Suzanne Embury - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Suzanne Embury
The vision of dataspaces is to provide various of the benefits of classical data integration, but... more The vision of dataspaces is to provide various of the benefits of classical data integration, but with reduced up-front costs. Combining this with opportunities for incremental refinement enables a 'pay-as-yougo' approach to data integration, resulting in simplified integrated access to distributed data. It has been speculated that model management could provide the basis for Dataspace Management, however, this has not been investigated until now. Here, we present DSToolkit, the first dataspace management system that is based on model management, and therefore, benefits from the flexibility provided by the approach for the management of schemas represented in heterogeneous models, supports the complete dataspace lifecycle, which includes automatic initialisation, maintenance and improvement of a dataspace, and allows the user to provide feedback by annotating result tuples returned as a result of queries the user has posed. The user feedback gathered is utilised for improvement by annotating, selecting and refining mappings. Without the need for additional feedback on a new data source, these techniques can also be applied to determine its perceived quality with respect to already gathered feedback and to identify the best mappings over all sources including the new one.
We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a flexible and efficient way toimplemen... more We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a flexible and efficient way toimplement complex semantic constraints in an OODB. We introduce a high-level constraint languageCoLan, based on functions and sets and including range quantifiers, from which fragmentsof code are generated to check the constraints. These fragments are attached to slots in classdescriptors, and are also inherited (constraints cannot be overridden). Thus many fragmentscan come from one constraint and one slot may have attached fragments ...
Rule Markup Languages For Business Rules on the Semantic Web, 2002
The Functional Approach to Data Management, 2004
The Fifth International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT'05), 2005
Abstract Modern enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent upon the data produced from infor... more Abstract Modern enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent upon the data produced from information systems to support their operations. So the knowledge of how such data are derived is vitally important to them. Unfortunately, as the systems evolve, their functionality ...
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Extending Database Technology - EDBT '10, 2010
20th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, 2004. Proceedings., 2004
Program slicing has long been recognised as a valuable technique for supporting the software main... more Program slicing has long been recognised as a valuable technique for supporting the software maintenance process. However, many programs operate over some kind of external state, as well as the internal program state. Arguably, the most significant form of external state is that used to store data associated with the application, for example, in a database management system. We propose
Skip to Main Content. IEEE.org | IEEE Xplore Digital Library | IEEE Standards Association | Spect... more Skip to Main Content. IEEE.org | IEEE Xplore Digital Library | IEEE Standards Association | Spectrum Online | More IEEE Sites. IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Search Term(s). Advanced Search | Preferences | Search Tips. ...
for allowing me to usecopies of two of his photographs in this thesis1, and Dr. Martin Jones for ... more for allowing me to usecopies of two of his photographs in this thesis1, and Dr. Martin Jones for giving up partof his holiday to proof-read some of my thesis and for all the "Dave Barry". Thanks alsoto Scott Leishman for his proof-reading efforts and for volunteering to take that awfulIndy off my hands, and to John Owens and John Boyle
BEA recently introduced a new middleware product called the Aqua-Logic Data Services Platform (AL... more BEA recently introduced a new middleware product called the Aqua-Logic Data Services Platform (ALDSP). The purpose of ALDSP is to make it easy to design, develop, deploy, and maintain a data services layer in the world of service-oriented architecture (SOA). ALDSP provides a declarative foundation for building SOA applications and services that need to access and compose information from a range of enterprise data sources; this foundation is based on XML, XML Schema, and XQuery. This paper focuses on query processing in ALDSP, describing its overall query processing architecture, its query compiler and runtime system, its distributed query processing techniques, the translation of XQuery plan fragments into SQL when relational data sources are involved, and the production of lineage information to support updates. Several XQuery extensions that were added in support of requirements related to data services are also covered.
Proceedings of UK e-ScienceAll Hands Meeting, 2005
The aim of the ISPIDER project is to create a proteomics grid; that is, a technical platform that... more The aim of the ISPIDER project is to create a proteomics grid; that is, a technical platform that supports bioinformaticians in constructing, executing and evaluating in silico analyses of proteomics data. It will be constructed using a combination of generic e-science and Grid technologies, plus proteomics specific components and clients that embody knowledge of the proteomics domain and the available resources. In this paper, we describe some of our earlier results in prototyping specific examples of proteomics data integration, ...
Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06), 2006
One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set ... more One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set by the owning organisation. As for any important functionality, it is necessary to verify the implementation of any business rule carefully, through thorough testing. However, business rules have some specific features which make testing a particular challenge. They represent a more fine-grained unit of functionality than is usually considered by testing tools (programs, module, UML models, etc.) and their implementations are typically spread across a system (or perhaps some specific layer of a system). There is no convenient one-toone relationship between programs and business rules that can facilitate their testing. To the best of our knowledge, no tools, methods or guidelines exist for helping software developers to test the implementation of business rules. Standard testing tools can help to a certain extent, but they leave the rule-specific work entirely in the programmer's hands. In this paper, we discuss the problems of testing business rules, and elicit the key features of a good test suite for a collection of business rules. We focus in particular on constraint business rules-an important class of rule that is commonly applied to the persistent data managed by the information system. We show how intensional database tests provide a suitable platform on which to implement business rule tests rapidly, and show how existing intensional test suites can be automatically adapted to test business rules. We have applied these ideas in a case study, which has allowed us to compare the relative costs of creating and executing these augmented test suites, as well as providing some evidence of their ability to detect faults in business rule implementations.
Rules in Database Systems., …, Jan 1, 1994
We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a exible and e cient way to implement c... more We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a exible and e cient way to implement complex semantic constraints in an OODB. We introduce a high-level constraint language CoLan, based on functions and sets and including range quanti ers, from which fragments of code are generated to check the constraints. These fragments are attached to slots in class descriptors, and are also inherited (constraints cannot be overridden). Thus many fragments can come from one constraint and one slot may have attached fragments from many constraints. Constraints can be selectively disabled or removed which causes inhibition or disabling of corresponding fragments. This overcomes many objections to implementing constraints through methods. We have prototyped it by using the metaclass facilities of ADAM to initiate code generation. We are now re-implementing it in P/FDM, using changes to metadata (P/FDM does not have full metaclasses). This will incorporate a transaction mechanism and also provide queries on constraints. This approach opens a number of interesting future directions.
The vision of dataspaces is to provide various of the benefits of classical data integration, but... more The vision of dataspaces is to provide various of the benefits of classical data integration, but with reduced up-front costs. Combining this with opportunities for incremental refinement enables a 'pay-as-yougo' approach to data integration, resulting in simplified integrated access to distributed data. It has been speculated that model management could provide the basis for Dataspace Management, however, this has not been investigated until now. Here, we present DSToolkit, the first dataspace management system that is based on model management, and therefore, benefits from the flexibility provided by the approach for the management of schemas represented in heterogeneous models, supports the complete dataspace lifecycle, which includes automatic initialisation, maintenance and improvement of a dataspace, and allows the user to provide feedback by annotating result tuples returned as a result of queries the user has posed. The user feedback gathered is utilised for improvement by annotating, selecting and refining mappings. Without the need for additional feedback on a new data source, these techniques can also be applied to determine its perceived quality with respect to already gathered feedback and to identify the best mappings over all sources including the new one.
We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a flexible and efficient way toimplemen... more We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a flexible and efficient way toimplement complex semantic constraints in an OODB. We introduce a high-level constraint languageCoLan, based on functions and sets and including range quantifiers, from which fragmentsof code are generated to check the constraints. These fragments are attached to slots in classdescriptors, and are also inherited (constraints cannot be overridden). Thus many fragmentscan come from one constraint and one slot may have attached fragments ...
Rule Markup Languages For Business Rules on the Semantic Web, 2002
The Functional Approach to Data Management, 2004
The Fifth International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT'05), 2005
Abstract Modern enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent upon the data produced from infor... more Abstract Modern enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent upon the data produced from information systems to support their operations. So the knowledge of how such data are derived is vitally important to them. Unfortunately, as the systems evolve, their functionality ...
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Extending Database Technology - EDBT '10, 2010
20th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, 2004. Proceedings., 2004
Program slicing has long been recognised as a valuable technique for supporting the software main... more Program slicing has long been recognised as a valuable technique for supporting the software maintenance process. However, many programs operate over some kind of external state, as well as the internal program state. Arguably, the most significant form of external state is that used to store data associated with the application, for example, in a database management system. We propose
Skip to Main Content. IEEE.org | IEEE Xplore Digital Library | IEEE Standards Association | Spect... more Skip to Main Content. IEEE.org | IEEE Xplore Digital Library | IEEE Standards Association | Spectrum Online | More IEEE Sites. IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Search Term(s). Advanced Search | Preferences | Search Tips. ...
for allowing me to usecopies of two of his photographs in this thesis1, and Dr. Martin Jones for ... more for allowing me to usecopies of two of his photographs in this thesis1, and Dr. Martin Jones for giving up partof his holiday to proof-read some of my thesis and for all the "Dave Barry". Thanks alsoto Scott Leishman for his proof-reading efforts and for volunteering to take that awfulIndy off my hands, and to John Owens and John Boyle
BEA recently introduced a new middleware product called the Aqua-Logic Data Services Platform (AL... more BEA recently introduced a new middleware product called the Aqua-Logic Data Services Platform (ALDSP). The purpose of ALDSP is to make it easy to design, develop, deploy, and maintain a data services layer in the world of service-oriented architecture (SOA). ALDSP provides a declarative foundation for building SOA applications and services that need to access and compose information from a range of enterprise data sources; this foundation is based on XML, XML Schema, and XQuery. This paper focuses on query processing in ALDSP, describing its overall query processing architecture, its query compiler and runtime system, its distributed query processing techniques, the translation of XQuery plan fragments into SQL when relational data sources are involved, and the production of lineage information to support updates. Several XQuery extensions that were added in support of requirements related to data services are also covered.
Proceedings of UK e-ScienceAll Hands Meeting, 2005
The aim of the ISPIDER project is to create a proteomics grid; that is, a technical platform that... more The aim of the ISPIDER project is to create a proteomics grid; that is, a technical platform that supports bioinformaticians in constructing, executing and evaluating in silico analyses of proteomics data. It will be constructed using a combination of generic e-science and Grid technologies, plus proteomics specific components and clients that embody knowledge of the proteomics domain and the available resources. In this paper, we describe some of our earlier results in prototyping specific examples of proteomics data integration, ...
Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06), 2006
One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set ... more One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set by the owning organisation. As for any important functionality, it is necessary to verify the implementation of any business rule carefully, through thorough testing. However, business rules have some specific features which make testing a particular challenge. They represent a more fine-grained unit of functionality than is usually considered by testing tools (programs, module, UML models, etc.) and their implementations are typically spread across a system (or perhaps some specific layer of a system). There is no convenient one-toone relationship between programs and business rules that can facilitate their testing. To the best of our knowledge, no tools, methods or guidelines exist for helping software developers to test the implementation of business rules. Standard testing tools can help to a certain extent, but they leave the rule-specific work entirely in the programmer's hands. In this paper, we discuss the problems of testing business rules, and elicit the key features of a good test suite for a collection of business rules. We focus in particular on constraint business rules-an important class of rule that is commonly applied to the persistent data managed by the information system. We show how intensional database tests provide a suitable platform on which to implement business rule tests rapidly, and show how existing intensional test suites can be automatically adapted to test business rules. We have applied these ideas in a case study, which has allowed us to compare the relative costs of creating and executing these augmented test suites, as well as providing some evidence of their ability to detect faults in business rule implementations.
Rules in Database Systems., …, Jan 1, 1994
We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a exible and e cient way to implement c... more We discuss the use of code-generated methods in Prolog as a exible and e cient way to implement complex semantic constraints in an OODB. We introduce a high-level constraint language CoLan, based on functions and sets and including range quanti ers, from which fragments of code are generated to check the constraints. These fragments are attached to slots in class descriptors, and are also inherited (constraints cannot be overridden). Thus many fragments can come from one constraint and one slot may have attached fragments from many constraints. Constraints can be selectively disabled or removed which causes inhibition or disabling of corresponding fragments. This overcomes many objections to implementing constraints through methods. We have prototyped it by using the metaclass facilities of ADAM to initiate code generation. We are now re-implementing it in P/FDM, using changes to metadata (P/FDM does not have full metaclasses). This will incorporate a transaction mechanism and also provide queries on constraints. This approach opens a number of interesting future directions.