Abstract Expressive power has been well-established as a dimension of measuring the quality of a computer language. Easiness is another dimension. It is the main stream of development in programming language and database management. In this article, we make the following assessment on the easiness of computer languages: 1) A data model is easier to use than a programming language in... Expressive power has been well-established as a dimension of measuring the quality of a computer language. Easiness is another dimension. It is the main stream of development in programming language and database management. In this article, we make the following assessment on the easiness of computer languages: 1) A data model is easier to use than a programming language in the development and maintenance of those applications expressible in the data model; 2) if one data model is more expressive than another data model, the former is easier than the latter in the development and maintenance of those applications where a programming language is involved; and 3) A unifi cation, i.e., a system having both a data model semantically equivalent to a class of total recursive functions and a programming language, achieves the greatest possible ease. We materialize the assessment with the following facts: 1) A data model is semantically within a class of total recursive functions while a programming is semantically within a class of partial recursive functions; 2) A data model arranges the managed objects in orders including at least one dependent order; and 3) The objects represented for both business data and business logic, in the case of a unifi cation, obey the orders enforced by the data model. Read More Read Less

Abstract A key challenge facing process non-conformance detection is to develop approaches not only effective across different domains and for different kinds of processes, but also to provide a practical and easy to implement solution. Since this is a process improvement area, the commercial realities of today dictate that if a solution cannot be implemented easily, quickly and cost-effectively then it... A key challenge facing process non-conformance detection is to develop approaches not only effective across different domains and for different kinds of processes, but also to provide a practical and easy to implement solution. Since this is a process improvement area, the commercial realities of today dictate that if a solution cannot be implemented easily, quickly and cost-effectively then it is probably not worth implementing at all regardless of its effectiveness. The focus of this paper is on presenting a simple and practical approach to process non-conformance detection. We propose an approach based on specifying non-conformance rules to enhance an existing process specifi cation without modifying it. The rules specifi ed are used to check for conformance of process enactment data. Our methodology is fl exible in its instantiation and because it is observatory, can be implemented with minimal interference with the existing process. We evaluate this approach using a case study. Read More Read Less

Abstract Resource management is one of the most important and fun damental problems in distributed systems. Typically, to maintain the integrity of a resource, at most one process should access the resource at any time. As a result, accesses to the same resource (that is, exe cution of critical sections) by different processes have to be serialized. This problem is referred... Resource management is one of the most important and fun damental problems in distributed systems. Typically, to maintain the integrity of a resource, at most one process should access the resource at any time. As a result, accesses to the same resource (that is, exe cution of critical sections) by different processes have to be serialized. This problem is referred to as the ”mutual exclusion problem”. In this paper, we have proposed a permission based distributed mutual exclu sion algo- rithm which is an improvement of Maekawa’s algorithm. The number of messages required by the improvised algorithm is in the range 3M to 5M per critical section invocation where M is the number of in tersection nodes in the system. A reduction in number of message by restricting the communication of any node with the intersection nodes of the quorums, without any modification of the basic structure of the algorithm. Read More Read Less

Abstract Among the architectural organizations for server, client, or hybrid confi gurations that can be adopted for application designs, newer cloud-based designs have been adopting a predominantly server based approach in the recent years. Though this approach correctly assumes that the fantastic improvements in server capacity in terms of memory, processing, and bandwidth, it also completely ignores the massive capacity and... Among the architectural organizations for server, client, or hybrid confi gurations that can be adopted for application designs, newer cloud-based designs have been adopting a predominantly server based approach in the recent years. Though this approach correctly assumes that the fantastic improvements in server capacity in terms of memory, processing, and bandwidth, it also completely ignores the massive capacity and scalability of client machines in satisfying user needs. The traditional client architectures use the binary capability of the client, which is generally not oriented towards the web. The extensive dynamic capabilities of the browser allow for platforms of infi nite extensibility and omni-functional power to be delivered via the net. This paper considers the adoption of intelligent immersive omni-functional technology with special focus on calculations towards creating standards-compliant documents that can be intermingled with semantic web structures. The paper documents experiences with such developments, and the implications in adopting such technology as a standard aspect of web-pages. Read More Read Less

Abstract Object-oriented databases (OODBs) have the potential to be used for data-intensive, multi-user applications that are not well served by traditional databases. Despite the fact that there has been extensive research done for relational databases in the area of concurrency control, many of the approaches are not suitable for the complex data model of objectoriented databases. This paper presents a self-adjusting... Object-oriented databases (OODBs) have the potential to be used for data-intensive, multi-user applications that are not well served by traditional databases. Despite the fact that there has been extensive research done for relational databases in the area of concurrency control, many of the approaches are not suitable for the complex data model of objectoriented databases. This paper presents a self-adjusting multi-granularity locking protocol (SAML) which facilitates choosing an appropriate locking granule according to the requirements of the transactions and encompasses less overhead and provides better concurrency compared to some of the existing protocols. Though there has been another adaptive multi-granularity protocol called AMGL [Chang, C.T.K. 2002], which provides the same degree of concurrency as SAML: SAML has been proven to have signifi cantly reduced the number of locks and hence the locking overhead compared to AMGL. Experimental results show that SAML performs the best when the workload is high in the system and transactions are long-lived. Read More Read Less