CS6400 (Spring 2005)

Homework 1 (Due, hardcopy in class Feb 1, 2005)

Topic: Review of research papers in advanced applications

(Weight: 8%)

The purpose of this assignment is to allow you to look at published research in some application areas of database technologies and provide you some experience with assessing such papers. You should proceed as follows:

1) Read the last chapter (Ch 29 in ed. 4 or Ch 27 in ed.3), in the Elmasri/Navathe textbook. In these chapters the following application areas are covered: Ed. 4- Mobile DB applications, Multimedia Applications, GIS (Geograhic Information Systems) and Genome Data Management. Edition 3 also covers the topics of Web Database applications and Digital Libraries.

2) Select one research paper per area from any two of the above application areas. Note that you must pick up a research paper and not a white paper or some working paper (written by someone and placed on the web). Look at the bibliography at the end of the book to see typical sources of research literature. They mostly include ACM and IEEE journals and conference proceedings. Most of them are found in the ACM and IEEE digital libraries as well as in our library in hardcopy form. Consult the source mentioned in the syllabus.

3) Write a short report on each of the two papers to include the following:

a. Topic selected (e.g. Genome Data Management) and a full citation for the paper. Examples of how to cite papers:

Waigen Yee, M. Donahoo, S.B.Navathe, "A Framework for Data Fragment Grouping to Improve Server Scalability in Intermittently Synchronized Databases,” Proc. ACM CIKM (Conference on Information and Knowledge Management) , October 2000.

Kogelnik AM, MT Lott, MD Brown, S. B. Navathe, and DC Wallace. " MITOMAP: a human mitochondrial genome database - 1998 update," In Nucleic Acid Research, Vol 26 (1), Jan 1998.

b. Your evaluation of the paper that includes:

- General scope (what is this paper about- how does it limit its scope)

- The problem addressed (what specific research problem is being addressed)

- Approach /techniques/methodology (how do the authors attempt to solve the problem)

- Results reported

- Contribution made by authors

- You feedback on how authors could improve this work.

- Open problems for the future.

NOTES: - Do not write more than 4 pages total (single spaced, 12 font)

- Do not repeat what is in the book and do not attempt a general survey of the topic

- Grading will take into account your choice of paper (do not choose trivial short papers), your understanding of the content and your analytical ability to evaluate the merit of the paper.