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Thesis (M.Sc)--Athabasca University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 31-32). Also available online.

The objective of this thesis is to design a complete ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) data model by using Entity-Relationship diagram and the argumentation of this model in relation to ITIL Configuration and Asset Management federative approach. The thesis is build of two major parts, where the first one focuses on the theory of recommendations and best practices in the IT Governance processes, its relationship to ITIL and a high-level overview of ITIL history. Theoretical part ends with the brief description of tools and methods used in data modeling. It is followed by practical part in which the content is based on analyzing of ITIL publications in the same order as IT Service Management life cycle phases and designing of the logical data model. Each chapter discusses at its end the abiliity of designed model to cover the data requirements for particular ITSM lifecycle phase. In the very last chapter, all partial models are joined into one complete data model and shown relations are argumented.

A criação do projeto conceitual de um bancos de dados que represente adequadamente um determinado domínio de aplicação continua sendo um dos principais desafios da área de banco de dados. Por outro lado, a discussão sobre métodos ágeis de desenvolvimento de software alcançou, recentemente, a comunidade de banco de dados. Este trabalho apresenta o projeto conceitual de bancos de dados sob a luz de métodos ágeis de desenvolvimento. Desenvolvemos uma extensão do arcabouço Naked Objects que permite uma validação ágil e precisa do projeto conceitual junto ao especialista do domínio. Em nossa abordagem, o projeto conceitual de bancos de dados é descrito por meio de anotações que representam as abstrações de dados em um ambiente dinâmico de validação. / Creating a conceptual database design that adequately represents a specific application domain continues to be one of the main challenges in the database research. On the other hand, the discussion regarding agile methods of software development has recently become a subject of interest to the database community. This work presents a new approach to create a conceptual database design according to agile methods. We have created an extension of the Naked Objects framework that allows an agile and precise validation of the conceptual database design by the domain specialist. In our approach, the conceptual database design is described through annotations that represent data abstractions in a dynamic validation environment.

Managing, handling, exchanging and accessing hydrogeological information depend mainly on the applied hydrogeological data models, which differ between institutions and across countries. Growing interest in hydrogeological information diffusion, combined with a need for information availability, require the convergence of hydrogeological data models. Model convergence makes hydrogeological information accessible to multiple institutions, universities, administration, water suppliers, and research organisations, at different levels: from the local level (on-site measurement teams), to national and international institutions dealing with water resources management. Furthermore, because hydrogeological studies are complex, they require a large variety of high-quality hydrogeological data with appropriate metadata in clearly designed and coherent structures. To respond to the requirement of model convergence, easy information exchange and hydrogeological completeness, new data models have been developed, using two different methodologies. At local-regional level, the HydroCube model has been developed for the Walloon Region in Belgium. This logical data model uses entity-relationship diagrams and it has been implemented in the MS Access environment, further enriched with a fully functional user-interface. The HydroCube model presents an innovative holistic project-based approach, which covers a full set of hydrogeological concepts and features, allowing for effective hydrogeological project management. This approach enables to store data about the project localisation, hydrogeological equipment, related observations and measurements. Furthermore, topological relationships facilitate management of spatially associated data. Finally, the model focuses on specialized hydrogeological field experiments, such as pumping tests and tracer tests. At the international level, a new hydrogeological data model has been developed which guarantees hydrogeological information availability in one standard format in the scope of the FP6 project GABARDINE (Groundwater Artificial recharge Based on Alternative sources of wateR: aDvanced Integrated technologies and management). The model has been implemented in the ArcGIS environment, as a Geospatial Database for a decision support system. The GABARDINE Geospatial Database uses advantages of object-oriented modelling (UML), it follows standards for geoscientific information exchange (ISO/TC211 and OGC), and it is compliant with the recommendations from the European Geospatial Information Working Group. Finally, these two developed models have been tested with hydrogeological field data on different informatics platforms: from MS Access, through a proprietary ArcGIS environment, to the open source, free Web2GIS on-line application. They have also contributed to the development of the GroundWater Markup Language (GWML) Canadian exchange standard, compliant with Geographic Markup Language (GML). GWML has the potential of becoming an international HydroGeology Markup Language (HgML) standard with a strong and continuous support from the hydrogeological community.

A criação do projeto conceitual de um bancos de dados que represente adequadamente um determinado domínio de aplicação continua sendo um dos principais desafios da área de banco de dados. Por outro lado, a discussão sobre métodos ágeis de desenvolvimento de software alcançou, recentemente, a comunidade de banco de dados. Este trabalho apresenta o projeto conceitual de bancos de dados sob a luz de métodos ágeis de desenvolvimento. Desenvolvemos uma extensão do arcabouço Naked Objects que permite uma validação ágil e precisa do projeto conceitual junto ao especialista do domínio. Em nossa abordagem, o projeto conceitual de bancos de dados é descrito por meio de anotações que representam as abstrações de dados em um ambiente dinâmico de validação. / Creating a conceptual database design that adequately represents a specific application domain continues to be one of the main challenges in the database research. On the other hand, the discussion regarding agile methods of software development has recently become a subject of interest to the database community. This work presents a new approach to create a conceptual database design according to agile methods. We have created an extension of the Naked Objects framework that allows an agile and precise validation of the conceptual database design by the domain specialist. In our approach, the conceptual database design is described through annotations that represent data abstractions in a dynamic validation environment.

Whenever one designs a new database system, an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ER diagram) is always needed to present the structure of this database. Using the graphically well-arranged ER Diagram helps you to easily understand the entities, attributes, domains, primary keys, foreign keys, constraints, and relationships inside a database. This data-modeling tool is an ideal choice for companies and developers.

The objective of this dissertation is to suggest the structure of new IS in the company, to suit the recent data flows, and simultaneously to satisfy the needs of the user. According to the suggestions and concepts mentioned in the thesis, it should be possible to pre – set a completely functional IS.

The purpose of this study is to design a database of resources for rational therapy. An investigation of the current health situation and reorientation towards primary health care (PHC) in South Africa evidenced the need for a database of resources which would meet the demand for rational therapy information made on the Helderberg College Library by various user groups as well as make a contribution to the national health information infrastructure. Rational therapy is viewed as an approach within PHC that is rational, common-sense, wholistic and credible, focusing on the prevention and maintenance of health. A model of the steps in database design was developed. A user study identified users' requirements for design and the conceptual schema was developed. The entities, attributes, relationships and policies were presented and graphically summarised in an Entity-Relationship (E-R) diagram. The conceptual schema is the blueprint for further design and implementation of the database. / Information Science / M.Inf.

<p>Stress responsive genes play a key role in shaping the manner in which plants process and respond to environmental stress. Their gene products are linked to DNA transcription and its consequent translation into a response product. However, whilst these genes play a significant role in manufacturing responses to stressful stimuli, transcription factors coordinate access to these genes, specifically by accessing a gene&rsquo / s promoter region which houses transcription factor binding sites. Here transcriptional elements play a key role in mediating responses to environmental stress where each transcription factor binding site may constitute a potential response to a stress signal. Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism, can be used to identify the mechanism of how transcription factors shape a plant&rsquo / s survival in a stressful environment. Whilst there are numerous plant stress research groups, globally there is a shortage of publicly available stress responsive gene databases. In addition a number of previous databases such as the Generation Challenge Programme&rsquo / s comparative plant stressresponsive gene catalogue, Stresslink and DRASTIC have become defunct whilst others have stagnated. There is currently a single Arabidopsis thaliana stress response database called STIFDB which was launched in 2008 and only covers abiotic stresses as handled by major abiotic stress responsive transcription factor families. Its data was sourced from microarray expression databases, contains numerous omissions as well as numerous erroneous entries and has not been updated since its inception.The Dragon Arabidopsis Stress Transcription Factor database (DASTF) was developed in response to the current lack of stress response gene resources. A total of 2333 entries were downloaded from SWISSPROT, manually curated and imported into DASTF. The entries represent 424 transcription factor families. Each entry has a corresponding SWISSPROT, ENTREZ GENBANK and TAIR accession number. The 5&rsquo / untranslated regions (UTR) of 417 families were scanned against TRANSFAC&rsquo / s binding site catalogue to identify binding sites. The relational database consists of two tables, namely a transcription factor table and a transcription factor family table called DASTF_TF and TF_Family respectively. Using a two-tier client-server architecture, a webserver was built with PHP, APACHE and MYSQL and the data was loaded into these tables with a PYTHON script. The DASTF database contains 60 entries which correspond to biotic stress and 167 correspond to abiotic stress while 2106 respond to biotic and/or abiotic stress. Users can search the database using text, family, chromosome and stress type search options. Online tools have been integrated into the DASTF&nbsp / database, such as HMMER, CLUSTALW, BLAST and HYDROCALCULATOR. User&rsquo / s can upload sequences to identify which transcription factor family their sequences belong to by using HMMER. The website can be accessed at http://apps.sanbi.ac.za/dastf/ and two updates per year are envisaged.</p>