Keynote & Plenary Talks

• Interoperability and Semantics - a reoccurring Issue?    → here
• New Technologies: We have seen nothing yet    → here
• Recent Studies in Privacy Preservation (iiWAS2013)    → here
• NoSQL databases - no panacea for Big Data processing (iiWAS2013)    → here

 

Interoperability and Semantics - a reoccurring Issue?

Prof. Erich J. Neuhold Professor Research Group Multimedia Information Systems University of Vienna Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna, Austria e-mail: erich.neuhold@univie.ac.at website: http://cs.univie.ac.at/mis-team/infpers/Erich_Neuhold/

Abstract

Interoperability is a qualitative property of computing infrastructures that denotes the ability of the sending and receiving systems to exchange and properly interpret information objects across system boundaries.

Since this property is not given by default, the interoperability problem and the representation of semantics have been an active research topic for approximately four decades. Early database models such as the Relational Model used schemas to express semantics and implicitly aimed at achieving interoperability by providing programming independence of data storage and access.

After a number of intermediate steps such as Object Oriented Data Bases and Semi - Structured Data such as hypertext and XML document models, the notions of semantics and interoperability became what they have been over the last ten years in the context of the World Wide Web and more recently the concept of Open Linked Data.

With this talk we investigate semantics and interoperability research from the point of view of information systems. It should give an overview of existing old and new interoperability techniques and point out future research directions, especially for concepts found in Open Linked Data and the Semantic WEB.

Biography

Erich J. Neuhold is currently Honorary Professor for Computer Science at the University of Vienna.

Until April 2005 he was Professor of Computer Science at the University of Technology in Darmstadt and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems (IPSI) in Darmstadt, Germany an institution of about 120 persons. There he was involved in basic research and applications on all aspects of Information systems and Internet Services, i.e. information and process intensive applications like e-learning, e-government, and e-commerce as well as mobile and location based systems.

Earlier he has been Professor at the University of Stuttgart and the Technical University of Vienna and he has also worked in research and management positions for IBM and Hewlett Packard both in Europe and the USA.

His areas of expertise include interoperable databases, semi- and unstructured databases and information stores for the internet (e. g. XML), intelligent content engineering for multimedia data using standards like RDF and OWL. More recently the Semantic Web and Web Services Computing, Peer-to-Peer and GRID Systems and their applications in digital libraries, cultural heritage and e-commerce and e-sustainability have been the focus of his work. Interoperability and privacy issues have always been an important aspect of his research, lately in the area of Clouds and Open Linked Data.

He is or has been on the Steering Committees if the three main Digital Library Conferences JCDL, ECDL and ICADL and chairs the JCDL Committee. He is a member of various editorial boards and currently serves as one of the Chairs of the IJDL Editorial Board. He is or has been on the Advisory Board of public and private organizations. He is a Fellow of IEEE and of the Gesellschaft fuer Informatik, Germany.

He has published four books and about 200 papers. His work has appeared, among others, in the VLDB Journal, Information Systems, Acta Informatica and in many conferences as, for example, VLDB, ICDE, MMDB, ADL, DL, IRC, CAiSE, EC-Web, EURASIA etc. He has served and is serving in all capacities on many congress, conference and workshop committees and in national and international governmental and corporate planning and evaluation bodies.

 

New Technologies: We have seen nothing yet

Prof. Hermann Maurer em. Prof. Institut für Informationssysteme und Computer Medien Graz University of Technology Inffeldgasse 16c, 8010 Graz, Austria e-mail: hmaurer@iicm.edu website: http://www.iicm.tugraz.at/maurer

Abstract

In this talk we will argue that developments in science will continue with increasing speed, opening completely new vistas. Why this is so is not just due to the usual trivial observations such as "developments are happening very fast and it seems even at accelerating speed". Rather, we will show a number of much deeper reasons, why nw developments will come at us as surprise, and to an extent hard to imagine. Some of the arguments are surprising in themselves and shed a light on how we think, and how we have to change our thinking to at least grasp a bit of what is going to happen. Surprisingly, it also turns out that some reasons show the weaknesses of our information age and how knowing this, we can become better in handling complicated situations and negotiations. If this sounds all a bit vague, it is, and it is vague on purpose: the speaker wants to surprise everyone in the audience a few times by presenting concrete samples and does not want to give away some of the highlights in this abstract.

Biography

Hermann Maurer is Emeritus Full Professor from the Graz University of Technology where he was Chair or vice-Chair of the Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media since 1988. He was co-founder and chairman of the board of the Hyperwave AG Munich 1997-2005, and vice-chairman of same company till 2009; founder, and later scientific advisor of the first research center on Knowledge Management in Austria.

Prof. Maurer received a number of awards, among them the "Austrian Cross of Honours for Arts and Science Class I". He received Honorary Doctorates from the Polytechnical University of St. Petersburg, the University Karlsruhe, Germany, and of the University of Calgary, Canada.

Hermann Maurer is author of twenty books, over 700 papers in various publications, founder and Editor-in-Chief of 'Journal of Universal Computer Science' till end of 2011, Co-Editor of 'Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching' and member of over a dozen Editorial Boards. He founded the Conference series ED-MEDIA and WebNet/eLearn and the conference I-KNOW; he was European Representative at ICCE till 2000.

He was responsible for the development of the first second generation Web Based Information System Hyperwave, and an Learning Suite, a modern net based teaching platform, and a large electronic encyclopaedia Austria-Forum that in its first version has some 400.000 entries per February 2013.

Prof. Maurer has given over 1000 talks on various occasions, including many as invited or keynote speaker at international conferences. He has been an outspoken critic of some data-mining activities in the WWW. He worked in a variety of areas including applications of computers to exhibitions and museums, Web based learning environments, languages and their applications, data structures and their efficient use, telematic services, computer networks, computer supported new media, dynamic symbolic language and techniques to fight plagiarism. His current main research and project areas are networked multimedia/hypermedia systems; electronic publishing and applications thereof, information integration, future implications of computers, and computers in Science Fiction.

 

Recent Studies in Privacy Preservation

Prof. Leon S.L. Wang Vice President Department of Information Management National University of Kaohsiung Kaohsiung, Taiwan 81148 website: http://www.im.nuk.edu.tw/l-en/?tid=240&act=showMember&cid=165

Abstract

In recent years, social network research has advanced significantly. People perceive the Web increasingly as a social medium that fosters interaction among people, sharing of experiences and knowledge, group activities, community formation and evolution. This has led to a rising prominence of social network analysis and mining in academia, politics, homeland security and business. However, growing popularity of on-line social networking and data publishing, not only brings the convenience of information sharing but also concerns of privacy breaches, as sensitive information, through links and inferences, individual's identity, health, financial status, political affiliations, etc, might be disclosed. In order to preserve privacy of users, anonymization is required prior to attempts to make the data more widely available to public. In this talk, we will concentrate on introducing recent studies in privacy preservation in data publishing, data mining, networking publishing, location publishing, and mobile publishing.

Biography

Leon Shyue-Liang Wang received his Ph.D. from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1984. From 1984 to 1994, he joined the University of New Haven and New York Institute of Technology as assistant/associate professor. From 1994 to 2002, he visited I-Shou University in Taiwan and served as director of computing center, chairman of information management department, and director of library. From 2003 to 2007, he rejoined NYIT. Since Fall of 2007, he joined National University of Kaohsiung in Taiwan and served as chairman of Information Management Department, Dean of College of Management, and Administrative Vice President. He is now Academic Vice President of the University. He has published over 190 papers in the areas of data mining, privacy preservation, soft computing, and served as PC member and session chair of more than 90 international conferences. He is recipient of the 2011-2014 national flexible wage award from Ministry of Education in Taiwan and member of the executive council of Chinese American Academic and Professional Society in New York, USA.

 

NoSQL databases - no panacea for Big Data processing

Prof. Jaroslav Pokorny Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in Prague Malostranske nam. 25, 11800 Praha, Czech Republic e-mail: pokorny@ksi.mff.cuni.cz website: http://www.ksi.mff.cuni.cz/en/osoba.php?osoba=8

Abstract

Big Data, big number of users, and cloud computing are driving the adoption of new database architectures, particularly NoSQL databases. Both research and practice indicate that traditional universal DBMS architecture hardly satisfies new trends in data processing in such environment. NoSQL databases enable better application development productivity through a more flexible data model, greater ability to scale dynamically to support more users and data, an ability to develop highly responsive applications and more complex processing of data.

On the other hand, NoSQL databases support solving data problems only partially. We will describe their basic features like horizontal scalability and concurrency model, which offer mostly weaker tools for querying and transactions processing than relational SQL-like database systems do. We will also present some data models and querying capabilities of NoSQL databases in more detail as well as an overview of some their representatives.

The NoSQL system properties mentioned imply that most of them are unsuitable, e.g., for the DW and BI querying or, in general, for the enterprise data processing. Consequently, new database architectures and various hybrid solutions are developed. We will point out on these actual problems and present some of the current approaches in detail.

Biography

Jaroslav Pokorny received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical cybernetics from Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1984. He is a full professor in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague. He has published more than 300 papers and books on data modeling, relational databases, query languages, XML technologies, and data organization. His current research interests include semi-structured data, Web technologies, database architectures, indexing methods, and social networks. Jaroslav served as a chair and co-chair in the organization of conferences ADBIS-DASFAA (2000), EDBT (2002), Int. Workshop ClustWeb in conj. with EDBT (2004), Web X.0 a Web Mining Workshop in conj. with IEEE ICDIM (2007), ISD (2010), IDEAS (2012), ADBIS (2013), etc. He is a member of ACM and IEEE. He works also as the representative of Czech Republic in IFIP.