From: kelly@ogicse.cse.ogi.edu (Kelly Atkinson)
Newsgroups: or.general,pdx.general,ogi.general
Subject: Computer Science Colloquia
Date: 17 Nov 92 23:55:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: ogicse.46033
Distribution: or
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR


Oregon Graduate Institute
Department of Computer Science and Engineering

COLLOQUIUM SERIES


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Distributed Computing Environments Colloquium Series
(Co-sponsored by OCATE)

Designing Database Systems for Mobile Computers
Rafael Alonso, Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory

Wednesday, December 2, 1992,  10:30 a.m.
Main Seminar Room, OGI Administration Building

Recently, there have appeared on the market a number of mobile pen-
centric computers.  Such machines represent a new kind of computing 
environment, one that we feel will force database designers to address 
new research issues.  In this talk we briefly describe the characteristics of 
these machines, and list some of the research problems in this area 
currently being explored at the Matsushita Information Technology 
Laboratory.  In particular, we will present our preliminary work in two 
areas: a pen-centric DBMS interface, and an energy-efficient query 
compilation mechanism (i.e., a query compiler that selects the database 
plan that uses the least amount of battery power).

Bio:

Rafael Alonso received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 
1986.  He was a member of the faculty of Princeton University before 
joining the Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory in Princeton as 
Senior Scientist.  Dr. Alonso's research interests include database systems, 
operating systems and distributed processing.


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Issues in Scientific Computing Colloquium Series
(Co-sponsored by OCATE)

Applications Demand Class-Specific Optimizations: 
       The C++ Compiler Can Do More
Ian G. Angus, Boeing Computer Services

Friday, December 4, 1992,  3:30 p.m.
Main Seminar Room, OGI Administration Building

So far C++ has made few inroads into the realm of scientific computing, 
which is still largely dominated by Fortran.  Of the few attempts that have 
been made to apply C++ to numerically intensive codes, the results have 
often suffered from annoying performance problems.  Examination of these 
problems suggests that they are unlikely to be solved by incremental 
improvements in compiler optimization technology.

In this talk we will:
*	Motivate the discussion by describing a common efficiency problem 
that arises when numerical codes are programmed in C++.
*	Discuss some potential solution strategies that we believe to be 
viable in the near term, but not over the long term.
*	Introduce a minimal mechanism through which a compiler could 
solve these problems by loading class-specific optimizations on an as-
needed basis.  A simple interface that will enable this feature will be 
presented.

While our immediate motivation is that of numerically intensive codes,
our approach will be applicable to all application domains.

Bio:

Ian Angus received a Ph.D. in theoretical high energy physics from Caltech 
in 1986.  Following graduation he spent a year as a research fellow in the 
Concurrent Computation Program at Caltech.  In 1987 he joined the 
Computer Science group at Northrop's Research and Technology Center in 
Southern California.  In 1992 he joined the Research and Technology 
organization within Boeing Computer Services in Seattle.  Dr. AngusU 
research focuses on the use of object-oriented programming methods to 
facilitate scientific computation on massively parallel computers.


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Issues in Scientific Computing Colloquium Series
(Co-sponsored by OCATE)

Single Schema Database Management Systems
Don Batory, University of Texas

Friday, December 11, 1992,  3:30 p.m.
Main Seminar Room, OGI Administration Building

Many data-intensive applications require high-performance data 
management facilities but utilize only a small fraction of the power of a 
general-purpose database system.  We believe single schema database 
systems (SSDs), i.e., database systems that are designed to work only for a 
specific schema and a predeclared set of operations, are a vital need of 
today's software industry.  

The challenge is to create a technology for economically building high-
performance SSDs.  To meet this challenge, we are building the P2 
language, an extension of C, that is specifically designed to support high-
performance, customized SSDs.

This research was supported in part by grants from The University of 
Texas Applied Research Labs, Schlumberger, Digital Equipment 
Corporation, and Texas Instruments.