Database News and Products.Major Milestone in Genomics Software The Object Management Group (OMG (1) See Object Management Group. (2) "Oh my God!" See digispeak. OMG - Object Management Group ) Life Sciences Research (LSR 1. (networking) LSR - Label Switching Router. 2. (operating system) LSR - Local Shared Resources. ) Domain Task Force (DTF (Digital Tape Format) A high-performance magnetic tape technology from Sony that was based on the helical scan transport and cartridge shell of Sony's highly successful 1/2" Digital Betacam. ) recently reached a major milestone by gaining final approval for new specifications for biomolecular sequence analysis and genome mapping software. These specifications define standard representations for biological objects such as sequences, annotations, alignments, genomic maps, and map assignments. They also support interfaces for data retrieval and sequence analysis methods. This milestone was recently reached when the OMG Board of Directors voted to adopt these specifications. Software products that implement these specifications are currently under development by a number of commercial and academic groups. The LSR DTF benefits from the broad participation of academic, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, software, and government institutions. At the OMG Technical Committee Meeting, in September 11 to 15, 2000 in Burlingame, Califoniia, USA, the group reviewed specifications for bibliographic query services, macromolecular mac·ro·mol·e·cule n. A very large molecule, such as a polymer or protein, consisting of many smaller structural units linked together. Also called supermolecule. structure data, entity identification services, and chemical structure access and representation. The following OMG Technical Committee Meeting, scheduled for December 11 to 15, 2000 in Orlando, Florida The city of Orlando is a major city in central Florida and is the county seat of Orange County, Florida. According to the 2000 census, the city population was 185,951. A 2006 U.S. , USA, includes gene expression and laboratory equipment control specification proposals on the agenda. Guests are welcomed at these meetings. The LSR DTF is chartered under the auspices of the Object Management Group, an international software consortium, with over 800 member organisations. Organised in September 1997, the LSR DTF has worked at OMG Technical Meetings around the world to progress technology adoptions aimed at improving the quality and interoperability of software used in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals industries and in related academic research. Additional information on task force activities may be found at http://www.omg.org/homepages/Isr/, or through contact with one of the task force co-chairs by email: David Benton at w-david-benton@sbphrd.com, Kari Konnerth at konnerth@incyte.com, or Scott Markel at smarkel@netgenics.com. Unique Data Cleansing See address cleansing and data hygiene. Service Intergraph and Infoshare have launched a unique data cleansing service incorporating a map-based front end. Infoshare software draws upon an array of different data sets enabling information from any source to be cleansed, validated and matched. Typically, this will result in the accuracy of a dataset being improved from less than 80 per cent to better than 95 per cent. Mapping generated by Intergraph's GeoMedia universal server technology now enables clients to see cleansed data in a graphical format and improves their ability to cleanse their own data. The solution also accommodates BS7666 and other standards and is targeted at customers with large databases. These include central and local government, the emergency services emergency services Emergency care '…services …necessary to prevent death or serious impairment of health and, because of the danger to life or health, require the use of the most accessible hospital available and equipped to furnish those services' , utilities and health - as well as commercial organisations in areas such as insurance where the accuracy of databases is a high priority. www.intergraph.com/uk Software Answers Hard Questions Invention Machine has launched CoBrain, a software package that delivers actual solutions to technical problems by `reading' information using a semantic processor Software that can extract knowledge (relevance, meaning, etc.) from text. See knowledge management. that is set to revolutionise the nature of research and development. Unlike conventional search engines, that indicate related web sites or documents, CoBrain gives actual answers to specific technical problems. Once a request has been made, CoBrain trawls its database of 15 million technical solutions, drawn from English language English language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world, English is the official language of about 45 nations. patents and 700 web sites. The semantic processor enables the software to `understand' questions, and deliver answers and the synonym synonym (sĭn`ənĭm) [Gr.,=having the same name], word having a meaning that is the same as or very similar to the meaning of another word of the same language. Some are alike in some meanings only, as live and dwell. database allows for varied language use in questions, while filtering out passing references and irrelevant information in its answers. Company's using the system can, it is claimed, semantically process their own knowledge base at the rate of 20,000 pages an hour, and customise CoBrain to understand industry and company terminology. www.invention-machine.co.uk Wireless Travel Database Mercury Interactive For another company with a similar name, see Mercury Computer Systems. HP Mercury (formerly Mercury Interactive) is a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard that is a market leader in automated software quality assurance and offers products in other areas such as diagnostics, Corp. new Web performance management and testing solutions, are being used to help OAG OAG Office of the Attorney General OAG Office of the Auditor General (of Canada) OAG Official Airline Guide OAG Open-Angle Glaucoma OAG Open Application Group OAG Operational Advisory Group Mobile, a comprehensive travel information database published by OAG, meets wireless consumer expectations for performance and reliability. OAG Mobile will be accessible via hand-held devices or cellphones that support the wireless application protocol (WAP (1) (Wireless Access Point) See access point. (2) (Wireless Application Protocol) A standard for providing cellular phones, pagers and other handheld devices with secure access to e-mail and text-based Web pages. ) and run a WAP-enabled micro-browser. OAG Mobile provides access to more than 600,000 direct and connecting flights from over 800 airlines and offers users the ability to check flight schedules, flight status and seat availability. Users will also be able to take advantage of the OAG E-Notification service. With E-Notification, users can either look-up the current status of a flight, or schedule an update to be automatically sent to them via their mobile device, as well as to their e-mail address See Internet address. e-mail address - electronic mail address , as changes occur. www.mercuryinteractive.com Compare for Servers Princeton Softech, has announced Compare for Servers, a data comparison tool for server environments that understands complex database relationships. It is designed to reduce development cost by streamlining the application testing application testing - system testing process and is suitable for developers, quality assurance testers and database administrators who need to verify and compare data in two or more sets of database tables or types. An early user said Compare for Servers identifies changes to relational data, by analysing before and after images from single or multiple tables. We know what to look for in terms of expected changes, but the value of Compare for Servers is that it automatically shows us the unexpected changes, which significantly improves the accuracy of our testing and reduces the amount of time it takes to deliver a high quality application." www.princetonsoftech.com ContactDetails "Self-Updating Address Book" Service ContactDetails, the communications company Communications Company is a communications unit of the United States Marine Corps. They are part of Combat Logistics Regiment 37 , 3rd Marine Logistics Group (3MLG) and III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF). The unit is based out of the Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. that offers a solution to the problem of ever changing contact information, has gone live with the installation of e-business solutions from Sybase. Sybase's application server and database products will provide the underpinning technology infrastructure to support the rapidly growing ContactDetails web site (www.contactdetails.com) Launched in July 2000, ContactDetails was formed in response to the increasing problem of staying in touch with friends, family and professional contacts. It is based around the use of a single ContactDetails ID, which provides access to a person's set of contact information. Members of ContactDetails store their own contact information on-line and create a self-updating address book that is accessible from PC and mobile phone. The ContactDetails service could become the complement for the handset-based phone book providing users with complete and up-to-date information about all their contacts. This information, stored online, will be available by WAP or text-message query from mobile phones and on the fixed-line Internet. www.sybase.com Progress 9.1 RDMS RDMS Relational Database Management System RDMS Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer (American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers) RDMS Research Data Management Services (University of Delaware, Newark, DE) 400% rise in throughput Version 9.1 of the Progress RDBMS (Relational DataBase Management System) See relational database and DBMS. RDBMS - relational database database has it is claimed, demonstrated more than a 400% increase in transaction throughput from its Version 8.3 product. Benchmark tests run on three of today's high-end servers validate that the multi-platform Progress RDBMS enables application developers to maximise the use of today's server technology and realise the full potential of their database systems. In comparison to the Version 8.3 release, the Progress Version 9.1 database demonstrated a 456% increase in performance over the Sun Enterprise 10000 server, a 438% increase over a Hewlett-Packard V-Class server and 517% increase over an IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) RS/6000 Model S80. The Progress RDBMS reached a performance record for single-server transactions by processing over one billion transactions within a 24-hour period. Using the Progress ATM Benchmark application, the Progress database achieved a peak transaction rate of over 12,175 transactions per second In a very generic sense, the term Transactions Per Second refers to the number of atomic actions performed by certain entity per second. In a more restrictied view, the term is usually used by DBMS vendor and user community to refer to the number of database transactions performed and a sustained transaction rate of 11,522 transactions per second. At a peak rate of over 700,000 transactions per minute, these most recent tests represent a 1201o increase over tests done with beta software Noun 1. beta software - software that has not yet been released but has received an alpha test and still has more bugs than a regular release; "beta software is usually available only to particular users who will test it" . Progress Version 9.1, released in March of 2000, introduced a number of new features that enable Progress-based applications to thrive in Interact and enterprise environments where user demand is often unpredictable and high performance is essential. These include Optimised Checkpoint Processing, which enables portions of the database to stay in memory longer for faster updates and the patent-pending Concurrent Commit Lock Protocol, which increases the parallelism An overlapping of processing, input/output (I/O) or both. 1. parallelism - parallel processing. 2. (parallel) parallelism - The maximum number of independent subtasks in a given task at a given point in its execution. E.g. allowed within the storage engine for simple update and commit operations used by a majority of database applications. www.progress.com Filemaker Mobile FileMaker Mobile,is the first cross-platform database for the Palm OS handheld. An easy-to-use companion to FileMaker Pro 5, FileMaker Mobile will allow a user to transfer and synchronise data between FileMaker Pro databases on Windows and Mac OS systems and Palm Powered handhelds. FileMaker Mobile, scheduled to ship this winter, is designed on a load and go mobile user model: an individual user selects and loads the FileMaker data they require from their desktop computer to the Palm OS handheld. Later, the data on the handheld may be re-synched via the Palm HotSync technology with the individual's single-user FileMaker Pro database on the desktop computer. The Company expects that Filemaker will be priced under o60. System requirements To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer system. These pre-requisites are known as (computer) system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed to an absolute rule. for Filemaker Mobile for the Palm OS platform are not available at this time. www.filemaker.co.uk One Stop Portal for Digital Images ibase Image Systems, the image database management specialist, has launched Image Digest (www.imagedigest.com.), a web portal See portal. containing a compilation of the best on-line image sites. The site is designed to provide a `one stop shop' for picture researchers and the digital design community to gain access to a wide variety of digital images. The portal will be regularly updated with every on-line picture web site viewed and rated for content, case of use, and quality of design. The service includes comprehensive indexing by category and keyword to enable the user to locate relevant sites easily www.ibase. Medi Pack MediPack enables doctors to analyse and report back on performance indicators, such as waiting times, patient satisfaction issues, resource allocation resource allocation Managed care The constellation of activities and decisions which form the basis for prioritizing health care needs and planning, survival analysis and drug effectiveness. The software is based on survey, research and analysis tools, already used by medical researchers. MediPack is designed to help GPs meet required levels of patient care, as outlined by recent Government initiatives. All local trusts are required to keep electronic data records, as part of the local implementation strategy for information management and technology. SPSS A statistical package from SPSS, Inc., Chicago (www.spss.com) that runs on PCs, most mainframes and minis and is used extensively in marketing research. It provides over 50 statistical processes, including regression analysis, correlation and analysis of variance. is offering MediPack to GPs at less than a third of the normal price. The basic package costs just 345 [pounds sterling], instead of the standard 1,140 [pounds sterling]. A desktop training package is also available, giving doctors access to expert help and advice whenever they need it. www.spss.com/uk |
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