Bin Yang (Chinese: 杨彬; Pinyin: Yáng Bīn) is a professor of computer science the department of computer science, Aalborg University. His research interests include data management and machine learning. == Education and career == Bin Yang received his bachelor and master degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Fudan University in China in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he worked at the Databases and Information Systems department at Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik in Germany. From 2011 to 2014, he was employed at the department of computer science, Aarhus University. He has been employed at Aalborg University since 2014. At the present moment, he works on a number of different projects: Time Series Analytics and Spatio-temporal Data Management, funded by Huawei, 2020 - 2022. Light-AI for Cognitive Power Electronics, funded by Villum Synergy Programme, 2020 - 2022. Advance: A Data-Intensive Paradigm for Dynamic, Uncertain Networks, funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2019 - 2023. Algorithmic Foundations for Data-Intensive Routing, funded by The Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education, 2019 - 2021. Astra: AnalyticS of Time seRies in spAtial networks, funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2018 - 2021. Distinguished Scholar, funded by The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, 2018 - 2021. == Awards == Bin Yang has received a series of awards throughout his career: Sapere Aude Research Leader, Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2018. Distinguished Scholar, The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, 2018. Early Career Distinguished Lecturer, 20th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM), 2019. Distinguished Program Committee Member, 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2019 Best paper award at IEEE 14th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM2013), Milan, Italy Best demo award at IEEE 14th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM2013), Milan, Italy 2015 best paper in Pervasive and Embedded Computing, Shanghai Computer Academy == Selected publications == Sean Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, Jilin Hu, Jian Tang, and Bin Yang. Unsupervised Path Representation Learning with Curriculum Negative Sampling. IJCAI 2021. Razvan-Gabriel Cirstea, Tung Kieu, Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, and Sinno Jialin Pan. EnhanceNet: Plugin Neural Networks for Enhancing Correlated Time Series Forecasting. ICDE 2021. Sean Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Bin Yang. Context-Aware Path Ranking in Road Networks. TKDE 2021. Simon Aagaard Pedersen, Bin Yang, and Christian S. Jensen. Anytime Stochastic Routing with Hybrid Learning. PVLDB 13(9): 1555-1567 (2020). Tung Kieu, Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Christian S. Jensen. Outlier Detection for Time Series with Recurrent Autoencoder Ensembles. IJCAI 2019, 2725–2732. Jilin Hu, Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, and Christian S. Jensen. Stochastic Weight Completion for Road Networks using Graph Convolutional Networks. ICDE 2019, 1274–1285. Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, Jilin Hu, and Christian S. Jensen. Learning to Route with Sparse Trajectory Sets. ICDE 2018, 1073–1084. Bin Yang, Jian Dai, Chenjuan Guo, Christian S. Jensen, and Jilin Hu. PACE: A PAth-CEntric Paradigm For Stochastic Path Finding. The VLDB Journal 27(2): 153-178 (2018). Jian Dai, Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Zhiming Ding. Personalized Route Recommendation using Big Trajectory Data. ICDE 2015, 543–554, Seoul, Korea, April 2015. Bin Yang, Manohar Kaul, and Christian S. Jensen. Using Incomplete Information for Complete Weight Annotation of Road Networks. TKDE 26(5):1267-1279. Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Christian S. Jensen. Travel Cost Inference from Sparse, Spatio-Temporally Correlated Time Series Using Markov Models. PVLDB 6(9):769-780. VLDB 2013, Riva del Garda, Trento, Italy, August 2013.
Easyrec
easyrec is an open-source program that provides personalized recommendations using RESTful Web services to be integrated into Web enabled applications. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies and hosted at SourceForge. It is written in Java, uses a MySQL database and comes with an administration tool. == History == The development of easyrec, an implementation of the Adaptive Personalization approach, started in the course of several research and development projects conducted by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies in close cooperation with international companies. During the year of 2008 the core functionality of easyrec was developed forming the basis of research prototypes focusing on the music domain (e.g. MusicExplorer). In June 2009 a beta version of easyrec, containing basic administration features, was integrated into a movie streaming portal for evaluation purposes. Furthermore, in September 2009 easyrec was awarded a special recognition in the category “Award for Innovations – IT Innovations for an economic upswing” by the jury of the Austrian state prize for multimedia and e-business. After a comprehensive refactoring phase and the integration of the evaluation results easyrec was published on SourceForge on 18 February 2010. In course of the CeBIT tradeshow 2011 in Hanover easyrec has been awarded the German “INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT 2011”. == Principles == The following five primary goals guided the development of easyrec. It should be a ready-to-use application, not another algorithmic framework It should be easy to use, concerning installation, integration and administration It should be robust and scalable for serving real world applications It should be free of charge, so that anyone can profit from personalization features It should rely on a community-driven development == Uses == Although easyrec is a domain-agnostic, general purpose personalization system, the current Web service API is customized for providing online shops with item recommendations. Especially for small and medium enterprises, easyrec provides a low barrier entrance to personalization. == Features == A major feature of easyrec is a set of usage statistics and other business relevant information presented via an administration and management interface. Furthermore, the easyrec administrator is supported by a variety of administration and configuration functions including the manual import or adaptation of business rules. Integrators or developers benefit from the lightweight Web service APIs (REST and SOAP) as well as from the guided installation wizard. Concerning personalization functionality easyrec is providing the following services unpersonalized recommendations of the form "other users also bought/viewed/...", etc. personalized recommendation depending on individual preferences rankings such as "most bought items", "most viewed...", etc. Additionally, as an integration showcase, a MediaWiki extension was developed and is bundled with the application. Currently additional features like further recommender algorithms and a plugin-system are evaluated and prepared for integration into the easyrec system. == Architecture == The underlying architecture of easyrec is designed to be robust and scalable—separating time-consuming computations from the task of online assembling of recommendations. easyrec is designed as a multi-layer system consisting of a database layer as storage of user actions and pre-calculated business rules an application layer for hosting online and offline recommendation services and an API layer for various Web service interfaces. Moreover, the generator server contains different item association generators which create business rules that define a relation between two items.
Data quality
Data quality refers to the state of qualitative or quantitative pieces of information. There are many definitions of data quality, but data is generally considered high quality if it is "fit for [its] intended uses in operations, decision making and planning". Data is deemed of high quality if it correctly represents the real-world construct to which it refers. Apart from these definitions, as the number of data sources increases, the question of internal data consistency becomes significant, regardless of fitness for use for any particular external purpose. People's views on data quality can often be in disagreement, even when discussing the same set of data used for the same purpose. When this is the case, businesses may adopt recognised international standards for data quality (See #International Standards for Data Quality below). Data governance can also be used to form agreed upon definitions and standards, including international standards, for data quality. In such cases, data cleansing, including standardization, may be required in order to ensure data quality. == Definitions == Defining data quality is difficult due to the many contexts data are used in, as well as the varying perspectives among end users, producers, and custodians of data. From a consumer perspective, data quality is: "data that are fit for use by data consumers" data "meeting or exceeding consumer expectations" data that "satisfies the requirements of its intended use" From a business perspective, data quality is: data that are "'fit for use' in their intended operational, decision-making and other roles" or that exhibits "'conformance to standards' that have been set, so that fitness for use is achieved" data that "are fit for their intended uses in operations, decision making and planning" "the capability of data to satisfy the stated business, system, and technical requirements of an enterprise" From a standards-based perspective, data quality is: the "degree to which a set of inherent characteristics (quality dimensions) of an object (data) fulfills requirements" "the usefulness, accuracy, and correctness of data for its application" Arguably, in all these cases, "data quality" is a comparison of the actual state of a particular set of data to a desired state, with the desired state being typically referred to as "fit for use," "to specification," "meeting consumer expectations," "free of defect," or "meeting requirements." These expectations, specifications, and requirements are usually defined by one or more individuals or groups, standards organizations, laws and regulations, business policies, or software development policies. == Dimensions of data quality == Drilling down further, those expectations, specifications, and requirements are stated in terms of characteristics or dimensions of the data, such as: accessibility or availability accuracy or correctness comparability completeness or comprehensiveness consistency, coherence, or clarity credibility, reliability, or reputation flexibility plausibility relevance, pertinence, or usefulness timeliness or latency uniqueness validity or reasonableness A systematic scoping review of the literature suggests that data quality dimensions and methods with real world data are not consistent in the literature, and as a result quality assessments are challenging due to the complex and heterogeneous nature of these data. == International standards for data quality == ISO 8000 is an international standard for data quality. Managed by the International Organization for Standardization, the ISO 8000 standards address and describe general aspects of data quality including principles, vocabulary and measurement data governance data quality management data quality assessment quality of master data, including exchange of characteristic data and identifiers quality of industrial data == History == Before the rise of the inexpensive computer data storage, massive mainframe computers were used to maintain name and address data for delivery services. This was so that mail could be properly routed to its destination. The mainframes used business rules to correct common misspellings and typographical errors in name and address data, as well as to track customers who had moved, died, gone to prison, married, divorced, or experienced other life-changing events. Government agencies began to make postal data available to a few service companies to cross-reference customer data with the National Change of Address registry (NCOA). This technology saved large companies millions of dollars in comparison to manual correction of customer data. Large companies saved on postage, as bills and direct marketing materials made their way to the intended customer more accurately. Initially sold as a service, data quality moved inside the walls of corporations, as low-cost and powerful server technology became available. Companies with an emphasis on marketing often focused their quality efforts on name and address information, but data quality is recognized as an important property of all types of data. Principles of data quality can be applied to supply chain data, transactional data, and nearly every other category of data found. For example, making supply chain data conform to a certain standard has value to an organization by: 1) avoiding overstocking of similar but slightly different stock; 2) avoiding false stock-out; 3) improving the understanding of vendor purchases to negotiate volume discounts; and 4) avoiding logistics costs in stocking and shipping parts across a large organization. For companies with significant research efforts, data quality can include developing protocols for research methods, reducing measurement error, bounds checking of data, cross tabulation, modeling and outlier detection, verifying data integrity, etc. == Overview == There are a number of theoretical frameworks for understanding data quality. A systems-theoretical approach influenced by American pragmatism expands the definition of data quality to include information quality, and emphasizes the inclusiveness of the fundamental dimensions of accuracy and precision on the basis of the theory of science (Ivanov, 1972). One framework, dubbed "Zero Defect Data" (Hansen, 1991) adapts the principles of statistical process control to data quality. Another framework seeks to integrate the product perspective (conformance to specifications) and the service perspective (meeting consumers' expectations) (Kahn et al. 2002). Another framework is based in semiotics to evaluate the quality of the form, meaning and use of the data (Price and Shanks, 2004). One highly theoretical approach analyzes the ontological nature of information systems to define data quality rigorously (Wand and Wang, 1996). A considerable amount of data quality research involves investigating and describing various categories of desirable attributes (or dimensions) of data. Nearly 200 such terms have been identified and there is little agreement in their nature (are these concepts, goals or criteria?), their definitions or measures (Wang et al., 1993). Software engineers may recognize this as a similar problem to "ilities". MIT has an Information Quality (MITIQ) Program, led by Professor Richard Wang, which produces a large number of publications and hosts a significant international conference in this field (International Conference on Information Quality, ICIQ). This program grew out of the work done by Hansen on the "Zero Defect Data" framework (Hansen, 1991). In practice, data quality is a concern for professionals involved with a wide range of information systems, ranging from data warehousing and business intelligence to customer relationship management and supply chain management. One industry study estimated the total cost to the U.S. economy of data quality problems at over U.S. $600 billion per annum (Eckerson, 2002). Incorrect data – which includes invalid and outdated information – can originate from different data sources – through data entry, or data migration and conversion projects. In 2002, the USPS and PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report stating that 23.6 percent of all U.S. mail sent is incorrectly addressed. One reason contact data becomes stale very quickly in the average database – more than 45 million Americans change their address every year. In fact, the problem is such a concern that companies are beginning to set up a data governance team whose sole role in the corporation is to be responsible for data quality. In some organizations, this data governance function has been established as part of a larger Regulatory Compliance function - a recognition of the importance of Data/Information Quality to organizations. Problems with data quality don't only arise from incorrect data; inconsistent data is a problem as well. Eliminating data shadow systems and centralizing data in a warehouse is one of the initiatives a company can take to ensure data consistency. En
Vocabulary-based transformation
In metadata, a vocabulary-based transformation (VBT) is a transformation aided by the use of a semantic equivalence statements within a controlled vocabulary. Many organizations today require communication between two or more computers. Although many standards exist to exchange data between computers such as HTML or email, there is still much structured information that needs to be exchanged between computers that is not standardized. The process of mapping one source of data into another is often a slow and labor-intensive process. VBT is a possible way to avoid much of the time and cost of manual data mapping using traditional extract, transform, load technologies. == History == The term vocabulary-based transformation was first defined by Roy Shulte of the Gartner Group around May 2003 and appeared in annual "hype-cycle" for integration. == Application == VBT allows computer systems integrators to more automatically "look up" the definitions of data elements in a centralized data dictionary and use that definition and the equivalent mappings to transform that data element into a foreign namespace. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) language also support three semantic equivalence statements. == Companies or products == IONA Technologies Contivo and Delta by Liaison Technologies enLeague Systems ItemField Unicorn Solutions Vitria Technology Zonar
Transliteracy
Transliteracy is "a fluidity of movement across a range of technologies, media and contexts". It is an ability to use diverse techniques to collaborate across different social groups. Transliteracy combines a range of capabilities required to move across a range of contexts, media, technologies and genres. Conceptually, transliteracy is situated across five capabilities: information capabilities (see information literacy), ICT (information and communication technologies), communication and collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. It is underpinned by literacy and numeracy. (See figure below) The concept of transliteracy is impacting the system of education and libraries. == History == While the term appears to come from the prefix trans- ('across') and the word literacy, the scholars who coined it say they developed it from the practice of transliteration, which means to use the letters of one language to write down a different language. The study of transliteracy was first developed in 2005 by the Transliteracies Research Project, directed by University of California at Santa Barbara Professor Alan Liu. The concept of 'transliteracies' was developed as part of research into online reading. It was shared and refined at the Transliteracies conference, held at UC Santa Barbara in 2005. The conference inspired the at the time De Montfort University Professor, Sue Thomas, to create the Production in Research and Transliteracy (PART) group, which evolved into the Transliteracy Research Group. The current meaning of transliteracy was defined in the group's seminal paper Transliteracy: crossing divides as "the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks." The concept was enthusiastically adopted by a number of professional groups, notably in the library and information field. Transliteracy Research Group Archive 2006–2013 curates numerous resources from this period. For a number of years, there was a gap between significant interest in transliteracy among professional groups and the scarcity of research. A group of academics from the University of Bordeaux considered transliteracy mainly in the school context. Freelance writer and consultant, Sue Thomas, studied transliteracy and creativity, while Suzana Sukovic, executive director of educational research and evidence-based practice at HETI, researched transliteracy in relation to digital storytelling. The first book on the topic, Transliteracy in complex information environment by Sukovic, is based on research and experience with practice-based projects. == Transliteracy in education == Transliteracy is making an impact on the classroom setting because of how technologically advanced younger generations are today. In 2012, Adam Marcus, a teacher and librarian at the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), decided to incorporate transliteracy into his school's public library summer reading program. He had a desire to enhance the experience of reading for his students by allowing them to connect to the text differently by using social media. He used a tool called VoiceThread in order to have his students "take part in conversations, formulate ideas, and share higher-order thinking through a variety of media channels: video, audio, text, images, and music". Students were also enabled to communicate with the book's author through blogs and websites, and were given multiple modes of media to comprehend and engage with the text on a deeper level. Some of these examples include an audio-video glossary and web links that aimed to bring the details of the text to life. The results of his experiment were deemed to have a positive effect on the program as students responded well to this interactive experience they were given. Marcus believes that it is important for educators and librarians to enhance storytelling for children by providing them with a modern and transliterate experience that one could not receive back then. The Agence nationale de la recherche funded a program at a French high school from 2013 to 2015, where the transliteracy skills of students were tested and observed. Students were placed in groups of three or four members and were required to use all sorts of media and tools in order to collect data for their projects. They were not allowed to only use digital sources, and were advised to use a diversity of sources. The focus of this experiment was to observe "the possible diversity of media and tools employed, on the ways of and reasons for switching from one to another, on how these different media and tools are distributed within contexts, according to the academic requirements and tasks individually and collectively performed by the students." The conclusions of the experiment dealt with physical space and organization being an issue for students and teachers to deal with. Spatially, it was challenging for students to navigate through different mediums when their space inside the classroom was limited. It was noticed that students were prone to use something that took up less space, rather than focusing on expanding their diversity of sources. Organizationally, it was challenging for students to organize all of the information they collected since everything was not being search and collected for digitally. In addition, students were not allotted a lot of time to complete their projects which also impacted their final product. == Transliteracy in libraries == In 2009, Dr. Susie Andretta, senior lecturer in Information Management at London Metropolitan University, conducted interviews with four different information professionals including an academic librarian, an outreach librarian, a content manager, and a scholar within the library science and information discipline. She was aiming to explore how transliteracy was colliding and combining with the print-world of libraries. Dr. Andretta defines transliteracy as "an umbrella term encompassing different literacies and multiple communication channels that require active participation with and across a range of platforms, and embracing both linear and non-linear messages (3)." The goals of these interviews ranged from the following: to test the information professional's awareness of transliteracy, to have them identify transliteracy and how it is integrated into their work, and to explain the impact transliteracy has had on they library they work at. Andretta found that out of all the information professionals interviewed, it was only the academic librarian who was vaguely familiar with the concept of transliteracy. Bernadette Daly Swanson, an Academic Librarian at UC Davis, expresses in her interview with Dr. Andretta how she would "like to think that the transliterate library is more of an environment where we do different things [...] I would take maybe about a third of the first floor of our library and transform it into a lab [...] where we can start to evolve [..] explore, and experiment in media development, content development, and do it not just with librarians; so open up the space for other people [...] so you don't get people working in isolation." Although the other three candidates that Dr. Andretta interviewed had not heard of the term transliteracy, they responded well to the concept once it was explained to them and agreed with its impact on the workplace. Dr. Michael Stephens, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, explains in his interview how the term transliteracy describes the courses he teaches on libraries and Web 2.0 technologies. Dr. Stephens states that students being educated in Web 2.0 technologies gives them "the opportunity to experience what the channel can be and the potential for that sharing learning, for asking questions, just for out loud thinking – I think it's incredibly valuable. [..] this is where this wonderful concept comes in, it was teaching them transliteracy and the fact that they can move across channels without getting worried about it." Dr. Andretta concluded from her interviews how although transliteracy may not be a very well-known term yet, it has nonetheless established itself into the intuition of libraries while also transforming the traditional library to a world of enhanced and expanded services. "Inherent in this transition are the challenges of having to adapt to a constantly changing technological landscape, the multiple literacies that this generates, and the need to establish a multifaceted library profession that can speak the multiple-media languages of its diverse users." Thomas Ipri, a librarian at the University of Nevada, advocates for libraries needing to make a change in their literary functions. He argues that the divide between digital and print makes it harder for libraries to accommodate their patrons and to share information. He f
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on demand". It is commonly referred to as "the cloud". == Characteristics == In 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified five "essential characteristics" for cloud systems. Below are the exact definitions according to NIST: On-demand self-service: "A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider." Broad network access: "Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations)." Resource pooling: " The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand." Rapid elasticity: "Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time." Measured service: "Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service. By 2023, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) had expanded and refined the list. == History == The history of cloud computing extends to the 1960s, with the initial concepts of time-sharing becoming popularized via remote job entry (RJE). The "data center" model, where users submitted jobs to operators to run on mainframes, was predominantly used during this era. This period saw broad experimentation with making large-scale computing power more accessible through time-sharing, while optimizing infrastructure, platforms, and applications to improve efficiency for end users. The "cloud" metaphor for virtualized services dates to 1994, when it was used by General Magic for the universe of "places" that mobile agents in the Telescript environment could "go". The metaphor is credited to David Hoffman, a General Magic communications specialist, based on its long-standing use in networking and telecom. The expression cloud computing became more widely known in 1996 when Compaq Computer Corporation drew up a business plan for future computing and the Internet. The company's ambition was to supercharge sales with "cloud computing-enabled applications". The business plan foresaw that online consumer file storage would likely be commercially successful. As a result, Compaq decided to sell server hardware to internet service providers. In the 2000s, the application of cloud computing began to take shape with the establishment of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which allowed developers to build applications independently. In 2006 Amazon Simple Storage Service, known as Amazon S3, and the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) were released. In 2008 NASA's development of the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds. The following decade saw the launch of various cloud services. In 2010, Microsoft launched Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace Hosting and NASA initiated an open-source cloud-software project, OpenStack. IBM introduced the IBM SmartCloud framework in 2011, and Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud in 2012. In December 2019, Amazon launched AWS Outposts, a service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to customer data centers, co-location spaces, or on-premises facilities. == Value proposition == Cloud computing can shorten time to market by offering pre-configured tools, scalable resources, and managed services, allowing users to focus on core business value rather than maintaining infrastructure. Cloud platforms can enable organizations and individuals to reduce upfront capital expenditures on physical infrastructure by shifting to an operational expenditure model, where costs scale with usage. Cloud platforms also offer managed services and tools, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and machine learning, which might otherwise require significant in-house expertise and infrastructure investment. While cloud computing can offer cost advantages through effective resource optimization, organizations often face challenges such as unused resources, inefficient configurations, and hidden costs without proper oversight and governance. Many cloud platforms provide cost management tools, such as AWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Management, and frameworks like FinOps have emerged to standardize financial operations in the cloud. Cloud computing also facilitates collaboration, remote work, and global service delivery by enabling secure access to data and applications from any location with an internet connection. Cloud providers offer various redundancy options for core services, such as managed storage and managed databases, though redundancy configurations often vary by service tier. Advanced redundancy strategies, such as cross-region replication or failover systems, typically require explicit configuration and may incur additional costs or licensing fees. Cloud environments operate under a shared responsibility model, where providers are typically responsible for infrastructure security, physical hardware, and software updates, while customers are accountable for data encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and application-level security. These responsibilities vary depending on the cloud service model—Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS)—with customers typically having more control and responsibility in IaaS environments and progressively less in PaaS and SaaS models, often trading control for convenience and managed services. == Adoption and suitability == The decision to adopt cloud computing or maintain on-premises infrastructure depends on factors such as scalability, cost structure, latency requirements, regulatory constraints, and infrastructure customization. Organizations with variable or unpredictable workloads, limited capital for upfront investments, or a focus on rapid scalability benefit from cloud adoption. Startups, SaaS companies, and e-commerce platforms often prefer the pay-as-you-go operational expenditure (OpEx) model of cloud infrastructure. Additionally, companies prioritizing global accessibility, remote workforce enablement, disaster recovery, and leveraging advanced services such as AI/ML and analytics are well-suited for the cloud. In recent years, some cloud providers have started offering specialized services for high-performance computing and low-latency applications, addressing some use cases previously exclusive to on-premises setups. On the other hand, organizations with strict regulatory requirements, highly predictable workloads, or reliance on deeply integrated legacy systems may find cloud infrastructure less suitable. Businesses in industries like defense, government, or those handling highly sensitive data often favor on-premises setups for greater control and data sovereignty. Additionally, companies with ultra-low latency requirements, such as high-frequency trading (HFT) firms, rely on custom hardware (e.g., FPGAs) and physical proximity to exchanges, which most cloud providers cannot fully replicate despite recent advancements. Similarly, tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon build their own data centers due to economies of scale, predictable workloads, and the ability to customize hardware and network infrastructure for optimal efficiency. However, these companies also use cloud services selectively for certain workloads and applications where it aligns with their operational needs. In practice, many organizations are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud architectures, combining on-premises infrastructure with cloud services. This approach allows businesses to balance scalability, cost-effectiveness, and control, offering the benefits of both deployment models while mitigating their respective limitations. == Challenges and limitations == One of the primary challenges of cloud computing, compared with traditional on-premises systems, is maintaining data security and privacy. Cloud users entrust their sensitive data to third-party providers, who may not have adequate measures to protect it from unau
International Philosophical Bibliography
The International Philosophical Bibliography (IPB), also known in French as Répertoire bibliographique de la philosophie (RBP), is a bibliographic database covering publications on the history of philosophy and continental philosophy. The database comprises records of publications in over 30 languages. Annually, about 12,000 records are added. The indexes include, among other elements, over 84,000 names of authors, editors, translators, reviewers, and collaborators, as well as more than 3,000 commentaries on philosophical works, making it the world's most complete index in Philosophy. Since 1934, the IPB has been developed by the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), first in Leuven and since 1978 in Louvain-la-Neuve. The online version was launched by Peeters Publishers in 1997 and continues to be updated quarterly.