Data Management Functions Research Articles

Effective Materials Property Information Management for the 21st Century

This paper discusses key principles for the development of material property information management software systems. The growing need for automated material information management is fueled, in part, by the demand for higher efficiency in material testing, product design, and engineering analysis. But equally important, organizations are being driven by the need for consistency, quality, and traceability of data, as well as control of access to proprietary or sensitive information. Further, the use of increasingly sophisticated nonlinear, anisotropic, and multiscale engineering analyses requires both processing of large volumes of test data for the development of constitutive models and complex material data input for computer-aided engineering software. Finally, the globalization of economy often generates great needs for sharing a single “gold source” of material information between members of global engineering teams in extended supply chains. Fortunately, material property management systems have kept pace with the growing user demands and have evolved into versatile data management systems that can be customized to specific user needs. The more sophisticated of these provide facilities for (i) data management functions such as access, version, and quality controls; (ii) a wide range of data import, export, and analysis capabilities; (iii) data “pedigree” traceability mechanisms; (iv) data searching, reporting, and viewing tools; and (v) access to the information via a wide range of interfaces. In this paper, the important requirements for advanced material data management systems, future challenges, and opportunities, such as automated error checking, data quality characterization, identification of gaps in data sets, as well as functionalities and business models to fuel database growth and maintenance are discussed.

Three national cancer clinical research groups to merge

The CALOB, NCCTG, and ACOSOG announced that they will create 1 integrated cooperative group that will develop and conduct more efficient clinical research studies. They anticipate the merger will be completed by 2014. In June 2010, the groups integrated their statistical, data management, and information technology functions. This full integration will allow them to further streamline their operations; expand their scientific research opportunities; and apply for funding as a new, larger cooperative group, according to a news release issued by the 3 groups. “Each of our groups has scientific and organizational strengths,” Heidi Nelson, ACOSOG group cochair, noted in the news release. “We are optimistic that when we join together, the sum will be greater than the individual parts, and the new scientific opportunities will advance cancer patient care.” As part of their integration efforts, the groups will apply for a U24 grant for a combined biospecimen tissue bank and a U10 grant for a new cooperative group with integrated scientific, operations, and governance membership functions.

Implementing performance competitive logical recovery

New hardware platforms, e.g. cloud, multi-core, etc., have led to a reconsideration of database system architecture. Our Deuteronomy project separates transactional functionality from data management functionality, enabling a flexible response to exploiting new platforms. This separation requires, however, that recovery is described logically. In this paper, we extend current recovery methods to work in this logical setting. While this is straightforward in principle, performance is an issue. We show how ARIES style recovery optimizations can work for logical recovery where page information is not captured on the log. In side-by-side performance experiments using a common log, we compare logical recovery with a state-of-the art ARIES style recovery implementation and show that logical redo performance can be competitive.

Working in Freshwater: The Great Lakes Observing System Contributions to Regional and National Observations, Data Infrastructure, and Decision Support

AbstractThe Laurentian Great Lakes is the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem. A charge of the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS) Regional Association is to help coordinate and integrate data and information relative to the needs of multiple user communities—decision makers with responsibility for coastal resources, maritime operations, human health and water security data, and issues associated with adapting to climate change and weather-related hazards. This article outlines the process GLOS has developed for determining regional data and information needs, how GLOS outreach activities inform data management functions and the development of decision support tools, and how the nearshore network of multiple observation platform types was conceived and is being implemented. The article finishes with a case study of this approach as it is being applied to source water protection, spill response, and search and rescue in the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and Detroit River, the connecting channels that link Lake Huron to Lake Erie.

Utility and Importance of Hearing-Aid Features Assessed by Hearing-Aid Acousticians

Modern hearing instruments include many features addressing situation-specific and user-related amplification. The main tasks of the acoustician are the appropriate choice of hearing instruments and fitting them to hearing impaired individuals. This study aims at investigating the utility and importance of several hearing-aid features as assessed by hearing-aid acousticians. For this purpose, eight different hearing-aid features with three levels each are addressed in a discrete-choice experiment. Preferences for systematically varied combinations of the features are assessed with 143 acousticians, using an adaptive conjoint analysis conducted via the Internet. Based on the preference data, utility and importance of the features are calculated. Highest utility and importance are found for noise cancellation and directional microphones. Outcome of these two features do not differ significantly. In contrast, data management functions, that is, self-learning options, show lowest importance. Though the acousticians' professional experience reveal statistically significant influence on the assessment of some of the features' utility and importance, a clear impact of sociodemographic or subject-specific factors on the outcome cannot be found. The study can be seen as a first approach to determine the estimation of basic hearing-aid features assessed by acousticians. Results show the outstanding utility and importance of features addressing speech perception in adverse listening situations. Furthermore, the outcome reveals reservations of the acousticians regarding self-learning options of the instruments.

Parallel GeoFEST for regional faulted deformation

AbstractThe GeoFEST application, which can accurately simulate deformation and stress in a faulted region of the earth's crust and mantle in the presence of heterogeneous rheology, faulting, tectonic loading, and viscoelastic relaxation, is a scalable parallel application well suited for the largest supercomputers. In order to achieve such scaling, the authors implemented a carefully choreographed algorithm using the Message Passing interface (MPI) calls, made use of parallel partitioning and data management functions from the PYRAMID and ParMetis libraries, and designed a technique for using the strain energy density from an initial scratch elastic solution to direct PYRAMID in performing parallel adaptive mesh refinement. An example problem follows that illustrates how an initial geometry and mesh designed on a laptop computer is automatically processed on hundreds to thousands of processors using millions of refined finite elements. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An object-oriented shared data model for GIS and distributed hydrologic models

Distributed physical models for the space–time distribution of water, energy, vegetation, and mass flow require new strategies for data representation, model domain decomposition, a priori parameterization, and visualization. The geographic information system (GIS) has been traditionally used to accomplish these data management functionalities in hydrologic applications. However, the interaction between the data management tools and the physical model are often loosely integrated and nondynamic. This is because (a) the data types, semantics, resolutions, and formats for the physical model system and the distributed data or parameters may be different, with significant data preprocessing required before they can be shared; (b) the management tools may not be accessible or shared by the GIS and physical model; and (c) the individual systems may be operating system dependent or are driven by proprietary data structures. The impediment to seamless data flow between the two software components has the effect of increasing the model setup time and analysis time of model output results, and also makes it restrictive to perform sophisticated numerical modeling procedures (real-time forecasting, sensitivity analysis, etc.) that utilize extensive GIS data. These limitations can be offset to a large degree by developing an integrated software component that shares data between the (hydrologic) model and the GIS modules. We contend that the prerequisite for the development of such an integrated software component is a ‘shared data model’, which is designed using an object-oriented strategy. Here we present the design of such a shared data model taking into consideration the data type descriptions, identification of data classes, relationships, and constraints. The developed data model has been used as a method base for developing a coupled GIS interface to Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM), called PIHMgis.

A Software Approach for Real-Time Control of Operation and Experiments at the WHMFC Pulsed High Magnetic Field Facility

A newly developed Control Software System (CSS) designed to control and monitor the operation of the magnets and the experiments at the Wuhan High Magnetic Field Center (WHMFC) pulsed high magnetic field facility is described. The CSS implements the functions of status evaluation and experiment process control in real time as well as the functions of system structure configuration and data management off-line. Using software architecture based on component-oriented technology, scenarios about control flow rebuilding, interfacing with local control hardware, synchronous triggering and transfer of the results of measurements are discussed in detail. Hardware simulator design and human machine interface of the CSS are described as well. The test results show that the entire operation process is perfectly handled by the CSS which provides an integrated platform for scientific experiments and research.

Stability analysis and monitoring study of Jijia River landslide based on WebGIS

On the basis of in situ investigation and deformation monitoring of the Jijia River landslide (JJRL), the rigid body limit equilibrium method and finite element method (FEM) were used to analyze the stability of the JJRL; the grey system theory method was applied to forecast the deformation trend of the JJRL; and the information system about the landslide deformation and monitoring, and forecasting systems based on the platform of the Web Geographical Information System (WebGIS) were developed, which can be used to analyze in situ monitoring data and predict the deformation of the landslide. The study results can be summarized as follows: ➀ the JJRL is stable as a whole; the water content in the landslide has a great effect on its stability; ➁ the developed Web Geographical Information System has realized many functions, including inputting, computing, inquiry, analyzing, and the function of forecasting; it has also realized the functions of distance data management, analysis, and forecasting based on the WebGIS; ➂ the information resource can be shared by the WebGIS developed all over the world.

WebBio, a Web-Based Management and Analysis System for Patient Data of Biological Products in Hospital

We selected HTML, PHP and JavaScript as the programming languages to build "WebBio", a web-based system for patient data of biological products and used MySQL as database. WebBio is based on the PHP-MySQL suite and is run by Apache server on Linux machine. WebBio provides the functions of data management, searching function and data analysis for 20 kinds of biological products (plasma expanders, human immunoglobulin and hematological products). There are two particular features in WebBio: (1) pharmacists can rapidly find out whose patients used contaminated products for medication safety, and (2) the statistics charts for a specific product can be automatically generated to reduce pharmacist's work loading. WebBio has successfully turned traditional paper work into web-based data management.

A PDA-based record-keeping and decision-support system for traceability in cucumber production

For the small-scale and scattered fresh cucumber production in China, the result that production record-keeping and its transfer are inefficient have prevented the wide application of traceability systems in China. With the mobility and computability, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) provides a new way for agricultural information collection to solve the above problems. Thus a PDA-based Record-keeping and Decision-support System (PRDS) for traceability in cucumber production was developed on Windows Mobile platform invoking a Geographic Information System (GIS) control. For improving the decision making feasibility of PRDS, the fertilization recommendation model and pesticide usage early warning model were developed by using the Technical Specification of Balanced Fertilization by Soil Testing and the Guideline for Safety Application of Pesticides in China. The architecture of PRDS was provided. With Unified Modeling Language (UML), a requirement model including two types of users and 17 use cases was described, and a static class model was also designed, which consisted of table class, table operation class, algorithm class and interface class. Based on these models, the functions of system setup, map management, data management, production record-keeping and decision-support and query, etc., were implemented by adopting Hosting MapInfo MapX Mobile Controls on the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, and the data synchronization was realized by Remote Data Access (RDA). Two agricultural production enterprises were chosen as case study to evaluate the system by questionnaires. The results show that the efficiency of production record-keeping and decision-support is improved by the simple and friendly system.

Qupe—a Rich Internet Application to take a step forward in the analysis of mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomics experiments

The goal of present -omics sciences is to understand biological systems as a whole in terms of interactions of the individual cellular components. One of the main building blocks in this field of study is proteomics where tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in combination with isotopic labelling techniques provides a common way to obtain a direct insight into regulation at the protein level. Methods to identify and quantify the peptides contained in a sample are well established, and their output usually results in lists of identified proteins and calculated relative abundance values. The next step is to move ahead from these abstract lists and apply statistical inference methods to compare measurements, to identify genes that are significantly up- or down-regulated, or to detect clusters of proteins with similar expression profiles. We introduce the Rich Internet Application (RIA) Qupe providing comprehensive data management and analysis functions for LC-MS/MS experiments. Starting with the import of mass spectra data the system guides the experimenter through the process of protein identification by database search, the calculation of protein abundance ratios, and in particular, the statistical evaluation of the quantification results including multivariate analysis methods such as analysis of variance or hierarchical cluster analysis. While a data model to store these results has been developed, a well-defined programming interface facilitates the integration of novel approaches. A compute cluster is utilized to distribute computationally intensive calculations, and a web service allows to interchange information with other -omics software applications. To demonstrate that Qupe represents a step forward in quantitative proteomics analysis an application study on Corynebacterium glutamicum has been carried out. Qupe is implemented in Java utilizing Hibernate, Echo2, R and the Spring framework. We encourage the usage of the RIA in the sense of the 'software as a service' concept, maintained on our servers and accessible at the following location: http://qupe.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The M. D. Anderson proton therapy system

The purpose of this study is to describe the University of Texas M. D. Anderson proton therapy system (PTC-H) including the accelerator, beam transport, and treatment delivery systems, the functionality and clinical parameters for passive scattering and pencil beam scanning treatment modes, and the results of acceptance tests. The PTC-H has a synchrotron (70-250 MeV) and four treatment rooms. An overall control system manages the treatment, physics, and service modes of operation. An independent safety system ensures the safety of patients, staff, and equipment. Three treatment rooms have isocentric gantries and one room has two fixed horizontal beamlines, which include a large-field treatment nozzle, used primarily for prostate treatments, and a small-field treatment nozzle for ocular treatments. Two gantry treatment rooms and the fixed-beam treatment room have passive scattering nozzles. The third gantry has a pencil beam scanning nozzle for the delivery of intensity modulated proton treatments (IMPT) and single field uniform dose (SFUD) treatments. The PTC-H also has an experimental room with a fixed horizontal beamline and a passive scattering nozzle. The equipment described above was provided by Hitachi, Ltd. Treatment planning is performed using the Eclipse system from Varian Medical Systems and data management is handled by the MOSAIQ system from IMPAC Medical Systems, Inc. The large-field passive scattering nozzles use double scattering systems in which the first scatterers are physically integrated with the range modulation wheels. The proton beam is gated on the rotating range modulation wheels at gating angles designed to produce spread-out-Bragg peaks ranging in size from 2 to 16 g/cm2. Field sizes of up to 25 x 25 cm2 can be achieved with the double scattering system. The IMPT delivery technique is discrete spot scanning, which has a maximum field size of 30 x 30 cm2. Depth scanning is achieved by changing the energy extracted from the synchrotron (energy can be changed pulse to pulse). The PTC-H is fully integrated with DICOM-RT ION interfaces for imaging, treatment planning, data management, and treatment control functions. The proton therapy system passed all acceptance tests for both passive scattering and pencil beam scanning. Treatments with passive scattering began in May 2006 and treatments with the scanning system began in May 2008. The PTC-H was the first commercial system to demonstrate capabilities for IMPT treatments and the first in the United States to treat using SFUD techniques. The facility has been in clinical operation since May 2006 with up-time of approximately 98%. As with most projects for which a considerable amount of new technology is developed and which have duration spanning several years, at project completion it was determined that several upgrades would improve the overall system performance. Some possible upgrades are discussed. Overall, the system has been very robust, accurate, reproducible, and reliable. The authors found the pencil beam scanning system to be particularly satisfactory; prostate treatments can be delivered on the scanning nozzle in less time than is required on the passive scattering nozzle.

Tailor-made data management for embedded systems: A case study on Berkeley DB

Applications in the domain of embedded systems are diverse and store an increasing amount of data. In order to satisfy the varying requirements of these applications, data management functionality is needed that can be tailored to the applications’ needs. Furthermore, the resource restrictions of embedded systems imply a need for data management that is customized to the hardware platform. In this paper, we present an approach for decomposing data management software for embedded systems using feature-oriented programming. The result of such a decomposition is a software product line that allows us to generate tailor-made data management systems. While existing approaches for tailoring software have significant drawbacks regarding customizability and performance, a feature-oriented approach overcomes these limitations, as we will demonstrate. In a non-trivial case study on Berkeley DB, we evaluate our approach and compare it to other approaches for tailoring DBMS.

Near real-time parallel processing and advanced data management of SAR images in grid environments

In this paper, we describe the process of parallelizing an existing, production level, sequential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) processor based on the Range-Doppler algorithmic approach. We show how, taking into account the constraints imposed by the software architecture and related software engineering costs, it is still possible with a moderate programming effort to parallelize the software and present an message-passing interface (MPI) implementation whose speedup is about 8 on 9 processors, achieving near real-time processing of raw SAR data even on a moderately aged parallel platform. Moreover, we discuss a hybrid two-level parallelization approach that involves the use of both MPI and OpenMP. We also present GridStore, a novel data grid service to manage raw, focused and post-processed SAR data in a grid environment. Indeed, another aim of this work is to show how the processed data can be made available in a grid environment to a wide scientific community, through the adoption of a data grid service providing both metadata and data management functionalities. In this way, along with near real-time processing of SAR images, we provide a data grid-oriented system for data storing, publishing, management, etc.

Review of Data Management Mechanisms on Mobile DevicesÜberblick über Datenmanagementmechanismen auf mobilen Endgeräten

Abstract The design of data management for mobile applications is a non-trivial task. Even with today´s much more powerful devices, we must consider limited resources: size and persistence of the local data storage, limited bandwidth and reliability of connection for data transmissions to remote servers, and constraint energy consumption of the used algorithms. In this article we focus on client/server approaches. We classify existing techniques and support the designer of data management functionalities for mobile applications with a set of fundamental characteristics of replication, hoarding and caching solutions.

Análise da integração entre um sistema de gestão de dados de documentos e um sistema de gestão de projetos contexto da gestão do ciclo de vida de produtos (PLM)

O emprego de sistemas de apoio à gestão do ciclo de vida dos produtos, PLM, é de suma importância para melhorar o processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, principalmente para pequenas e médias empresas. Um dos desafios é integrar as funcionalidades de gestão de projetos (GP) com os dados do produto. O trabalho analisa diferentes estratégias para a integração entre sistemas PDM (SMARTEAM) e de GP (MS Project), comumente utilizados por SME’s. A estratégia considerada mais viável foi implementada e testada. Ao final, apresentam-se considerações sobre a pesquisa de aplicativos de GP no contexto de soluções PLM. Palavras-chave: integração, gestão de projetos, workflow, PDM e PLM.

Pervasive Access to Images and Data—The Use of Computing Grids and Mobile/Wireless Devices Across Healthcare Enterprises

Emerging technologies are transforming the workflows in healthcare enterprises. Computing grids and handheld mobile/wireless devices are providing clinicians with enterprise-wide access to all patient data and analysis tools on a pervasive basis. In this paper, emerging technologies are presented that provide computing grids and streaming-based access to image and data management functions, and system architectures that enable pervasive computing on a cost-effective basis. Finally, the implications of such technologies are investigated regarding the positive impacts on clinical workflows.

ＧＩＳを用いた土地利用計画支援ツールに関するアンケート調査

The purpose of this study is to obtain information to develop land use planning support tools (PSS) using GIS through questionnaire survey. The focus of this survey is upon an urban planning section in provincial government, an urban planning consultant company and a private think tank company. The rate using GIS for land use planning is 56 percent, but GIS is mainly used as data management tools. In addition, many of those surveyed are using commercial GIS software more than PSS. Finally, many answers showed required functions of PSS are data management and mapping function, and desired use of PSS data is mainly for land use, zoning and population distribution.

A case study for a digital seabed database: Bohai Sea engineering geology database

This paper discusses the designing plan of ORACLE-based Bohai Sea engineering geology database structure from requisition analysis, conceptual structure analysis, logical structure analysis, physical structure analysis and security designing. In the study, we used the object-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML) to model the conceptual structure of the database and used the powerful function of data management which the object-oriented and relational database ORACLE provides to organize and manage the storage space and improve its security performance. By this means, the database can provide rapid and highly effective performance in data storage, maintenance and query to satisfy the application requisition of the Bohai Sea Oilfield Paradigm Area Information System.