Just as packet switched networks constituted a major breakthrough in our perception of the information exchange in computer networks so have the decoupling properties of publish/subscribe systems revolutionized the way we look at networking in the context of large scale distributed systems. The decoupling of the components of publish/subscribe systems in time, space and synchronization has created an appealing platform for the asynchronous information exchange among anonymous information producers and consumers. Moreover, the content-based nature of publish/subscribe systems provides a great degree of flexibility and expressiveness as far as construction of data flows is considered. However, a number of challenges and not yet addressed issued still exists in the area of the publish/subscribe systems. One active area of research is directed toward the problem of the efficient content delivery in the content-based publish/subscribe networks. Routing of the information based on the information itself, instead of the explicit source and destination addresses poses challenges as far as efficiency and processing times are concerned. Simultaneously, due to their decoupled nature, publish/subscribe systems introduce new challenges with respect to issues related to dependability and fail-awareness. This thesis seeks to advance the field of research in both directions. First it shows the design and implementation of routing algorithms based on the end-to-end systems design principle. Proposed routing algorithms obsolete the need to perform content-based routing within the publish/subscribe network, pushing this task to the edge of the system. Moreover, this thesis presents a fail-aware approach towards construction of the content-based publish/subscribe system along with its application to the creation of the soft state publish/subscribe system. A soft state publish/subscribe system exposes the self stabilizing behavior as far as transient timing, link and node failures are concerned. The result of this thesis is a family of the XSiena content-based publish/subscribe systems, implementing the proposed concepts and algorithms. The family of the XSiena content-based publish/subscribe systems has been a subject to rigorous evaluation, which confirms the claims made in this thesis.

Just as packet switched networks constituted a major breakthrough in our perception of the information exchange in computer networks so have the decoupling properties of publish/subscribe systems revolutionized the way we look at networking in the context of large scale distributed systems. The decoupling of the components of publish/subscribe systems in time, space and synchronization has created an appealing platform for the asynchronous information exchange among anonymous information producers and consumers. Moreover, the content-based nature of publish/subscribe systems provides a great degree of flexibility and expressiveness as far as construction of data flows is considered. However, a number of challenges and not yet addressed issued still exists in the area of the publish/subscribe systems. One active area of research is directed toward the problem of the efficient content delivery in the content-based publish/subscribe networks. Routing of the information based on the information itself, instead of the explicit source and destination addresses poses challenges as far as efficiency and processing times are concerned. Simultaneously, due to their decoupled nature, publish/subscribe systems introduce new challenges with respect to issues related to dependability and fail-awareness. This thesis seeks to advance the field of research in both directions. First it shows the design and implementation of routing algorithms based on the end-to-end systems design principle. Proposed routing algorithms obsolete the need to perform content-based routing within the publish/subscribe network, pushing this task to the edge of the system. Moreover, this thesis presents a fail-aware approach towards construction of the content-based publish/subscribe system along with its application to the creation of the soft state publish/subscribe system. A soft state publish/subscribe system exposes the self stabilizing behavior as far as transient timing, link and node failures are concerned. The result of this thesis is a family of the XSiena content-based publish/subscribe systems, implementing the proposed concepts and algorithms. The family of the XSiena content-based publish/subscribe systems has been a subject to rigorous evaluation, which confirms the claims made in this thesis.

Audiovisuelle Medien, insbesondere Filme und Fernsehsendungen entwickelten sich innerhalb der letzten einhundert Jahre zu bedeutenden Massenmedien. Große Bestände audiovisueller Medien werden heute in Datenbanken und Mediatheken verwaltet und professionellen Nutzern ebenso wie den privaten Konsumenten zur Verfügung gestellt. Eine besondere Herausforderung liegt in der Indexierung, Durchsuchung und Beschreibung der multimedialen Datenbestände. Die Segmentierung audiovisueller Medien, als Teilgebiet der Videoanalyse, bildet die Grundlage für verschiedene Anwendungen im Bereich Multimedia-Information-Retrieval, Content-Browsing und Video-Summarization. Insbesondere die Segmentierung in semantische Handlungsanschnitte bei narrativen Medien gestaltet sich schwierig. Sie setzt ein besonderes Verständnis der filmischen Stilelemente vorraus, die im Rahmen des Schaffensprozesses genutzt wurden, um die Handlung und Narration zu unterstützten. Die Arbeit untersucht die bekannten filmischen Stilelemente und wie sie sich im Rahmen algorithmischer Verfahren für die Analyse nutzen lassen. Es kann gezeigt werden, dass unter Verwendung eines mehrstufigen Analyse-Prozesses semantische Zusammenhänge in narrativen audiovisuellen Medien gefunden werden können, die zu einer geeigneten Sequenz-Segmentierung führen. / Audiovisual media, especially movies and TV shows, developed within the last hundred years into major mass media. Today, large stocks of audiovisual media are managed in databases and media libraries. The content is provided to professional users as well as private consumers. A particular challenge lies in the indexing, searching and description of multimedia assets. The segmentation of audiovisual media as a branch of video analysis forms the basis for various applications in multimedia information retrieval, content browsing and video summarization. In particular, the segmentation into semantic meaningful scenes or sequences is difficult. It requires a special understanding of cinematic style elements that were used to support the narration during the creative process of film production. This work examines the cinematic style elements and how they can be used in the context of algorithmic methods for analysis. For this purpose, an analysis framework was developed as well as a method for sequence-segmentation of films and videos. It can be shown that semantic relationships can be found in narrative audiovisual media, which lead to an appropriate sequence segmentation, by using a multi-stage analysis process, based on visual MPEG-7 descriptors.

Audiovisuelle Medien, insbesondere Filme und Fernsehsendungen entwickelten sich innerhalb der letzten einhundert Jahre zu bedeutenden Massenmedien. Große Bestände audiovisueller Medien werden heute in Datenbanken und Mediatheken verwaltet und professionellen Nutzern ebenso wie den privaten Konsumenten zur Verfügung gestellt. Eine besondere Herausforderung liegt in der Indexierung, Durchsuchung und Beschreibung der multimedialen Datenbestände. Die Segmentierung audiovisueller Medien, als Teilgebiet der Videoanalyse, bildet die Grundlage für verschiedene Anwendungen im Bereich Multimedia-Information-Retrieval, Content-Browsing und Video-Summarization. Insbesondere die Segmentierung in semantische Handlungsanschnitte bei narrativen Medien gestaltet sich schwierig. Sie setzt ein besonderes Verständnis der filmischen Stilelemente vorraus, die im Rahmen des Schaffensprozesses genutzt wurden, um die Handlung und Narration zu unterstützten. Die Arbeit untersucht die bekannten filmischen Stilelemente und wie sie sich im Rahmen algorithmischer Verfahren für die Analyse nutzen lassen. Es kann gezeigt werden, dass unter Verwendung eines mehrstufigen Analyse-Prozesses semantische Zusammenhänge in narrativen audiovisuellen Medien gefunden werden können, die zu einer geeigneten Sequenz-Segmentierung führen. / Audiovisual media, especially movies and TV shows, developed within the last hundred years into major mass media. Today, large stocks of audiovisual media are managed in databases and media libraries. The content is provided to professional users as well as private consumers. A particular challenge lies in the indexing, searching and description of multimedia assets. The segmentation of audiovisual media as a branch of video analysis forms the basis for various applications in multimedia information retrieval, content browsing and video summarization. In particular, the segmentation into semantic meaningful scenes or sequences is difficult. It requires a special understanding of cinematic style elements that were used to support the narration during the creative process of film production. This work examines the cinematic style elements and how they can be used in the context of algorithmic methods for analysis. For this purpose, an analysis framework was developed as well as a method for sequence-segmentation of films and videos. It can be shown that semantic relationships can be found in narrative audiovisual media, which lead to an appropriate sequence segmentation, by using a multi-stage analysis process, based on visual MPEG-7 descriptors.