Join a feisty crew as they complete their early missions to arrive at Long Island and defeat those at the collider who intend to send out a pulse that could set off dangerous plasma weapons.This pulse was powered by a small object the size of a baseball, the Black Stone.The many references to Atlantis are to show how this 'type' of electric current was what they used so long ago, from what they called, 'the firestone'.It's a fun ride with an Afterword designed to encourage research of your own.

The database field has experienced a rapid and incessant growth since the development of relational databases. The progress in database systems and applications has produced a diverse landscape of specialized technology areas that have often become the exclusive domain of research specialists. Examples include active databases, temporal databases, object-oriented databases, deductive databases, imprecise reasoning and queries, and multimedia information systems. This book provides a systematic introduction to and an in-depth treatment of these advanced database areas. It supplies practitioners and researchers with authoritative coverage of recent technological advances that are shaping the future of commercial database systems and intelligent information systems. Advanced Database Systems was written by a team of six leading specialists who have made significant contributions to the development of the technology areas covered in the book. Benefiting from the authors' long experience teaching graduate and professional courses, this book is designed to provide a gradual introduction to advanced research topics and includes many examples and exercises to support its use for individual study, desk reference, and graduate classroom teaching.

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.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Rules in Database Systems, RIDS '97, held in Skövde, June 1997. The 13 revised papers presented in the book were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The book documents the state-of-the art in the area. The papers are devoted to deductive databases, active database systems architectures, events in workflow management, rule modelling and simulation, rule confluence, rule termination analysis, rule testing and validation, active database systems design.

When chronic misfit Isaac Winter walks out into the freezing cold of a January night, he only has one thing on his mind: ending his own life. Instead, he encounters something in the darkness that makes life worth living. Something strange. Something scary. Something not of this world – an extraterrestrial machine of unknown origin and intent. After developing an obsession with this other-worldly entity, events are set in motion that lead Isaac to a secret military organisation, strangers with superhuman powers, and – ultimately – a revelation about his own past he could never have dreamt of.

Database Support for Workflow Management: The WIDE Project presents the results of the ESPRIT WIDE project on advanced database support for workflow management. The book discusses the state of the art in combining database management and workflow management technology, especially in the areas of transaction and exception management. This technology is complemented by a high-level conceptual workflow model and associated workflow application design methodology. In WIDE, advanced base technology is applied, like a distributed computing model based on the corba standard. The usability of the WIDE approach is documented in this book by a discussion of two real-world applications from the insurance and health care domains. Database Support for Workflow Management: The WIDE Project serves as an excellent reference, and may be used for advanced courses on database and workflow management systems.

This book collects some written exercises and solutions from the classworks of the course “Workgroup and Workflow Systems” at the Como campus of the Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy. Throughout the book, two approaches will be presented to describe business processes: the first approach is based on the UML (Unified Modelling Language) notation (including use case diagrams, class diagrams, activity diagrams) and on the BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation) notation; the second approach is based on the WIDE (Worfklow on Intelligent Distributed database Environments) methodology, derived from the EU-funded project WIDE.

Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps ofMeaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

New technology is always evolving and companies must have appropriate security for their business to be able to keep up-to-date with the changes. With the rapid growth in internet and www facilities, database security will always be a key topic in business and in the public sector and has implications for the whole of society. Database Security Volume XII covers issues related to security and privacy of information in a wide range of applications, including: Electronic Commerce Informational Assurances Workflow Privacy Policy Modeling Mediation Information Warfare Defense Multilevel Security Role-based Access Controls Mobile Databases Inference Data Warehouses and Data Mining. This book contains papers and panel discussions from the Twelfth Annual Working Conference on Database Security, organized by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held July 15-17, 1998 in Chalkidiki, Greece. Database Security Volume XII will prove invaluable reading for faculty and advanced students as well as for industrial researchers and practitioners working in the area of database security research and development.

This text provides the Intelligent Database Environment for Advanced Applications (IDEA) methodology for the development, maintenance and application of modern database systems. It seeks to enable the reader to take advantage of current advances in software engineering techniques. The book is split into three parts covering an introduction to the models and languages used in the methodology; the process of analysis, design, prototyping and implementation; and how to put the methodology to work.