Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics
Department of Computer Systems and Communications
Botanická 68a, 602 00 Brno
Report of reader of diploma thesis
Student: Mohamed Ahmed Abdelhameed
Title: The Effect of In-Memory Computing and Big Data on Enterprise Software The focus of this thesis was on the question how new technologies affect the way companies run their business. In particular, technology for Big data was to be described - SAP H A N A , Hadoop and SAP Vora. These representatives were to be compared when it is valuable to use particular kind of technology and when it is better to use combination of both.
A l l conclusions were to be verified by practical case studies and real data usage.
The thesis is structured into five chapters. After short introduction, there are parts describing In-Memory Computing and Big Data phenomena. Chapter 4 should be the main part of this thesis. The last chapter is conclusion.
Considering the thesis assignment I do not see any direct connection to the technologies mentioned there, mainly SAP Vora. Thus the chapter about in-memory computing did not make much sense, because the only occurrence of "SAP Vora" is on page 66. In fact, SAP H A N A is an analytical platform implementing an in-memory database system, whereas SAP Vora is the combination of Hadoop and H A N A . This has not been explained in the thesis in any way. Next, I expected a clearly-stated comparison of the technologies, but it seems to be missing. The only study presented in the thesis is about healthcare. I would appreciate at least one more domain of interest, where such technologies can be used. Besides practical experience of the student with any analytical platform including results on some sample data would be valuable. Chapter 3 (Big data) seems to be a mere listing of many technologies to make analytics possible without any deeper description.
It includes a superficial listing of Hadoop, MapReduce, some scripting languages, R, etc. So it title is inappropriate too.
The list of references is enormous, so it is hard to believe that all items were read by the student.
Further comments and questions:
• Page 17 - terminology issue: you use "database" instead of "database system";
• Page 17 - "Big data was created because of several factors, but the main factors include the dropping prices of memory'". I certainly do not agree with
this statement. The term Big data was coined because of the nature of current data.
• What does the abbreviation IMC stand for? (page 55) Formal comments:
• Chapters should start on new page and in double-side printing on the right one;
• Bibliography items are malformatted (no space between items, not respecting any sort order; some items are incomplete (e.g. missing publisher, pages);
• Bibliography items missing: (Intel, 2012), SAP (2012), Bryant et al (2008), (Mass Technology leadership council, 2010), (Collet, 2011), (Sheppard, 2011)
• Is bibliography item (Brown et al, 2011) the same as (Manyika, 2011)?
• Any illustration does not have its source appended in caption.
Copied content without citing the source:
• The content of Sec. 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 (6.5 pages) was copied from vom Brocke, J., Debortoli, S., Müller, O., & Reuter, N. (2014). How In-Memory Technology
Can Create Business Value: Insights from the Hilti Case. Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS), 34(1), 151-167.
• Sec. 2.2.1 (3 pages) was copied from SAP HANA Architecture (Part I), available at http://www.sapstudent.com/hana/sap-hana-architecture-part-1.
• Sec. 2.2.2 (2 pages) was copied from SAP HANA Cookbook by Ganesh Mahadevan V., Chandrasekhar Mankala, Publisher: Packt Publishing, Release Date: December 2013, ISBN: 9781782177623.
• Sec. 4.1 (pages 55-59) was copied from SAP HANA Platform: Rethinking Information Processing for Genomic and Medical Data. February, 2013. SAP website. Next, pages 59-61 were copied from SAP Innovation Center Network website https://icn.sap.com/projects/sap-medical-research-insights.html.
Finally, pages 61-65 were also copied: SAP HANA Platform for Healthcare:
Bringing the World Closer to Real-Time Personalized MedicineSAP HANA blog.
• Beginning of Sec. 4.2 (pages 65-67) was copied from 7. Kyoungyoung, K.
Gang-Hoon: Potentiality of Big Data in the Medical Sector: Focus on How to Reshape the Healthcare System. Healthcare Informatics Research, vol. 19(2), pp. 79-85. 2013. doi: 10.4258/hir.2013.19.2.79
• End of Sec. 4.2 (pages 68-73) was copied from P. Groves, B. Kayyali, D.
Knott, S. van Kuiken: The big data revolution in healthcare: Accelerating value and information. Center for US Health System Reform, Bussiness Technology Office. January, 2013.
In conclusion, the presented thesis does not meet all the requirements stated in the thesis assignment. Moreover, the substantial part of Chapter 2 and the whole Chapter 4 were plagiarized. I recommend this thesis to be graded F - unsatisfactory. I will be present at the defense.
In Brno, on January 21, 2016 Vlastislav Dohnal
