Context. Performance and resource usage is often an important factor for database driven services. Depending on the purpose of the application, choosing the wrong type of database may require unnecessary hardware upgrades or replacements. Objectives. This study investigates the differences in performance and resource usage between different SQL- and NoSQL-databases. The study is a comparison that focuses on how the databases perform in different applications.

The paper discusses the problems contemporary Swedish art criticism faces when judging performance art and interactive art. Problems include among others that performance art is collectively ignored in Swedish newspaper art criticism. This prevents art critics from fair contextualising of contemporary performance art. Down in the rabbit hole, performance by Tris Vonna-Michell and its reception exemplifies these problems. Performance and interactive art seems to be disturbing art critics.

The purpose with this essay is to examine how arts and politics integrate to raise urgent messages and call upon social changes. Performance art as an artistic manifestation against the surveillance society has been studied to clarify this integration and through an empirical examination of the anarchistic performance group The Surveillance Camera Players. This group formed in New York City 1996 as a manifestation against the increased use of surveillance cameras in public places in Manhattan. Through performance in front of these cameras, The Surveillance Camera Players are able to express their protest against the surveillance society which, occurring to them, violates citizens constitutionally right to privacy. The development and signification of the surveillance society are examined through theoretical perspective by foremost Michel Foucault, but also by contemporary scientist in that field.

This thesis examines underpricing and the long run performance of IPO firms on the Swedish equity market during 1994-2010. We further investigate whether any correlation exist between underpricing and post-IPO performance during 36 months. We use a sample of 80 IPO firms. To examine the aftermarket performance we compare total return of each firm with a matching industry index. In order to strengthen our analysis, we run a second test, comparing actual return for each firm with expected return, adjusted for firm specific risk.

Organising knowledge in a corporate environment : a case study at the development departments of Ecophon ABThe purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how three development departments of a technical firm could organise their collection of documents and information resources to improve their management of information. Three sets of questions have been posed: 1) How does the target group of engineers deal with information, and what problems can be identified in this process? 2) What does their collection of resources consist of, how is it organised, and what problems are apparent? 3) How can principles of knowledge organisation be applied in a corporate environment?The investigation has been carried out as a case study. Three main methods of collecting empirical data have been used: surveys, unstructured interviews and collection observations. The results of the study have highlighted three major problem areas: the collection's lack of structure and searchability, the absence of policy regarding how employers should deal with information, and the inadequate knowledge among staff on how to search for, use and disseminate information.By looking at previous research on knowledge organisation, we have been able to draw conclusions regarding how the target group could organise and manage its information and knowledge in order to achieve greater efficiency in dealing with information and carrying out work tasks.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to evaluate whether active fund management is profitable on Emerging Markets. The material used to examine this consists of 106 actively managed funds, with varying length during the period 1988-2006 and who uses MSCI Emerging Markets (MSCI EM) as benchmark index. The thesis has been written under the supervision of the Asset Management Department of Länsförsäkringar AB (LFAB) and the Department of Production Economics, Linköping Institute of Technology. Apart from the main purpose, the methodology used is also meant to form a template for in-depth or similar studies, preferably by the assigner of this survey, LFAB.The results shows that the median manager underperforms the MSCI EM throughout the whole period, which leads to the conclusion is that active management on Emerging Markets is not profitable. A grouping of the funds based on tracking error still shows that a majority of the managers in all of the groups underperforms against the benchmark.

The purpose of this master thesis is to evaluate how the current share price and market consensus affect security analysts target price and if an investor should pay any attention to it. Empirical data is primarily collected from qualitative interviews with ten security analysts but also from a quantitative e-mail survey. Our main finding is that security analysts are indeed affected by each others earnings forecasts as well as the current share price. This is not strange, it is in several aspects rational. Security analysts has often nothing to gain by standing out too much and not either by spending too much time trying to create their own opinions due to lack of time or the complexity of what is analyzed.

This thesis compares the impact on disk performance in a GNU/Linux  environmentwith three encryption algorithms: AES,  Serpent and Twofish in three different implementations: DM-crypt, Loop-AES and Truecrypt. For all three algorithms a key length of 256 bits is used.The thesis shows that the least performance impact during data encryption, and thus file writing, is reached by using AES or Twofish encryption implemented in DM-crypt or TrueCrypt. The thesis shows that some data operations with a sufficiently low processor utilization barely affects disk performance at all if encrypted using the optimal implementation and algorithm.It is also discovered that the performance impact during data decryption, or file reading, can be minimized by using the most efficient implementation and algorithm. The best results are met with the AES or Twofish cipher, regardless of implementation.An important conclusion that  is  drawn is that it is hard to determine a superior encryption solution for all purposes. However, by reviewing and examining the collected data from all aspects of disk performance the AES implementation in TrueCrypt is, with small marginals, determined to be the most optimal..

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine how managers in some public libraries are using performance measurements and to what extent decision making is based on the results. The main questions posed are:??What performance measurements and indicators are used in the libraries examined???What is the attitude towards performance measurements among library managers???How and to what extent are performance measurements and indicators used in the process of decision making???What improvement would library managers wish regarding the development of performance measurements in public libraries?The theory is based on a model of evaluation of the public sector in addition to general steps of evaluation of quality and performance measurement results. The investigation is based on qualitative interviews with seven managers of public libraries in Sweden.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

There are some key elements which distinguish a general operating system, such as Linux, from a Real Time operating system, such as OSE. The later belongs to the category of soft Real Time systems while Linux is a general operating system, with significantly improved real time properties after version 2.6. These improvements make it interesting to compare the two systems.When comparing two operating systems, there are a number of issues which have to be considered. One way to measure the performance of the systems is by studying the time consumption for the same functionality and hardware.During the study, the items that appeared as the most important for the performance of the systems, were: process primitives, system primitives, interprocess communication, context switches and interrupt latency.This work demonstrates that it is possible and reasonable to do performance testing on two different operating systems. The implemented tests cover a number of basic functionalities, which appeared to be the most crucial ones for the performance of the systems..

 Performance appraisals- a study of the performance appraisals significance as a tool for development in the public sector.Anders Larsson and Åsalill OlssonPerformance appraisals have been given a central role in leading businesses in the public sector and are seen as a tool to create development opportunities and achieve better results. This has resulted that performance appraisal in many organizations takes up capacity and time. This was the starting point of our interest to study whether the time spent on performance appraisals effectively pays for itself in the organization, in other words whether the effects expected actually are achieved. The paper examines first line managers` views on staff appraisal purposes and effects of a function within the Landstinget. The survey design, methodology and transaction are of qualitative and quantitative method with three different sources: literature review of previous research, interviews with first line managers in Landstinget Västmanland and the results from an employee satisfaction survey conducted on behalf of Landstinget Västmanland.

THE ROLE OF TARGET GROUPS IN FEEDBACK EFFECTSBrand extension is one of the most commonly used brand strategies since it reduces some of the risks involved in introducing a completely new brand. There are, however, several challenges associated with brand extensions. One of these challenges is the impact of a new brand extension on the parent brand image, which is known as feedback effect. Feedback effects are the changes in parent brand associations that are caused by a new brand extension, these effects can be both negative and positive. Several previous studies have investigated feedback effects and the antecedents of these effects.

The report aims to examine how property owners position themselves to reach their targetmarket, and which strategies they use when positioning their product. The investigation has beencarried out mainly in the form of a case study in which a number of interviews with Stockholmreal estate companies has been conducted, focusing on commercial property market segment.The interviews have resulted in identification of common and specific strategies among thecompanies. These strategies have been analyzed in the light of the theory by Philip Kotler andKevin Lane Keller, focusing on how an offer should be designed to reach a competitive position.It can be concluded that positioning is a key activity for successfully addressing the targetmarket. Successful positioning mandates three key requirements to be met; determining thecategory to which the offer belongs, identifying similarities and differences compared to thecompetitors and developing a brand mantra. The result of the case study concludes that theproperty companies work similar in many ways.

In game development, performance is everything and the Playstation 3 provides a unique platform for utilizing parallelization of code to achieve extremely high performance. In this master?s thesis the issue of animation with smooth skinning is migrated from being a GPU process to becoming a parallelized and 358% faster process. This method is incorporated in an existing commercial game engine and integrated in a currently in development title for the Playstation 3. An in-depth study covers parallel processors, the CELL processor, used in the Playstation 3, and how contemporary industry leading game developers are utilizing the same unique architecture to increase their own games? performance..