Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks, such as unknown quality properties of the…

The term Federated Databases refers to the data integration of distributed, autonomous and heterogeneous databases. However, a federation can also include information systems, not only databases. At integrating data, several issues must be addressed. Here, we focus on the problem…

The studies of Relational Data Base Management Systems and Databases constitute nowadays a main tren of investigation in large businesses and universities of the entire world. The creation of a data base engine keeps being a challenge since there are…

The main objective of this paper centers on reviewing the evolution of Decision Support System´s (DSS) architectures, particularly as they apply to natural resources. Today it is difficult to conceive the existence of a rural planning automated system that doesn't…

The concept of “approximate” searching has applications in a vast number of fields. Some examples are non-traditional databases (e. g. storing images, fingerprints or audio clips, where the concept of exact search is of no use and we search instead…

Data mining is at the core of the knowledge discovery process. However, an initial preprocessing step is crucial for assuring reliable results within this process. Preprocessing of data is a time-consuming and non-trivial task since data quality issues should be…

The term “Federated Databases” refers to the data integration of distributed, autonomous and heterogeneous databases. However, a federation can also include information systems, not only databases. When integrating data, several issues must be addressed. Here, we focus on the problem…

Product-line architectures, i.e. a software architecture and component set shared by a family of products, represents a promising approach to achieving reuse of software. Several companies are initiating or have recently adopted a product-line architecture. However, little experience is available…

Ontologies serve as a mean to establish a conceptually concise basis for communicating knowledge for many purposes. Within the information integration area, ontologies are useful to solve heterogeneity problems. They provide a set of knowledge terms, including the vocabulary, the…

Numerical Taxonomy aims to group in clusters, using so-called structure analysis of operational taxonomic units (OTUs or taxons or taxa) through numerical methods. Clusters that consitute families was the purpose of this series of last projects.
Structural analysis, based on…