Assignment 4

CS 640 Winter 2013

Due: Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Hand in: via email (possible formats: PDF, HTML, OpenDocument; no Word documents or similar, proprietary formats)

Choose one of the following two papers:

• Simon Miles: Electronically Querying for the Provenance of Entities. IPAW 2006.
• Ahmad Ghazal, Dawit Yimam Seid, and Alain Crolotte: Merging Views Containing Outer Joins in the Teradata DBMS. DEXA 2010.

Read the selected paper and write a critical review (between 2 to 4 pages). Your review should address the following points (weighted as indicated). Use your own words and, except for the summary in the first point, do not merely rephrase ideas from the paper.

• Briefly summarize the paper. (1 mark)

  What is the intent and the contribution(s) of the paper? (Do not devote more than 0.5 page to this part of your review.)

• Describe the importance of the problem. (2 marks)

  Consider, for example, the following questions: Is it a new, significant, and relevant problem? Do the authors sufficiently motivate the problem? Did you learn anything? Does the problem fit the scope of our course?

• Describe the quality of the presentation. (2 marks)

  Consider, for example, the following questions: Do the authors cite the relevant literature? Do the authors clearly describe what was done and/or how it was studied? How well do the title, abstract, and summary convey the intent of the paper? Is the writing clear and concise? Do the authors provide the right level of detail? Are the figures informative? Are the mechanics (e.g., English usage) adequate?

• Evaluate the authors' contributions. (10 marks)
  • Describe the quality of the research.
    • Identify at least two strong points of the paper. For each one, indicate whether this is a major or minor strength. Explain your reasoning (i.e., what makes each of those points a strong point and why is it major/minor).
    • Identify at least two weak points of the paper. For each one, indicate whether this is a major or minor weakness, explain your reasoning, and elaborate on how the weakness could be corrected or eliminated.

    In addressing this part, consider, for example, the following aspects: Are the results described in the paper correct? Does the analysis use appropriate methods? Does the analysis cover all the important issues? Is the argument logical? How much has been implemented? Do the authors provide sufficient data and/or well-supported arguments?

  • Describe two or three of your own additional ideas for possible extensions to the work.

    You may wish to consider interesting short-term research or development that could be conducted within 6 months to explore the ideas further or help validate or repudiate the results. You could also consider long-term research or development that could be initiated to contribute more substantially to the ideas proposed in the paper. (Note that this part is especially important if you did not identify major weaknesses in the work. Explanations of how to overcome any of the identified weaknesses should not be repeated. If you choose to mention any of the extensions suggested in the paper, you must elaborate the ideas significantly beyond what is suggested.)

• Provide a numerical rating of the paper's acceptability. (0 marks)

  Possible ratings are: 1 (excellent), 2 (good), 3 (fair), 4 (neutral), 5 (poor)

Acknowledgement: This assignment has been adopted from Frank Tompa's earlier version of this course.

Mar. 24, 2013. Olaf Hartig