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Books > Computing & IT > Computer programming
Computer interfaces and documentation are notoriously difficult for any user, regardless of his or her level of experience. Advances in technology are not making applications more friendly. Introducing concepts from linguistics and language teaching, Language and Communication proposes a new approach to computer interface design. The book explains for the first time why the much hyped user-friendly interface is treated with such derision by the user community. The author argues that software and hardware designers should consider such fundamental language concepts as meaning, context, function, variety, and equivalence. She goes on to show how imagining an interface as a new language can be an invaluable design exercise, calling into question deeply held beliefs and assumptions about what users will or will not understand. Written for a wide range of computer scientists and professionals, and presuming no prior knowledge of language-related terminology, this volume is a key step in the on-going information revolution.
It is, indeed, widely acceptable today that nowhere is it more important to focus on the improvement of software quality than in the case of systems with requirements in the areas of safety and reliability - especially for distributed, real-time and embedded systems. Thus, much research work is under progress in these fields, since software process improvement impinges directly on achieved levels of quality, and many application experiments aim to show quantitative results demonstrating the efficacy of particular approaches. Requirements for safety and reliability - like other so-called non-functional requirements for computer-based systems - are often stated in imprecise and ambiguous terms, or not at all. Specifications focus on functional and technical aspects, with issues like safety covered only implicitly, or not addressed directly because they are felt to be obvious; unfortunately what is obvious to an end user or system user is progressively less so to others, to the extend that a software developer may not even be aware that safety is an issue. Therefore, there is a growing evidence for encouraging greater understanding of safety and reliability requirements issues, right across the spectrum from end user to software developer; not just in traditional safety-critical areas (e.g. nuclear, aerospace) but also acknowledging the need for such things as heart pacemakers and other medical and robotic systems to be highly dependable.
Complementarity theory is a new domain in applied mathematics and is concerned with the study of complementarity problems. These problems represent a wide class of mathematical models related to optimization, game theory, economic engineering, mechanics, fluid mechanics, stochastic optimal control etc. The book is dedicated to the study of nonlinear complementarity problems by topological methods. Audience: Mathematicians, engineers, economists, specialists working in operations research and anybody interested in applied mathematics or in mathematical modeling.
The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) was introduced in 1957 by Koopmans and Beckmann to model a plant location problem. Since then the QAP has been object of numerous investigations by mathematicians, computers scientists, ope- tions researchers and practitioners. Nowadays the QAP is widely considered as a classical combinatorial optimization problem which is (still) attractive from many points of view. In our opinion there are at last three main reasons which make the QAP a popular problem in combinatorial optimization. First, the number of re- life problems which are mathematically modeled by QAPs has been continuously increasing and the variety of the fields they belong to is astonishing. To recall just a restricted number among the applications of the QAP let us mention placement problems, scheduling, manufacturing, VLSI design, statistical data analysis, and parallel and distributed computing. Secondly, a number of other well known c- binatorial optimization problems can be formulated as QAPs. Typical examples are the traveling salesman problem and a large number of optimization problems in graphs such as the maximum clique problem, the graph partitioning problem and the minimum feedback arc set problem. Finally, from a computational point of view the QAP is a very difficult problem. The QAP is not only NP-hard and - hard to approximate, but it is also practically intractable: it is generally considered as impossible to solve (to optimality) QAP instances of size larger than 20 within reasonable time limits.
Broadly-scoped requirements such as security, privacy, and response time are a major source of complexity in modern software systems. This is due to their tangled inter-relationships with and effects on other requirements. Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering (AORE) aims to facilitate modularisation of such broadly-scoped requirements, so that software developers are able to reason about them in isolation - one at a time. AORE also captures these inter-relationships and effects in well-defined composition specifications, and, in so doing exposes the causes for potential conflicts, trade-offs, and roots for the key early architectural decisions. Over the last decade, significant work has been carried out in the field of AORE. With this book the editors aim to provide a consolidated overview of these efforts and results. The individual contributions discuss how aspects can be identified, represented, composed and reasoned about, as well as how they are used in specific domains and in industry. Thus, the book does not present one particular AORE approach, but conveys a broad understanding of the aspect-oriented perspective on requirements engineering. The chapters are organized into five sections: concern identification in requirements, concern modelling and composition, domain-specific use of AORE, aspect interactions, and AORE in industry. This book provides readers with the most comprehensive coverage of AORE and the capabilities it offers to those grappling with the complexity arising from broadly-scoped requirements - a phenomenon that is, without doubt, universal across software systems. Software engineers and related professionals in industry, as well as advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students and researchers, will benefit from these comprehensive descriptions and the industrial case studies.
Effective compilers allow for a more efficient execution of application programs for a given computer architecture, while well-conceived architectural features can support more effective compiler optimization techniques. A well thought-out strategy of trade-offs between compilers and computer architectures is the key to the successful designing of highly efficient and effective computer systems. From embedded micro-controllers to large-scale multiprocessor systems, it is important to understand the interaction between compilers and computer architectures. The goal of the Annual Workshop on Interaction between Compilers and Computer Architectures (INTERACT) is to promote new ideas and to present recent developments in compiler techniques and computer architectures that enhance each other's capabilities and performance. Interaction Between Compilers and Computer Architectures is an updated and revised volume consisting of seven papers originally presented at the Fifth Workshop on Interaction between Compilers and Computer Architectures (INTERACT-5), which was held in conjunction with the IEEE HPCA-7 in Monterrey, Mexico in 2001. This volume explores recent developments and ideas for better integration of the interaction between compilers and computer architectures in designing modern processors and computer systems. Interaction Between Compilers and Computer Architectures is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.
The author's aim in this textbook is to provide students with a clear understanding of the relationship between the principles of object-oriented programming and software engineering. Professor Zeigler takes an approach based on state representation to formal specification. Consequently, this book is unique through its - emphasis on formulating primitives from which all other functionality can be built; - integral use of a semi-formal behaviour specification language based on state transition concepts; -differentiation between behaviour and implementation; -a reusable heterogeneous container class library; -ability to show the elegance and power of ensemble methods with non-trivial examples. As a result, students studying software engineering will find this a distinctive and valuable approach to programming and systems engineering.
Reasoning under uncertainty is always based on a specified language or for malism, including its particular syntax and semantics, but also on its associated inference mechanism. In the present volume of the handbook the last aspect, the algorithmic aspects of uncertainty calculi are presented. Theory has suffi ciently advanced to unfold some generally applicable fundamental structures and methods. On the other hand, particular features of specific formalisms and ap proaches to uncertainty of course still influence strongly the computational meth ods to be used. Both general as well as specific methods are included in this volume. Broadly speaking, symbolic or logical approaches to uncertainty and nu merical approaches are often distinguished. Although this distinction is somewhat misleading, it is used as a means to structure the present volume. This is even to some degree reflected in the two first chapters, which treat fundamental, general methods of computation in systems designed to represent uncertainty. It has been noted early by Shenoy and Shafer, that computations in different domains have an underlying common structure. Essentially pieces of knowledge or information are to be combined together and then focused on some particular question or domain. This can be captured in an algebraic structure called valuation algebra which is described in the first chapter. Here the basic operations of combination and focus ing (marginalization) of knowledge and information is modeled abstractly subject to simple axioms."
In recent years there has been a remarkable convergence of interest in programming languages based on ALGOL 60. Researchers interested in the theory of procedural and object-oriented languages discovered that ALGOL 60 shows how to add procedures and object classes to simple imperative languages in a general and clean way. And, on the other hand, researchers interested in purely functional languages discovered that ALGOL 60 shows how to add imperative mechanisms to functional languages in a way that does not compromise their desirable properties. Unfortunately, many of the key works in this field have been rather hard to obtain. The primary purpose of this collection is to make the most significant material on ALGoL-like languages conveniently available to graduate students and researchers. Contents Introduction to Volume 1 1 Part I Historical Background 1 Part n Basic Principles 3 Part III Language Design 5 Introduction to Volume 2 6 Part IV Functor-Category Semantics 7 Part V Specification Logic 7 Part VI Procedures and Local Variables 8 Part vn Interference, Irreversibility and Concurrency 9 Acknowledgements 11 Bibliography 11 Introduction to Volume 1 This volume contains historical and foundational material, and works on lan guage design. All of the material should be accessible to beginning graduate students in programming languages and theoretical Computer Science."
Component-based software development regards software construction in terms of conventional engineering disciplines where the assembly of systems from readily-available prefabricated parts is the norm. Because both component-based systems themselves and the stakeholders in component-based development projects are different from traditional software systems, component-based testing also needs to deviate from traditional software testing approaches. Gross first describes the specific challenges related to component-based testing like the lack of internal knowledge of a component or the usage of a component in diverse contexts. He argues that only built-in contract testing, a test organization for component-based applications founded on building test artifacts directly into components, can prevent catastrophic failures like the one that caused the now famous ARIANE 5 crash in 1996. Since building testing into components has implications for component development, built-in contract testing is integrated with and made to complement a model-driven development method. Here UML models are used to derive the testing architecture for an application, the testing interfaces and the component testers. The method also provides a process and guidelines for modeling and developing these artifacts. This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the intricacies of testing component-based software systems. With its strong modeling background, it appeals to researchers and graduate students specializing in component-based software engineering. Professionals architecting and developing component-based systems will profit from the UML-based methodology and the implementation hints based on the XUnit and JUnit frameworks.
Software Process Modeling brings together experts to discuss relevant results in software process modeling, and expresses their personal view of this field. This book focuses on new aspects of software process modeling. Specifically, it deals with socio-technological aspects, process modeling for new development types (open source software, dependability applications, etc.) and organization change management. The computer audience is placing growing demands on the software industry today. Consumers are looking for more complex products that are, at the same time, easier to use. Software developer organizations are expected to produce higher quality products and deliver them to the public faster. In so doing, however, globally distributed development teams have to cope with understaffing and changing technologies. The challenges for the software industry are apparently mounting. Over the years, a variety of software process models have been designed to structure, describe and prescribe the software systems construction process. Most recently, software process modeling is increasingly dealing with new challenges raised by the tests that the software industry has to stand. Software Process Modeling is designed for a professional audience of researchers and practitioners in industry. The book is also suitable for graduate-level students in computer science.
C++/CLI is Microsofts latest extension to C++ that targets the heart of .NET 2.0, the common language runtime. "Expert Visual C++/CLI" is written by visual C++ MVP -->Marcus Heege-->, who examines the core of the C++/CLI language. He explains both how the language elements work and how Microsoft intends them to be used. Even if you're new to C++/CLI and are planning to migrate to it from another language, this book will ground you in the core language elements and give you the confidence to explore further and migrate effectively. It provides concise, yet in-depth coverage of all major C++/CLI features; short code examples succinctly illustrate syntax and concepts, and more elaborate examples show how C++/CLI should be used.
Mathematical programming has know a spectacular diversification in the last few decades. This process has happened both at the level of mathematical research and at the level of the applications generated by the solution methods that were created. To write a monograph dedicated to a certain domain of mathematical programming is, under such circumstances, especially difficult. In the present monograph we opt for the domain of fractional programming. Interest of this subject was generated by the fact that various optimization problems from engineering and economics consider the minimization of a ratio between physical and/or economical functions, for example cost/time, cost/volume, cost/profit, or other quantities that measure the efficiency of a system. For example, the productivity of industrial systems, defined as the ratio between the realized services in a system within a given period of time and the utilized resources, is used as one of the best indicators of the quality of their operation. Such problems, where the objective function appears as a ratio of functions, constitute fractional programming problem. Due to its importance in modeling various decision processes in management science, operational research, and economics, and also due to its frequent appearance in other problems that are not necessarily economical, such as information theory, numerical analysis, stochastic programming, decomposition algorithms for large linear systems, etc., the fractional programming method has received particular attention in the last three decade
JavaServer Pages (JSP) is a technology for building dynamic web
applications that can access databases and provide an interactive
experience for users. It's a powerful technology with open source
implementations (server and platform independent) for building
enterprise Web applications. With JSP, existing business systems
can be leveraged with minimal overhead, maintenance, and support.
JSP: Practical Guide for Java Programmers is designed to cover the
essentials of JSP including the basic JSP constructs and the
relevant implicit objects as well as more advanced concepts such as
incorporating JavaBeans, developing custom tags, utilizing the JSP
expression language, building with the JSP Standard Tag Library,
and developing complete JSP-Servlet application. Throughout the
book, an electronic bank Web application is used to introduce new
concepts, while demonstrating to the reader how the pieces fit
together.
In any software design project, the analysis stage - documenting and designing technical requirements for the needs of users - is vital to the success of the project.This book provides a thorough introduction & survey to all aspects of analysis. This new edition provides new features including: additional chapters on system Development Life Cycle & Data Element Naming Conventions & Standards; more coverage on converting logical models to physical models, how to generate DDL & testing database functionalities; expansion of database section with concepts such as denormalization, security & change control; developments on new design & technologies, particularly in the area of web analysis and design; a revised Web/Commerce chapter, which addresses component middleware for complex systems design; and, new case studies. This book is a valuable resource and guide for all information systems students, practitioners and professionals who need an in-depth understanding of the principles of the analysis and design process.
In the recent years, fractional-order systems have been studied by many researchers in the engineering field. It was found that many systems can be described more accurately by fractional differential equations than by integer-order models. Advanced Synchronization Control and Bifurcation of Chaotic Fractional-Order Systems is a scholarly publication that explores new developments related to novel chaotic fractional-order systems, control schemes, and their applications. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics including chaos synchronization, nonlinear control, and cryptography, this publication is geared toward engineers, IT professionals, researchers, and upper-level graduate students seeking current research on chaotic fractional-order systems and their applications in engineering and computer science.
This book covers the dominant theoretical approaches to the approximate solution of hard combinatorial optimization and enumeration problems. It contains elegant combinatorial theory, useful and interesting algorithms, and deep results about the intrinsic complexity of combinatorial problems. Its clarity of exposition and excellent selection of exercises will make it accessible and appealing to all those with a taste for mathematics and algorithms. Richard Karp,University Professor, University of California at Berkeley Following the development of basic combinatorial optimization techniques in the 1960s and 1970s, a main open question was to develop a theory of approximation algorithms. In the 1990s, parallel developments in techniques for designing approximation algorithms as well as methods for proving hardness of approximation results have led to a beautiful theory. The need to solve truly large instances of computationally hard problems, such as those arising from the Internet or the human genome project, has also increased interest in this theory. The field is currently very active, with the toolbox of approximation algorithm design techniques getting always richer. It is a pleasure to recommend Vijay Vazirani's well-written and comprehensive book on this important and timely topic. I am sure the reader will find it most useful both as an introduction to approximability as well as a reference to the many aspects of approximation algorithms. László Lovász, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research
This book is the final version of a course on algorithmic information theory and the epistemology of mathematics and physics. It discusses Einstein and Goedel's views on the nature of mathematics in the light of information theory, and sustains the thesis that mathematics is quasi-empirical. There is a foreword by Cris Calude of the University of Auckland, and supplementary material is available at the author's web site. The special feature of this book is that it presents a new "hands on" didatic approach using LISP and Mathematica software. The reader will be able to derive an understanding of the close relationship between mathematics and physics. "The Limits of Mathematics is a very personal and idiosyncratic account of Greg Chaitin's entire career in developing algorithmic information theory. The combination of the edited transcripts of his three introductory lectures maintains all the energy and content of the oral presentations, while the material on AIT itself gives a full explanation of how to implement Greg's ideas on real computers for those who want to try their hand at furthering the theory." (John Casti, Santa Fe Institute)
This thesis deals with the evaluation of surface and groundwater quality changes in the periods of water scarcity in river catchment areas. The work can be divided into six parts. Existing methods of drought assessment are discussed in the first part, followed by the brief description of the software package HydroOffice, designed by the author. The software is dedicated to analysis of hydrological data (separation of baseflow, parameters of hydrological drought estimation, recession curves analysis, time series analysis). The capabilities of the software are currently used by scientist from more than 30 countries around the world. The third section is devoted to a comprehensive regional assessment of hydrological drought on Slovak rivers, followed by evaluation of the occurrence, course and character of drought in precipitation, discharges, base flow, groundwater head and spring yields in the pilot area of the Nitra River basin. The fifth part is focused on the assessment of changes in surface and groundwater quality during the drought periods within the pilot area. Finally, the results are summarized and interpreted, and rounded off with an outlook to future research.
Modern methods of filter design and controller design often yield systems of very high order, posing a problem for their implementation. Over the past two decades or so, sophisticated methods have been developed to achieve simplification of filters and controllers. Such methods often come with easy-to-use error bounds, and in the case of controller simplification methods, such error bounds will usually be related to closed-loop properties.This book is the first comprehensive treatment of approximation methods for filters and controllers. It is fully up to date, and it is authored by two leading researchers who have personally contributed to the development of some of the methods. Balanced truncation, Hankel norm reduction, multiplicative reduction, weighted methods and coprime factorization methods are all discussed.The book is amply illustrated with examples, and will equip practising control engineers and graduates for intelligent use of commercial software modules for model and controller reduction.
Mathematical Programming has been of significant interest and relevance in engineering, an area that is very rich in challenging optimization problems. In particular, many design and operational problems give rise to nonlinear and mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems whose modeling and solu tion is often nontrivial. Furthermore, with the increased computational power and development of advanced analysis (e. g. , process simulators, finite element packages) and modeling systems (e. g. , GAMS, AMPL, SPEEDUP, ASCEND, gPROMS), the size and complexity of engineering optimization models is rapidly increasing. While the application of efficient local solvers (nonlinear program ming algorithms) has become widespread, a major limitation is that there is often no guarantee that the solutions that are generated correspond to global optima. In some cases finding a local solution might be adequate, but in others it might mean incurring a significant cost penalty, or even worse, getting an incorrect solution to a physical problem. Thus, the need for finding global optima in engineering is a very real one. It is the purpose of this monograph to present recent developments of tech niques and applications of deterministic approaches to global optimization in engineering. The present monograph is heavily represented by chemical engi neers; and to a large extent this is no accident. The reason is that mathematical programming is an active and vibrant area of research in chemical engineering. This trend has existed for about 15 years.
Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments researches both how game sound affects a player psychologically, emotionally, and physiologically, and how this relationship itself impacts the design of computer game sound and the development of technology. This compilation also applies beyond the realm of video games to other types of immersive sound, such as soundscape design, gambling machines, emotive and fantastical sound to name a few. The application for this research is wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, and of primary importance for academics and practitioners searching for the right sounds.
Genetic and evolutionary algorithms (GEAs) have often achieved an enviable success in solving optimization problems in a wide range of disciplines. This book provides effective optimization algorithms for solving a broad class of problems quickly, accurately, and reliably by employing evolutionary mechanisms. |
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