Much of the world's advanced data processing applications are now dependant on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), from publishing to medical information storage. Therefore, XML has become a de facto standard for data exchange and representation on the World Wide Web and in daily life. Applications and Structures in XML Processing: Label Streams, Semantics Utilization and Data Query Technologies reflects the significant research results and latest findings of scholars' worldwide, working to explore and expand the role of XML. This collection represents an understanding of XML processing technologies in connection with both advanced applications and the latest XML processing technologies that is of primary importance. It provides the opportunity to understand topics in detail and discover XML research at a comprehensive level.

This edited book is dedicated to Professor N. U. Ahmed, a leading scholar and a renowned researcher in optimal control and optimization on the occasion of his retirement from the Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Ottawa in 1999. The contributions of this volume are in the areas of optimal control, non linear optimization and optimization applications. They are mainly the im proved and expanded versions of the papers selected from those presented in two special sessions of two international conferences. The first special session is Optimization Methods, which was organized by K. L. Teo and X. Q. Yang for the International Conference on Optimization and Variational Inequality, the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1998. The other one is Optimal Control, which was organized byK. Teo and L. Caccetta for the Dynamic Control Congress, Ottawa, 1999. This volume is divided into three parts: Optimal Control; Optimization Methods; and Applications. The Optimal Control part is concerned with com putational methods, modeling and nonlinear systems. Three computational methods for solving optimal control problems are presented: (i) a regularization method for computing ill-conditioned optimal control problems, (ii) penalty function methods that appropriately handle final state equality constraints, and (iii) a multilevel optimization approach for the numerical solution of opti mal control problems. In the fourth paper, the worst-case optimal regulation involving linear time varying systems is formulated as a minimax optimal con trol problem."

This volume contains several surveys focused on the ideas of approximate solutions, well-posedness and stability of problems in scalar and vector optimization, game theory and calculus of variations. These concepts are of particular interest in many fields of mathematics. The idea of stability goes back at least to J. Hadamard who introduced it in the setting of differential equations; the concept of well-posedness for minimum problems is more recent (the mid-sixties) and originates with A.N. Tykhonov. It turns out that there are connections between the two properties in the sense that a well-posed problem which, at least in principle, is "easy to solve," has a solution set that does not vary too much under perturbation of the data of the problem, i.e. it is "stable." These themes have been studied in depth for minimum problems and now we have a general picture of the related phenomena in this case. But, of course, the same concepts can be studied in other more complicated situations as, e.g. vector optimization, game theory and variational inequalities. Let us mention that in several of these new areas there is not even a unique idea of what should be called approximate solution, and the latter is at the basis of the definition of well posed problem."

Rules represent a simplified means of programming, congruent with our understanding of human brain constructs. With the advent of business rules management systems, it has been possible to introduce rule-based programming to nonprogrammers, allowing them to map expert intent into code in applications such as fraud detection, financial transactions, healthcare, retail, and marketing. However, a remaining concern is the quality, safety, and reliability of the resulting programs. This book is on business rules programs, that is, rule programs as handled in business rules management systems. Its conceptual contribution is to present the foundation for treating business rules as a topic of scientific investigation in semantics and program verification, while its technical contribution is to present an approach to the formal verification of business rules programs. The author proposes a method for proving correctness properties for a business rules program in a compositional way, meaning that the proof of a correctness property for a program is built up from correctness properties for the individual rules-thus bridging a gap between the intuitive understanding of rules and the formal semantics of rule programs. With this approach the author enables rule authors and tool developers to understand, express formally, and prove properties of the execution behavior of business rules programs. This work will be of interest to practitioners and researchers in the areas of program verification, enterprise computing, database management, and artificial intelligence.

At present, there is a general consensus on the nature of learning programming, but there are different opinions on what forms an effective environment for it. It is generally recognized that the development of a mental model is a formidable task for the student and that learning programming is a complex activity that depends heavily on metacognitive skills. This book, based on a NATO workshop, presents both pure cognitive models and experimental learning environments, and discusses what characteristics can make a learning model effective, especially in relation to the learning environment (natural or computerized). The papers cover cognitive models related to different aspects of programming, classes of learners, and types of environment, and are organized in three groups: theoretical and empirical studies on understanding programming, environments for learning programming, and learning programming in school environments. Comprehension, design, construction, testing, debugging, and verification are recognized as interdependent skills, which require complicated analysis and may develop independently, and indifferent orders, in novices. This book shows that there is unlikely to be asingle path from novice to expert and that the structure of the final product (the program) may not constrain the process by which it comes into being as much as some would advocate.

Embedded computing systems play an important and complex role in the functionality of electronic devices. With our daily routines becoming more reliant on electronics for personal and professional use, the understanding of these computing systems is crucial. Embedded Computing Systems: Applications, Optimization, and Advanced Design brings together theoretical and technical concepts of intelligent embedded control systems and their use in hardware and software architectures. By highlighting formal modeling, execution models, and optimal implementations, this reference source is essential for experts, researchers, and technical supporters in the industry and academia.

The launch of Microsoft s Kinect, the first high-resolution depth-sensing camera for the consumer market, generated considerable excitement not only among computer gamers, but also within the global community of computer vision researchers.

The potential of consumer depth cameras extends well beyond entertainment and gaming, to real-world commercial applications such virtual fitting rooms, training for athletes, and assistance for the elderly. This authoritative text/reference reviews the scope and impact of this rapidly growing field, describing the most promising Kinect-based research activities, discussing significant current challenges, and showcasing exciting applications.

Topics and features: presents contributions from an international selection of preeminent authorities in their fields, from both academic and corporate research; addresses the classic problem of multi-view geometry of how to correlate images from different viewpoints to simultaneously estimate camera poses and world points; examines human pose estimation using video-rate depth images for gaming, motion capture, 3D human body scans, and hand pose recognition for sign language parsing; provides a review of approaches to various recognition problems, including category and instance learning of objects, and human activity recognition; with a Foreword by Dr. Jamie Shotton of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK.

This broad-ranging overview is a must-read for researchers and graduate students of computer vision and robotics wishing to learn more about the state of the art of this increasingly hot topic."

As information technologies become increasingly distributed and accessible to larger number of people and as commercial and government organizations are challenged to scale their applications and services to larger market shares, while reducing costs, there is demand for software methodologies and appli- tions to provide the following features: Richer application end-to-end functionality; Reduction of human involvement in the design and deployment of the software; Flexibility of software behaviour; and Reuse and composition of existing software applications and systems in novel or adaptive ways. When designing new distributed software systems, the above broad requi- ments and their translation into implementations are typically addressed by partial complementarities and overlapping technologies and this situation gives rise to significant software engineering challenges. Some of the challenges that may arise are: determining the components that the distributed applications should contain, organizing the application components, and determining the assumptions that one needs to make in order to implement distributed scalable and flexible applications, etc.

A definitive reference for resolving the dilemma of application testing and debugging--one of the biggest time commitments in a programmer's daily routine--this book rescues readers from substandard application testing practices. It commences with several chapters that provide an overview the debugger's basic features, then covers common debugging scenarios.

The software product line strategy has enabled many organizations to improve productivity, reduce time-to-market, and address both mass- and niche markets. A successful product line organization achieves strategic levels of architectural reuse.

The topics in this book cover research related to the most important practices in a product line organization. The contributions provide experience-based knowledge about the domain and application engineering, the modeling and management of variability, and the design and use of tools to support the management of product line related knowledge. Kakola and Duenas have grouped them into five parts corresponding to the main areas of software product line engineering: product line management, product line requirements engineering, product line architecture, product line testing, and specific product line engineering issues. They ensured maximum coherence and cross-referencing throughout the book, imposing a common terminology and carefully integrating all chapters. The result is a valuable and enduring resource for researchers in both industry and academia who will also find many pointers for future research and implementation strategies. In addition, systems and software professionals, and technology managers aspiring to fully leverage the product line strategy will also benefit from many pertinent development details.

"This volume is a valuable resource for researchers wishing to move the product line strategy forward and for those charged with translating state-of-the-art ideas into state-of-the-practice processes and activities."

From the Foreword by John D. McGregor, Clemson University, USA

This book is concerned with topological and differential properties of multivalued mappings and marginal functions. Beside this applica- tions to the sensitivity analysis of optimization problems, in particular nonlinear programming problems with perturbations, are studied. The elaborated methods are primarily obtained by theories and concepts of two former Soviet Union researchers, Demyanov and Rubinov. Con- sequently, a significant part of the presented results have never been published in English before. Based on the use of directional derivatives as a key tool in studying nonsmooth functions and multifunctions, these results can be considered as a further development of quasidifferential calculus created by Demyanov and Rubinov. In contrast to other research in this field, especially the recent publica- tion by Bonnans and Shapiro, this book analyses properties of marginal functions associated with optimization problems under quite general con- straints defined by means of multivalued mappings. A unified approach to directional differentiability of functions and multifunctions forms the base of the volume.

This book initiates a new digital multimedia standards series. The purpose of the series is to make information about digital multimedia standards readilyavailable. Both tutorial and advanced topics will be covered in the series, often in one book. Our hope is that users will find the series helpful in deciding what standards to support and use while implementors will d- cover a wealth of technical details that help them implement those standards correctly. In today's global economy standards are increasingly important. Yet until a standard is widely used, most of the benefits of standardization are not realized. We hope that standards committee chairpeople will organize and encourage a book in this series devoted to their new standard. This can be a forum to share and preserve some ofthe "why" and "how" that went into the development of the standard and, in the process, assist in the rapid adoption of the standard. Already in production for this series are books titled Digital Video: - troduction to MPEG-2 and Data Compression in Digital Systems.

In a model-based development of software systems different views on a system are elaborated using appropriate modeling languages and techniques. Because of the unavoidable heterogeneity of the viewpoint models, a semantic integration is required, to establish the correspondences of the models and allow checking of their relative consistency.

The integration approach introduced in this book is based on a common semantic domain of abstract systems, their composition and development. Its applicability is shown through semantic interpretations and compositional comparisons of different specification approaches. These range from formal specification techniques like process calculi, Petri nets and rule-based formalisms to semiformal software modeling languages like those in the UML family.

SMIL 3.0: Multimedia for the Web, Mobile Devices and Daisy Talking Books is a revised introduction to - and resource guide for - the W3C SMIL language. It covers all aspects of the SMIL specification and covers all of SMIL's implem- tation profiles, from the desktop through the world of mobile SMIL devices. Based on the first version of the book, which covered SMIL 2.0, this edition has been updated with information from the past two releases of the SMIL l- guage. We have benefitted from comments and suggestions from many readers of the first edition, and have produced what we feel is the most comprehensive guide to SMIL available anywhere. Motivation for this Book While we were working on various phases of the SMIL recommendations, it became clear to us that the richness of the SMIL language could easily ov- whelm many Web authors and designers. In the 500+ pages that the SYMM working group needed to describe the 30+ SMIL elements and the 150+ SMIL attributes, there was not much room for background information or extensive examples. The focus of the specification was on implementation aspects of the SMIL language, not on the rationale or the potential uses of SMIL's declarative power.

The emergence of Web 2.0 has triggered a trend towards global online social interactions and has brought sociology into the global interactive picture, creating educational issues relating to individual and social learning for the internalization and externalization of information and knowledge. ""Educational Social Software for Context-Aware Learning: Collaborative Methods and Human Interaction"" examines socio-cultural elements in educational computing focused on design and theory where learning and setting are intertwined. This advanced publication addresses real-life case studies where evaluations have been applied and validated in computational systems.

The Art of Computer Programming is Knuth's multivolume analysis of algorithms. With the addition of this new volume, it continues to be the definitive description of classical computer science. Volume 4B, the sequel to Volume 4A, extends Knuth's exploration of combinatorial algorithms. These algorithms are of keen interest to software designers because ". . . a single good idea can save years or even centuries of computer time." The book begins with coverage of Backtrack Programming, together with a set of data structures whose links perform "delightful dances" and are ideally suited to this domain. New techniques for important applications such as optimum partitioning and layout are thereby developed. Knuth's writing is playful, and he includes dozens of puzzles to illustrate the algorithms and techniques, ranging from popular classics like edge-matching to more recent crazes like sudoku. Recreational mathematicians and computer scientists will not be disappointed! In the second half of the book, Knuth addresses Satisfiability, one of the most fundamental problems in all of computer science. Innovative techniques developed at the beginning of the twenty-first century have led to game-changing applications, for such things as optimum scheduling, circuit design, and hardware verification. Thanks to these tools, computers are able to solve practical problems involving millions of variables that only a few years ago were regarded as hopeless. The Mathematical Preliminaries Redux section of the book is a special treat, which presents basic techniques of probability theory that have become prominent since the original "preliminaries" were discussed in Volume 1. As in every volume of this remarkable series, the book includes hundreds of exercises that employ Knuth's ingenious rating system, making it easy for readers of varying degrees of mathematical training to find challenges suitable to them. Detailed answers are provided to facilitate self-study. "Professor Donald E. Knuth has always loved to solve problems. In Volume 4B he now promotes two brand new and practical general problem solvers, namely (0) the Dancing Links Backtracking and (1) the SAT Solver. To use them, a problem is defined declaratively (0) as a set of options, or (1) in Boolean formulae. Today's laptop computers, heavily armoured with very high speed processors and ultra large amounts of memory, are able to run either solver for problems having big input data. Each section of Volume 4B contains a multitudinous number of tough exercises which help make understanding surer. Happy reading!" --Eiiti Wada, an elder computer scientist, UTokyo "Donald Knuth may very well be a great master of the analysis of algorithms, but more than that, he is an incredible and tireless storyteller who always strikes the perfect balance between theory, practice, and fun. [Volume 4B, Combinatorial Algorithms, Part 2] dives deep into the fascinating exploration of search spaces (which is quite like looking for a needle in a haystack or, even harder, to prove the absence of a needle in a haystack), where actions performed while moving forward must be meticulously undone when backtracking. It introduces us to the beauty of dancing links for removing and restoring the cells of a matrix in a dance which is both simple to implement and very efficient." --Christine Solnon, Department of Computer Science, INSA Lyon Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.

IFIP's Working Group 2.7(13.4)* has, since its establishment in 1974, con centrated on the software problems of user interfaces. From its original interest in operating systems interfaces the group has gradually shifted em phasis towards the development of interactive systems. The group has orga nized a number of international working conferences on interactive software technology, the proceedings of which have contributed to the accumulated knowledge in the field. The current title of the Working Group is 'User Interface Engineering', with the aim of investigating the nature, concepts, and construction of user interfaces for software systems. The scope of work involved is: - to increase understanding of the development of interactive systems; - to provide a framework for reasoning about interactive systems; - to provide engineering models for their development. This report addresses all three aspects of the scope, as further described below. In 1986 the working group published a report (Beech, 1986) with an object-oriented reference model for describing the components of operating systems interfaces. The modelwas implementation oriented and built on an object concept and the notion of interaction as consisting of commands and responses. Through working with that model the group addressed a number of issues, such as multi-media and multi-modal interfaces, customizable in terfaces, and history logging. However, a conclusion was reached that many software design considerations and principles are independent of implemen tation models, but do depend on the nature of the interaction process."

This book proposes a purely classical first-order logical approach to the theory of programming. The authors, leading members of the famous "Hungarian school," use this approach to give a unified and systematic presentation of the theory. This approach provides formal methods and tools for reasoning about computer programs and programming languages by allowing the syntactic and semantic characterization of programs, the description of program properties, and ways to check whether a given program satisfies certain properties. The basic methods are logical extension, inductive definition and their combination, all of which admit an appropriate first-order representation of data and time. The framework proposed by the authors allows the investigation and development of different programming theories and logics from a unified point of view. Dynamic and temporal logics, for example, are investigated and compared with respect to their expressive and proof-theoretic powers. The book should appeal to both theoretical researchers and students. For researchers in computer science the book provides a coherent presentation of a new approach which permits the solution of various problems in programming theory in a unified manner by the use of first-order logical tools. The book may serve as a basis for graduate courses in programming theory and logic as it covers all important questions arising between the theory of computation and formal descriptive languages and presents an appropriate derivation system.

In earlier forewords to the books in this series on Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (DEDS), we have dwelt on the pervasive nature of DEDS in our human-made world. From manufacturing plants to computer/communication networks, from traffic systems to command-and-control, modern civilization cannot function without the smooth operation of such systems. Yet mathemat ical tools for the analysis and synthesis of DEDS are nascent when compared to the well developed machinery of the continuous variable dynamic systems char acterized by differential equations. The performance evaluation tool of choice for DEDS is discrete event simulation both on account of its generality and its explicit incorporation of randomness. As it is well known to students of simulation, the heart of the random event simulation is the uniform random number generator. Not so well known to the practitioners are the philosophical and mathematical bases of generating "random" number sequence from deterministic algorithms. This editor can still recall his own painful introduction to the issues during the early 80's when he attempted to do the first perturbation analysis (PA) experiments on a per sonal computer which, unbeknownst to him, had a random number generator with a period of only 32,768 numbers. It is no exaggeration to say that the development of PA was derailed for some time due to this ignorance of the fundamentals of random number generation."

In January 1992, the Sixth Workshop on Optimization and Numerical Analysis was held in the heart of the Mixteco-Zapoteca region, in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, a beautiful and culturally rich site in ancient, colonial and modern Mexican civiliza tion. The Workshop was organized by the Numerical Analysis Department at the Institute of Research in Applied Mathematics of the National University of Mexico in collaboration with the Mathematical Sciences Department at Rice University, as were the previous ones in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984 and 1989. As were the third, fourth, and fifth workshops, this one was supported by a grant from the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology, and the US National Science Foundation, as part of the joint Scientific and Technical Cooperation Program existing between these two countries. The participation of many of the leading figures in the field resulted in a good representation of the state of the art in Continuous Optimization, and in an over view of several topics including Numerical Methods for Diffusion-Advection PDE problems as well as some Numerical Linear Algebraic Methods to solve related pro blems. This book collects some of the papers given at this Workshop."

Content-based multimedia retrieval is a challenging research field with many unsolved problems. This monograph details concepts and algorithms for robust and efficient information retrieval of two different types of multimedia data: waveform-based music data and human motion data. It first examines several approaches in music information retrieval, in particular general strategies as well as efficient algorithms. The book then introduces a general and unified framework for motion analysis, retrieval, and classification, highlighting the design of suitable features, the notion of similarity used to compare data streams, and data organization.

A resource like no other—the first comprehensive guide to phase unwrapping

Phase unwrapping is a mathematical problem-solving technique increasingly used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry, optical interferometry, adaptive optics, and medical imaging. In Two-Dimensional Phase Unwrapping, two internationally recognized experts sort through the multitude of ideas and algorithms cluttering current research, explain clearly how to solve phase unwrapping problems, and provide practicable algorithms that can be applied to problems encountered in diverse disciplines. Complete with case studies and examples as well as hundreds of images and figures illustrating the concepts, this book features:

• A thorough introduction to the theory of phase unwrapping
• Eight algorithms that constitute the state of the art in phase unwrapping
• Detailed description and analysis of each algorithm and its performance in a number of phase unwrapping problems
• C language software that provides a complete implementation of each algorithm
• Comparative analysis of the algorithms and techniques for evaluating results
• A discussion of future trends in phase unwrapping research
• Foreword by former NASA scientist Dr. John C. Curlander

Two-Dimensional Phase Unwrapping skillfully integrates concepts, algorithms, software, and examples into a powerful benchmark against which new ideas and algorithms for phase unwrapping can be tested. This unique introduction to a dynamic, rapidly evolving field is essential for professionals and graduate students in SAR interferometry, optical interferometry, adaptive optics, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

This book shows C# developers how to use C# 2008 and ADO.NET 3.5 to develop database applications the way the best professionals do.

After an introductory section, section 2 shows how to use data sources and datasets for Rapid Application Development and prototyping of Windows Forms applications. Section 3 shows how to build professional 3-layer applications that consist of presentation, business, and database classes. Section 4 shows how to use the new LINQ feature to work with data structures like datasets, SQL Server databases, and XML documents. And section 5 shows how to build database applications by using the new Entity Framework to map business objects to database objects.

To ensure mastery, this book presents 23 complete database applications that demonstrate best programming practices. And it's all done in the distinctive Murach style that has been training professional developers for 35 years.