ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
University innovations in desktop publishing
Authors: J. E. Diem, Allison Hartman
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User Services (1987)

Desktop publishing by a university computing services provides a way to (1) rapidly produce professional quality locally-written computer documentation, (2) expose university administrators to cost-effective microcomputer services, and (3) help to defray the cost of microcomputer support. During the summer of 1986, Tulane Computing Services (TCS) faced a lack of locally-written documentation for its new IBM 3081 mainframe computer and the need to defray the cost of microcomputer support and services in the absence of a university charge-back mechanism for these services. Partial solutions to these problems were achieved with the purchase of an Apple Computer Desktop Publishing &ldquo;bundle,&rdquo; consisting of a Macintosh Plus and a LaserWriter Plus, and the page layout program PageMaker, and by offering desktop publishing services to the university community on a fee basis. Initially, a single person in the computing services consulting division was responsible for all of TCS's desktop publishing activities. This person prepared all of the computing services' locally-written computer documentation. Additionally, in cooperation with the administrative department responsible for all university publications, desktop publishing assignments from university departments other than computing services were accepted on a fee basis.
Careers in computer graphics
Authors: Judith R Brown, Don Culanag
Venue: ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics (1986)

Information is unquestionably today's most important commodity. Computer graphics, as a means of expressing that information, now appears in virtually every application area. When we began gathering information for this article, we intended to describe each job title and cross-reference each title by applications which utilize computer graphics. However, there no longer appears to be any application, no matter how seemingly obscure, where computer graphics is not used to some extent. For example, techniques similar to those used a few years ago in charting the surface of the moon are now being used in a Skin-Imaging Computer to select cosmetic supplies.The most important distinction in computer graphics careers is between working in the computer graphics industry and using computer graphics as a tool in an occupation whose main focus is not computer graphics. By "working in the computer graphics industry," we mean the jobs of researching, designing and marketing graphics equipment, researching and writing graphics languages, libraries and application software, preparing documentation, consulting on graphics hardware and software and teaching graphics courses. Careers in these areas require more extensive knowledge of computers in general and computer graphics in particular than do careers involving applications which use graphics work stations. In both cases, however, some specialty is required in addition to computer graphics experience.
Retraining computing faculty: a perspective
Authors: William Mitchell
Venue: Proceedings of the seventeenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1986)

The author has been actively involved in the retraining of college faculty to teach computing science for six years. He is presently recruiting a fifth class for a two-summer masters degree program which addresses this goal, and is preparing for a seventh offering of a week-long, non-credit summer institute. This paper reflects upon the experience of having worked first-hand with nearly 200 faculty members from a great variety of disciplines. It also incorporates interchanges with directors of other formal retraining efforts around the country, and the comments made by some of the nearly 500 faculty who have participated in formal summer retraining programs. From these sources the author tries to clarify the phenomena of retraining and suggests some areas which merit further study.
Equilibrium Point Analysis of Memory Interference in Multiprocessor Systems
Authors: Akira Fukuda
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1988)

An approximate analytic tool called equilibrium point analysis is applied to the problem of memory interference in multiprocessor systems. It is a simple and powerful analytic tool based on the fluid approximation and has been widely used for packet broadcast systems. It is shown that quite general multiprocessor systems can be studied quite simply with this technique, these systems include those made up of many classes of processors and memory modules with arbitrary static memory reference patterns, and systems with bus connections between processors and memories. In most cases, the approximation is shown to be sufficiently good. One of the advantages of this technique is that the error is smaller for larger systems for which no appropriate analytic tools have existed until now.
Monte Carlo simulation through APL computer language
Authors: Edward J. Danial, S. K. Katti
Venue: ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad (1988)

Two convenient APL functions with the capability of simulating random frequencies and sample, through the widely used Monte Carlo method, are introduced. Documentations and examples are presented.
On the Complexity of Table Lookup for Iterative Division
Authors: B. Parhami
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1987)

We show that except for a few special cases allowing smaller tables, the lookup table used for achieving k digits of convergence after the initial multiplication (or for obtaining the approximate reciprocal of the divisor with k - 1 digits of accuracy) in iterative division methods must have at least (r--l) rk words of k + I digits, r being the number representation base. In the important special case of r = 2 with k =5, a 2k-word table with k-bit entries can be used, since the initial digit is always 1. It is also shown that a table of this optimal size can always be constructed. The special cases corresponding to r = 3 with k = 1, and r = 2 with k = 4, allow smaller tables than the general case and are thus handled separately.
Multi-disk management algorithms
Authors: Miron Livny, Setrag Khoshafian, Haran Boral
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 ACM SIGMETRICS conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems (1987)

We investigate two schemes for placing data on multiple disks. We show that declustering (spreading each file across several disks) is inherently better than clustering (placing each file on a single disk) due to a number of reasons including parallelism and uniform load on all disks.
Communications design for Co-oP: a group decision support system
Authors: Tung X. Bui, Matthias Jarke
Venue: ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) (1986)

Decision Support Systems (DSSs), computer-based systems intended to assist managers in preparing and analyzing decisions, have been single-user systems for most of the past decade. Only recently has DSS research begun to study the implications of the fact that most complex managerial decisions involve multiple decision makers and analysts. A number of tools for facilitating group decisions have been proposed under the label Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs). One of the most important functions of a GDSS is to provide problem-oriented services for communication among decision makers. On the basis of an analysis of the communication requirements in various group decision settings, this paper presents an architecture for defining and enforcing dynamic application-level protocols that organize decision group interaction. The architecture has been implemented on a network of personal computers in Co-oP, a GDSS for cooperative group decision making based on interactive, multiple-criteria decision methods.
In search of silver bullet
Authors: M. M. Tanik
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

Frederick P. Brooks' recent insightful exposition on werewolves and the essence of software engineering [1] triggered painful memories of my own experience with werewolves such as program development environments for NASA, telecommunications software at Collins research labs, and rapid prototyping systems for the Strategic Defense Initiative. We have tried and are still trying many approaches to solving the generic problem of finding reliable, efficient, timely and cost-contained solutions for our automation problems. Our goal is still to create the means for cost-contained production of efficient, reliable, timely, maintainable, and portable automatons. We are attacking this generic problem from many angles. We are extending our horizon of programming technology in directions of functional programming, automatic programming, graphical/visual programming, object-oriented programming, and logic programming. We are extending our development environments in directions of knowledge-based support, graphics, integrated data-flow, and low-level operating system interfacing. We are providing powerful and expensive environments to the developers in the form of workstations. We are providing all sorts of tool sets. We are preaching management techniques. So far there is no clear cut single winner. It appears that missed-budget and scheduling problems of 1960's and early 1970's in constructing software have been, at least partially, solved. But the lack of a continuum from specification to design and to implementation is making the knowledge of a particular phase inaccessible at later phases of development. This inaccessibility of design and specification information is becoming a source of problems in developing and maintaining large scale software systems. A fundamental challenge is to identify the ways of synergistic integration of technological knowledge accumulated in the fields of AI, SE, DBMS, and graphics. In working towards this goal, we should maintain a realistic perspective and not raise unrealistic expectations. It is desirable to have a high level description system which takes advantage of AI, SE, DBMS, and graphics technologies for interactive and rapid development of functional prototypes. To be able to provide such a system, we have to solve fundamental problems related to knowledge representation and semantics. At the heart of such a system, there will be an executable VHL design languages which can be used in interactive, incremental and hierarchical specification of large scale systems. This system should provide capabilities for prototyping of functional behavior and interfaces. In addition, a simulation/stimulation environment in which this kind of rapid prototyping system will reside should provide performance and reliability testing capabilities.
A parts selection expert system to increase manufacturability
Authors: D. Praizler, G. Fritz
Venue: Proceedings of the 24th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (1987)

This paper describes the Parts Selection Advisor, a prototype expert system applied to component selection. The Parts Selection Advisor (PSA) condenses the diffuse knowledge of several manufacturing experts into a system that design engineers can use. By leveraging this store of manufacturing knowledge, an engineer can produce a product that will be more economical to manufacture. Manufacturing costs are reduced because the PSA helps the engineer select parts which fit the manufacturing process. In addition, the parts chosen are reliable components from preferred suppliers. This paper also addresses practical issues of expert system construction.
FSM&mdash;a fullscreen manager
Authors: R. J. Busman
Venue: ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad (1987)

FSM is a set of utility functions used in developing fullscreen APL systems at The Upjohn Company. Defining panels and validating input data can be a tedious and time consuming process. FSM simplifies the construction of user dialogues by providing two methods for designing panels, by creating help panels for each screen and input field, and by providing three types of documentation on each panel. It automates checking of user input, scrolling on selected fields, aborting input under program or user signal, and controlling field processing with edit codes, missing values, fill characters, and left/right justification. FSM was originally developed in conjunction with work on a pharmaceutical manufacturing receiving system. The use of nested arrays simplified implementation and contributes to its ease of use. The purpose of the paper will be to describe the capabilities of FSM as influenced by feedback from other development analysts.
A synthesis algorithm for a class of 4NF
Authors: E. A. Unger, Cleopas O. Angaye
Venue: ACM SIGSMALL/PC Notes (1987)

In order to ensure a better logical data base design that captures the semantics of the enterprise application, two basic approaches, decomposition and synthesis, are employed. The synthesis approach provides a schema that envelops all the given dependencies, though currently applicable to only functional dependencies and only for 3NF. However, the decomposition approach may produce data base schema in BCNF without satisfying the dependency preserving property [BEE79]. Ling et al. [LIN81] have discussed the existence of an objectionable form of attribute redundancy denoted superfluous attributes in schemas formed by decomposition and synthesis algorithms. A new synthesis algorithm, denoted Algorithm 2 [ANG83], eliminates such superfluous attributes from synthesized data base schema.In this paper, definitions for separable entities based only upon the dependency set under consideration are given. Algorithm 2 [ANG83] is shown to produce a data base schema which is in BCNF if the dependency set consists only of functional dependencies and the entities are separable. Further, a synthesis algorithm to normalize a relational schema involving only multivalued dependencies into a 4NF data base schema is proposed. The inclusion of multivalued dependencies in the synthesis algorithm permits wider units of information representation in the modeling of enterprise application. This algorithm will produce a 4NF schema if the dependency set consists only of multivalued dependencies which are not also functional dependencies and the entities are separable.
Software support for computer science video courses
Authors: Karen van Houten
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1987)

The Computer Science department at the University of Idaho offers a Masters degree to off-campus students via video taped courses. One of the major roadblocks to the expansion of course offerings is the lack of inexpensive software available to the video student.
Efficient Support of Statistical Operations
Authors: Setrag N. Khoshafian, Douglas M. Bates, David J. De Witt
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1985)

Most research in statistical databases has concentrated on retrieval, sampling, and aggregation type statistical queries. Data management issues associated with computational statistical operations have been ignored. As a first step towards integrating database management support of statistical operations, we have analyzed the performance of X'X, the QR decomposition, and the Singular Value Factorization. Alternative implementation strategies with respect to the relational and transposed storage organizations are developed. Implementation strategies corresponding to vector building block, vector-matrix, and direct algorithms with explicit buffer management are compared in terms of efficiency in performance.
Towards monolingual programming environments
Authors: Jan Heering, Paul Klint
Venue: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) (1985)

Most programming environments are much too complex. One way of simplifying them is to reduce the number of mode-dependent languages the user has to be familiar with. As a first step towards this end, the feasibility of unified command/programming/debugging languages, and the concepts on which such languages have to be based, are investigated. The unification process is accomplished in two phases. First, a unified command/programming framework is defined and, second, this framework is extended by adding an integrated debugging capability to it. Strict rules are laid down by which to judge language concepts presenting themselves as candidates for inclusion in the framework during each phase. On the basis of these rules many of the language design questions that have hitherto been resolved this way or that, depending on the taste of the designer, lose their vagueness and can be decided in an unambiguous manner.
Implementing RUSSELL
Authors: Hans-Juergen Boehm, Alan Demers
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1986)

We have completed an implementation of the Russell programming language [Don 85]. This effort has been very helpful in the evaluation of the original language design. It has also served to pinpoint the difficulties in implementing languages with type systems as general as that of Russell.Russell treats both functions and types as data objects which can be freely manipulated by the program. Most operators present in conventional programming languages are viewed as function calls. In spite of this, our compiler produces surprisingly efficient machine code, even with minimal effort invested in the code generator.The generality of the language served to simplify some aspects of the compiler. We focus on the separate compilation mechanism.The most difficult implementation problem is that of inferring typing information omitted by the programmer. We argue that this is an essential part of type checking a language such as Russell. Our current solution is only partially satisfactory.
The Format Model: A Theory of database Organization
Authors: Richard Hull, Chee K. Yap
Venue: Journal of the ACM (JACM) (1984)

A mathematical theory for the study of data representation in databases is introduced and developed. The theory focuses on three data constructs (collection, composition and classification). "Formats" with semantically rich yet tractable structure are built recursively using these constructs. Using formats, we obtain several nontrivial results concerning notions of relative information capacity and restructuring of data sets. As such, the format model provides a new approach for the formal study of the construction of "user views" and other data manipulations in databases.
A bus network designed to support parallel processing
Authors: E. C. Foudriat
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

A bus network design is provided that improves communications between operational CPU's by 1-2 orders of magnitude over present distributed system LANs. Bus networking is chosen over point-to-point coupling (cube connected architectures) because 1) reconfiguration for different tasks is not necessary, 2) the system can support heterogeneous nodes and mulitlevel parallelism, and 3) its physical structure supports reliability and evolution more readily. The design provides multiple messages per access by framed virtual circuitry in order to minimize delays and provides backplane-to-backplane data protocols transfers. When software protocol handling is eliminated, communications speeds increase significantly. It also supports local read-&ldquo;global&rdquo; write paradigm to effect a shared memory machine. However, extremely flexible buffering scheme allows each node to operate autonomously in both time and data handling. Thus, multilevel, potentially heterogeneous parallelism is available for implementation at the kernel and operating system level. The paper describes the integrated network and node communications interface design and presents expected performance figures.
A VLSI Solution to the Vertical Segment Visibility Problem
Authors: E Lodi, L Pagli
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

We present a parallel algorithm to solve the visibility problem among n vertical segments in a plane, which can be implemented on a VLSI chip arranged as a mesh of trees. Our algorithm determines all the pairs of segments that "see" each other in time O(log n); while the fastest sequential algorithm requires O(n log n). A lower bound to the area-time complexity of this problem of O(n2 log2 n) is also derived.
Socio-tech: what is it (and why should we care)?
Authors: R. Pew, K. Assunto, W. Baker, S. Dray, J. Taylor
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1986)

At a time when more and different people are using more and different computer systems, there is growing awareness that if technology is to give companies the &ldquo;competitive edge&rdquo; they are seeking, it must be used to support business goals. This means that systems must work within the existing organization to improve and extend its functioning. This also means that the design of these systems must enhance the organization, not disrupt it. Yet technology is, by its very nature, a stimulus for change. The question then becomes: How can this intrinsically de-stabilizing technology be designed and implemented in a way which supports the organization, without destroying it? It is the purpose of this panel to explore this basic question. Sociotechnical systems theory is a method to deal with this dilemma. At its core is the assumption that to be successful, technology must be designed in tandem with the receiving organization. So-called socio-tech focuses on how the organization can use technology, in an attempt to establish a &ldquo;best fit&rdquo; between the technical and the social aspects of the workplace. This is in contrast both to &ldquo;old style&rdquo; systems design, which concentrates on technical aspects only and to the &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; Human Factors approach, which considers how to design for &ldquo;typical&rdquo; users and how they think and perceive. (Some people have dubbed this new approach &ldquo;Macroergonomics&rdquo; as a way of distinguishing it from this more traditional Human Factors approach.)
Enlarging the REDUCE domain of computation
Authors: R. J. Bradford, A. C. Hearn, J. A. Padget, E. Schrüfer
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth ACM symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation (1986)

We describe the methods available in the current REDUCE system for introducing new mathematical domains, and illustrate these by discussing several new domains that significantly increase the power of the overall system.
Graph-Based Algorithms for Boolean Function Manipulation
Authors: Randal E. Bryant
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

In this paper we present a new data structure for representing Boolean functions and an associated set of manipulation algorithms. Functions are represented by directed, acyclic graphs in a manner similar to the representations introduced by Lee [1] and Akers [2], but with further restrictions on the ordering of decision variables in the graph. Although a function requires, in the worst case, a graph of size exponential in the number of arguments, many of the functions encountered in typical applications have a more reasonable representation. Our algorithms have time complexity proportional to the sizes of the graphs being operated on, and hence are quite efficient as long as the graphs do not grow too large. We present experimental results from applying these algorithms to problems in logic design verification that demonstrate the practicality of our approach.
Architectural support for multilanguage parallel programming on heterogeneous systems
Authors: Roberto Bisiani, Alessandro Forin
Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News (1987)

We have designed and implemented a software facility, called Agora, that supports the development of parallel applications written in multiple languages. At the core of Agora there is a mechanism that allows concurrent computations to share data structures independently of the computer architecture they are executed on. Concurrent computations exchange control information by using a pattern-directed technique. This paper describes the Agora shared memory and its software implementation on both tightly and loosely-coupled architectures.