bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From shaman to IT guru
Authors: Barbour R. H.
Published: February 2006

IT people are involved in creating order out of chaos and communicating new knowledge. IT academics and practitioners find themselves confronted on a daily basis with chaos, un-controlled change and more or less ordered change as new machines, software tools and techniques appear and have to be integrated into existing systems. Dealing with these challenges requires people who are knowledge seekers and problem solvers by inclination, endlessly curious on behalf of other people. This paper addresses the issue of where the role of knowledge seeker and problem solver developed in human history. Parallels are drawn between knowledge seekers in academic cultures and those in First Nation people's cultures. Three aspects of the experiences of past and present knowledge seekers are identified and examined. The first aspect is the initiation of new entrants, the second is the confirmation of acceptance by the group and the third is the vocation of being a knowledge seeker and problem seeker in the IT industry. Metaphor is used to identify these experiences linking together the crucial steps in the processes of becoming accepted as a knowledge seeker. The investigation finds close relationships between First Nations' knowledge seeker's roles and Information Technology roles.
Opting out?
Authors: French Sheila
Published: February 2006

From all corners of the globe, the on-line revolution is proclaimed. The imperative is to connect; to shop, work, learn, be governed, even fall in love on-line. Government initiatives proliferate globally, stressing the urgency for citizens to become part of the so called Information Society. In the midst of all this euphoria the question must be raised 'Is this opportunity for all, or just a few?' Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) are being introduced to the teaching and learning process at an increasing pace. E-government ministers are particularly concerned about the 'have-nets' and 'have-nots' in this 'digital revolution' (e.g. see www.UKonline). Our research in schools and the HE (Higher Education) sector, looking at women learning on-line, has indicated barriers. We discuss how gendered relations in the home, work and education go far beyond having access to IT (Information Technology). We illustrate how these relations contribute to the shaping of the gendered experiences of using technology in education. So whilst women are urged to get connected, we ask whether or not they will want to use technology as a tool to learn with. We suggest that the current gendered discourse surrounding technology and its use in all areas of society should inform government on-line learning policies globally, cutting through the euphoric hype.
Are open-domain question answering technologies useful for information access dialogues?---an empirical study and a proposal of a novel challenge
Authors: Kato Tsuneaki , Fukumoto Jun'ichi , Masui Fumito , Kando Noriko
Published: February 2006

There are strong expectations for the use of question answering technologies in information access dialogues, such as for information gathering and browsing. In this paper, we empirically examine what kinds of abilities are needed for question answering systems in such situations, and propose a challenge for evaluating those abilities objectively and quantitatively. We also show that existing technologies have the potential to address this challenge. From the empirical study, we found that questions that have values and names as answers account for a majority in realistic information-gathering situations and that those sequences of questions contain a wide range of reference expressions and are sometimes complicated by the inclusion of subdialogues and focus shifts. The challenge proposed is not only novel as an evaluation of the handling of information access dialogues, but also includes several valuable ideas such as categorization and characterization of information access dialogues, and introduces three measures to evaluate various aspects in addressing list-type questions and reference test sets for evaluating context-processing ability in isolation.
An analysis of a high-performance japanese question answering system
Authors: Isozaki Hideki
Published: February 2006

Twenty-five Japanese Question Answering systems participated in NTCIR QAC2 subtask 1. Of these, our system SAIQA-QAC2 performed the best: MRR = 0.607. SAIQA-QAC2 is an improvement on our previous system SAIQA-Ii that achieved MRR = 0.46 for QAC1. We mainly improved the answer-type determination module and the retrieval module. In general, a fine-grained answer taxonomy improves QA performance but it is difficult to build an accurate answer extraction module for the fine-grained taxonomy because Machine Learning methods require a huge training corpus and hand-crafted rules are hard to maintain. Therefore, we built a fine-grained system by using a coarse-grained named entity recognizer and a Japanese lexicon “Nihongo Goi-taikei.” Our experiments show that named entity/numerical expression recognition and word sense-based answer extraction mainly contributed to the performance. In addition, we developed a new proximity-based document retrieval module that performs better than BM25. We also compared its performance with MultiText, a conventional proximity-based retrieval method developed for QA.
Multi-answer-focused multi-document summarization using a question-answering engine
Authors: Mori Tatsunori , Nozawa Masanori , Asada Yoshiaki
Published: February 2006

In recent years, answer-focused summarization has gained attention as a technology complementary to information retrieval and question answering. In order to realize multi-document summarization focused by multiple questions, we propose a method to calculate sentence importance using scores, for responses to multiple questions, generated by a Question-Answering engine. Further, we describe the integration of this method with a generic multi-document summarization system. The evaluation results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed method is better than not only several baselines but also other participants' systems at the evaluation workshop NTCIR4 TSC3 Formal Run. However, it should be noted that some of the other systems do not use the information of questions.
On a combination of probabilistic and boolean ir models for WWW document retrieval
Authors: Yoshioka Masaharu , Haraguchi Makoto
Published: February 2006

Even though a Boolean query can express the information need precisely enough to select relevant documents, it is not easy to construct an appropriate Boolean query that covers all relevant documents. To utilize a Boolean query effectively, a mechanism to retrieve as many as possible relevant documents is therefore required. In accordance with this requirement, we propose a method for modifying a given Boolean query by using information from a relevant document set. The retrieval results, however, may deteriorate if some important query terms are removed by this reformulation. A further mechanism is thus required in order to use other query terms that are useful for finding more relevant documents, but are not strictly required in relevant documents. To meet this requirement, we propose a new method that combines the probabilistic IR and the Boolean IR models. We also introduce a new IR system---called appropriate Boolean query reformulation for information retrieval (ABRIR)---based on these two methods and the Okapi system. ABRIR uses both a word index and a phrase index formed from combinations of two adjacent noun words. The effectiveness of these two methods was confirmed according to the NTCIR-4 Web test collection.
Technical Writing as a Profession in Australia
Authors: Whittle Sandra
Published: February 2006

Technical writing as a profession is not new. The Technical Communication Association of Australia (TCAA) was active through the 1960's to 1970's. It was made up of members who belonged to Australian electronic companies such as AWA, STC and Phillips, and pockets of government (mostly defence work). According to Brockmann (1986), there were TCAA strongholds in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
Meeting Training and Education Needs of the 1990s
Authors: Bonifacio Flor , Dickeson Bryan
Published: February 2006

Ever since its inception, the NSW Society for Technical Communication (NSW STC) has faced a dilemma over certification.
The metadata enigma
Authors: Shankaranarayanan Ganesan , Even Adir
Published: February 2006

Metadata promises too much value as a business management tool to dismiss its implementation and maintenance effort as the equivalent of Sisyphean torture.
The present B2C implementation framework
Authors: Poon Pak-Lok , Lau Amy H.L.
Published: February 2006

It guides e-commerce firms implementing B2C Web sites intended to attract customers, earn their trust, and entice them to buy while helping integrate the firms' internal business processes.
Wireless commons perils in the common good
Authors: Damsgaard Jan , Parikh Mihir A. , Rao Bharat
Published: February 2006

In the last few years, high-speed wireless access to the Internet has grown rapidly. Surprisingly, this growth has not come through cellular phone networks as many had expected, but through IEEE 802.11 standards-based wireless local area networks (WLANs). This rise of WLANs can be partly linked to the creation of a series of open standards, a precipitous fall in the costs of related hardware, and the explosive growth of home networking. WLANs have become commonplace in the education, transportation, and manufacturing sectors and are rapidly embraced in the retail, hospitality, and government sectors.
The quarks of object-oriented development
Authors: Armstrong Deborah J.
Published: February 2006

A two-construct taxonomy is used to define the essential elements of object orientation through analysis of existing literature.
Video image stabilization and registration technology
Authors: Templeton Gary F.
Published: February 2006

A powerful software algorithm is utilized for a variety of video-enhancing applications.
Computing in post-war Afghanistan
Authors: Uldal Siri Birgitte , Marjan Muhammad Aimal
Published: February 2006

Reflecting on recent history and the context of current events.
Regulating technical design
Authors: Samuelson Pamela
Published: February 2006

Should software developers be required to include infringement-inhibitingcomponents such as filters in their technologies?
Risks of live digital forensic analysis
Authors: Carrier Brian D.
Published: February 2006

Live analysis tools have made a significant difference in capturing evidence during forensic investigations. Such tools, however, are far from infallible.
Improving the computer forensic analysis process through visualization
Authors: Teelink Sheldon , Erbacher Robert F.
Published: February 2006

The ability to display mountains of data in a graphical manner significantly enhances the time needed to locate and analyze suspicious files.
Next-generation digital forensics
Authors: Richard Golden G. , Roussev Vassil
Published: February 2006

The digital forensics community requires new tools and strategies for the rapid turnaround of large forensic targets.
Estimating satisfactoriness of selectional restriction from corpus without a thesaurus
Authors: Tomiura Yoichi , Tanaka Shosaku , Hitaka Toru
Published: February 2006

A selectional restriction specifies what combinations of words are semantically valid in a particular syntactic construction. This is one of the basic and important pieces of knowledge in natural language processing and has been used for syntactic and word sense disambiguation. In the case of acquiring the selectional restriction for many combinations of words from a corpus, it is necessary to estimate whether or not a word combination that is not observed in the corpus satisfies the selectional restriction. This paper proposes a new method for estimating the degree of satisfaction of the selectional restriction for a word combination from a tagged corpus, based on the multiple regression model. The independent variables of this model correspond to modifiers. Unlike a conventional multiple regression analysis, the independent variables are also parameters to be learned. We experiment on estimating the degree of satisfaction of the selectional restriction for Japanese word combinations 〈
noun, postpositional-particle, verb
〉. The experimental results indicate that our method estimates the degree of satisfaction of a word combination not very well observed in the corpus, and that the accuracy of syntactic disambiguation using the co-occurrencies estimated by our method is higher than using co-occurrence probabilities smoothed by previous methods.
Algorithms for HLA-based distributed simulation cloning
Authors: Chen Dan , Turner Stephen J. , Cai Wentong , Gan Boon Ping , Low Malcolm Yoke Hean
Published: February 2006

Distributed simulation cloning technology is designed to analyze alternative scenarios of a distributed simulation concurrently within the same execution session. One important goal is to optimize execution by avoiding repeated computation among independent scenarios. Our research is concerned with the cloning of High Level Architecture (HLA)-based distributed simulations; a federate may spawn clones to explore different scenarios at a decision point. This article introduces the cloning mechanism and the supporting infrastructure. When enabling cloning, our approach ensures the state consistency and supports user transparency and reusability of federate codes. When a federate clones, it is desirable to replicate only those federates whose states will be affected while the rest are shared among the old and new scenarios. This article discusses the theory and issues involved in such an incremental cloning mechanism, which guarantees accurate sharing and initiates cloning only when absolutely necessary. Experiments have been carried out to compare the performance of entire cloning and incremental cloning mechanisms. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach provides correct cloning and can significantly reduce the execution time for evaluating different scenarios of a distributed simulation. Moreover the incremental cloning mechanism significantly surpasses entire cloning in terms of execution efficiency.
On the xorshift random number generators
Authors: Panneton François , L'Ecuyer Pierre
Published: February 2006

G. Marsaglia recently introduced a class of very fast
xorshift
random number generators, whose implementation uses three “xorshift” operations. They belong to a large family of generators based on linear recurrences modulo 2, which also includes shift-register generators, the Mersenne twister, and several others. In this article, we analyze the theoretical properties of xorshift generators, search for the best ones with respect to the equidistribution criterion, and test them empirically. We find that the vast majority of xorshift generators with only three xorshift operations, including those having good equidistribution, fail several simple statistical tests. We also discuss generators with more than three xorshifts.
Very large fractional factorial and central composite designs
Authors: Sanchez Susan M. , Sanchez Paul J.
Published: February 2006

We present a concise representation of fractional factorials and an algorithm to quickly generate resolution V designs. The description is based on properties of a complete, orthogonal discrete-valued basis set called Walsh functions. We tabulate two-level resolution V fractional factorial designs, as well as central composite designs allowing estimation of full second-order models, for experiments involving up to 120 factors. The simple algorithm provided can be used to characterize even larger designs, and a fast Walsh transform method quickly generates design matrices from our representation.
In with the New
Authors: O'Hanlon Charlene
Published: February 2006

Ah, December. That time of year when endings and beginnings are as prevalent as Salvation Army Santas. Amid the holiday parties, shopping for presents, and drinking and eating too much of the stuff that’s really bad for us, most of us take some time to reflect on the year that is now behind us and contemplate ways to make the new year better than the last.
News 2.0
Authors: Stanik John
Published: February 2006

Web 2.0—Looking toward the Future or Reviving the Past?
Vicious XSS
Authors: Neville-Neil George
Published: February 2006

For readers who doubt the relevance of KV’s advice, witness the XSS attack that befell MySpace in October. This month Kode Vicious addresses just this sort of XSS attack. It’s a good thing cross-site scripting is not abbreviated CSS, as the MySpace hacker used CSS to perpetrate his XSS attack. That would have made for one confusing story, eh?
Lessons from the Floor
Authors: Rogers Daniel
Published: February 2006

The January monthly service quality meeting started normally. Around the table were representatives from development, operations, marketing, and product management, and the agenda focused on the prior month’s performance. As usual, customer-impacting incidents and quality of service were key topics, and I was armed with the numbers showing the average uptime for the part of the service that I represent: MSN, the Microsoft family of services that includes e-mail, Instant Messenger, news, weather and sports, etc.
Review of "Open Systems and Standards for Software Product Development by P. A. Dargan", Artech House, 2005, $89.00, ISBN: 1580537499
Authors: Menon A. K.
Published: February 2006

Review of "Open Systems and Standards for Software Product Development by P. A. Dargan", Artech House, 2005, $89.00, ISBN: 1580537499
Anything Su Doku, I Can Do Better
Authors: Kelly-Bootle Stan
Published: February 2006

I dedicate this essay in memoriam to Jef Raskin. Many more authoritative tributes than I can muster continue to pour in, and no doubt a glorious Festschrift will be forthcoming from those who admired this remarkable polymath. "Le don de vivre a passé dans les fleurs."
Are virtual-machine monitors microkernels done right?
Authors: Heiser Gernot , Uhlig Volkmar , LeVasseur Joshua
Published: February 2006

A paper by Hand
et al.
at the recent HotOS workshop re-examined microkernels and contrasted them to virtual-machine monitors (VMMs). It found that the two kinds of systems share architectural commonalities but also have a number of technical differences which the paper examined. It concluded that VMMs are a special case of microkernels, "microkernels done right".A closer examination of that paper shows that it contains a number of statements which are poorly justified or even refuted by the literature. While we believe that it is indeed timely to reexamine the merits and issues of microkernels, such an examination needs to be based on facts.
The design principles of PlanetLab
Authors: Peterson Larry , Roscoe Timothy
Published: February 2006

PlanetLab is a geographically distributed platform for deploying, evaluating, and accessing planetary-scale network services. PlanetLab is a shared community effort by a large international group of researchers, each of whom gets access to one or more isolated
slices
of PlanetLab's global resources. Because we deployed PlanetLab and started supporting users before we fully understood what its architecture would be, being able to evolve the system became a requirement. This paper examines the set of
design principles
that guided this evolution. Some of these principles were explicit at the project outset, and others have become crystallized as the platform has developed.
Using PlanetLab for network research
Authors: Spring Neil , Peterson Larry , Bavier Andy , Pai Vivek
Published: February 2006

PlanetLab is a continuously-evolving global network research testbed that is simultaneously used by hundreds of researchers for diverse tasks, ranging from short-term self-contained experiments among PlanetLab nodes to continuously-running Web-accessible services with tens of thousands of non-PlanetLab users. While PlanetLab cannot provide a perfectly-customized environment for every experiment, it has been changing over time, and the base of knowledge of how to best utilize it has also been growing. As a result, many of the early observations researchers made about PlanetLab would change if rechecked today. In this paper, we discuss these issues and explain whether they remain, have been addressed via PlanetLab's evolution, or can be avoided by the use of best practices. Where possible, we provide quantitative evidence showing the realities of PlanetLab and possible research avenues to further broaden the opportunities for using PlanetLab in network research.
PlanetLab application management using plush
Authors: Albrecht Jeannie , Tuttle Christopher , Snoeren Alex C. , Vahdat Amin
Published: February 2006

Support for application deployment and monitoring in large-scale distributed systems such as PlanetLab remains in its early stages. While a number of solutions exist for specific subtasks of deployment and monitoring, these tools suffer from a lack of integration. Most tools were developed specifically to deploy and manage a particular service or application on a single platform and were not designed to be general enough to support different environments. In this paper, we consider three different classes of PlanetLab applications to distill a set of requirements for a general application-control infrastructure. We then discuss initial experiences and lessons learned during the development and PlanetLab deployment of Plush, a tool designed to manage applications running over large-scale distributed systems.
Oasis
Authors: Madhyastha Harsha V. , Venkataramani Arun , Krishnamurthy Arvind , Anderson Thomas
Published: February 2006

Overlays have enabled several new and popular distributed applications such as Akamai, Kazaa, and Bittorrent. However, the lack of an overlay-aware network stack has hindered the widespread use of general purpose overlay packet delivery services [16, 29, 26]. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of Oasis, a system and toolkit that enables legacy operating systems to access overlay-based packet delivery services. Oasis combines a set of ideas - network address translation, name resolution, packet capture, dynamic code execution - to provide greater user choice. We are in the process of making the Oasis toolkit available for public use, specifically, to ease the development of PlanetLab-based packet delivery services.
CoMon
Authors: Park KyoungSoo , Pai Vivek S.
Published: February 2006

CoMon is an evolving, mostly-scalable monitoring system for PlanetLab that has the goal of presenting environment-tailored information for both the administrators and users of the PlanetLab global testbed. In addition to passively reporting metrics provided by the operating system, CoMon also actively gathers a number of metrics useful for developers of networked systems. Using CoMon, PlanetLab administrators and users can easily spot problematic machines, where the problem may arise from the machine itself, local configuration/environment problems, or the workload running on the machine. Furthermore, users can easily observe many properties of all of the experiments running across multiple PlanetLab nodes, facilitating not only their own experiment monitoring and debugging, but also helping scale the task of finding PlanetLab problems.In this paper we describe CoMon's design and operation, including what kinds of data are gathered, the scale of the processing involved, and the approaches we have taken to keep CoMon running. Our goal is not only to illustrate the kinds of problems faced in this environment, but also to invite others to participate, either by experimenting with the data generated by CoMon, or by building on the CoMon system itself.
Privileged operations in the PlanetLab virtualised environment
Authors: Muir Steve , Peterson Larry , Fiuczynski Marc , Cappos Justin , Hartman John
Published: February 2006

Virtualised systems have experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, whether used to support multiple OSes running on a user's desktop, provide commercial application hosting facilities, or isolate a large number of users from each other in global network testbeds. We also see an increasing level of interest in having entities within these virtualised systems interact with each other, either as peers or as helpers providing a service to clients.Very little work has been previously conducted on how such interaction between virtualised environments can take place. We introduce Proper, a service running on the PlanetLab system, that allows unprivileged entities to access privileged operations in a safe, tightly controlled manner.This paper describes our work designing and implementing Proper, including a discussion of the various architectural decisions made. We describe how implementing such a system in a traditional UNIX environment is non-trivial, and provide a number of examples of how services running on PlanetLab actually use Proper.
PlanetFlow
Authors: Huang Mark , Bavier Andy , Peterson Larry
Published: February 2006

PlanetFlow is a network auditing service that maintains comprehensive, permanent accountability for all traffic generated by PlanetLab services, in accordance with common Internet practice and the terms of the PlanetLab Acceptable Use Policy. PlanetFlow audits the usage of PlanetLab network resources in order to facilitate the resolution of complaints, limit liability, and minimize problematic behavior.The current implementation of PlanetFlow consists of a low overhead flow classifier, an autonomously managed distributed database, and a publicly accessible Web interface. PlanetFlow currently processes up to 4 TB of generated traffic per day, and incurs negligible CPU and storage overhead.
Using outcomes-based assessment data to improve assessment and instruction
Authors: Rigby Steve , Dark Melissa
Published: February 2006

Educators who have been through accreditation are well aware of the need for outcomes-based learning and assessment. However, there are misunderstandings about what outcomes based assessment is, and how it can improve teaching and learning. We understand that accreditation requirements can be a reason for adopting outcomes-based assessment, but our real goal is to convey to our readers how outcomes-based assessment can provide meaningful and useful feedback to the instructor regarding student achievement, assessment, and the quality of the instruction.
Macro based systems for information retrieval
Authors: Lyons Norman R.
Published: February 2006

The concept of a macro is an old one in computing. Brown [2] gives a bibliography of some of the more noteworthy developments in this area stretching over many years. Basically, a macro generates source code in-line in a computer program from a single statement. It is most commonly used in assembly languages to generate a whole sequence of assembly instructions from a single instruction. Most assembly languages allow for both library macros and for user-defined macros. Many early computer languages (such as IBM's Autocoder) were macro-based languages that allowed for the intermixing of both machine code and library macros to produce complex and powerful programs with a minimum of programmer effort.
The nature of the interface
Authors: Barkin Stephen R.
Published: February 2006

Almost two decades have passed since the first promise of computerized information systems capable of executing the functions of management was enthusiastically voiced [1]. Today a search for even one example of the prophesized total management information system (MIS) proves futile. Fortunately, the overly optimistic rhetoric of the early 1960s has succumbed to more mature deliberations [e.g., 2, 3]. Why, though, has the MIS concept failed to win widespread acceptance?
Structure in programs from another point of view
Authors: Connor John E.
Published: February 2006

Sometimes a new point of view can offer a useful insight into old problems. "Point of view" is relevant when we consider structure in programs, especially if we are to think about structure as other disciplines, atomic physics or molecular biology for example.
Review of "The Little Book of Basic Style: How to Write a Program You Can Read, by John M. Nevison", Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978
Authors: Barkin Stephen R.
Published: February 2006

My first reaction to this book was, "Who needs it?" But then several thoughts crossed my mind: BASIC is rapidly gaining acceptance as a major programming language. Many vendors, including IBM, are offering BASIC as the primary language for their smallest business orientated systems. The National Bureau of Standards is expected to adopt Federal Information Processing Standards for BASIC. And besides, BASIC is the only higher-level language that is generally available to the personal computer crowd. With those thoughts in mind, I looked a little more deeply into this book that promises to show "how to write a program you can read."
DSS for chargeout system planning, control in large-scale environment
Authors: Davis Charles K. , Wetherbe James C.
Published: February 2006

Gibson and Nolan have stated, "EDP, as corporations use it today, is so complex that controlling it, or even understanding it, is almost too difficult for words." One of the most popular management techniques for attempting to control EDP is the implementation of a chargeout system In a chargeout system, users are charged an appropriate fee, computed by formula, for their use of computing resources on a job-by-job basis.
Review of "Pre-Data Base Survey, by Leo J. Cohen", Performance Development Corporation, 1979
Authors: Senn Jim
Published: February 2006

This typewritten report addresses the critical question: How do you get started in data base management? The report is divided into three parts: Planning for the Data Base System Project, The Pre-Data Base Survey and Project Analysis. In the planning section, the report examines the steps associated with a data base project, the roles of personnel involved in the project and treatment of data as a corporate resource.
Review of "SIGOA Newsletter: A Bimonthly Publication of the Special Interest Group on Office Automation," Association of Computing Machinery
Authors: Ives Blake
Published: February 2006

The new office automation SIG is doing lots more than just talking about office automation. The members are doing it. Their newsletter is prepared using modern text processing techniques. If you want to submit an article, it must be in machine-readable form. Then it passes through software for formatting text, creating tables, correcting spelling errors (oops! we found one of those in each of the first two editions). Then it's on to the Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter. Oh yes, the newsletter does exist in paper form, delivered to your door by your friendly mailperson.
Review of "Introduction to Computers and Data Processing, by Gary B. Shelly and Thomas J. Cashman", Anaheim Publishing Co., 1980
Authors: Ives Blake
Published: February 2006

This column does not as a general practice review textbooks, particularly introductory texts. This issue, however, we will make an exception for what we consider to be a major breakthrough in introductory data processing texts. If you pick the book up and leaf through the pages, you may think you grabbed the National Geographic by mistake. Full-color photographs, drawings and diagrams appear on almost every page and richly illustrate the text. The photographs portray computers in use rather than spread out across vendor showrooms. The diagrams are generally of high quality, with the text in many cases serving to supplement the graphics rather than the other way around.
Review of "Decision Support Systems: Current Practice and Continuing Challenges, by Steven L. Alter", Addison-Wesley, 1980
Authors: Ives Blake
Published: February 2006

Writing a book to meet the needs of both experienced practitioners and naive students is difficult. Though desirable from an economic perspective to both author and publisher, the book more often than not results in material unsuitable for either market. Steven Alter's first book may have successfully met both needs.
Performance measurement in times of turbulence
Authors: Janusz Edward R.
Published: February 2006

Procurement of a major ADP System, particularly one including a large software conversion effort, is not a simple undertaking. The completion of such a procurement, however, even if seemingly successful, does not mean the end of automation problems for the receiving organization. In fact, it frequently ushers in a period of great turbulence and creates new challenges for management to bring the performance of the new computer and the supporting organization to a level expected by the using community.
People, Inc.
Authors: Tischhauser Jennie L.
Published: February 2006

Is computing an art or a science? Is the systems analyst an artist or a scientist? These questions have been the subject of lively debates in the last half of the 20th century and although the science of computing has established a place for itself and become the foundation for computing professionals, there is still room for the artist, especially in systems analysis.
Computer capacity planning
Authors: Carper I. Lynne , Harvey Susan , Wetherbe James C.
Published: February 2006

This article defines computer capacity planning and proposes a four-phased model for computer capacity planning (CCP). The model contains the major steps needed for developing a comprehensive computer capacity plan. The requirements for capacity planning are defined in terms of people, hardware, software, and computing resources. Common tools and methodologies for each step in the planning process are described, including a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each. This article provides guidelines for the development of a formal capacity planning function.
Corporate data architecture
Authors: Laning Laurence J.
Published: February 2006

We are currently in a period of time when managers are becoming computer literate and focusing their attention on acquiring personal computers and powerful terminals. It is hard to imagine that the next stage we will experience is the expectation of managers to be able to easily get high quality, well-defined, and timely data delivered to their terminals. (I choose to lump personal computers and terminals together.) The stage following this data-focused era will center on the analytical technologies needed by managers to gain insight and synthesize the masses of data available to them by this time. These analytical technologies will include artificial intelligence applications such as expert systems, as well as the more classic management science and statistical techniques. This paper addresses what technology is needed to support managers when the calls for data begin arriving on a large scale, a few short years away, or sooner. It purposefully takes a macro perspective rather than examining a specific technical issue in order to motivate thought on multiple technical issues important in managing and delivering data.
Environmental factors affecting decision support system design
Authors: Mahmood Mo A. , Courtney James F. , Burns James R.
Published: February 2006

The development of a Decision Support System (DSS) that is truly responsive to user needs has proven to be a deceptively complex, error-prone, and expensive process. One of the problems seems to be a mismatch between the design approaches and the organizational design environments. Because of the mismatch, many systems which are developed cease to be used or are used for routine report generation rather than for direct support of decision makers. This paper addresses that problem by first, analyzing existing DSS design approaches and discussing their shortcomings; second, by examining the nature of organizational design environments; and third, by prescribing which design approaches are appropriate for the environmental factors that are identical.
Right-brained decision support systems
Authors: Young Lawrence F.
Published: February 2006

Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been described as computer-based aids for management decision-makers dealing with semi-structured problems [Keen and Scott Morton, 1978]. DSS are differentiated from other MIS components in that they seek to establish a symbiosis of human mind and computer by allowing for a high degree of human-computer interaction and by enabling the manager-user to maintain direct control over the computer's tasks and their outcomes.
An evaluation of MINI/MICRO systems
Authors: Rushinek Avi , Rushinek Sara F.
Published: February 2006

Many variables are important in determining the performance of computer systems. Potential buyers and current users of these systems would like to know more about these variables or factors which can help them decide about a computer system they would like to acquire for their organization. Large numbers of variables could confuse the manager or decision-maker and these variables may give redundant information. This paper tests the hypothesis of potential redundancy among the computer performance or satisfaction variables. The null hypothesis was rejected in favor of the alternative hypothesis, concluding that the initial fourteen variables were redundant and three factors could replace them. The importance of some of these variables is discussed in detail. These three nonredundant factors are designed to be incorporated in an interactive online EDP (Electronic Data Processing) Auditing Software System for Mini/Micro Computers. The auditor of a mini/micro computer system could evaluate the efficiency and the effectiveness of the system through the information accumulated by this interactive software package.
Review of "EDP Auditing, by Weber, Ron", McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982
Authors: Schrage John F.
Published: February 2006

This book provides an excellent overview of EDP auditing concepts that could be useful to almost any person with an interest in computers. The overall organization is such that the material could be used for general or specific applications for various individual backgrounds.
Database
Authors: Canter Susan J.
Published: February 2006

This paper proposes a procedure for determining whether a database management system should be used for the implementation of some particular computer application. The procedure calculates the present value of the expected costs for development and maintenance of the system for each of its implementation methods. The procedure is most applicable to data processing shops that use database management systems but that also acknowledge the pertinence of standard file access methods to some applications. The paper compares this procedure to other procedures for making such a determination.
A user-oriented framework for data dictionary systems
Authors: Kahn Beverly K. , Lumsden Eunice W.
Published: February 2006

Data dictionary systems traditionally have been analyzed and compared against idealized standards that are independent of both the special requirements of the organization and the environment in which they will be used. This has resulted in the selection of data dictionary systems that appear to be the best product in terms of the features offered but which may not be the most effective alternative for meeting the needs of the organization. This paper presents a new framework, called an environmentally dependent framework, for analyzing data dictionary systems that encompasses the most critical environmental dependencies and organizational requirements. In addition, a structured methodology which is based on this framework for selecting a data dictionary system is described.
Resolution of conflicts in data ownership and sharing in a corporate environment
Authors: Brathwaite Kenmore S.
Published: February 2006

An approach to resolving conflicts in data ownership and sharing in a large corporation is presented. The approach consists of establishing a data ownership philosophy, a model for data sharing, and a user group to arbitrate and mediate in data sharing conflicts. The main objective of the approach is the resolution of conflicts but the attending benefits to the corporation include greater control over the data resource, increased auditability of the data, and reduction in the proliferation of systems developed mainly to get around problems created by the user's inability to access data from the corporate database.
Review of "Systems Analysis and Design: A Structured Approach, by Davis, William S.", Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1983
Authors: Schrage John F.
Published: February 2006

About ten years ago, the structured concepts hit programming, and books were published with "structured" in the title but little in the material. The structured programs concept was easy to see but adapting it by programmers was difficult. Structured for systems is now becoming popular, and in the same fashion, "structured" is somewhere in the title. In addition, the structured systems concepts have several methodologies and few examples have been available without high costs to an organization. The above noted book seems to have met the challenge of content and examples better than others I have examined or reviewed. While some books have been strong in content, the examples have been weak. Also some books have emphasized more real methodology or skimmed several.
MIS research
Authors: Vogel Douglas R. , Wetherbe James C.
Published: February 2006

MIS research is emerging as an electric and diverse body of literature. Frameworks have been developed to define and direct research efforts. Considerable variation in research methodology, however, creates problems of effective comparison and evaluation of merit. In this article, MIS research is reviewed from the perspective of an examination of leading journals in the field. A taxonomy is proposed and tested, illustrating research preference by journals and universities. Significant differences of research methodology and .journal preference are noted between the top publishing universities both within that group and in comparison to the wider body of publishing institutions.
Microcomputers and relational database management systems
Authors: Egyhazy Csaba J.
Published: February 2006

Since it became known that Database Management Systems (DBMS) based on the relational model [ 1] were running on microcomputers, the MIS manager has been in a position to opt for a new strategy, namely distributing the administration and operation of part(s) of the entire organization's database. Local autonomy, flexibility, greater reliability and availability are most often cited as advantages of this strategy. On the other hand, distributed databases are not without problems [2], and because the subject is both too complex and extensive to be fully covered by a single article, the focus here will be on identifying common microcomputer configurations and to evaluate seven relational DBMS supported by one or more of these configurations. Particularly, the following questions will be addressed:• What technological breakthroughs have prompted the emergence of microcomputer-based relational DBMSs?• What are some microcomputer configurations supporting commercially available relational DBMSs?• What has been our experience with seven microcomputer-based relational DBMSs?
Use and organizational implications of database systems
Authors: Ho Simon S. M.
Published: February 2006

The use of a computer-based database system in business organizations is increasing at an explosive rate in Hong Kong and considerable experience has now been gained in the use of a wide variety of these systems.
Review of "Analysis and Design of lnformation Systems, by James A. Senn", McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1984
Authors: Sitek Jerry Frances
Published: February 2006

Analysis and Design o fin formation Systems
is a much needed, long awaited excellently written book that takes a broad yet surprisingly in depth look at the area of systems analysis and design. Although Senn's book is aimed primarily at the college market, professionals in data processing could benefit from not only reading it, but having it on the shelf of their information systems flbrary.
Review of "Building Controls into Structured Systems, by Alan E. Brill", Yourdon Press, 1983
Authors: Scharge John F.
Published: February 2006

The aspect of controls in the computer environment is essential but somewhat overlooked, if possible, in the field. Only when a breach of the systems is noted has the emphasis on controls been the concern in many companies. The responsibility of the systems design is to, not only design the system for the user, but to insure that the system cannot be subdued by others.
Review of "Spreadsheet Comparison of VISICALC versus MULTIPLAN"
Authors: Halton John
Published: February 2006

VisiCalc was my first electronic spreadsheet and of course it was "just plain magic" with power. It is still, in my opinion, a very fine piece of software; particularly in some of the updated versions. Multiplan came along after I had become competent with VisiCalc, and I can remember the excitement over the fact that it had a SORT capability. After using both packages for some time I favor Multiplan, but I think it's fair to say that the authors of Multiplan took a good thing (VisiCalc) and improved on it.
Review of "ACM'84 Conference"
Authors: Miller Boulton B.
Published: February 2006

The significance of the Fifth Generation was the target topic of the ACM'84 Conference. The opening session established the environment for those to follow. Following President Adele Goldberg's welcome address, the panel discussion of the Fifth Generation was led by Pamela McCorduck. Ms. McCorduck will, no doubt, be remembered in years to come as the Countess of Lovelace for Artificial Intelligence and the Fifth Generation.
Business implications of knowledge-based systems
Authors: Sviokla John J.
Published: February 2006

This two part paper explores management issues raised by expert systems (ES). In the first section, a brief history of ES is presented, and the competitive potential of ES is analyzed from a business policy perspective. The second section, appearing in the next issue, discusses development and implementation issues of ES. Both sections highlight similarities and differences between expert systems and other types of information systems.
An analysis of MIS doctoral dissertations
Authors: Carr Houston H. , Cheney Paul H. , Mann Robert L
Published: February 2006

The advancement of any field is accomplished largely by research directed at specific issues in that field. Research in management information systems (MIS) takes place, or is reported in (1) private studies that usually resuit in published articles, (2) doctoral dissertations, and (3) private or government funded research that may be reported in private publications, books, or articles. This paper reviews four MIS Ph.D. dissertation lists that were compiled by Scott Hamilton, Blake Ires, and Gordon Davis, covering the period 1972 through 1983 and reported in the
MIS Quarterly
. It describes the nature of the research conducted in the dissertation process, lists the fields and schools from which major work is being produced, and indicates some of the characteristics of those research efforts.
Doctoral research
Authors: Wetherbe James C.
Published: February 2006

As universities attempt to catch up with the demand to produce information systems (IS) faculty and reseachers, the field of IS will benefit from more and more timely research on key IS issues.
A normative model of decision making in auditing
Authors: Ferrandez Eugenia
Published: February 2006

An audit is a collection of judgments made about various accounting subsystems. Ultimately these judgments must be combined in order to issue a final opinion. As businesses become more complex, the number and type of subsystems increase, and the job of the auditor becomes more complex. Coupled with an increase in auditor liability, systems which provide quantitative support for the audit process are needed. This research attempts to formalize the audit process by developing a normative model of the audit decision process. Such a model would provide the theoretical basis for building an expert support system for auditors.