waashk/acm huggingface dataset:
information systems skills: achieving alignment between the curriculum and the needs of the is professionals in the future the objectives of this study are to find out the perceived information systems (is) skills which are important at present and in five years time, and the perceived emphasis of is curricula on these skills. it is found that the scope of skills required of is professionals will broaden towards the end of the decade. interpersonal skills, business skills, analysis and design skills, and programming skills are the most critical for career development. results also show that there is a match between the skills and knowledge possessed by is graduates of the hong kong polytechnic university and industry requirements for the current is environment. however, the curriculum is not aligned with industry needs in the future. this indicates that the education the respondents received does not prepare them for progression up the career ladder. implications of the findings are discussed so that a new curriculum may be designed to provide the preferred is graduates to industry. eugenia m. w. ng tye ray s. k. poon janice m. burn
signature schemes based on the strong rsa assumption  we describe and analyze a new digital signature scheme. the new scheme is quite efficient, does not require the signer to maintain any state, and can be proven secure against adaptive chosen message attack under a reasonable intractability assumption, the so-called strong rsa assumption. moreover, a hash function can be incorporated into the scheme in such a way that it is also secure in the random oracle model under the standard rsa assumption.  ronald cramer victor shoup
session m4: women in the workplace  this session, organized by the association for women in computing, seeks to provide a forum for discussion of the ever-changing environment facing today s woman in the computer industry. each panelist, an experienced computer professional, will discuss private industry, academia, or government, in terms of the decision points in her own career. she will discuss topics such as initial educational requirements, work experience, career development activities, other issues relating to advancement, and the more general demands of the workplace as they have changed since she entered the workforce. she will then relate these factors to the entry-level computer professional, noting where shifts in emphasis have occurred. after the presentations, the panelists will discuss the similarities and differences in their various spheres.  virginia c. walker mary charles blakebrough caroline m. eastman
caught in the middle  cartoonist sandra boynton has captured in a single cartoon the dilemma faced by middle managers at all levels. the cartoon shows a bewildered, hapless cat standing between a large, pointing, barking dog on one side and a small, distraught yapping dog on the other.  when you were promoted or promised promotion, you were probably not warned about all the ways in which you would be "caught in the middle". in this presentation, i want to talk about some of the ways in which you can be in the middle.  s. webster
women in computing  the world is changing and the demographics of the workforce are changing with it. at one time there was hope that our exciting new field of computer science would not only revolutionize the technical world in which we live, but break new ground in professional access and equity for women. this optimism has given way to pragmatism. if we want the best and the brightest women to participate fully in our profession, we must take a long hard look at our professional practices and conventions. the goal of this special section is to provide computer professionals with the information to understand the issues that women confront in their workplace and with the resources to successfully diversify their workplace. i hope you will save this issue of communications as a reference for many years to come. i also hope that, as opportunities for women in computer science expand, the need for the specialized resources and programs we described here diminishes.  amy pearl
webware: a course about the web sophisticated applications and software development on the web demand an extensive and thorough understanding of a variety of computer science disciplines, as well as providing their own set of issues. therefore, we have created an advanced undergraduate computer science course called _webware: computational technology for network information systems_ that builds upon and extends knowledge previously gathered by the students. we describe its contents, our teaching experience, and address the challenges of teaching both the foundations and current technological issues of web programming. david finkel isabel f. cruz
the costs of personal computing in a complex organization: a comparative study  the widespread adoption of personal computers (pcs) may be attributable to their apparent low purchase and operational costs. however, significant procedural costs arise in fitting a pc application into a work setting. our investigation of the adoption and use of pcs in several departments of a complex organization reveals a large number of unanticipated costs. these indirect, deferred, and governance costs are chiefly borne by users not responsible for acquiring pcs. these costs represent additional demands for users' time, skill, expertise, and attention as well as money. we find that the distribution of deferred costs determines the viability of pc systems. we also find that the integration of pcs can alter the way people do their jobs. these changes in turn give rise to additional social and political costs within the organization. subsequently, we find that the true costs of personal computing are typically underestimated and unaccounted.  sonia nayle walt scacchi
functional computer literacy  many volumes have been written about computer literacy; unfortunately, most of these have not defined it, and those that do tend to disagree. with so little agreement, it is not surprising that computer literacy has become one of our most frequently abused buzz words.  playing games, teaching physical education, accounting for one of the big 8 firms, and programming on a supercomputer may all involve computers and, if so, require a certain level of computer literacy. but not all to the same extent. many universities have begun talking about a computer literacy requirement. indeed, several have already adopted one. those that have adopted such a requirement differ in how it is to be met. this paper discusses how these differences appear to have arisen and proposes a comprehensive plan to achieve functional computer literacy, the initial task being to define computer literacy.  john h. major roi f. prueher
a cooperative approach to software development by application engineers and software engineers  we have tried a new project management approach for the development of engineering application software systems. the key factor of this new approach is the introduction of the role of "interpreter" who sits in between application engineers and programmers and handles all of the communication problems among them. our major objectives were:  (1) to release application engineers from unfamiliar programming tasks as much as possible.  (2) and to increase the productivity of a small group of technical staffs.  experiments upon real projects resulted in much greater improvement of productivity and quality than we had expected. and also the morale of team members was improved.  this paper describes the results of these experiments and the characteristics of this new development approach in comparison with the traditional one.  keiji uemura miki ohori
factors influencing the formation of a user's perceptions and use of a dss software innovation understanding how users form perceptions of a software innovation would help software designers, implementers and users in their evaluation, selection, implementation and on-going use of software. however, with the exception of some recent work, there is little research examining how a user forms his or her perceptions of an innovation over time. to address this research need, we report on the experiences of a health planner using a dss software tool for health planning over a 12-month period. using diffusion theory as outlined by rogers, we interpret the user's perceptions of the software following rogers' perceived characteristics of the innovation. furthermore, we show how our user justifies her attitudes toward the technology using 5 important factors during 3-, 6- and 12-month interviews: stage of adoption, implementation processes, organizational factors, subjective norms, and user competence. results are compared with key is research in these areas, and the implications of these findings on the diffusion of decision support systems are discussed. mike w. chiasson chris y. lovato
reducing risk for central site equipment moves  equipment changes - moving, adding or removing units in a central computer facility - can have a devastating effect on a computer center. equipment failures and cable problems can result in prolonged service outages, user disservice and management frustration. risks from these changes can be effectively controlled by means of sound implementation planning tools. an effective methodology based on a graphics technique that accurately represents equipment location in a computer room on standard size paper provides the planning tools that minimizes the risk of outages.  roger kleffman rick glesener jerry brzeczek
organizational expectations: what the top expects of those in the middle  as a manager in user services there is a constant demand on your talents and time. believe it or not, managers higher up in the organization know that you cannot do all of them. they may not tell you, but they know --- they know because they're faced with the same dilemma. several years ago there was a "tongue-in-cheek" book on management that proposed that a manager was similar to a monkey attempting to shinny up a flag pole. the higher up either goes, the more exposed there rear ends are. your boss' future and success are dependent on all those who work for her/him.  the conflicting demands of being a manager in computer services are a cause for stress and anxiety. if you can't do everything that is expected of you, what should you do? there are three simple rules that can make your job easier. the rules are:  thou shall not surprise thy boss  thou shalt not do anything your subordinates can do  thou shalt not subvert thy bosses' priorities  f. w. connolly
thinking parallel: the process of learning concurrency this paper describes a course in concurrent and distributed computing for high school students and empirical research that was done to study students' conceptions and attitudes. we found that both their conceptions and their work methods evolved during course to the point that they were able to successfully develop algorithms and to prove their correctness. students initially found the course extremely challenging but eventually came to appreciate its relevance and its contribution to improving their cognitive skills. mordechai ben-ari yifat ben- david kolikant
object-oriented inspection in the face of delocalisation  software inspection is now widely accepted as an effective technique for defect detection. this acceptance is largely based on studies using procedural program code. this paper presents empirical evidence that raises significant questions about the application of inspection to object-oriented code.  a detailed analysis of the 'hard to find' defects during an inspection experiment shows that many of them can be characterised as 'delocalised' --- the information needed to recognise the defect is distributed throughout the software. the paper shows that key features of object-oriented technology are likely to exaggerate delocalisation.  as a result, it is argued that new methods of inspection for object-oriented code are required. these must address: partitioning code for inspection ("what to read"), reading strategies ("how to read"), and support for understanding what isn't read --- "localising the delocalisation".  alastair dunsmore marc roper murray wood
framekit, an ada framework for a fast implementation of case enviroments software engineering methodologies rely on various and complex graphical representations and are more useful when associated to case (computer aided software engineering) tools designed to take care of constraints that have to be respected. now, case tools gave way to case environments (a set of tools that have a strong coherence in their us). this concept provides enhanced solutions for software reusability while the environment may be adapted to a specific understanding of a design methodology.this paper describes framekit, an ada based framework dedicated to the quick implementation of case environments. we summarize first the concepts implemented in framekit and illustrate them using a detailed example of a simple tool implementation and integration. fabrice kordon jean-luc mounier
a complete binary tree based system for activation of concurrent processes (abstract only)  the main purpose of this paper is to create a complete binary tree (cbt) system to activate processes concurrently. users are not provided any commands from the 4.2 bsd unix system to activate processes simultaneously. however, by using the result of this project, users are able to activate several processes at the same time by issuing the command of cbt. the cbt is an executable program which contains two routines. one of the routines is called nrouter.c which is a recursive program used to create a complete binary tree structure to activate user processes simultaneously. the advantages of using complete binary tree structure to activate user processes are that the user processes can be activated almost simultaneously and the redundant leaves will not be created.  weishing chen s. sitharama iyengar
safkasi: a security mechanism for language-based systems  in order to run untrusted code in the same process as trusted code, there must be a mechanism to allow dangerous calls to determine if their caller is authorized to exercise the privilege of using the dangerous routine. java systems have adopted a technique called stack inspection to address this concern. but its original definition, in terms of searching stack frames, had an unclear relationship to the actual achievement of security, overconstrained the implementation of a java system, limited many desirable optimizations such as method inlining and tail recursion, and generally interfered with interprocedural optimization. we present a new semantics for stack inspection based on a belief logic and its implementation using the calculus of security- passing style which addresses the concerns of traditional stack inspection. with security-passing style, we can efficiently represent the security context for any method activation, and we can build a new implementation strictly by rewriting the java bytecodes before they are loaded by the system. no changes to the jvm or bytecode semantics are necessary. with a combination of static analysis and runtime optimizations, our prototype implementation showes reasonable performance (although traditional stack inspection is still faster), and is easier to consider for languages beyond java. we call our system safkasi (the security architecture formerly known as stack inspection).  dan s. wallach andrew w. appel edward w. felten
software pipelining: an effective scheduling technique for vliw machines  this paper shows that software pipelining is an effective and viable scheduling technique for vliw processors. in software pipelining, iterations of a loop in the source program are continuously initiated at constant intervals, before the preceding iterations complete. the advantage of software pipelining is that optimal performance can be achieved with compact object code.  this paper extends previous results of software pipelining in two ways: first, this paper shows that by using an improved algorithm, near-optimal performance can be obtained without specialized hardware. second, we propose a hierarchical reduction scheme whereby entire control constructs are reduced to an object similar to an operation in a basic block. with this scheme, all innermost loops, including those containing conditional statements, can be software pipelined. it also diminishes the start-up cost of loops with small number of iterations. hierarchical reduction complements the software pipelining technique, permitting a consistent performance improvement be obtained.  the techniques proposed have been validated by an implementation of a compiler for warp, a systolic array consisting of 10 vliw processors. this compiler has been used for developing a large number of applications in the areas of image, signal and scientific processing.  m. lam
a portable syntactic error recovery scheme for lr(1) parsers  a 4-level language independent error recovery scheme for table driven lr(1) parsers is presented. the first two levels are intended for recovery with appropriate corrections and the next two for simple recovery without corrections. the objective is to do the recovery without affecting the semantics or data structure of the compiler while at the same time producing necessary diagnostics and terminating gracefully. the scheme is a significant improvement and a step forward in the direction of language independent error recovery and is made portable when combined with any of the existing lr(1) parser generators. it is currently implemented as an integral part of the yacc parser generator in an ongoing project at advanced micro devices.  pyda srisuresh michael j. eager
formal refinement patterns for goal-driven requirements elaboration requirements engineering is concerned with the identification of high-level goals to be achieved by the system envisioned, the refinement of such goals, the operationalization of goals into services and constraints, and the assignment of responsibilities for the resulting requirements to agents such as humans, devices and programs. goal refinement and operationalization is a complex process which is not well supported by current requirements engineering technology. ideally some form of formal support should be provided, but formal methods are difficult and costly to apply at this stage.this paper presents an approach to goal refinement and operationalization which is aimed at providing constructive formal support while hiding the underlying mathematics. the principle is to reuse generic refinement patterns from a library structured according to strengthening/weakening relationships among patterns. the patterns are once for all proved correct and complete. they can be used for guiding the refinement process or for pointing out missing elements in a refinement. the cost inherent to the use of a formal method is thus reduced significantly. tactics are proposed to the requirements engineer for grounding pattern selection on semantic criteria.the approach is discussed in the context of the multi-paradigm language used in the kaos method; this language has an external semantic net layer for capturing goals, constraints, agents, objects and actions together with their links, and an inner formal assertion layer that includes a real-time temporal logic for the specification of goals and constraints. some frequent refinement patterns are high-lighted and illustrated through a variety of examples.the general principle is somewhat similar in spirit to the increasingly popular idea of design patterns, although it is grounded on a formal framework here. robert darimont axel van lamsweerde
ada programming techniques, research, and experiences on a fast control loop system  this paper discusses real time ada (60 hz control loop) programming techniques developed during research to support a conversion of software written in pl/m-86 to ada for a dod missile system employing fiber optic technology. two of the major requirements of the steelman document were that any dod common language must support embedded computer system development and must not impose undue execution or efficiency costs because of unused or unneeded generalities. this paper examines several constraints and requirements frequently encountered in distributed real time applications. such real world environmental factors provide challenges for any high order language attempting to meet these ideals.  ada's ability to support these requirements is analyzed in light of an ongoing research effort to support the ada conversion of a time critical embedded application. ada programming techniques developed to achieve execution performance requirements of this system are presented and analyzed. the techniques presented include both those deemed successful at supporting performance requirements and those which failed to support such requirements.  eric n. schacht
sodos - a software documentation support environment: its use  this paper describes a computerized environment, sodos (software documentation support), which supports the definition and manipulation of documents used in developing software. an object oriented environment is used as a basis for the sodos interface. sodos is built around a software life cycle (slc) model that structures all access to the documents stored in the environment. one advantage of this model is that it supports software documentation independent of any fixed methodology that the developers may be using. the main advantage of the system is that it permits traceability through each phase of the life cycle, thus facilitating the testing and maintenance phases. finally the effort involved in learning and using sodos is simplified due to a sophisticated "user-friendly" interface.  ellis horowitz ronald williamson
2nd international workshop on living with inconsistency  _in software engineering, there has long been a recognition that inconsistency is a fact of life. evolving descriptions of software artefacts are frequently inconsistent, and tolerating this inconsistency is important if flexible collaborative working is to be supported. this workshop will focus on reasoning in the presence of inconsistency, for a wide range of software engineering activities, such as building and exploring requirements models, validating specifications, verifying correctness of implementations, monitoring runtime behaviour, and analyzing development processes. a particular interest is on how existing automated approaches such as model checking, theorem proving, logic programming, and model-based reasoning can still be applied in the presence of inconsistency._  steve easterbrook marsha chechik