ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A Comprehensive Model for the Design of Distributed Computer Systems
Authors: Hemant K. Jain
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1987)

The availability of micro-, mini-, and supercomputers has complicated the laws governing the economies of scale in computers. A recent study by Ein-Dor [7] concludes that it is most effective to accomplish any task on the least powerful type of computer capable of performing it. This change in cost/performance, and the promise of increased reliability, modularity, and better response time has resulted in an increased tendency to decentralize and distribute computing power. But some economic factors, such as the communication expenses incurred and increased storage with distributed systems are working against the tendency to decentralize. It is clear that in many instances the optimal solution will be an integration of computers of varying power.
Computer Design of Custom Femoral Stem Prostheses
Authors: John W. Granholm, Douglas D. Robertson, Peter S. Walker, Philip C. Nelson
Venue: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (1987)

Improved implant-bone fit appears to increase the longevity of cementless total joints. This article describes design software that uses 3D bone models generated from X-ray computerized tomography to produce optimal-fit hip stems for individual femurs. The result is an implant designed to optimize load transfer and minimize stem motion within a given bone.
A study in two-handed input
Authors: W. Buxton, B. Myers
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1986)

Two experiments were run to investigate two-handed input. The experimental tasks were representative of those found in CAD and office information systems. Experiment one involved the performance of a compound selection/positioning task. The two sub-tasks were performed by different hands using separate transducers. Without prompting, novice subjects adopted strategies that involved performing the two sub-tasks simultaneously. We interpret this as a demonstration that, in the appropriate context, users are capable of simultaneously providing continuous data from two hands without significant overhead. The results also show that the speed of performing the task was strongly correlated to the degree of parallelism employed. Experiment two involved the performance of a compound navigation/selection task. It compared a one-handed versus two-handed method for finding and selecting words in a document. The two-handed method significantly outperformed the commonly used one-handed method by a number of measures. Unlike experiment one, only two subjects adopted strategies that used both hands simultaneously. The benefits of the two-handed technique, therefore, are interpreted as being due to efficiency of hand motion. However, the two subjects who did use parallel strategies had the two fastest times of all subjects.
Performance Criteria for Constrained Nonlinear Programming Codes
Authors: H. W. Robb, H. R. Weistroffer
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1987)

A set of performance criteria for evaluating optimization software with respect to efficiency, reliability, and accuracy is presented and discussed. A numerical comparison of five constrained nonlinear programming codes is described, which was carried out in order to test the usefulness and general applicability of the proposed performance criteria. The results of the numerical comparison are discussed, and the proposed criteria are compared to the criteria traditionally used in comparative evaluations of nonlinear programming codes, with particular reference to machine dependence and the applicability to test problems with unknown solutions. A separate small scale computational experiment is described which was carried out specifically to test the machine dependence of the criteria. The observed deficiencies of the proposed new criteria are also discussed.
Scheduling Multiprocessor Tasks to Minimize Schedule Length
Authors: J Blazewicz, M Drabowski, J Weglarz
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

The problem considered in this paper is the deterministic scheduling of tasks on a set of identical processors. However, the model presented differs from the classical one by the requirement that certain tasks need more than one processor at a time for their processing. This assumption is especially justified in some microprocessor applications and its impact on the complexity of minimizing schedule length is studied. First we concentrate on the problem of nonpreemptive scheduling. In this case, polynomial-time algorithms exist only for unit processing times. We present two such algorithms of complexity O(n) for scheduling tasks requiring an arbitrary number of processors between 1 and k at a time where k is a fixed integer. The case for which k is not fixed is shown to be NP-complete. Next, the problem of preemptive scheduling of tasks of arbitrary length is studied. First an algorithm for scheduling tasks requiring one or k processors is presented. Its complexity depends linearly on the number of tasks. Then, the possibility of a linear programming formulation for the general case is analyzed.
Patterns in office information systems research increasing complexity and integration
Authors: Sig Treu
Venue: ACM SIGOIS Bulletin (1987)

Research in office information systems has been characterized as entailing a considerable variety of important topics. A review of the major OIS publications indicates patterns of topical areas that have gained primary attention. In attempting to draw a composite picture of the current definition and constituency of OIS research, it appears that progress is being made especially toward the design of increasingly complex, integrative, and interdisciplinary systems.
Software engineering in commercial programming courses
Authors: M O Adigum
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1986)

The theory and practice of Software Engineering is introduced to undergraduate computer science students in their third year at the University of Ife. It is taught as part of two Commercial Programming courses, one in the first semester and the other in the second semester. This paper discusses the modus operandi of this exercise and outlines the topics covered in the instruction.
The 1985 Fredkin competition
Authors: Hans Berliner
Venue: Issue 96 (April 1986) (1986)

We have now been running Fredkin competitions designed to find out how good the best computer chess entities really are, since 1980. These have always taken the form of computer-human competition, as this seems to be the way to bring reality to the subject.
The "Software Engineering" of Expert Systems: Is Prolog Appropriate?
Authors: P. A. Subrahmanyam
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1985)

This paper is a preliminary assessment of the viability of Prolog as a basis for the design of expert systems, where the major competition is assumed to be from Lisp and Lisp-based systems. We critically examine the basic features of Prolog from various perspectives to see to what extent they support (or hinder) expert system development. Our conclusion is that while Prolog has significant assets along several dimensions, Prolog as it exists today needs to be modified and appropriately enhanced to make it competitive to extant Lisp-based systems; we suggest the nature of some of these modifications.
Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think
Authors: John D. Gould, Clayton Lewis
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1985)

This article is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, it describes three principles of system design which we believe must be followed to produce a useful and easy to use computer system. These principles are: early and continual focus on users; empirical measurement of usage; and iterative design whereby the system (simulated, prototype, and real) is modified, tested, modified again, tested again, and the cycle is repeated again and again. This approach is contrasted to other principled design approaches, for example, get it right the first time, reliance on design guidelines. Empirically, the article presents data which show that our design principles are not always intuitive to designers; identifies the arguments which designers often offer for not using these principles&mdash;and answers them; and provides an example in which our principles have been used successfully.
The datacycle architecture for very high throughput database systems
Authors: Gary Herman, K. C. Lee, Abel Weinrib
Venue: ACM SIGMOD Record (1987)

The evolutionary trend toward a database-driven public communications network has motivated research into database architectures capable of executing thousands of transactions per second. In this paper we introduce the Datacycle architecture, an attempt to exploit the enormous transmission bandwidth of optical systems to permit the implementation of high throughput multiprocessor database systems. The architecture has the potential for unlimited query throughput, simplified data management, rapid execution of complex queries, and efficient concurrency control. We describe the logical operation of the architecture and discuss implementation issues in the context of a prototype system currently under construction.
An insertion algorithm for a minimal internal path length binary search tree
Authors: Thomas E. Gerasch
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1988)

This paper presents an insertion algorithm for maintaining a binary search tree with minimal internal path length. The insertion algorithm maintains minimal internal path length by displacing keys when necessary, in an inorder fashion, until a vacant position is found in the last incomplete level of the tree. The algorithm produces trees that are optimal for searching while exhibiting a runtime behavior that is between logarithmic and linear in the number of nodes in the tree, with linear time being its worst-case behavior.
Object-oriented approaches to the software life cycle using the Smalltalk-80 system as a CASE toolkit
Authors: S. T. Pope, A. Goldberg, L. P. Deutsch
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

This paper discusses the tools and methodologies used in the Smalltalk-80 Programming System with respect to their support for the various phases of the software lifecycle and their relevance to computer-aided software engineering (CASE). Special attention is paid to the issues of support for early design and implementation review, software documentation, portability and maintainability, and software reusability, as well as the organization of software modules within an object-oriented framework. Examples of Smalltalk-80-based CASE-oriented toolkits and applications are presented.
Notecards in a nutshell
Authors: Frank G. Halasz, Thomas P. Moran, Randall H. Trigg
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1986)

NoteCards is an extensible environment designed to help people formulate, structure, compare, and manage ideas. NoteCards provides the user with a &ldquo;semantic network&rdquo; of electronic notecards interconnected by typed links. The system provides tools to organize, manage, and display the structure of the network, as well as a set of methods and protocols for creating programs to manipulate the information in the network. NoteCards is currently being used by more than 50 people engaged in idea processing tasks ranging from writing research papers through designing parts for photocopiers.In this paper we briefly describe NoteCards and the conceptualization of idea processing tasks that underlies its design. We then describe the NoteCards user community and several prototypical NoteCards applications. Finally, we discuss what we have learned about the system's strengths and weaknesses from our observations of the NoteCards user community.
Implementation of a compiler for a semantic data model: Experiences with taxis
Authors: Brian Nixon, Lawrence Chung, John Mylopoulos, David Lauzon, Alex Borgida, M. Stanley
Venue: ACM SIGMOD Record (1987)

The features of a compiler for the Taxis design language are described and discussed. Taxis offers an entity-based framework for designing interactive information systems and supports generalisation, classification and aggregation as abstraction mechanisms. Its features include multiple inheritance of attributes, isA hierarchies of transactions, metaclasses, typed attributes, a procedural exception-handling mechanism and an iteration construct based on the abstraction mechanisms supported Developing a compiler for the language involved dealing with the problems of efficiently representing and accessing a large collection of entities, performing (static) type checking and representing isA hierarchies of transactions.
Dealing with independent studies courses&mdash;an effective methodology
Authors: Gordon Bailes, Jerry Sayer
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1986)

Independent studies courses can be an effective means of providing the flexibility for a serious student with a well-planned career path to tailor his or her curriculum to meet the special requirements of the career plan, and to permit the students to experience and learn about subjects for which there is insufficient demand or resources to offer a regular course. The potential for abuse of this course is high as we found at East Tennessee State University. In addressing this issue, we found that we were also able to strengthen the written and oral communications skills which are so important to today's computing professionals. This paper describes the experiences we have had and the solution we discovered.
Using Constancy of Distance to Estimate Position and Displacement in Space
Authors: Amar Mitiche, Steven Seida, J. K. Aggarwal
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1988)

The problem of computing structure and motion from the observation of points in two distinct images of a scene is considered. The proposed method explicitly utilizes the principle of conservation of distance during rigid-body motion. The formulation is such that it separates the problem of estimating object position from that of determining motion parameters. The equations of invariance of distance for a rigid body are solved for the points' position in space. When these coordinates in space are known, motion parameters are computed in a simple and straightforward manner. Examples are given to illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm.
On some cryptographic solutions for access control in a tree hierarchy
Authors: R. S. Sandhu
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

We consider the access control problem in a system where users and information items are classified into security classes organized as a rooted tree, with the most privileged security class at the root. In practice we expect such a tree to be quite broad and shallow. It is also inevitable that new security classes will need to be added as the needs of the organization evolve. We compare some cryptographic techniques which have been proposed in the literature for solution of this problem.
Measuring Photolithographic Overlay Accuracy and Critical Dimensions by Correlating Binarized Laplacian of Gaussian Convolutions
Authors: H. K. Nishihara, P. A. Crossley
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1988)

A technique is described for measuring overlay accuracy and critical dimensions in IC manufacture and similar fields, based on a theory originally developed for matching binocular stereo images. The method uses targets composed of small elements that can be at the minimum feature size of the photolithographic process. Alignment is measured using clusters of those elements rather than the small elements individually. This makes the method insensitive to many of the imaging effects that have plagued other approaches, such as interference fringes and edge topology differences between process steps. The method is tolerant of high noise levels, which allows operation on process layers that produce low-contrast images or high-noise backgrounds as is the case when aligning resist over metal. Adding an appropriate bar grating to the alignment target causes element size changes to induce a proportional shift in alignment, allowing critical dimensions to be measured by the alignment technique.
How graphics could be simplified in APL
Authors: Gerard A. Langlet
Venue: Proceedings of the international conference on APL: APL in transition (1987)

With the help of a new scalar primitive, named &ldquo;Associate&rdquo;, and, optionally, after introducing a notation for &ldquo;unknown values&rdquo;, this paper shows on some simple examples, how the combination of these new features with some existing primitives can enhance the capabilities of the language, especially in the field of graphics. Other facilities also result from these extensions, answering some fundamental questions about APL in general.
The small computer assisted lecturing system
Authors: Jerzy A. Piotrowski
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1988)

Intensive courses are conducted by an instructor who is often supported by one or more assistants. However, for certain density of assignments, the work in such teams is difficult to organize and control. Then, the computer-assistant becomes indispensable. A teaching method is presented which offers many individual small and medium size assignments from 3--4 different subjects taught by a single instructor during a semester. An average number of 55 documents is processed and 150 grading decisions taken per day, without any help of a human assistant. The teaching concept is a traditional one and based on the assumption that scholars already have prepared courseware for many subjects. Also specific methods and tricks are worked out and well-tested. The system is attractive for staff members because it assures not only better teaching standards, but also leaves them more time for research. Finally, it is worthwhile to mention that powerful software systems are offered to support administrative functions of the university, but the needs of an individual instructor remain somehow forgotten.The system is implemented on IBM PC and requires a mini-system like VAX-780 only to print or display forms for students.
Failure Dependent Bandwidth in Shuffle-Exchange Networks
Authors: Charles R. Bisbee Victor P. Nelson
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1988)

A failure-dependent bandwidth model for shuffle-exchange (S/E) and augmented shuffle-exchange (S/E+) interconnection networks is presented. The models are based on probabilities of either data or address model failures for the individual binary switches that comprise the network and give the expected bandwidth as a function of the probability of failures in these switches. A model consistent with those previously published for a zero probability of failure is first developed for the S/E network. It is extended to the S/E+ network by developing a special model for the input stage of the S/E+ network and then proving that, to within a close approximation, the conditions necessary for the S/E model hold at the outputs of first stage of the S/E+. The primary uses of the bandwidth models presented are as a network design parameter and as a measure to evaluate the cost effectiveness of proposed, switch-level, reliability enhancement.
A software science counting strategy for the full Ada language
Authors: D M Miller, R S Maness, J W Howatt, W H Shaw
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1987)

A software science counting strategy is defined for the Ada* programming language. Two initial approaches, one based on intuition and the other based on trial-and-error, prove unsatisfactory. The third, based on the BNF description of Ada, leads to a satisfactory counting strategy. In contrast to most software science counting strategies, ones that consider only executable code, this strategy provides rules for classifying tokens in an entire Ada program, including declarations, as operators and operands.
Formal specification-based conformance testing
Authors: B Sarikaya
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM conference on Communications architectures protocols (1986)

The paper discusses the use of formal specifications for conformance testing of OSI protocols and divides the discussion in two parts: test design and tester design. A draft standard formal specification of the Class 4 transport protocol in Estelle is taken as the starting point for test design. The test design technique used to derive a conformance test suite is semi-formal based in part on the formal specification and also the informal specification. The tests obtained are expressed in natural language. In the tester design part, we discuss the distributed test architecture of ISO and give the detailed designs of upper and lower testers. It is shown that, in testing Class 4 transport implementations, a parametrized protocol implementation approach in the lower tester design, renders the tests easier to implement.
Some uses of { and }
Authors: Roger Hui
Venue: ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad (1987)

We believe that the design of APL was also affected in important respects by a number of procedures and circumstances. Firstly, from its inception APL has been developed by using it in a succession of areas. This emphasis on application clearly favors practicality and simplicity. The treatment of many different areas fostered generalization &hellip; &mdash; Falkoff and Iverson, &ldquo;The Design of APL&rdquo;
An Analysis of the Effect of Network Parameters on the Performance of Distributed Database Systems
Authors: Amit P. Sheth, Anoop Singhal, Ming T. Liu
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1985)

Performance analysis studies of distributed database systems in the past have assumed that the message transmission time between any two nodes of a network is constant. They disregard the effect of communication network parameters such as network traffic, network topology, and capacity of transmission channels. In this paper, an analytical model is used to estimate the delays in transmission channels of the long haul network supporting the distributed database system. The analysis shows that the constant transmission time assumption cannot be justified in many cases, and that the response time is sensitive to the parameters mentioned above. Extensions and performance analysis in the context of interconnection networks are also discussed.
Design of a Multiple-Valued Systolic System for the Computation of the Chrestenson Spectrum
Authors: C Moraga
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

This correspondence deals with the computation of the Chrestenson spectrum of an n-ary, n-place, p-valued function by means of a systolic system. The design of a systolic system in a multiple-valued environment is discussed in details and some aspects are compared to binary realizations.