As a web programming language, one of PHP’s strengths traditionally has been to make it easy to write scripts that access databases so that you can create dynamic web pages that incorporate database content. This is important when you want to provide visitors with information that is always up-to-date, without hand tweaking a lot of static HTML pages. However, although PHP is easy to use, it includes no general-purpose database access interface. Instead it has a number of specialized ones that take the form of separate sets of functions for each database system. There is one set for MySQL, another for InterBase, and another for PostgreSQL—and others as well.
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The combination of evolving ICT standards that increase the interoperability between applications and the ever-increasing need for a more seamless access to and exchange of information is a major driver in the OECD ICT strategy. This paper describes the role and use of web services in the context of recent developments at the OECD to improve the accessibility of statistical information. It follows up on a paper presented at the 2002 ISIS meeting about “Improving Access to Statistical Information at OECD in Response to Users’ Requirements” and describes a technology framework – called “dot.STAT” – that has been devised for the implementation of applications that enable easy access to certain OECD reference data. The concepts outlined in this paper have been developed in close collaboration with the Statistics Directorate, specialised OECD-internal groups and task forces 2, as well as members of the SDMX Consortium3.
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Because the properties of aluminum alloys are dependent upon both the exposure temperature and also to the length of time of exposure, the prediction of design values for structures designed to last many years is a significant challenge. For relatively short-life structures, the need is addressed simply by planning ahead and carrying out a test plan that replicates the intended service conditions. This is feasible for structures whose design life might be as much as a year or even five years, but it is not very practical for structures for which the life expectancy is 10 years or more.
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RealObjects PDFreactor is a powerful formatting processor that enables server-side PDF creation from XML and XHTML/HTML documents using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define page layout and styles. You can dynamically generate PDF documents such as reports, invoices, statements and others on-the-fly. Since PDFreactor runs on your server, the end-user does not need any software other than a Web browser with a free PDF viewer.
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Tagging is an important way for users to succinctly describe the content they upload to the Internet. However, most tag-suggestion systems recommend words that are highly correlated with the existing tag set, and thus add little information to a user’s contribution. This paper describes a means to determine the ambiguity of a set of (user-contributed) tags and suggests new tags that disambiguate the original tags. We introduce a probabilistic framework that allows us to find two tags that appear in different contexts but are both likely to co-occur with the original tag set. If such tags can be found, the current description is considered “ambiguous” and the two tags are recommended to the user for further clarification. In contrast to previous work, we only query the user when information is most needed and good suggestions are available. We verify the efficacy of our approach using geographical, temporal and semantic metadata, and a user study. We built our system using statistics from a large (100M) database of images and their tags.
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Presenting compelling search results depends critically on understanding what is there to be presented on the first place. Given that the current generation of search engines have a very limited understanding of the query entered by the user, the content returned as a result and the relationship of the two, the opportunities for customizing search results have been limited.
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A living cell can be viewed as a dynamical system in which a large number of different substances react continuously and non-linearly with one another. In order to understand the behavior of a continuous non-linear dynamical system with numerous interacting parts, it is usually insufficient to study behavior of each part in isolation. Instead, the behavior must usually be analyzed as a whole (Tomita et al., 1999).
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So - you are wrapping up development of yet another Web app. The database is in place, CRUD functions are working, user interface and reports have been signed off. Now your thoughts are turning to access control. Just enough time to splice in that trusty user authentication and roles module, make a few tweaks and move on to the next project. Wait! Do you really want to contribute yet another authorization stovepipe to the growing forest? We all curse the proliferation of authentication and authorization “solutions” on the Web. Yet we continue to treat access control as an after thought.
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