The Object Data Management Group (ODMG) was conceived in the summer of 1991 at a breakfast with object database vendors that was organized by Rick Cattell of Sun Microsystems. In 1998, the ODMG changed its name from the Object Database Management Group to reflect the expansion of its efforts to include specifications for both object database and object–relational mapping products. The primary goal of the ODMG was to put forward a set of specifications that allowed a developer to write portable applications for object database and object–relational mapping products. In order to do that, the data schema, programming language bindings, and data manipulation and query languages needed to be portable. Between 1993 and 2001, the ODMG published five revisions to its specification. The last revision was ODMG version 3.0, after which the group disbanded. == Major components of the ODMG 3.0 specification == Object Model. This was based on the Object Management Group's Object Model. The OMG core model was designed to be a common denominator for object request brokers, object database systems, object programming languages, etc. The ODMG designed a profile by adding components to the OMG core object model. Object Specification Languages. The ODMG Object Definition Language (ODL) was used to define the object types that conform to the ODMG Object Model. The ODMG Object Interchange Format (OIF) was used to dump and load the current state to or from a file or set of files. Object Query Language (OQL). The ODMG OQL was a declarative (nonprocedural) language for query and updating. It used SQL as a basis, where possible, though OQL supports more powerful object-oriented capabilities. C++ Language Binding. This defined a C++ binding of the ODMG ODL and a C++ Object Manipulation Language (OML). The C++ ODL was expressed as a library that provides classes and functions to implement the concepts defined in the ODMG Object Model. The C++ OML syntax and semantics are those of standard C++ in the context of the standard class library. The C++ binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. Smalltalk Language Binding. This defined the mapping between the ODMG ODL and Smalltalk, which was based on the OMG Smalltalk binding for the OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL). The Smalltalk binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. Java Language Binding. This defined the binding between the ODMG ODL and the Java programming language as defined by the Java 2 Platform. The Java binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. == Status == ODMG 3.0 was published in book form in 2000.[1] By 2001, most of the major object database and object-relational mapping vendors claimed conformance to the ODMG Java Language Binding. Compliance to the other components of the specification was mixed.[2] In 2001, the ODMG Java Language Binding was submitted to the Java Community Process as a basis for the Java Data Objects specification. The ODMG member companies then decided to concentrate their efforts on the Java Data Objects specification. As a result, the ODMG disbanded in 2001. In 2004, the Object Management Group (OMG) was granted the right to revise the ODMG 3.0 specification as an OMG specification by the copyright holder, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. In February 2006, the OMG announced the formation of the Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBT WG) and plans to work on the 4th generation of an object database standard. == ODMG Compliant DBMS == Orient ODBMS: http://www.OrienTechnologies.com Objectivity/DB C++, Java and Smalltalk interfaces.
Are You Dead?
Are You Dead? (Chinese: 死了么; pinyin: Sǐleme), also known by its English name Demumu, is a Chinese application designed for young people living alone. It requires setting up one emergency contact and sends automatic notifications if the user has not checked in via the app for consecutive days. The app was released on the App Store on 10 June 2025. In early January 2026, the application gained popularity due to its name and the issue of safety for people living alone, and ranked high on the list of paid applications in the Chinese region of the Apple App Store before being removed. The app's rise in popularity sparked discussions about taboos about death in China. == History == Are You Dead? was founded and operated independently by three people born in the 1990s, and developed in a way that involved remote collaboration in their spare time. According to the New Yellow River report, Guo, the product manager, said that the application was designed for young people and that the inspiration came from the discussion of netizens on social platforms about "an app that everyone must have and will definitely download" that he observed two or three years ago. The name was also "not their original creation". After realizing its potential demand and social significance, the team successfully registered the name and completed the product development in about a month. Regarding the development entity, the New Yellow River cited information from the Apple App Store that the application was developed by Yuejing (Zhengzhou) Technology Service Co., Ltd. According to Tianyancha information, the company was established in March 2025 with a registered capital of 100,000 yuan. === Rise in popularity === The app has been generating buzz on social media since 9 January 2026, due to its name and the topic of safety for people living alone. Around 10 January, it topped the Apple paid app chart. As of 10:00 a.m. on January 11, it ranked first in the App Store paid app chart. It also ranked highly in the utility app chart; it ranked first or second in the paid utility app charts in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong, and first or fourth in Australia and Spain. The app was subsequently removed from the Apple App Store in China. In terms of functionality and usage, First Financial praised the product for its "simple interface and single function," but pointed out that the interface lacks a display of consecutive check-in days, and there is also the possibility that users may forget to check in, leading to the mistaken issuance of reminders. In addition, since the application mainly relies on email reminders and lacks SMS or telephone notifications, it does not conform to Chinese social habits; the untimely notifications also make the application more like a "death notification" tool, losing its early warning significance for emergency rescue. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, commented on the application on Weibo that it is "really good and can help many lonely elderly people." The Beijing News Quick Review pointed out that the role of technical tools is limited and needs to be connected with real support such as community patrols and liaison mechanisms. Due to the price increase, there have also been questions about the motivation for the price increase. The app's rise in popularity sparked discussions about taboos about death in China. Regarding the popularity of the application, both Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News commented that it reflects the public issue of the risks of living alone and reflects the general anxiety of the living alone group about dying alone. Shangguan News further pointed out that although such technology products provide a certain "low-cost sense of security", their "cold notifications" may not only cause false alarms, but also highlight the embarrassing reality that "there is no one to fill in the emergency contact". It also emphasized that algorithms or applications cannot bring true happiness and called on society to reconstruct a support network full of humanistic care while relying on technology. The name of the application has also sparked controversy. Most netizens believe that the name "Are You Dead?" is unlucky and makes it awkward to share the application. They suggest changing it to a milder name such as "Are You Alive?". Hu Xijin also said that the name change could "give the elderly who use it more psychological comfort" and "believe that the application will become more popular after the name change". Some people also believe that this straightforward name just points out the real dilemma faced by people living alone and has a special meaning. BBC News commented that the name "Are You Dead" is playing a word game with Ele.me (Chinese: 饿了么; pinyin: Èleme) and the pronunciation is also similar. Legal professionals believe that its name is highly similar to Ele.me and may cause confusion. They also raised the possibility of trademark infringement and unfair competition. However, the developers said that the application is developed for young people and death is not a sensitive topic. They will "consider launching a new application that is more suitable for middle-aged and elderly people". They have not yet received any name change requests from relevant departments. On the evening of 13 January 2026, the Are You Dead? team announced that it would change its name to the English brand name Demumu in the upcoming new version. On 11 January, the development team also issued a statement through its official Weibo account, stating that it would study the renaming suggestion and plan to enrich the SMS reminder function, consider adding the message function and explore the direction of age-friendly products; it also stated that it would launch an 8 yuan paid plan to cover the costs of SMS, servers, etc., and welcomed investors to discuss cooperation. In terms of financing and valuation, it plans to sell 10% of the company's shares for 1 million yuan and proposed a valuation of 10 million yuan. On the evening of January 15, the application was removed from the app store in mainland China. == Functions == The application does not require users to enter phone numbers or other information to register. After filling in their name and setting an emergency contact, users can click the sign-in button every day. If they fail to sign in for two consecutive days, the system will send an email reminder to the emergency contact the next day. In addition, users can also bind a smart bracelet to monitor physiological signs, pre-designate a hearse driver and funeral music, and trigger the "one-click body collection" function when no pulse is detected. The application was initially available for free download, but a one yuan paid download option was introduced at the end of 2025. In January 2026, the application team issued a statement saying that an 8 yuan paid option would be launched based on the costs of SMS, servers, etc.
Time-aware long short-term memory
Time-aware LSTM (T-LSTM) is a long short-term memory (LSTM) unit capable of handling irregular time intervals in longitudinal patient records. T-LSTM was developed by researchers from Michigan State University, IBM Research, and Cornell University and was first presented in the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) conference. Experiments using real and synthetic data proved that T-LSTM auto-encoder outperformed widely used frameworks including LSTM and MF1-LSTM auto-encoders.
Ho–Kashyap algorithm
The Ho–Kashyap algorithm is an iterative method in machine learning for finding a linear decision boundary that separates two linearly separable classes. It was developed by Yu-Chi Ho and Rangasami L. Kashyap in 1965, and usually presented as a problem in linear programming. == Setup == Given a training set consisting of samples from two classes, the Ho–Kashyap algorithm seeks to find a weight vector w {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} } and a margin vector b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } such that: Y w = b {\displaystyle \mathbf {Yw} =\mathbf {b} } where Y {\displaystyle \mathbf {Y} } is the augmented data matrix with samples from both classes (with appropriate sign conventions, e.g., samples from class 2 are negated), w {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} } is the weight vector to be determined, and b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } is a positive margin vector. The algorithm minimizes the criterion function: J ( w , b ) = | | Y w − b | | 2 {\displaystyle J(\mathbf {w} ,\mathbf {b} )=||\mathbf {Yw} -\mathbf {b} ||^{2}} subject to the constraint that b > 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} >\mathbf {0} } (element-wise). Given a problem of linearly separating two classes, we consider a dataset of elements { ( x i , y i ) } i ∈ 1 : N {\displaystyle \{(\mathbf {x_{i}} ,y_{i})\}_{i\in 1:N}} where y i ∈ { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle y_{i}\in \{-1,+1\}} . Linearly separating them by a perceptron is equivalent to finding weight and bias w , b {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} ,b} for a perceptron, such that: [ y 1 x 1 1 ⋮ ⋮ y N x N 1 ] [ w b ] > 0 {\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}y_{1}\mathbf {x} _{1}&1\\\vdots &\vdots \\y_{N}\mathbf {x} _{N}&1\\\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}\mathbf {w} \\b\end{bmatrix}}>0} == Algorithm == The idea of the Ho–Kashyap algorithm is as follows: Given any b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } , the corresponding w {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} } is known: It is simply w = Y + b {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} =\mathbf {Y} ^{+}\mathbf {b} } , where Y + {\displaystyle \mathbf {Y} ^{+}} denotes the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse of Y {\displaystyle \mathbf {Y} } . Therefore, it only remains to find b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } by gradient descent. However, the gradient descent may sometimes decrease some of the coordinates of b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } , which may cause some coordinates of b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } to become negative, which is undesirable. Therefore, whenever some coordinates of b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } would have decreased, those coordinates are unchanged instead. As for the coordinates of b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } that would increase, those would increase without issue. Formally, the algorithm is as follows: Initialization: Set b ( 0 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} (0)} to an arbitrary positive vector, typically b ( 0 ) = 1 {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} (0)=\mathbf {1} } (a vector of ones). Set the iteration counter k = 0 {\displaystyle k=0} . Set w ( 0 ) = Y + b ( 0 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} (0)=\mathbf {Y} ^{+}\mathbf {b} (0)} Loop until convergence, or until iteration counter exceeds some k m a x {\displaystyle k_{max}} . Error calculation: Compute the error vector: e ( k ) = Y w ( k ) − b ( k ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {e} (k)=\mathbf {Yw} (k)-\mathbf {b} (k)} . Margin update: Update the margin vector: b ( k + 1 ) = b ( k ) + 2 η k ( e ( k ) + | e ( k ) | ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} (k+1)=\mathbf {b} (k)+2\eta _{k}(\mathbf {e} (k)+|\mathbf {e} (k)|)} where η k {\displaystyle \eta _{k}} is a positive learning rate parameter, and | e ( k ) | {\displaystyle |\mathbf {e} (k)|} denotes the element-wise absolute value. Weight calculation: Compute the weight vector using the pseudoinverse: w ( k + 1 ) = Y + b ( k + 1 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} (k+1)=\mathbf {Y} ^{+}\mathbf {b} (k+1)} . Convergence check: If | | e ( k ) | | ≤ θ {\displaystyle ||\mathbf {e} (k)||\leq \theta } for some predetermined threshold θ {\displaystyle \theta } (close to zero), then return b ( k + 1 ) , w ( k + 1 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} (k+1),\mathbf {w} (k+1)} . if e ( k ) ≤ 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {e} (k)\leq \mathbf {0} } (all components non-positive), return "Samples not separable.". Return "Algorithm failed to converge in time.". == Properties == If the training data is linearly separable, the algorithm converges to a solution (where e ( k ) = 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {e} (k)=\mathbf {0} } ) in a finite number of iterations. If the data is not linearly separable, the algorithm may or may not ever reach the point where e ( k ) = 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {e} (k)=\mathbf {0} } . However, if it does happen that e ( k ) ≤ 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {e} (k)\leq \mathbf {0} } at some iteration, this proves non-separability. The convergence rate depends on the choice of the learning rate parameter ρ {\displaystyle \rho } and the degree of linear separability of the data. == Relationship to other algorithms == Perceptron algorithm: Both seek linear separators. The perceptron updates weights incrementally based on individual misclassified samples, while Ho–Kashyap is a batch method that processes all samples to compute the pseudoinverse and updates based on an overall error vector. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA): LDA assumes underlying Gaussian distributions with equal covariances for the classes and derives the decision boundary from these statistical assumptions. Ho–Kashyap makes no explicit distributional assumptions and instead tries to solve a system of linear inequalities directly. Support vector machines (SVM): For linearly separable data, SVMs aim to find the maximum-margin hyperplane. The Ho–Kashyap algorithm finds a separating hyperplane but not necessarily the one with the maximum margin. If the data is not separable, soft-margin SVMs allow for some misclassifications by optimizing a trade-off between margin size and misclassification penalty, while Ho–Kashyap provides a least-squares solution. == Variants == Modified Ho–Kashyap algorithm changes weight calculation step w ( k + 1 ) = Y + b ( k + 1 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} (k+1)=\mathbf {Y} ^{+}\mathbf {b} (k+1)} to w ( k + 1 ) = w ( k ) + η k Y + | e ( k ) | {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} (k+1)=\mathbf {w} (k)+\eta _{k}\mathbf {Y} ^{+}|\mathbf {e} (k)|} . Kernel Ho–Kashyap algorithm: Applies kernel methods (the "kernel trick") to the Ho–Kashyap framework to enable non-linear classification by implicitly mapping data to a higher-dimensional feature space.
Analogical modeling
Analogical modeling (AM) is a formal theory of exemplar based analogical reasoning, proposed by Royal Skousen, professor of Linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. It is applicable to language modeling and other categorization tasks. Analogical modeling is related to connectionism and nearest neighbor approaches, in that it is data-based rather than abstraction-based; but it is distinguished by its ability to cope with imperfect datasets (such as caused by simulated short term memory limits) and to base predictions on all relevant segments of the dataset, whether near or far. In language modeling, AM has successfully predicted empirically valid forms for which no theoretical explanation was known (see the discussion of Finnish morphology in Skousen et al. 2002). == Implementation == === Overview === An exemplar-based model consists of a general-purpose modeling engine and a problem-specific dataset. Within the dataset, each exemplar (a case to be reasoned from, or an informative past experience) appears as a feature vector: a row of values for the set of parameters that define the problem. For example, in a spelling-to-sound task, the feature vector might consist of the letters of a word. Each exemplar in the dataset is stored with an outcome, such as a phoneme or phone to be generated. When the model is presented with a novel situation (in the form of an outcome-less feature vector), the engine algorithmically sorts the dataset to find exemplars that helpfully resemble it, and selects one, whose outcome is the model's prediction. The particulars of the algorithm distinguish one exemplar-based modeling system from another. In AM, we think of the feature values as characterizing a context, and the outcome as a behavior that occurs within that context. Accordingly, the novel situation is known as the given context. Given the known features of the context, the AM engine systematically generates all contexts that include it (all of its supracontexts), and extracts from the dataset the exemplars that belong to each. The engine then discards those supracontexts whose outcomes are inconsistent (this measure of consistency will be discussed further below), leaving an analogical set of supracontexts, and probabilistically selects an exemplar from the analogical set with a bias toward those in large supracontexts. This multilevel search exponentially magnifies the likelihood of a behavior's being predicted as it occurs reliably in settings that specifically resemble the given context. === Analogical modeling in detail === AM performs the same process for each case it is asked to evaluate. The given context, consisting of n variables, is used as a template to generate 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n}} supracontexts. Each supracontext is a set of exemplars in which one or more variables have the same values that they do in the given context, and the other variables are ignored. In effect, each is a view of the data, created by filtering for some criteria of similarity to the given context, and the total set of supracontexts exhausts all such views. Alternatively, each supracontext is a theory of the task or a proposed rule whose predictive power needs to be evaluated. It is important to note that the supracontexts are not equal peers one with another; they are arranged by their distance from the given context, forming a hierarchy. If a supracontext specifies all of the variables that another one does and more, it is a subcontext of that other one, and it lies closer to the given context. (The hierarchy is not strictly branching; each supracontext can itself be a subcontext of several others, and can have several subcontexts.) This hierarchy becomes significant in the next step of the algorithm. The engine now chooses the analogical set from among the supracontexts. A supracontext may contain exemplars that only exhibit one behavior; it is deterministically homogeneous and is included. It is a view of the data that displays regularity, or a relevant theory that has never yet been disproven. A supracontext may exhibit several behaviors, but contain no exemplars that occur in any more specific supracontext (that is, in any of its subcontexts); in this case it is non-deterministically homogeneous and is included. Here there is no great evidence that a systematic behavior occurs, but also no counterargument. Finally, a supracontext may be heterogeneous, meaning that it exhibits behaviors that are found in a subcontext (closer to the given context), and also behaviors that are not. Where the ambiguous behavior of the nondeterministically homogeneous supracontext was accepted, this is rejected because the intervening subcontext demonstrates that there is a better theory to be found. The heterogeneous supracontext is therefore excluded. This guarantees that we see an increase in meaningfully consistent behavior in the analogical set as we approach the given context. With the analogical set chosen, each appearance of an exemplar (for a given exemplar may appear in several of the analogical supracontexts) is given a pointer to every other appearance of an exemplar within its supracontexts. One of these pointers is then selected at random and followed, and the exemplar to which it points provides the outcome. This gives each supracontext an importance proportional to the square of its size, and makes each exemplar likely to be selected in direct proportion to the sum of the sizes of all analogically consistent supracontexts in which it appears. Then, of course, the probability of predicting a particular outcome is proportional to the summed probabilities of all the exemplars that support it. (Skousen 2002, in Skousen et al. 2002, pp. 11–25, and Skousen 2003, both passim) === Formulas === Given a context with n {\displaystyle n} elements: total number of pairings: n 2 {\displaystyle n^{2}} number of agreements for outcome i: n i 2 {\displaystyle n_{i}^{2}} number of disagreements for outcome i: n i ( n − n i ) {\displaystyle n_{i}(n-n_{i})} total number of agreements: ∑ n i 2 {\displaystyle \sum {n_{i}^{2}}} total number of disagreements: ∑ n i ( n − n i ) = n 2 − ∑ n i 2 {\displaystyle \sum {n_{i}(n-n_{i})}=n^{2}-\sum {n_{i}^{2}}} === Example === This terminology is best understood through an example. In the example used in the second chapter of Skousen (1989), each context consists of three variables with potential values 0-3 Variable 1: 0,1,2,3 Variable 2: 0,1,2,3 Variable 3: 0,1,2,3 The two outcomes for the dataset are e and r, and the exemplars are: 3 1 0 e 0 3 2 r 2 1 0 r 2 1 2 r 3 1 1 r We define a network of pointers like so: The solid lines represent pointers between exemplars with matching outcomes; the dotted lines represent pointers between exemplars with non-matching outcomes. The statistics for this example are as follows: n = 5 {\displaystyle n=5} n r = 4 {\displaystyle n_{r}=4} n e = 1 {\displaystyle n_{e}=1} total number of pairings: n 2 = 25 {\displaystyle n^{2}=25} number of agreements for outcome r: n r 2 = 16 {\displaystyle n_{r}^{2}=16} number of agreements for outcome e: n e 2 = 1 {\displaystyle n_{e}^{2}=1} number of disagreements for outcome r: n r ( n − n r ) = 4 {\displaystyle n_{r}(n-n_{r})=4} number of disagreements for outcome e: n e ( n − n e ) = 4 {\displaystyle n_{e}(n-n_{e})=4} total number of agreements: n r 2 + n e 2 = 17 {\displaystyle n_{r}^{2}+n_{e}^{2}=17} total number of disagreements: n r ( n − n r ) + n e ( n − n e ) = n 2 − ( n r 2 + n e 2 ) = 8 {\displaystyle n_{r}(n-n_{r})+n_{e}(n-n_{e})=n^{2}-(n_{r}^{2}+n_{e}^{2})=8} uncertainty or fraction of disagreement: 8 / 25 = .32 {\displaystyle 8/25=.32} Behavior can only be predicted for a given context; in this example, let us predict the outcome for the context "3 1 2". To do this, we first find all of the contexts containing the given context; these contexts are called supracontexts. We find the supracontexts by systematically eliminating the variables in the given context; with m variables, there will generally be 2 m {\displaystyle 2^{m}} supracontexts. The following table lists each of the sub- and supracontexts; x means "not x", and - means "anything". These contexts are shown in the venn diagram below: The next step is to determine which exemplars belong to which contexts in order to determine which of the contexts are homogeneous. The table below shows each of the subcontexts, their behavior in terms of the given exemplars, and the number of disagreements within the behavior: Analyzing the subcontexts in the table above, we see that there is only 1 subcontext with any disagreements: "3 1 2", which in the dataset consists of "3 1 0 e" and "3 1 1 r". There are 2 disagreements in this subcontext; 1 pointing from each of the exemplars to the other (see the pointer network pictured above). Therefore, only supracontexts containing this subcontext will contain any disagreements. We use a simple rule to identify the homogeneous supraco
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, sometimes stylized Azure, and formerly Windows Azure, is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers management, access and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure. Microsoft Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. Azure was first introduced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008 under the codename "Project Red Dog". It was officially launched as Windows Azure in February 2010 and later renamed to Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014. == Services == Microsoft Azure uses large-scale virtualization at Microsoft data centers worldwide and offers more than 600 services. Microsoft Azure offers a service level agreement (SLA) that guarantees 99.9% availability for applications and data hosted on its platform, subject to specific terms and conditions outlined in the SLA documentation. === Computer services === Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, software as a service (SaaS), as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. Starting in 2022, these virtual machines are now powered by Ampere Cloud-native processors. Most users run Linux on Azure, some of the many Linux distributions offered, including Microsoft's own Linux-based Azure Sphere. App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment, letting developers easily publish and manage websites. Azure Web Sites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, Java, or Python, which can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Azure DevOps, or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event. Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open-source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed Web Apps in April 2015. Web Jobs are applications that can be deployed to an App Service environment to implement background processing that can be invoked on a schedule, on-demand, or run continuously. The Blob, Table, and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides the capability to deploy production-ready Kubernetes clusters in Azure. In July 2023, watermarking support on Azure Virtual Desktop was announced as an optional feature of Screen Capture to provide additional security against data leakage. === Identity === Entra ID connect is used to synchronize on-premises directories and enable SSO (Single Sign On). Entra ID B2C allows the use of consumer identity and access management in the cloud. Entra Domain Services is used to join Azure virtual machines to a domain without domain controllers. Azure information protection can be used to protect sensitive information. Entra ID External Identities is a set of capabilities that allow organizations to collaborate with external users, including customers and partners. On July 11, 2023, Microsoft announced the renaming of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID. The name change took place four days later. === Mobile services === Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users' behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps. === Storage services === Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by the partition key and primary key. Azure Table Service is a NoSQL non-relational database. Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as object storage blobs that can be accessed by an HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol. === Communication services === Azure Communication Services offers an SDK for creating web and mobile communications applications that include SMS, video calling, VOIP and PSTN calling, and web-based chat. === Data management === Azure Data Explorer provides big data analytics and data-exploration capabilities. Azure Search provides text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Azure Cache for Redis is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. Azure SQL Database works to create, scale, and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology. It also integrates with Active Directory, Microsoft System Center, and Hadoop. Azure Synapse Analytics is a fully managed cloud data warehouse. Azure Data Factory is a data integration service that allows creation of data-driven workflows in the cloud for orchestrating and automating data movement and data transformation. Azure Data Lake is a scalable data storage and analytic service for big data analytics workloads that require developers to run massively parallel queries. Azure HDInsight is a big data-relevant service that deploys Hortonworks Hadoop on Microsoft Azure and supports the creation of Hadoop clusters using Linux with Ubuntu. Azure Stream Analytics is a Serverless scalable event-processing engine that enables users to develop and run real-time analytics on multiple streams of data from sources such as devices, sensors, websites, social media, and other applications. === Messaging === The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off-premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The Azure service bus supports four different types of communication mechanisms: Event Hubs, which provides event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at a massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example, an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as coordinating with a GPS in real time. Queues, which allows one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue, only one would process a single message. Topics, which provides one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue; however, each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally, the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. Relays, which provides bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay does not store in-flight messages in its memory; instead, it just passes them on to the destination application. === Media services === A PaaS offering that can be used for encoding, content protection, streaming, or analytics. === CDN === Azure has a worldwide content delivery network (CDN) designed to efficiently deliver audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. It improves the performance of websites by caching static files closer to users, based on their geographic location. Users can manage the network using a REST-based HTTP API. Azure has 118 point-of-presence locations across 100 cities worldwide (also known as Edge locations) as of January 2023. === Developer === Application Insights Azure DevOps === Management === With Azure Automation, users can easily automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, often prone to cloud or enterprise setting errors. They can accomplish it using runbooks or desired state configurations for process automation. Microsoft SMA === Azure AI === Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) provides tools and frameworks for developers to create their own machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Azure AI Services by Microsoft comprises prebuilt APIs, SDKs, and services developers can customize. These services encompass perceptual and cognitive intelligence features such as speech recognition, speaker recognition, neural speech synthesis, face recognition, computer vision, OCR/form understanding, natural language processing, machine translation, and business decision services. Many AI characteristics in Microsoft's products and services, namely Bing, Office, Teams, Xbox, and Windows, are driven by Azure AI Services. Microsoft Foundry (formerly known as Azure AI Studio)
Rprop
Rprop, short for resilient backpropagation, is a learning heuristic for supervised learning in feedforward artificial neural networks. This is a first-order optimization algorithm. This algorithm was created by Martin Riedmiller and Heinrich Braun in 1992. Similarly to the Manhattan update rule, Rprop takes into account only the sign of the partial derivative over all patterns (not the magnitude), and acts independently on each "weight". For each weight, if there was a sign change of the partial derivative of the total error function compared to the last iteration, the update value for that weight is multiplied by a factor η−, where η− < 1. If the last iteration produced the same sign, the update value is multiplied by a factor of η+, where η+ > 1. The update values are calculated for each weight in the above manner, and finally each weight is changed by its own update value, in the opposite direction of that weight's partial derivative, so as to minimise the total error function. η+ is empirically set to 1.2 and η− to 0.5. Rprop can result in very large weight increments or decrements if the gradients are large, which is a problem when using mini-batches as opposed to full batches. RMSprop addresses this problem by keeping the moving average of the squared gradients for each weight and dividing the gradient by the square root of the mean square. RPROP is a batch update algorithm. Next to the cascade correlation algorithm and the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, Rprop is one of the fastest weight update mechanisms. == Variations == Martin Riedmiller developed three algorithms, all named RPROP. Igel and Hüsken assigned names to them and added a new variant: RPROP+ is defined at A Direct Adaptive Method for Faster Backpropagation Learning: The RPROP Algorithm. RPROP− is defined at Advanced Supervised Learning in Multi-layer Perceptrons – From Backpropagation to Adaptive Learning Algorithms. Backtracking is removed from RPROP+. iRPROP− is defined in Rprop – Description and Implementation Details and was reinvented by Igel and Hüsken. This variant is very popular and most simple. iRPROP+ is defined at Improving the Rprop Learning Algorithm and is very robust and typically faster than the other three variants.