Policy rules in the Economic and Monetary Union (2017)

Bodo Herzog Minjae Choi

This paper studies whether a monetary union can be managed solely by a rule based approach. The Five Presidents’ Report of the European Union rejects this idea. It suggests a centralisation of powers. We analyse the philosophy of policy rules from the vantage point of the German economic school of thought. There is evidence that a monetary union consisting of sovereign states is well organised by rules, together with the principle of subsidiarity. The root cause of the euro crisis is rather the weak enforcement of rules, compounded by structural problems. Therefore, we suggest a genuine rule-based paradigm for a stable future of the Economic and Monetary Union.

Collaboration and creativity support for interdisciplinary engineering teams using component based systems and cognitive services (2017)

Matthias Merk Gabriela Tullius Peter Hertkorn

In this paper we suggest an ubiquitous system with an implicit HCI. A basic concept of a middleware as well as design recommendations for future creativity and collaboration environments in an engineering context are presented in this paper.

From in-place updates to in-place appends: revisiting out-of-place updates on Flash (2017)

Sergej Hardock Ilia Petrov Robert Gottstein Alejandro Buchmann

Under update intensive workloads (TPC, LinkBench) small updates dominate the write behavior, e.g. 70% of all updates change less than 10 bytes across all TPC OLTP workloads. These are typically performed as in-place updates and result in random writes in page-granularity, causing major write-overhead on Flash storage, a write amplification of several hundred times and lower device longevity. In this paper we propose an approach that transforms those small in-place updates into small update deltas that are appended to the original page. We utilize the commonly ignored fact that modern Flash memories (SLC, MLC, 3D NAND) can handle appends to already programmed physical pages by using various low-level techniques such as ISPP to avoid expensive erases and page migrations. Furthermore, we extend the traditional NSM page-layout with a delta-record area that can absorb those small updates. We propose a scheme to control the write behavior as well as the space allocation and sizing of database pages. The proposed approach has been implemented under Shore- MT and evaluated on real Flash hardware (OpenSSD) and a Flash emulator. Compared to In-Page Logging it performs up to 62% less reads and writes and up to 74% less erases on a range of workloads. The experimental evaluation indicates: (i) significant reduction of erase operations resulting in twice the longevity of Flash devices under update-intensive workloads; (ii) 15%-60% lower read/write I/O latencies; (iii) up to 45% higher transactional throughput; (iv) 2x to 3x reduction in overall write amplification.

Selective in-place appends for real: reducing erases on wear-prone DBMS storage (2017)

Sergej Hardock Ilia Petrov Robert Gottstein Alejandro Buchmann

In the present paper we demonstrate the novel technique to apply the recently proposed approach of In-Place Appends – overwrites on Flash without a prior erase operation. IPA can be applied selectively: only to DB-objects that have frequent and relatively small updates. To do so we couple IPA to the concept of NoFTL regions, allowing the DBA to place update-intensive DB-objects into special IPA-enabled regions. The decision about region configuration can be (semi-)automated by an advisor analyzing DB-log files in the background. We showcase a Shore-MT based prototype of the above approach, operating on real Flash hardware. During the demonstration we allow the users to interact with the system and gain hands-on experience under different demonstration scenarios.

In-place appends for real: DBMS overwrites on Flash without erase (2017)

Sergej Hardock Ilia Petrov Robert Gottstein Alejandro Buchmann

In the present paper we demonstrate a novel approach to handling small updates on Flash called In-Place Appends (IPA). It allows the DBMS to revisit the traditional write behavior on Flash. Instead of writing whole database pages upon an update in an out-of-place manner on Flash, we transform those small updates into update deltas and append them to a reserved area on the very same physical Flash page. In doing so we utilize the commonly ignored fact that under certain conditions Flash memories can support in-place updates to Flash pages without a preceding erase operation. The approach was implemented under Shore-MT and evaluated on real hardware. Under standard update-intensive workloads we observed 67% less page invalidations resulting in 80% lower garbage collection overhead, which yields a 45% increase in transactional throughput, while doubling Flash longevity at the same time. The IPA outperforms In-Page Logging (IPL) by more than 50%. We showcase a Shore-MT based prototype of the above approach, operating on real Flash hardware – the OpenSSD Flash research platform. During the demonstration we allow the users to interact with the system and gain hands on experience of its performance under different demonstration scenarios. These involve various workloads such as TPC-B, TPC-C or TATP.

A review on "Brain computation as hierarchical abstraction" (2016)

Bodo Herzog

This article is a review of the book "Brain computation as hierarchical abstraction" by Dana H. Ballard published by MIT press in 2015. The book series computational neuroscience familiarizes the reader with the computational aspects of brain functions based on neuroscientific evidence. It provides an excellent introduction of the functioning, i.e. the structure, the network and the routines of the brain in our daily life. The final chapters even discuss behavioral elements such as decision-making, emotions and consciousness. These topics are of high relevance in other sciences such as economics and philosophy. Overall, Ballard’s book stimulates a scientifically well-founded debate and, more importantly, reveals the need of an interdisciplinary dialogue towards social sciences.

Does transparency mitigate the political budget cycle? (2017)

Bodo Herzog

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of transparency on the political budget cycle (PBC) over time and across countries. So far, the literature on electoral cycles finds evidence that cycles depend on the stage of an economy. However, the author shows – for the first time – a reliance of the budget cycle on transparency. The author uses a new data set consisting of 99 developing and 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. First, the author develops a model and demonstrates that transparency mitigates the political cycles. Second, the author confirms the proposition through the econometric assessment. The author uses time series data from 1970 to 2014 and discovers smaller cycles in countries with higher transparency, especially G8 countries.

Eine staatliche Insolvenzordnung für den Euroraum. - (Die Zukunft der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion ; 1) (Analysen und Argumente ; 243) (2017)

Bodo Herzog

Die Europäische Währungs- und Wirtschaftsunion (EWWU) bedarf einer weiteren Stabilisierung, da die institutionellen Regelungen langfristig keine hinreichende Bindekraft auf die Mitgliedsländer entfalten. Die Herausforderung ist die Rückgewinnung der verlorengegangenen Glaubwürdigkeit in das Regelwerk im Zuge der europäischen Staatsverschuldungskrise seit dem Jahr 2010. Um die Währungsunion zu erhalten, muss einerseits im Primärrecht das „No Bailout“ in Art. 125 AEUV glaubwürdig angewandt werden können und andererseits die Regelungen im Sekundärrecht, u.a. der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt, der Fiskalpakt oder das europäische Semester, unabhängiger und schneller rechtsverbindlich vollzogen werden. Der hier vorgeschlagene und klug in den europäischen Rahmen eingepasste „staatliche Insolvenzmechanismus“, verbunden mit einer im Ultima Ratio rechtsverbindlichen „Austrittsklausel“ wäre ein Lösungsansatz. Ein Scheitern der EWWU ist abwendbar, aber der fehlende Reformwille könnte dem Zerfall der Währungsunion Vorschub leisten.

Condition monitoring von Rollenketten : Messgrößen und Methoden (2018)

Gernot Schullerus Thomas Kärcher

Ein wesentliches Ziel der unter dem Schlagwort Industrie 4.0 gebündelten neuen Entwicklungen ist die Vernetzung intelligenter Komponenten in industriellen Anlagen, um Prozesse transparenter und effizienter zu gestalten. Ein weiteres Ziel ist das Condition Monitoring, d.h. die Überwachung des Zustands der Komponenten während der Laufzeit und die Abschätzung der Restlebensdauer, damit die gesamte Lebensdauer der Komponente ausgenutzt und Wartungsintervalle besser geplant werden können. Die Bewertung des Komponentenzustands erfolgt anhand von Messgrößen, die entweder durch zusätzlich in den Prozess eingebrachte Sensoren erfasst werden oder durch Prozessdaten, die in den Regel- und Steuereinrichtungen verfügbar sind. Diese Messdaten werden ausgewertet und das Ergebnis wird dem Anwender angezeigt. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen kurzen Überblick über verwendete Messgrößen sowie verwendete Auswerteverfahren. Darüber hinaus wird ein Verfahren erläutert, das die Schwierigkeiten bei der Beurteilung der üblicherweise verwendeten Frequenzspektren vermeidet.

Condition monitoring of roller chains based on correlation functions and clustering (2017)

Thomas Kärcher Gernot Schullerus

This paper describes a new method for condition monitoring of a roller chain. In contrast to conventional methods, no additional accelerometers are used to measure and interpret frequency spectra but the chain condition is evaluated using an easy to interpret similarity measure based on correlation functions using the driving motor torque. An additional clustering of current data and reference measurements yields an easy to understand representation of the chain condition.