From: bigk@cs.uq.oz.au (Kathy Williamson)
Newsgroups: aus.general
Subject: Fourth Australian Database Conference
Date: 5 Jan 93 00:15:07 GMT
Reply-To: bigk@cs.uq.oz.au


C A L L     F O R     A T T E N D A N C E



A D C '93
Fourth Australian Database Conference

1 - 2 February 1993
Brisbane Queensland Australia


Sponsored by:
Key Centre for Software Technology, The University of Queensland
Queensland University of Technology
Griffith University
Australian Computer Society
Oracle Systems (Australia) Pty Ltd                                         
CRC for Distributed Systems Technology                                                                                                                                                      
Simsion Bowles & Associates


Correspondence:
ADC'93
School of Computing & Information Technology
Griffith University
Nathan Q 4111, Australia

Tel:  61-7-875 5002
Fax:  61-7-875 5051
Email:  adc93@cit.gu.edu.au


INVITED SPEAKERS

RECENT ADVANCES IN TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT
Speaker: Dr Alan Fekete (University of Sydney)

Summary:  For the past decade, transaction management had a reputation as a 
field where research progress was irrelevant to practioners, since all systems 
used the same long-understood techniques (namely two-phase locking and 
write-ahead logging).  This has now changed.

In the past few years, there have been several exciting advances in 
transaction management that seem certain to influence future commercial 
systems.  One is the invention and publication of improved techniques for 
implementation of transaction management. In particular, an exciting series of 
papers have come from the ARIES project led by C. Mohan at IBM Almaden 
Research Laboratory.  There are new algorithms which provide concurrency 
control for B-tree indices, recovery compatible with fine-grained locking, 
and concurrency control allowing long-running audits.  Another advance 
has been driven by advanced applications such as distributed programming and
collaborative design.  In these domains the traditional transaction model 
(with short, sequential, isolated transactions) is inadequate. Instead, richer 
transaction models have been proposed, such as sagas and nested transactions. 
Each new model needs new algorithms for managing concurrency and failure.  

This talk will present some of these exciting new ideas. A unifying theme will 
be the identification of the interactions between different aspects of 
transaction management.  

The speaker:  Alan Fekete holds a PhD from Harvard University. In 1987-88 he 
worked at the Laboratory for Computer Science at Massachussetts Institute 
of Technology. Since 1988 he has been at the University of Sydney, where he 
teaches the Database Systems course. His research interest is the theory of 
distributed systems, especially the algorithms for transaction management in 
distributed database management systems.  He has been involved in a major 
project to understand concurrency control for nested transaction systems; this 
work is presented in the recent book "Atomic Transactions" by Lynch, Merritt, 
Weihl and Fekete (published by Morgan Kaufmann).


IMPLEMENTATION OF VERY GENERALISED DATA STRUCTURES
Speaker: Mr Graeme Simsion (Simsion Bowles & Associates)

Summary:  The selection of the most appropriate level of generalisation for 
tables and columns is a critical decision in relational database design.  It 
involves a tradeoff between semantic content (and associated enforcement of 
constraints) and flexibility.  Very high levels of generalisation have been 
employed in some commercial database designs, with mixed success.  In some 
cases, they have formed the basis of very flexible systems, which can provide 
a competitive advantage through better responsiveness to business and 
regulatory change.  In others they have been the source of insurmountable 
implementation problems.  This paper discusses the advantages and 
disadvantages of very generalised data structures, and highlights some 
practical implementation issues.

The Speaker:  Graeme Simsion is Managing Director of Simsion Bowles & 
Associates, a specialist data management consultancy with offices in 
Melbourne and Sydney, and an Associate of the Department of Information 
Systems at Monash University.  He holds a Bachelor of Science from Monash 
University, a Graduate Diploma in Computing and Information Systems from 
Chisholm Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Adminstration from 
Deakin University.  He is currently completing a book on Data Modelling.


TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT IN A MULTIDATABASE ENVIRONMENT
Speaker:  Professor Marek Rusinkiewicz (University of Houston)

Summary:  A multidatabase system is a facility that provides access to data 
stored in multiple autonomous, and possibly heterogeneous database systems.  
Transaction management in such systems is complicated by the requirement to 
preserve local autonomy and the need to deal with heterogeneity of the member 
databases.  To determine the serialization order of global transactions the 
multidatabase system must take into account the indirect (transitive) conflicts 
between multidatabase transactions which may be caused by local transactions.  
However, such conflicts are difficult to resolve because the behavior or even 
the existence of local transactions is not known to the multidatabase system.

In the first part of the tutorial we will review the solutions in the area of 
concurrency control and recoverability that have been proposed in the 
literature.  We will concentrate on methods that use "tickets" to incorporate 
additional data manipulation operations in the subtransactions of each 
multidatabase transaction.  We show that if these operations create direct 
conflicts between subtransactions at each participating local database system, 
indirect conflicts can be resolved even if the multidatabase system is not 
aware of their existence.  Based on this approach we introduce optimistic 
and conservative multidatabase transaction management methods that guarantee 
global serializability by preventing multidatabase transactions from being 
serialized in different ways at the participating database systems.

In the second part of the tutorial we will discuss some proposed extensions of 
the traditional transaction model.  We will introduce the flexible transaction 
model in which the usual requirements of atomicity and isolation of 
transactions are relaxed.  Most of the extended transaction models use early 
commitment and rely on compensation to restore the consistency of the system, 
when it is violated.  We will discuss the properties of compensation and 
describe a model of compensation which depends only on the semantics of the 
operations and not on the particular state of the database.  We illustrate the 
use of these concepts in the context of a class of practical applications.

The Speaker:  Marek Rusinkiewicz is Professor of Computer Science at the 
University of Houston.  He has received MSc degree in Computer Science from 
the Moscow Institute of Electrical Engineering (MEI) and PhD in Informatics 
from the Polish Academy of Sciences.  His research interests include 
heterogeneous database systems, distributed computing systems, query 
languages, and transaction processing; he has published extensively on these 
topics in journals and conferece proceedings.  Dr.  Rusinkiewicz is the 
Principal Investigator of the OMNIBASE project aimed at the development and 
evaluation of new technologies for multidatabase access.  His research is 
sponsored by NASA, Bellcore, MCC and the Texas Advanced Research Program.  
He has consulted for industry and government organizations in the areas of 
distributed database systems and multidatabase systems.


CONFERENCE PROGRAM
(Provisional)

DAY ONE - MONDAY 1 FEBRUARY 1993

8.30am                        Registration

9.15am                        Welcome

Invited Talk 1:  
"Recent Advances in Transaction Management"
Dr Alan Fekete, University of Sydney, Australia

10.30am                       Morning Tea

11.00am
Indexing in an Extensible Database System
Lukas Relly (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland)
Alan Kent (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)                                                                                        

Functional Specifications to Object Structures
Janusz Getta (University of Wollongong, Australia)

11.30am                       
Storage Management for Files of Dynamic Records
Justin Zobel (Royal Melbourne Institute of Tech, Australia)
Alistair Moffat (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Ron Sacks-Davis (CITRI, Australia

Mapping One-to-One Predicates to a Relational Schema
Peter Ritson, Terry Halpin (University of Queensland, Australia)

12.00pm
A Guideline for Implementing Access Method Modules in Extensible DBMS MODUS
Kazutaka Furuse, Hiroyuki Katagawa, Nobuo Ohbo (University of Tsukuba, Japan)
Jeffrey Xu Yu (Australian National University, Australia)
Kazunori Yamaguchi (University of Tokyo, Japan)                                                                         

A Design Process of Databases Based on a Fuzzy Object-Oriented Approach
Annie Cavarero (University of Nice, France)
Carlos Gonzalez (Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Costa Rica)

12.30pm                       Lunch

2.00pm
Verification of a Two Pass Restart Algorithm for ARIES
Dean Kuo (University of Sydney, Australia)                                                               

Improving Integrity Checking by Compiling Derivation Paths
Matilde Celma, Juan Clarlos Casamayor (DSIC, Spain)
Hendrik Decker (Siemens AG, Germany)

2.30pm
A Temporal Algebra Based on an Abstract Model
Mehmet Orgun, Hausi Mller (University of Victoria, Canada)                                                                            

Using Weakest Preconditions to Simplify Integrity Constraint Checking
Michael Lawley, Rodney Topor (Griffith University, Australia)
Mark Wallace (European Computer-Industry Res Ctr, Germany)

3.00pm
Armstrong Relations for Functional and Multivalued Dependencies in 
Relational Databases
Millist Vincent (University of South Australia, Australia)
Bala Srinivasan (Monash University, Australia)                                                           

Integrity Preserving Updates in Object-Oriented Databases
Klaus-Dieter Schewe, Ingrid Wetzel (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Bernhard Thalheim (University of Rostock, Germany)

3.30pm                        Afternoon Tea

4.00pm
On Optimizing Uniformly Bounded Datalog Programs
Jia Liang Han (University of Southern Queensland, Australia)                                                                           

A New Graphical Method of Vertical Partitioning in Database Design
Xuemin Lin, Yanchun Zhang (Uni of Queensland, Australia)

4.30pm
Early Experience with Recursion Optimization in an Extensible Rewriter
Jrme Fessy, Batrice Finance (University of Paris VI, France)                                                                                       

On Horizontal Fragmentation of Distributed Database Design
Yanchun Zhang (University of Queensland, Australia)

5.00pm
Finiteness Properties of Database Queries
Inderpal Singh Mumick, Oded Shmueli (AT & T Bell Lab, USA)                                                                                            

Horizontal Partitioning for Distributed Database Design
Minyoung Ra (Korea Military Academy, Korea)

6.00pm                        B-B-Q


DAY TWO - TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 1993

9.00am
Invited Talk 2
Implementation of Very Generalised Data Structures
Mr Graeme Simsion (Simsion Bowles & Associates)

10.00am                       Morning Tea

10.30am
The Intelligent Developer:  Towards the Automated Implementation of 
Information Systems
Anthony Berglas (University of Queensland, Australia)
               
TUTORIAL
Transaction Management in a Multidatabase Environment 
Professor Marek Rusinkiewicz (University of Houston)

11.00am
Towards a General Theory for the Evolution of Application Domains
H A Proper, Th P van der Weide (University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
               
11.30am                       
Control of a Management Information System by Rules
Eva Gardyn (Simsion Bowles & Associates, Australia)
Keith Jeffery (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK)
               
12.00pm                       Lunch

1.30pm                        
Querying Heterogeneous Databases:  A Case Study
Alexandre Lefebvre, Peter Bernus, Rodney Topor (Griffith University, Australia)                                                                                                     

TUTORIAL (continued)
Transaction Management in a Multidatabase Environment 
Professor Marek Rusinkiewicz (University of Houston)

2.00pm                        
Omega:  A Parallel Object-Based System
Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Vera Choi, Clifford Ker, Kai Lin (University of 
Southern California, USA)                                   

2.30pm                        
Replicated Fragment Allocation Using a Clustering Methodology
George Semeczko (University of Queensland, Australia)                                                                   

3.00pm                        
Interconnection Topologies for Shared Nothing DBMS Architectures
M Hitz, T A Mueck (University of Vienna, Austria)                                                                       

3.30pm                        Afternoon Tea


LOCATION
The Conference will be held at the Nathan Campus of Griffith University.  This 
campus is located 11km south of central Brisbane in an attractive natural bush 
forest.  It is close to the South East Freeway to central Brisbane or the Gold 
Coast, on several bus routes, and close to many good restaurants.  The weather 
in Brisbane in early February is sunny, warm (29 degrees) and humid.  (Bring 
light clothes.)  There can be sudden thunderstorms.  (Bring an umbrella.)


ACCOMMODATION
Accommodation has been reserved for Conference attendees at the following 
three locations:
    
(a)            Bellenden Ker Residences, Griffith University, Nathan Campus.
               $42 per person per night, bed and breakfast.

(b)            Robertson Gardens Motel, Kessels Road, Nathan.
               $68 per person or couple per night, bed only.  Breakfast $9 to $14.
               10 minutes walk from the campus.

(c)            Park Royal Hotel, Alice Street, Brisbane.
               $75 per person or couple per night, bed only.  Breakfast $15.
               Central Brisbane, 15 minutes by taxi from the campus.

Please indicate on the registration form at which location you wish to stay, 
and on which nights you wish to stay.  Full payment is required in advance for 
Bellenden Ker Residences, and one night's deposit is required for Robertson 
Gardens and Park Royal.


TRANSPORT
Griffith University, Nathan Campus, is 30 minutes from Brisbane Airport (about 
$25 by taxi), 15 minutes from central Brisbane (about $12 by taxi).  The 511 
bus from the Queen Street Mall in central Brisbane goes to Griffith University.

Directions by private car:  
(a)            From Brisbane Airport: Follow the Gateway Arterial Road south, 
               take the Mt Gravatt-Capalaba Road exit about 20km from the 
               Airport, turn west towards Mt Gravatt, and continue for about 5km.

(b)            From the North (central Brisbane): Follow the South East 
               Freeway south, take the Klumpp Road/Mains Road exit about 10km 
               from the city, and follow the signs.  Note: Do NOT take the 
               Marshall Road exit.

(c)            From the South (Gold Coast): Follow the South East Freeway 
               north, take the Logan Road/Mt Gravatt exit, follow Logan Road 
               north for 1km, turn west into Mt Gravatt-Capalaba Road, and 
               continue for about 2km.


REGISTRATION FEES
Registration fees provide admission to all sessions, one copy of the 
Conference Proceedings, morning and afternoon teas, a barbeque on Monday 
evening, and temporary membership of Griffith University Club.

Student fees are available to full-time students only.  


CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FORM

Name:


               
Organization:



Address:





Telephone:

Facsimile:

E-mail:



Registration ($180)

Student Registration ($120)

Accommodation (Please select):

[   ] Bellenden Ker Residences @ $42.00 per night

[   ] Robertson Gardens Motel @ $68.00 per night

[   ] Park Royal Hotel @ $75.00 per night                                                                $

Number of Nights Accommodation:

Date In:                                                    Date Out:                                    

Extra Copies of Proceedings @ $50 each


TOTAL  $


METHODS OF PAYMENT
Payment must be by cheque or bank draft in AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS drawn on 
an Australian bank.  All cheques and bank drafts must be payable to ADC'93.

Please mail the completed registration form together with the cheque or bank 
draft to:

ADC'93
School of Computing & Information Technology
Griffith University
Nathan Q 4111
Australia

Telephone:  61-7-875 5002
Facsimile:  61-7-875 5051
E-mail:  adc93@cit.gu.edu.au
Newsgroups: aus.general