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2003-10-18Technical Note -- IMS celebrates thirty years as an IBM product. The first installation delivered its IMS Rady message on August 14, 1968. The ICS product was renamed in 1969. There is more her ein an IBM Systems Journal remeniscence. IMS Family - Library - IBM Software. This is information on the current support for IMS. There seems to be linkage to DB2 that is not what I was expecting. I am interested in the early history of IMS. I may need to check Ann. Hist. Computing. IBM Offering Information - Search results. This is a search service that coughs up IBM Announcement Letters on many, many products. There is a search service. Yelavich: Evolution of CICS - Table of Contents. The evolution of CICS and the integration with various DBMS capabilities (and use of DL/I) is chronocled. IBM DB2 Information Management: Product Announcements. These are recent announcements of DB2 releases and their feature sets. There are links to earlier announcements. IBM Scholars Program: Scholars Program pathway: get trained, and then train others.. This is specifically about learning to teach DB2. That is an interesting notion. There is also a set of resources that might provide the information I want about how DB2 is evolving too. DB2 Product Family - Family Overview - IBM Software. I am here to get a handle on the evolution of DB2 along with other database systems. This seems to be the start and the top of the heap. Programming Systems and LanguagesJavaRecommended Books for Learning JavaThese are noted for their straightforwardness and the good humor of the authors. Part of my on-going exploration of what there is for education about Java.Amazon.com: Books: Just Java 2 (5th Edition). Hmm, if it's in its 5th edition, it is probably a text book, and I have been having bad experiences with text books. Still, datingdesignpatterns likes how author Van Der Linden annotates highlights details in code, and that is no small thing. I notice that there is a bundle offer with Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java." I also notice that Java books are starting to be put on sale. I don't notice if this means the Java book-rush has levelled off and the market is saturated or there is a new generation of Java books about to roll off the presses. I wonder how far we are from Java 1.5 release. Amazon.com: Books: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. I'm not so sure about this one. I like Martin Fowler's writing, but I have opened this book several times in bookstores, and I keep putting it back on the shelf. I need to do some more work on design patterns and the ones that I notice around me before I am prepared to give this one serious attention. I must confess that I find it peculiar to see design patterns illustrated with code. I thought design patterns should be illustrated with designs. So that's something for me to come to grips with. Amazon.com: Books: Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide (Exam 310-035 & 310-027). This is a December 2002 version of a format I like, by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, who also bring you Head First Java. I am still interested in Java certification and this seems like a nice way to undertake the two basic certification examinations. I also want to make sure that what I do for a Java Inside-Out approach is consistent with the kinds of comprehension that support certification, although that is not the purpose of the material I am putting together. Amazon.com: Books: Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java(TM). OK, here's one citation from datingdesignpatterns to look into farther and test against my ideas for a Java inside-out approach. Amazon.com: Listmania! Fun, readable Java books you can actually learn from. Here's a list of readable Java books, something I am always interested in. What I notice is that the "Head First Java" team has a Java Certification book and there is more here that I will doubtless have to look at (Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java?). Anyone who identifies herself as "datingdesignpatterns" has to have an interesting sense of humor relative to the sense-of-humor of the authors being recommended. (I never noticed the "Add to Wedding Registry" buttons on book lists before. My, my.) Computing MilieuI should obviously print out a copy of the Computing Reviews Classification System and simply use the thing. I think I will do that next. But first ...EducationGrades, Grading Systems, and RecognitionIt is not clear to me what grades are a measure of, but there is some fuss about using similar systems for comparison of grade-point-averages across educational systems. It showed up in my M.Sc in IT program around tweaking of the grading structure to match a system used by the University of Liverpool on-campus grading. This normalization activity caused distress in some quarters.Welcome to AACRAO. There has been some bafflement about the grading structure at LIT eLearning and the University of Liverpool, since new explanations have been posted along with expanded description of what is required to graduate with distinction in the M.Sc and M.BA programs. One of the senior administrators mentioned that they do pay attention to AACRAO, so I naturally looked it up on the web: the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (with membership from around 2300 institutions and over 35 countries). I notice there is a foreign education credential service too. 2003-10-16Information ProcessingI must build a classification (no, not an ontology) that I can refer to and use in keeping my Blog topics straight. A new class has begun, so that will definitely be later.XML TechnologiesSchema methodology of the month?On the WebDAV list, a question about using quasi-DTD fragments or something else in the descriptions turned into a discussion of how to use DTDs, XML Schema, or something else to validate or assess the XML elements conveyed in DAV request and response bodies. I am learning a lot about context and binary thinking in the discussions. And where I become agitated and need to relax. Speaking of RELAX, some links to RELAX NG were offered by Julian Reschke as part of a byway into whether this would work in the explication of DAV rules for use of XML. I have no idea about that, but I find all work by James Clark to be of interest independent of that question.Thai Open Source RELAX NG. This is a different site, and there does not seem to be quite the same material. The Design of RELAX NG. A lengthy James Clark document on RELAX NG and the ways it treats aspects of XML, including Namespaces and what XML Schema addresses. XML Namespaces. This James Clark article from 1999-02-04 provides a nice explication of how XML Namespaces work and what they are and are not. 2003-10-15MiscellanySecuring the portals of cyber space. Here's a report on a Dorothy Denning speach at the US Naval Academy. I suppose for a SOHO operation like, mine, securing the system starts from the individual boxes outward. Since I am at an end-point, there would seem to be some prospects for relatively-secure operation. I wonder how well I will manage to do. Just in terms of getting rid of spybots, cutting down on adware and refusing ActiveX components, I notice there is a lot of cruft that I can exclude without much loss of access to content. It is remarkable how many web pages want to use my computer to run their presentation or, usually, some ad or pop-up that I find intrusive.visuos: A Visuo-spatial Operating Software for Knowledge Work. This ACM Ubiquity article describes "modular, integrated software could help knowledge workers keep track and make sense of abundant information by narrowing the cognitive load." This comes out of Dr. Clemens Lango's Ph.D research. There is a book volume and also a web site: www.visuos.com. 2003-10-14XML Data Management: Native XML and XML-Enabled Database Systems - Addison-Wesley and Benjamin Cummings Catalog. There's a discussion of "What's a database?" on the CIO Council XML Working Group [XMLWG] mailing list (maintained by the Office of Governmentwide Policy of the US General Services Administration). One contributor cited the definitions in this book. I haven't found them yet. The sample chapter is in PDF, so I'll have to take a look later.
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