Ahmad Abdollahzadeh Barforoush

     1987-1990:

Ph.D. in computer science, University of Bristol, England,

     1978-1980:

Master of Science in Computer Science, West Coast Universities, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.A.,
           Major: Information Systems
           Minor: Application Programming.

     1972-1975:

B.Sc., University of Tehran.
          Major: Accounting
          Minor: Mathematics

     1969-1972:

Diploma, The Alborz High School, Tehran, Iran.

Ph.D. Research Project

The Research project was concerned with the principles of multi-site information retrieval systems and, as part of this work, a multi-library inquiry system was being implemented and its performance evaluated. The work involves problems of knowledge assimilation in a concurrent environment.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly common for the Users of Information Systems to Formulate queries, which can only be answered by accessing a number of different databases, Either locally or remotely. Advances in Networking Capabilities Mean that access to Remote database is Generally a straight forward Matter but Less Attention has been Paid to the Problems of Generating Appropriate Requests, Receiving and Collecting the Responses in a Convenient form for the User.

The System Shows how to Extract Data from Heterogeneous Distributed databases and then how to Edit the Results in Such a way that the Inquirer can Easily Understand the Results. The procedure uses the joint Academic Network JANET to Access Academic Libraries Located Throughout the U, K.

The Questions are posed in a user-friendly way and these are translated to suit each database using its Protocol before they are forwarded to the database. The Final Results are also presented in a user-friendly Fashion. Several Tasks are Important in the Design and Implementation of a Multi database Inquiry Service (MDB-ES). One of the Crucial Stages in the Development of the MDB-ES is the Extraction of the Relevant Data from the Responses that the System has obtained after Remote Communication with Selected databases and Correctly Combining the Partial Results from Individual Queries into a single Answer. Obviously we cannot Assume that the Remote Systems after the user Relevant Items Only many Retrieval Systems (Especially Library Ones) use Abbreviations with the Result that they Provide Partial or Wrong Information, Although this is not Necessarily a Major Problem where the user can adopt a “Browsing” Approach.

It has also been Necessary to Consider the Problem of Designing a Knowledge Acquisition System (KAS) which Elicits, Analyses and Interprets the Responses which have been Obtained from Remote database.

One of the Major Problems in the Knowledge Acquisition area Concerns Missing Information and the Inability to Cope with this Satisfactorily has been one of the Causes of the Lack of Success of Some Information Systems Currently Available.

Particular Attention has been paid to this Problem in the work Presented here, both Indetermining what Information is Missing and how this can be handled.

The system is written in such a way that it can easily be expanded to Cope with Additional database, which use new protocols. The model Described is sufficiently general to be applied to any kind of database, it is not restricted to bibliographic Database. A Formal Specification in VDM is also presented.

Software was written in PROLOG on a UNIX system, with partial C programming embedded and particular attention paid to ensure portability.