Institute of Business Informatics - Data and Knowledge Engineering

The Department of Business Informatics - Data & Knowledge Engineering currently focuses its research activities on the following fields: (1) Security in databases: Within research projects, we develop new concepts to securely process sensitive data in outsourced databases with special focus on health data. (2) XML databases: XML database research focuses on index structures and query processing techniques for (encrypted) XML documents as well as on integrity constraints (keys, functional and inclusion dependencies). (3) Modeling web applications: We extend existing modeling languages to capture the requirements that are necessary to fulfill the corporate identity of an organization, while providing the flexibility to specify requirements which are particular for individual organizational units. (4) Conceputal modeling: To reduce modeling complexity, we extend existing modeling languages with several ontological layers. (5) Federated data warehouses: We design and implement tools that enable accessing individual heterogeneous data marts via a global multi-dimensional schema. (6) E-Tutor: The department offers its students an electronic tutoring system that supports students in solving exercises and evaluates and corrects solutions. (7) Modeling and integrating business processes: The department is actively involved in research projects that focus on modeling business processes with the help of recurring process patterns as well as on integrating business processes. (8) Design of Object-Oriented Information Systems: This research topic deals with the design of object-oriented information systems, particularly with the design of object behavior from user views and the behavior-consistent specialization of object behavior in conceptual design. Teaching concentrates on database systems, knowledge-based systems, data warehousing & mining and data modeling.