Cost-Based Optimization of Integration Flows - Datenbanken ...

Acknowledgments
First of all, I’d like to thank my advisor Wolfgang Lehner for always being a challenging
counterpart. Wolfgang accomplished to create an inspiring twofold working atmosphere.
On the one side, this atmosphere was coined by independence and freedom of research.
On the other side, by playing the role of an advocatus diaboli, he constantly motivated me
to always doing a bit more than necessary. Although sometimes I felt like being thrown in
at the deep end, eventually, I’ve grown with the given challenges. Putting it all together,
I’m really thankful for his supervision.
I’m also deeply grateful to my co-advisor Dirk Habich. He always had time for discussions
concerning my research and all the sideway problems. I’ve learned a lot from the
joint writing of many research papers. Most importantly, he was just a great colleague.
Beside the mentioned scientific supervision, I’m also thankful to Uwe Wloka who made
the initial cooperative research project, between TU Dresden and HTW Dresden, possible
by creating the contact to Wolfgang Lehner and by getting the initial funds. Thanks for
always trusting me and for giving me the opportunity of independent research. Finally, I
also want to thank Bernhard Mitschang for co-refereeing this thesis.
One of the most important aspects in workaday life at the university were great colleagues
at the database technology group. In particular, I thank Ulrike Fischer, Benjamin
Schlegel, Philipp Rösch, Frank Rosenthal, Simone Linke, and Steffen Preißler, with which
I had the pleasure to share the office (in reverse chronological order), for extensive discussions,
collaborations and simply for being great colleagues and friends. Special thanks go
to Benjamin, Ulrike and Dirk for invaluable comments, suggestions and proof-reading this
thesis. Furthermore, I’d like to express my gratitude to Simone who helped me a lot in
revising many research papers regarding spelling and grammar as well as for proof-reading
parts of this thesis. I’m also thankful to the other colleagues Anja, Bernd, Bernhard, Eric,
Gunnar, Hannes, Henri, Henrike, Ines, Katrin, Lars, Maik, Martin, Peter, Philipp, Rainer,
Thomas, and Tim for a good atmosphere at the research group. Furthermore, I thank
my students who were involved in related research projects. Beside the colleagues from
the university, I also want to thank Jürgen Bittner, Torsten Uhr, and Holger Rehn from
the SQL Project AG. During my diploma thesis and a subsequent employment at the
SQL Project AG, they introduced me into the field of enterprise application integration
(EAI) and gave me great insights into the design and implementation of the commercial
integration platform TransConnect R○ . Thanks for many discussions and suggestions.
Finally but probably most importantly, I am deeply thankful to my family and friends.
My parents Roswitha and Hans-Hendrik as well as my siblings Claudia and Michael always
supported me and my goals. Thanks to Hans-Hendrik and Claudia for thoughtful
suggestions and proof-reading this thesis. Without my family and a group of close friends
who have shown great understanding of this time full of privations, the time of writing
would have been much harder if not impossible.
Matthias Böhm
Dresden, December 3, 2010
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