Database systems of the next generation are likely to be inherently very complex due to the diversity of requirements placed on them. Incorporating active, real time, and temporal virtues in one database system is an arduous effort but is also a commend able one. This book presents the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Active, Real Time, and Temporal Database Systems (ARTDB 97), held in Como, Milan, in September 1997. The aim of the workshop was to bring researchers together from the active and real time research communities, and to examine the current state of the art in active, real time, and temporal database systems. This book offers a collection of papers presented at the ARTDB 97 workshop. The papers, many of them representing proficient and tenable results, illuminate the feasibility of building database system supporting reactive behavior, while enforcing timeliness and predictability. The book contains nine papers carefully reviewed and accepted by the program committee, three invited papers written by prominent researchers in the field, and two summaries of the panel discussions held at the workshop. The program committee received seventeen submissions, where each submission was reviewed by at least three program committee members. The two panel sessions focused on predictability issues and on practical experience of active, real time, and temporal database systems. The ARTDB 97 workshop was held in cooperation with the IEEE Technical Committees on Real Time Systems and Complexity in Computing, and the ACM Special Interest Group on Manipulation of Data.

A timely survey of the field from the point of view of some of the subject's most active researchers. Divided into several parts organized by theme, the book first covers the underlying methodology regarding active rules, followed by formal specification, rule analysis, performance analysis, and support tools. It then moves on to the implementation of active rules in a number of commercial systems, before concluding with applications and future directions for research. All researchers in databases will find this a valuable overview of the topic.

The areas of active and real-time databases have seen a tremendous growth of interest in the past few years, particularly with regard to their support of time-critical and embedded applications. ARTDB-95 provided, therefore, an important forum for researchers from both communities to discuss research results, and also to chart new directions for the future. As well as the 11 submitted papers presented at the workshop, this volume also contains 4 invited papers on the following topics: the impact of active databases on commercial practice; the optimization of active database transactions; the need for better language, compiler and tool support for real-time databases; and the origin of time constraints associated with data, events and actions. Together the papers give a comprehensive overview of current research, and will provide invaluable reading for academic and industrial researchers and students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

In recent years, tremendous research has been devoted to the design of database systems for real-time applications, called real-time database systems (RTDBS), where transactions are associated with deadlines on their completion times, and some of the data objects in the database are associated with temporal constraints on their validity. Examples of important applications of RTDBS include stock trading systems, navigation systems and computer integrated manufacturing. Different transaction scheduling algorithms and concurrency control protocols have been proposed to satisfy transaction timing data temporal constraints. Other design issues important to the performance of a RTDBS are buffer management, index accesses and I/O scheduling. Real-Time Database Systems: Architecture and Techniques summarizes important research results in this area, and serves as an excellent reference for practitioners, researchers and educators of real-time systems and database systems.

This is an introductory text to the science of neurobiology, describing animal nervous systems, what they consist of, how they work, and how they are studied. Unlike many other neurobiology texts, considerable discussion is given to both human and non-human nervous systems. Written in an easy-to-read style, it will be useful for both biology and medical students. It provides the opportunity for self-testing at the end of each chapter, with objectives and questions. A CD-ROM entitled 'The Human Brain' (ISBN 3-540-14666-0) has been produced to accompany this text, and can be purchased either separately or together with the book (ISBN 3-540-63778-8).

Despite the growing interest in Real-Time Database Systems, there is no single book that acts as a reference to academics, professionals, and practitioners who wish to understand the issues involved in the design and development of RTDBS. Real-Time Database Systems: Issues and Applications fulfills this need. This book presents the spectrum of issues that may arise in various real-time database applications, the available solutions and technologies that may be used to address these issues, and the open problems that need to be tackled in the future. With rapid advances in this area, several concepts have been proposed without a widely accepted consensus on their definitions and implications. To address this need, the first chapter is an introduction to the key RTDBS concepts and definitions, which is followed by a survey of the state of the art in RTDBS research and practice. The remainder of the book consists of four sections: models and paradigms, applications and benchmarks, scheduling and concurrency control, and experimental systems. The chapters in each section are contributed by experts in the respective areas. Real-Time Database Systems: Issues and Applications is primarily intended for practicing engineers and researchers working in the growing area of real-time database systems. For practitioners, the book will provide a much needed bridge for technology transfer and continued education. For researchers, this book will provide a comprehensive reference for well-established results. This book can also be used in a senior or graduate level course on real-time systems, real-time database systems, and database systems or closely related courses.

A review of relational concepts -- An overview of Tutorial D -- Time and the database -- What is the problem? -- Intervals -- Operators on intervals -- The EXPAND and COLLAPSE operators -- The PACK and UNPACK operators -- Generalizing the relational operators -- Database design -- Integrity constraints 1 : candidate keys and related constraints -- Integrity constraints 2 : general constraints -- Database queries -- Database updates -- Stated times and logged times -- Point and interval types revisited.

While traditional databases excel at complex queries over historical data, they are inherently pull-based and therefore ill-equipped to push new information to clients. Systems for data stream management and processing, on the other hand, are natively pushoriented and thus facilitate reactive behavior. However, they do not retain data indefinitely and are therefore not able to answer historical queries. The book provides an overview over the different (push-based) mechanisms for data retrieval in each system class and the semantic differences between them. It also provides a comprehensive overview over the current state of the art in real-time databases. It sfirst includes an in-depth system survey of today's real-time databases: Firebase, Meteor, RethinkDB, Parse, Baqend, and others. Second, the high-level classification scheme illustrated above provides a gentle introduction into the system space of data management: Abstracting from the extreme system diversity in this field, it helps readers build a mental model of the available options.

This book is a rich text for introducing diverse aspects of real-time systems including architecture, specification and verification, scheduling and real world applications. It is useful for advanced graduate students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines impacted by embedded computing and software. Since the book covers the most recent advances in real-time systems and communications networks, it serves as a vehicle for technology transition within the real-time systems community of systems architects, designers, technologists, and system analysts. Real-time applications are used in daily operations, such as engine and break mechanisms in cars, traffic light and air-traffic control and heart beat and blood pressure monitoring. This book includes 15 chapters arranged in 4 sections, Architecture (chapters 1-4), Specification and Verification (chapters 5-6), Scheduling (chapters 7-9) and Real word applications (chapters 10-15).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th East European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems, ADBIS 2003, held in Dresden, Germany in September 2003. The 29 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 86 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on compositional development, advanced query processing, transactions, retrieval from the Web, indexing techniques, active databases and workflows, complex value storage, data mining, formal query semantics, spatial aspects of information systems, XML processing, multimedia data management, information integration, and query containment.