Database Systems Laboratory

The University of Aizu, Aizu-wakamatsu,

Fukushima, Post code 965-8580 (Japan)

Fax : +81-242-37-2753
Database Systems Laboratory Home Page

Members

Subhash Bhalla, Ph .D. ( GT / Projects / Research )

Wanming Chu DBLP (Publications)

Junya Terazono DBLP (Publications)

Yutaka Watanobe, Ph.D. (Publications)

Doctoral Studies/PhD: Graduate Studies/Masters: Graduation Thesis 2012: Research Practices:
Shapiee bin Abd Rahman
Masaki Hasegawa
Shinji Kikuchi
Shelly Sachdeva
Aastha Madaan
Hiroaki Yui
Azusa Saito
Enrique Lopez de Lara Gutierrez
Tetsuya Hashimoto
Takanori Kuroiwa
Shin'ichirou Saeki
Saphina Lawrence
Sidhant Bhaskar
Daigo Yaginuma
Hiroki Sano
Hiroki Nakamura
Nobuhiro Aita
Tetsuya Kishinami
 Hiromi Hashimoto
 Yuritaka Matsunaga
Syouhei Nakayama
Sanshiro Hosokawa
Fuyuki Ito
Yusuke Sato
Keisuke Watanabe
Ryoko Aoki
Takashi Kato
Midori Osaka
Kohei Hara

Research Association / Collaboration

Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze UCL Interaction Centre, UC London, UK
IIT Delhi, CSE Department, IIT Delhi, India
Ehime University School of Medicine, Ehime University, Japan
Delhi University, India International Conference on Big Data Analytics, University of Delhi, 24 - 26 December, 2012.

Database Activity

Members conduct research on database systems and web informatics. Activities range from the design of new user interfaces and query languages, focusing on next generation pervasive and ubiquitous environments, such as sensor networks, personal databases, and information management on the Web. Currently, global research efforts aim to capture a wide variety of applications into the fold of Database Management Systems (DBMSs). The DBMSs also use visual representations within new interfaces to manage large volumes of data. These manage data that may have complex features within its structure. In addition to complexity, such as multiple attributed data, and wave-forms many new types of raw data are emerging. In orde to provide flexibility in data representation, the databases depend on data modeling techniques. Most of the advances in techniques concentrate on capturing more meaning within the stored information.

Research


Conferences / Workshops Organized

The following events relating to Databases in Networked Information Systems have been organized at University of Aizu. The workshops invited researchers from industry and research institutions to share their experince. New research directions were highlighted with the participation of students.

CISMOD1995, DNIS2000, DNIS2002, DNIS2003, DNIS2005, DNIS2007, DNIS2010, and DNIS2011

Proceedings

The Proceedings in LNCS   were published by Springer-verlag, in   1006, Vol. 1966 , Vol. 2544 , V ol. 2822, Vol. 3433, Vol. 4777, Vol. 5999, and Vol. 7108

Research Projects

Data Modelling for Complex Objects

Information Processing Systems of future will be a combination of integrated components. There will be components for intelligent problem solving, or decision making, components for specialized data processing (e.g., image enhancers), and components for shared information management. The applications will utilize a shared base of information. The examples of some of the application domains are business automation, industrial automation, computer-aided design and manufacture, and cartography. Traditional approaches to solving these problems have been based on adopting ad hoc solutions. Recent activities focus on-

  • Managing components and application services,
  • Distributed client/middleware/service oriented computing,
  • XML, E-commerce,
  • Mobile database management systems,
  • Web querry and web data mining,
  • Data warehouses and data mining,
  • Integration of technologies.

    Multimedia Information Retrieval based on Subjective Criteria

    The goal of this research is to build a web information system that enables users to retrieve multimedia information carrying a given subjective (Kansei) content, e.g. retrieving a piece of music that matches a given image.

    Such system will prove useful in various areas of information technology such as online shopping, advertising industry, entertainment, and design. Rather than being yet another search engine, the system is intended to be a meta-search engine that tailor existing web search engines to the user query and filter the information thus retrieved. The multimedia filtering is performed by an adaptive multi-agent system whose agents specialize in a particular media processing (e.g. image, text, sound, body-temperature, video, visual expression, etc.). Agents learn to associate configurations of multimedia low-levels features (multimedia sentences such as used in querying the system) with subjective impressions.

    Real-time Database Management Systems

    In the area of transaction management within Real-time database systems, transactions have time constraint. Traditional approaches to transaction management introduce elements of unpredictable delays during transaction processing. Thus, making these not suitable for adoption in new application environments. The focus of research activity is to find more deterministic approaches to complete selected (real-time) transactions.

    Visual Data Mining

    The fields of data mining and knowledge discovery is promising sources of knowledge to improve the indexing and retrieval of multimedia information. A variety of techniques from machine discovery, statistics, databases, knowledge acquisition, machine learning, data visualization, image analysis, high performance computing, and knowledge-based systems, have been used to mine large data sets. The easy access to large data sets of multimedia information such as internet suggests the idea of incorporating data mining methods for dynamic indexing. Multimedia data are very complex (high dimensionality) and are generally subjectively interpreted by the user (similarity, impression) , hence, there is a need for new techniques and tools that can extract relevant information from multimedia data and transform it into useful knowledge.

    Visual data mining is especially useful when little is known about the data and the exploration goals are vague. For example, identifying the patterns that cause the information to be interpreted subjectively is difficult. Thus, the role of the user should take the form of externalization processes aimed at transforming the user tacit knowledge into modeling hypotheses. The visual data mining process can then be seen as hypothesis generation process if it is supported by: (1) interactive representations of the data and of the process; (2) triggering mechanisms (e.g.. cognitive maps, identification of inconsistencies) that lead the user to externalize his/her internal models and (3) a conceptual space that supports the translation of these hypotheses into a formal specification to be eventually implemented in the computer.

    Courses Offered

    The following senior and graduate level courses are offered.

    Important Links -

    ACM SIGMOD Publicly available database software.

    ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data SIGMOD.

    Recent Issues SIGMOD record.

    Recent Issues IEEE CS Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Data Engineering.

    DBLP Bibliography search Database Conferences/Journals


    Admission To MS / PhD Programs in Database Systems and Distributed Information Systems (click here)

    For Database Systems study and research at Graduate level (Master, and PhD) at University of Aizu, Fukushima, Japan -
     Applicants are invited to consult  the   Student Application Guide  for the Msc program as well as the  Doctoral Program  information .

    Degrees are recognized by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Government of Japan  (MONBU-KAGAKU-SHO).
     Foreign students may wish to consult the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan  (MOFA).

    For Scholarships - Please refer to:
      1. (a) Study in Japan (For Prospective Students)   (notes)
      1. (b) ,   (Study in Japan info)
      2. Association of International Education, Japan   (JASSO)
      3. Please also refer to Ministry of Education scholarships (and other scholarships) available -
      (a) Please see 'scholarships' page of JASSO for individual details
    For details of MEXT scholarships,
    please refer to web page of Embassy of Japan (study in Japan)
      (List of Scholarships JASSO)
      (b) Also, (Scholarships info) (Scholarships info)
      4. Working at campus ( University of Aizu )
      Few opportunities (with limited support) are available in the form of teaching assistant-ships and research assistant-ships.

      5. Doctoral Fellowships for Foreign Researchers (Employed research/teaching) ;
    . . . and RONPAKU(Dissertation PhD)Program (Program Information)
    RONPAKU ( General Information) (Program Information)