In distributed database systems, immediate global consistency of replicated data can be achieved by distributed commit protocols that are typically unpredictable. If real-time characteristics are necessary, such unpredictability has to be avoided. In a distributed real-time database, optimistic replication can be used to avoid unpredictable delays by allowing transactions to commit locally. The update of other nodes is performed as soon as possible. If optimistic replication is used, conflicts may occur since data can be changed locally without synchronously informing other nodes. To detect these conflicts, this thesis introduces a conflict detection approach for DeeDS, a distributed, active real-time database that supports a dynamic node set. A comparison of existing conflict detection approaches is performed, and it is found that the dynamic version vector approach is the best fitting approach. The main reason is that it can handle a dynamic node set with a minimum of additional conflict detection data. To show the realization of the approach in DeeDS, dynamic version vectors have been implemented. Additionally, conflict management in DeeDS is redesigned to allow separation of conflict detection and conflict resolution. This makes the software architecture more flexible and is a first step towards application specific conflict resolution.

Version control is an important tool for safekeeping of data and collaboration between colleagues. These days, new distributed version control systems are growing increasingly popular as successors to centralized systems like CVS and Subversion. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make it easier to interact with version control systems, but GUIs for distributed systems are still few and less mature than those available for centralized systems. The purpose of this thesis was to propose specific GUI ideas to make distributed systems more accessible. To accomplish this, existing version control systems and GUIs were examined. A usage survey was conducted with 20 participants consisting of software engineers. Participants were asked to score various aspects of version control systems according to usage frequency and usage difficulty. These scores were combined into an index of each aspect's "unusability" and thus its need of improvement. The primary problems identified were committing, inspecting the working set, inspecting history and synchronizing. In response, a commit helper, a repository visualizer and a favorite repositories list were proposed, along with several smaller suggestions. These proposals should constitute a good starting point for developing GUIs for distributed version control systems.

This study highlights aspects of performance for the consideration of the pianist wishing to perform Rachmaninoff’s second piano sonata op. 36, using a combination of the two versions (1913 and 1931) published by Boosey&Hawkes. By providing a background to the composition, revision, and structure of this sonata, the study aims to inspect all aspects of the conception and revision of the work. Through a close examination of two recordings of this sonata - by Vladimir Horowitz and Van Cliburn - the study analyses and compares the performers’ choices regarding the selection and combination of material from the two versions for performance. Aspects such as technical difficulty, texture, structure and sonority are highlighted as points for the pianist to contemplate when attempting an alternative version of this work. These elements of successful performance are singled out by the detailed observation of the material selected by the performers, with conjectures as to the most probable reason for its selection. The various analyses and comparisons are illustrated by means of music examples. / Dissertation (MMus (Performing Arts))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Music / MMus / unrestricted

Modern agile software development methods allow to continuously evolve software systems by easily adding new features, fixing bugs, and adapting the software to changing requirements and conditions while it is continuously used by the users. A major obstacle in the agile evolution is the underlying database that persists the software system’s data from day one on. Hence, evolving the database schema requires to evolve the existing data accordingly—at this point, the currently established solutions are very expensive and error-prone and far from agile. In this thesis, we present InVerDa, a multi-schema-version database system to facilitate agile database development. Multi-schema-version database systems provide multiple schema versions within the same database, where each schema version itself behaves like a regular single-schema database. Creating new schema versions is very simple to provide the desired agility for database development. All created schema versions can co-exist and write operations are immediately propagated between schema versions with a best-effort strategy. Developers do not have to implement the propagation logic of data accesses between schema versions by hand, but InVerDa automatically generates it. To facilitate multi-schema-version database systems, we equip developers with a relational complete and bidirectional database evolution language (BiDEL) that allows to easily evolve existing schema versions to new ones. BiDEL allows to express the evolution of both the schema and the data both forwards and backwards in intuitive and consistent operations; the BiDEL evolution scripts are orders of magnitude shorter than implementing the same behavior with standard SQL and are even less likely to be erroneous, since they describe a developer’s intention of the evolution exclusively on the level of tables without further technical details. Having the developers’ intentions explicitly given in the BiDEL scripts further allows to create a new schema version by merging already existing ones. Having multiple co-existing schema versions in one database raises the need for a sophisticated physical materialization. Multi-schema-version database systems provide full data independence, hence the database administrator can choose a feasible materialization, whereby the multi-schema-version database system internally ensures that no data is lost. The search space of possible materializations can grow exponentially with the number of schema versions. Therefore, we present an adviser that releases the database administrator from diving into the complex performance characteristics of multi-schema-version database systems and merely proposes an optimized materialization for a given workload within seconds. Optimized materializations have shown to improve the performance for a given workload by orders of magnitude. We formally guarantee data independence for multi-schema-version database systems. To this end, we show that every single schema version behaves like a regular single-schema database independent of the chosen physical materialization. This important guarantee allows to easily evolve and access the database in agile software development—all the important features of relational databases, such as transaction guarantees, are preserved. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to realize such a multi-schema-version database system that allows agile evolution of production databases with full support of co-existing schema versions and formally guaranteed data independence.

La plupart des problèmes de la physique et de la mécanique conduisent à des équations aux dérivées partielles. Les nombreuses méthodes qui existent déjà sont de degré relativement bas. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une méthode de très haut degré. Notre idée est d'augmenter l'ordre des fonctions d'interpolation via une technique de perturbation afin d'éviter ou de réduire les difficultés engendrées par les opérations très coûteuses comme les intégrations. En dimension 1, la technique proposée est proche de la P-version des éléments finis. Au niveau élémentaire, on approxime la solution par une série entière d'ordre p. Dans le cas d'une équation linéaire d'ordre 2, cette résolution locale permet de construire un élément de degré élevé, avec deux degrés de liberté par élément. Pour les problèmes nonlinéaires, une linéarisation du problème par la méthode de Newton s'impose. Des tests portant sur des équations linéaires et nonlinéaires ont permis de valider la méthode et de montrer que la technique a une convergence similaire à la p-version des éléments finis. En dimension 2, le problème se discrétise grâce à une réorganisation des polynômes en polynômes homogènes de degré k. Après une définition de variables dites principales et secondaires associé à un balayage vertical du domaine, le problème devient une suite de problème 1D. Une technique de collocation permet de prendre en compte les conditions aux limites et les conditions de raccord et de déterminer la solution du problème. La collocation couplée avec la technique des moindres carrés a permis de d'améliorer les premiers résultats et a ainsi rendu plus robuste la technique de perturbation / Most problems of physics and mechanics lead to partial differential equations. The many methods that exist are relatively low degree. In this thesis, we propose a method of very high degree. Our idea is to increase the order of interpolation function via a perturbation technique to avoid or reduce the difficulties caused by the high cost operations such as integrations. In dimension 1, the proposed technique is close to the P-version finite elements. At a basic level, approximates the solution by a power series of order p. In the case of a linear equation of order 2, the local resolution can build an element of degree, with two degrees of freedom per element. For nonlinear problems, a linearization of the problem by Newton's method is needed. Tests involving linear and nonlinear equations were used to validate the method and show that the technique has a similar convergence in the p-version finite elements. In dimension 2, the problem is discretized through reorganizing polynomials in homogeneous polynomials of degree k. After a definition of variables called principal and secondary combined with a vertical scanning field, the problem becomes a series of 1D problem. A collocation technique allows to take into account the boundary conditions and coupling conditions and determine the solution of the problem. The collocation technique coupled with the least-squares enabled to improve the initial results and has made more robust the perturbation technique

The topic of this paper is creation of new ServiceNow development tool. ServiceNow is cloud based IT service support management tool. It is widely customizable, mainly by creating scripts. The problem is that scripts are created via web browser, which is not very user friendly. The main goal of this paper is to design better solution for creating scripts in ServiceNow and implement it for selected integrated development environment - Eclipse. Created development tool should support these operations - checking out scripts from ServiceNow to local workspace, editing them in special editor, updating them to newest version and committing them back to ServiceNow with check that work of some other developer is not overwritten. The main contribution of this paper is created ServiceNow development tool that provides better user experience than existing solutions. This paper is only start of development. It will continue in the future.

Diploma Thesis deals with the design and launch of the e-shop Hotversionparts.cz. For this purpose is used the knowledge about business through the Internet, Internet marketing, Competitive Intelligence discipline, social networks, car accessories market and the most important - deep knowledge about real competitors. The pur-poses of this thesis are methodical approach to the project, and go from theoretical information surveys to the application of this information in the real environment. The main part of this thesis is the description of Competitive Intelligence field from theoretical point of view with focus on entrepreneur, and using the latest tools for doing the Competitive Intelligence discipline via social networks. The target of theo-retical analysis is the application of methods and principals described here, in the practical part, which focuses on deep analysis of competitive e-shops chosen. The real illustration of the Competitive Intelligence discipline application in the online shop-ping environment is the biggest contribution of this thesis.

The aim of this master thesis is to suggest the marketing plan for paid digital version of daily newspaper MF DNES. The thesis is divided into two parts -- theoretical and practical. The first part focuses on marketing plan from the theoretical point of view, where the plan and all its parts are summarized and defined into details. In the practical part, the plan is presented on the example of paid digital version of MF DNES. On the basis of deep market analysis, consumer analysis and executed marketing research, the marketing goals of the company are set. Based on these goals, the marketing strategy is suggested. The strategy is further explained in the action plan. Finally, the budget corresponding to these actions is proposed.

O controle de versões é uma das principais funcionalidades do Gerenciamento de Configuração de Software (GCS) e visa, entre outras coisas, a recuperação e auditoria (quem, quando e o quê) de versões anteriores e a redução do espaço de armazenamento dos produtos em desenvolvimento. Existem ferramentas que auxiliam esse controle - o CVS (Concurrent Versions System) é uma delas e tem sido amplamente adotado. Como apoio à edição colaborativa na Web, o CVS pode proporcionar benefícios no sentido de recuperar e verificar versões anteriores. Atualmente, ferramentas conhecidas como “wiki”, que possibilitam edição colaborativa por meio da Web, têm obtido muitos adeptos. Um exemplo desse tipo de ferramenta é a CoTeia, que tem sido utilizada no ambiente acadêmico do Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP) desde 2001, e vem sendo utilizada também, integrada à ferramenta DocRationale, usada para registro do Design Rationale (DR). Além da edição colaborativa, é possível também o armazenamento de arquivos (uploads) associados às páginas Web da wiki. A ferramenta DocRationale viabiliza o armazenamento de artefatos relacionados ao processo de desenvolvimento de software, através do upload de arquivos. No entanto, o controle de versões desses artefatos na CoTeia não era provido. De fato, não existe um consenso da literatura a respeito do suporte de controle de versões em áreas de upload nas wikis. Neste trabalho foi realizado um estudo para análise do uso de controle de versões nas páginas e nos uploads em um conjunto de wikis pesquisadas. Já na DocRationale, como os artefatos são alterados durante o processo de desenvolvimento de software, o controle de versões na CoTeia se torna um mecanismo importante. Com isso, foi implementado o controle de versões dos artefatos armazenados na ferramenta DocRationale, através da integração do CVS à CoTeia utilizada na DocRationale. / Versions Control is one of the main activities of Software Configuration Management (SCM) and aims, among other goals, the previous versions retrieval and auditing (who, when and what), and the reduction of storage space required by under development products. There are tools that help this control – CVS is one of these and has been widely adopted. As a support to web collaborative editing, CVS can provide benefits by retrieving and checking previous versions. Nowadays, the tools known as wiki, which allow web collaborative editions, have been gathered many adopters. An example of this kind of tool is CoTeia, that has been used in academic environment at Institute of Mathematics Science and Computing (ICMC) of University of São Paulo (USP) since 2001. CoTeia has also been used integrated to DocRationale tool, which is used to register design rationale. Besides the collaborative editing, CoTeia also permits the file uploads related to wiki webpages. DocRationale makes possible artifacts storage related to software development process, through file uploads. However, versions control of the artifacts in CoTeia was not provided. Indeed, in literature there is not a consensus about the versions control support in uploads wiki area. The present dissertation shows an analysis of versions control usage on pages and uploads areas of a set of selected wikis. On the other hand, in DocRationale, because the artifacts can be changed during all the software development process, the versions control in CoTeia becomes an important mechanism. For this reason, versions control of artifacts stored in DocRationale was implemented, through integration of CVS to CoTeia used in DocRationale.

This Diploma thesis deals with the information system. It contains the analysis of the present state and particular parts of this matter including suggestion of information system for CTMOS company, economic cost evaluation and applicability in practice.