been little foundational work to date. In this chapter, we present the foundational service framework that helps address some fundamental research issues on Web services [44, 74]. The presented framework offers a systematic approach that enables users to achieve an op- timal Service Execution Plan (SEP) by submitting declarative service queries. Figure 3.1 shows the overall architecture of the service query optimization framework. At the bottom, we have the service space for a given application domain that consists of the actual service providers, a.k.a., service instances. The integration layer helps resolve the discrepancy of the service schemas and provides a uniformed view of the service space. It can achieve this by ap- plying the existing data integration techniques [40], which are not the focus of this work. The QoWS manager deals with the collection of quality related information from the service instances. The quality data will be used by the query optimizer to make selection from the competing service providers. The service model captures a set of key features of Web services that lay out a foundation for service query specification, processing, and optimization. The service calculus enables users to use declarative service queries to locate Web services, which is more precise and reliable than the keyword based search. The query processor generates SEPs which can be used by the users to invoke services.

Since the very beginning of query processing in database systems, cost-based query optimization has been the essential strategy for effectively answering complex queries on large documents. XML documents can be efficiently stored and processed using native XML database management systems. Even though such systems can choose from a huge repertoire of join operators (e. g., Structural Joins and Holistic Twig Joins) and various index access operators to efficiently evaluate queries on XML documents, the development of full-fledged XML query optimizers is still in its infancy. Especially the evaluation of complex XQuery expressions using these operators is not well understood and needs further research. The extensible, rule-based, and cost-based XML query optimization framework proposed in this chapter, serves as a testbed for exploring how and whether well-known concepts from relational query optimization (e. g., join reordering) can be reused and which new techniques can make a significant contribution to speed-up query execution. Using the best practices and an appropriate cost model that will be developed using this framework, it can be turned into a robust cost-based XML query optimizer in the future.

Recently Published Dissertations on Community and Junior Colleges

Dissertation List Jonathan Erlen and Jay Toth January 2006 Ackley, Kristina Lyn. "We are Oneida yet: Discourse in the Oneida land claim." PhD diss., SUNY at Buffalo, 2005. Alessi, Joseph P. "Settling America: Indians, Euroamericans, and the establishment of the frontier towns, 1600-1830." PhD diss., St. Louis University, 2005. Atine, Christine D. "The experience of Navajo families living with the stigma of mental illness: A phenomenological study." PhD diss., University of Denver, 2005. Davis, James Joe, Jr. "The effects of coalition building on Public Law 93-531: The Navajo and Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974." PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2005. De Leon, Diana Fisher. "A study on forging a new front and building a new vision for tribal environmental health policy on the Colorado River Indian Reservation." PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2005. Denial, Catherine Jane. "A proper light before the country: The shifting politics of gender and kinship among the Dakota, Ojibwe and non-Native communities of the Upper Midwest, 1825-1845." PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2005. Evans, Lara M. "One of these things is not like the other: Works by Native performance artists James Luna, Greg Hill, and Rebecca Bemore." PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 2005. Fitzgerald, Barbara J. "Gender equity and technology use in K-5 classrooms in a Native American school." PhD diss., Walden University, 2005. Funk, Caroline L. "Evolutionary and cognitive influences on hunter-gatherer settlement location in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2005. [End Page 549] George, Maggie L. "The promise of indigenous education: A case study of Navajo bilingual-bicultural teachers." PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2005. Green, Chris. "The epidemiology of diabetes in Manitoba: An exploration through time and space." PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2005. Kipp, Billie Jo. "Crystallized versus fluid intelligence in American Indian children referred to developmental clinics: An examination of multiple measures and indicators." PhD diss., University of Montana, 2005. Krahe, Diane L. "Last refuge: The uneasy embrace of Indian lands by the national wilderness movement, 1937-1965." PhD diss., Washington State University, 2005. Labreche, Yves. "Appropriation et conservation des resources alimentaires chez les Inuit de Kangiqsujuaq-Salliuit, Québec arctique: Perspective ethnoarchéologique." PhD diss., Université de Montréal, 2005. Lambe, Jeffrey P. "We plant a tree of peace: Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp's narratives, dynamics of relationships, and principles of peace." PhD diss., Trent University, 2005. Lang, Martin Joeseph. "Conspicuous absence, quiet presence: Representations of American Indians and gaming in Minnesota's mainstream and Indian-produced newspapers." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2005. Larcombe, Linda Anne. "Native North American resistance and susceptibility to infectious diseases: An anthropological approach." PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2005. Manuelito-Kervliet, Cassandra. "Widening the circle: Mentoring and the learning process for American Indian women in tribal college administration." PhD diss., University of Oregon, 2005. McGlennen, Molly Suzanne. "It is evidence of faith to create: Spirituality and contemporary Native American women's poetics." PhD diss., University of California, 2005. Milligan, Marianne I. "Menominee prosodic structure." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2005. Pauli, Wayne E. "The Native American digital divide: A preliminary investigation of an undergraduate population in South Dakota." PhD diss., Capella University, 2005. Powell, Francis J. "Assessing the identity of black Indians in Louisiana: A quantitative and qualitative analysis." PhD diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2004. Ramos, Frances Lourdes. "The politics of ritual in Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1695-1775." PhD diss., University of Texas, 2005. Robertson, Carmen Lee. "Reel artists: National Film Board of Canada portrayals of contemporary Aboriginal and Inuit artists and their art." PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2005. [End Page 550] Stock, Karen S. E. "The Skownan First Nation model for sustainable development and Aboriginal stewardship." PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2005. Tronsen, Beverly Kay. "The rhetoric of disappearances: Racialized discourse and the Cherokee Removal." PhD diss., Washington State University, 2005. Vermilion, Mary R. "The Loyd site (11 MS 74): A prehistoric Moorehead phase nodal site." PhD diss., University of Illinois, 2005. Wilmerding, Mary Elizabeth Gesek. "The cultural sequence at the Nunik site, Chernabura Island, Alaska." PhD diss., Washington State University, 2005. February 2006 Andersen, Christian. "Courting colonialism? The juridical construction...

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Framework for query optimization in distributed statistical databases

The query optimizer is an important system component of a relational database management system (DBMS). It is the responsibility of this component to translate the user-submitted query - usually written in a non-procedural language - into an efficient query evaluation plan (QEP) which is then executed against the database. The research literature describes a wide variety of optimization strategies for different query languages and implementation environments. However, very little is known about how to design and structure the query optimization component to implement these strategies. This paper proposes a first step towards the design of a modular query optimizer . We describe its operations by transformation rules which generate different QEPs from initial query specifications. As we distinguish different aspects of the query optimization process, our hope is that the approach taken in this paper will contribute to the more general goal of a modular query optimizer as part of an extensible database management system.

Due to the ubiquity of spatial data applications and the large amounts of spatial data that these applications generate and process, there is a pressing need for scalable spatial query processing. In this paper, we present new techniques for spatial query processing and optimization in an in-memory and distributed setup to address scalability. More specifically, we introduce new techniques for handling query skew that commonly happens in practice, and minimizes communication costs accordingly. We propose a distributed query scheduler that uses a new cost model to minimize the cost of spatial query processing. The scheduler generates query execution plans that minimize the effect of query skew. The query scheduler utilizes new spatial indexing techniques based on bitmap filters to forward queries to the appropriate local nodes. Each local computation node is responsible for optimizing and selecting its best local query execution plan based on the indexes and the nature of the spatial queries in that node. All the proposed spatial query processing and optimization techniques are prototyped inside Spark, a distributed memory-based computation system. Our prototype system is termed LocationSpark. The experimental study is based on real datasets and demonstrates that LocationSpark can enhance distributed spatial query processing by up to an order of magnitude over existing in-memory and distributed spatial systems.

Data stream management systems (DSMS) processing long-running queries over large volumes of stream data must typically deliver time-critical responses. We propose the first semantic query optimization (SQO) approach that utilizes dynamic substream metadata at runtime to find a more efficient query plan than the one selected at compilation time. We identify four SQO techniques guaranteed to result in performance gains. Based on classic satisfiability theory we then design a lightweight query optimization algorithm that efficiently detects SQO opportunities at runtime. At the logical level, our algorithm instantiates multiple concurrent SQO plans, each processing different partially overlapping substreams. Our novel execution paradigm employs multi-modal operators to support the execution of these concurrent SQO logical plans in a single physical plan. This highly agile execution strategy reduces resource utilization while supporting lightweight adaptivity. Our extensive experimental study in the CAPE stream processing system using both synthetic and real data confirms that our optimization techniques significantly reduce query execution times, up to 60%, compared to the traditional approach.

Optimizing queries over XML streams has been an important and non-trivial issue with the emergence of complex XML stream applications such as monitoring sensor networks and online transaction processing. Our system, R-SOX, provides a platform for runtime query optimization based on dynamic schema knowledge embedded in the XML streams. Such information provides refined runtime schema knowledge thus dramatically enlarged the opportunity for schema-based query optimizations. In this demonstration, we focus on the following three aspects: (1) annotation of runtime schema knowledge; (2) incremental maintenance of run-time schema knowledge; (3) dynamic semantic query optimization techniques. The overall framework for runtime semantic query optimization, including several classes of dynamic optimization techniques, will be shown in this demonstration.

This paper describes an open-source software system developed to dispense antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to HIV+ patients in South Africa. There are numerous constraints to the scaling up of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in resourcepoor settings; one being the difficulty in monitoring and capturing of relevant patient data. South Africa has a severe lack of qualified medical staff, from doctors and pharmacists to nursing sisters, and it is imperative that the existing scarce resources are utilized effectively. Based on an assessment of the local context, the system is comprised of two applications which reside at geographically separate locations. The first is housed at a central supply pharmacy where ARV drugs are packaged by a pharmacist for individual patients. The second application is housed at a service point or ARV site, where patients collect their medication from a nurse. Using HCI theory, it is designed to be user friendly and easy to learn for the nurses working at this health care facility. Features such as stock control and patient history (of timeous medication collection) make it easy for the pharmacist to assess each site receiving drugs from the central store. In a resource constrained environment, it is important to assess software and maintenance costs to ensure long term sustainability of a project. By using open source software for development, additional costs of licensing are drastically reduced. The system described is developed in Java and connects to a PostgreSQL database management system. A client-server model is used to extend the outreach of trained pharmacists who can now dispense ARV drugs to a number of patients located in separate remote areas. The system focuses on patient monitoring and measurements of drug adherence through feedback between the applications. A prototype system was successfully implemented and has been in use for over a year. Currently over 2000 HIV+ patients on ART are being monitored on this system.

David J. DeLaura John Stasny David DeLaura died on April 9, 2005 at age 74. He was a giant among the Victorian scholars of his generation. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, received a B.A. and an M.A. from Boston College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, where, according to a contemporary, "He was a legend of brilliance among his fellow graduate students." David taught for ten years at the University of Texas before he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and remained there until his retirement in 1999. He was an admired and honored teacher; he served as chairman of the English Department from 1985 to 1990 and as University Ombudsman from 1993-1997. David's publications were numerous. He was the winner in 1964 of the first annual William Riley Parker Prize of the MLA for his article on "Arnold and Carlyle." He is perhaps best known for his Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England: Newman, Arnold, and Pater (Univ. of Texas Press, 1969). Although his scholarly emphasis was on the prose, David published articles on Arnold, Clough, the Brownings, and Hopkins in Victorian Poetry. He lectured here at West Virginia University as part of the Victorian Poetry Lecture Series in the 1970s and as recently as 2000 as the keynote speaker at the 75th Anniversary celebration of Newman Hall on the WVU campus. He was on those occasions a delightful guest and a provocative and stimulating intellectual presence. I can simply say that I share the sentiments of a long-time Penn colleague: "All of us who were privileged to know and love him understood that David was among the most generous, compassionate, and loyal persons we have ever encountered." Copyright © 2005 West Virginia University

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