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2003-11-20PJD's CACM Columns on IT Profession. Golly, here are all of Peter Denning's IT Professional columns, all the way up to the November, 2003 issue. Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium 2004. There is a K-12 Task force that is being addressed here. This is addressing critical issues for teachers including a Java Case Study, Web Resources, Attracting Women to Computing, and Building a CS Curriculum. Microsoft, the industry sponsor, must have the creepy-crawlies over all of this institutionalization of Java as the synonym for Object-Oriented. I have gotten over that myself, and at the same time I would like to see how to use Java as a way to illustrate what is and is not OO about Java OOT. SIGCSE 2004 Home Page. The 2004 Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education will be in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 3-7 2004. This will include a March 6 Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium offered as an opportunity for high-school teachers. ACM MemberNet: Conquering Java Anxiety Among Computer Science Teachers. Here's an interesting juxtaposition with the announcement about JETT. The AP language moved from Pascal to C++ just two years ago, and now it is moving to Java (in 2004, which is any day now, by golly). Eric Roberts, at Stanford and principal editor of Computing Curricula 2001, is creating a task force for developing a set of simpler Java-based teaching tools for introductory Computer Science courses. The timeline is to present the task force and its mission at the March 2004 ACM SIGCSE Symposium, with a draft of resources in December 2004 and a final report in June 2005. JETT - Java Engagement for Teacher Training. Here is the site that has been created for JETT. Now, the move is from C++ to Java as the Advanced Placement language. So we will see. ACM MemberNet: JETT Offers Advanced Online Resources for Teachers, Universities.. JETT is Java Engagement for Teacher Training. Like it or not, OO development and Java are going to be viewed as equivalent. JETT is intended for high school teachers and their training in Java and object-oriented concepts. Starting in 2004, the Adsvanced Placement Computer Science examination is going to be based on Java. thesis: Improving Performance of Modern Peer-to-Peer Services. This is Marcus Bergner's 2003-06-10 Masters Thesis, including an analysis of FastTrack. FastTrack. Here's a thesis project that explores the FastTrack protocol and the efforts of giFT and OpenFT to clone a workalike from the undocumented and undisclosed FastTrack protocol. FastTrack P2P Supernode Packet Handler Buffer Overflow Vulnerability. This is about a SuperNode difficulty. The alert is dated 2003-05-26. Active Downloads and Shared Objects Meta Database - KaZaA P2P FastTrack File Formats. Here's some reverse-engineering scoop. It suggests problems to avoid, it seems to me. I am also curious about the proprietary nature of FastTrack and how OpenFT avoids that. SourceForge.net: OpenVRML 0.14.3. Wow, VRML is alive and well. The fans of Microsoft VChat might be happy to know about this activity. SourceForge.net: Project Info - giFT. It looks like maybe OpenFT is the sort of thing I am interested in learning about. Something to dig into in my February Communications course, but also something to watch for Miser design notes. giFT: Internet File Transfer. There is an interesting discussion here about FastTrack security updates and that FastTrack was reverse-engineered in this open-source project. Makes me wonder ... Policy violators - Acceptable and Unacceptable FastTrack usage. This site has a clean explanation of what happens with FastTrack and how to control working as a host. There are also links to the FastTrack site, though I found it to be temporarily unavailable just now. Why Use PeerCache to optimize P2P?. Well, here's more about it. It is specific to FastTrack, so that is interesting too. PeerCache overview - localizing P2P traffic. This suggests that P2P traffic is a problem and that caching by the ISP matters. This is an odd situation. It is about caching so that subnets don't have to communicate to the planet so much, and vice versa. Are we creating a problem or solving one? Publishing with PeerEnabler and P2P. Because there is this need for distribution support, I am not clear how clients end up being participating as hosts, and how that works to provide locality. This is an useful scheme, but how many systems end up being part of the cache? P2P PeerEnabler Documentation. This is an interesting list of releases as well as information on how to develop with this mechanism. Joltid P2P Developer information. This is about a P2P substrate and how it can be installed, downloaded, and used by applications and users. Skype - P2P Telephony Explained. It would seem that the FastTrack technology is at the heart of this, along with some mechanisms for global directory support. All of the nodes become participants in creating and operating the infrastructure, providing routing for neighbors, and so on. There are also arrangements that avoid the usual firewall and NAT problems, such as Vicki and I wanting to do voice over MSN Messenger when we are both on the same LAN and gateway to the Internet. In general, this could be a very interesting technology. Skype. Well, this might be interesting. I am not so sure about Skype itself, or how the model scales, but it is something that might work in Miser. Yahoo! News - Sun Confirms December Ship Date For Java Desktop System: "Sun unveiled the Java Desktop System, formerly code-named Mad Hatter, in September 2002. The Linux (news - web sites)-based OS, which includes the Mozilla browser, StarOffice office productivity suite, GNOME interface and Evolution mail client, is Sun's effort to disrupt the industry's dependency on Microsoft Windows as the dominant desktop OS." I am curious to know how this will approach the Outlook-Exchange view of the world which is also well-entrenched. And, of course, there is the usual need for productivity of various kinds. Also, it is not clear to me what is in the use of "Java" in the name and how this fits the Java and only Java view of interoperability that Sun seemed to be insistent upon. 2003-11-19ACM News Service - A Lifetime of Memories in a Nutshell. This Technews article points out that the current rate of drive capacity increase (50% per year) will make for ability to store a life-time of material, including captured multi-media. This fits with Jim Gray's observations about storage and may have the most dramatic impact of anything since the PC, in the personal computing space. SD Times: SPECIAL REPORT SOA Enablers: Retraining, Tools, and Technologies.. Here's a companion piece to the central one on SOA emergence. SD Times: SPECIAL REPORT Defining the SOA. This is a look at what Service-Oriented Architecture entails, and the current lag in adoption, in the face of tricky conditions and immature technologies and standards. United Press International: Analysis: Is U.S. tech self-destructing?. Here's a rather startling article about a structural weakness in high-tech companies having to do with executive compensation and the prospect for movement of top-management overseas, however that might make any sense at all. I wonder how real is the hidden burdening of U.S. tech firms with management compensation packages that excede the profits of the firm. Simony's View of the future of programming. Here's more from the article on the future for programmers, ending with observations from Charles Simonyi: "Ultra-educated Indian programmers are underutilized, just as programmers have been in this country, he says. He has a stake in this vision, since his company, Intentional Software Corp., develops tools to make it easier to capture the design of software in the actual code. Yet he predicts a long and painful journey. In the near term, the 20% or more least-productive U.S. programmers could lose their jobs to overseas employees. But those jobs will eventually be mechanized, by utilizing the programming skills of senior U.S. people, Simonyi predicts. "If routine IT programming can be mechanized, Simonyi says, it will bring Moore's Law to software--a steady increase in capacity along with a steady decrease in cost. The basics of software engineering will remain important to creating software, but the focus will be automating functions. Languages and compilers will have the limited, narrow role that order codes and assemblers have today, he says. And obsolescence will be a constant threat. 'A programmer's 3-year-old experience will be like a 3-year-old laptop is today: a quarter of capacity, a quarter of speed, and ready for replacement,' he says. "It's hardly a comforting vision. But high-tech has never been about comfort, especially when it comes to change. 'Moore's Law isn't predicated on keeping the key parameters and key technologies constant,' Simonyi says. 'We on the software side should take a hint from this.' " The Programmer's Future. This article, which had Morris's article on the appeal of CS as a companion, is about how IT is changing and the pool of programmer jobs is shrinking. Computer Science Is More Than Programming. James Morris, dean of the CS school at Carnegie-Mellon, writes about the challenges and adventure of computer science, along with the importance of curricula that feature humanities and social awareness. I like the emphasis on the empirical science aspects and human problem-solving. "Good computer-science programs include liberal arts, mathematics, and experimental science. The computer-oriented studies are focused not just on programming skills but on the things a person should know to prosper in a computing-intensive world: the potential and the limits of computing devices, matching solutions to problems, and the ethics of information use. More generally, we impart basic skills--how to judge what you know, how to learn what you need to know, and how to communicate--with the added feature that one can use computers and networks to help." 2003-11-18AIS: The Meta Model. Here's an Applied Information Science collection on metamodels for data, keys, and existence, uniqueness, and identity. Something to graze when tightening up my reading of Data and Reality. AIS: Relational vs E-R. Here's a page (updated 1996-05-05) that claims the risk of the ER model is (1) Premature encapsulation of attributes within arbitrary entities. Forces the designer to make early commitments to data structures. (2) Limited ability to model constraints which are intra-attribute, possibly intra-entity. (3)Requires unmodeled methods to capture ad hoc procedural logic to express constraints. The proposed remedy is to consider data dictionary to normalization to E-R. That's an interesting idea. What has me be suspicious is that the relational model is shown on the far side of the physical RDBMS from the E-R conceptual and logical models. This is an odd deal. Tips & Newsletters-SearchDatabase.com: 13 Reasons why normalized tables help your business. 2002-04-20 article by Tom Russell and Rob Armstrong. Found by classmate Ricardo Santos. Nice article. 2003-11-17Papers by Ron Fagin. This is a great way to locate Fagin's papers, since he has the equivalent of electronic off-prints for all of them. Guide to Course Materials: Database-Management Principles and Applications, LIS 384K.11, The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, The University of Texas at Austin. This Spring 2002 class has some great material on normalization. Jim Courtney's UCF Homepage. Courtney teaches a database course and there are slides for his ISM 6938, Introduction to DBMS at the University of Central Florida graduate school. GA Tech CS4400 Introduction to Database Systems. Hot off the presses, something that might tell more about DKNF and such. DATABASE LECTURE NOTE. This is a set of lecture notes that looks like Silberschatz used at Seol National University. Some of the slides have been extended, or are later than versions found elsewhere. Database System Concepts -- Slides. These are slides and PDFs on the Silberschatz book, including Appendix C on Advanced RDB Design. There are two PDFs and PPT. Cafe Scientifique. Here's an interesting alternative to the Cyber Cafe, for those interested in discussion of all topics scientific. Steve's home page. A little more about Steve Grand and his work leading up to Lucy. Puts a human face on this effort. AI Loves Lucy - Computerworld. This is a rather startling development. It is not clear how any of this scales, but developer Steve Grand is going to find out. The photograph is really gross. Outsourcing's Dirty Little Secret - Computerworld. This November 10 article by Bart Perkins discusses the ways that users of outsourcing can have an unsatisfactory arrangement, either initially or over time. It is fundamentally around the risk of failing to manage the relationship and also to provide clear accountability and measurability. 2003-11-16Fabian Pascal - The Logical-Physical Confusion. On-line article in the Journal of Conceptual Modeling, May 2002 (Issue 25). BRCommunity.com : Commentary (C.J. Date). This is Date's kick-orr "Foundation Matters" column from April 2000. He has a lot to say about theoretical foundations and why they matter. There is a sidebar that lists the complete series, and that is to be followed-up on. BRCommunity.com :: Date - Principles of Normalization. Hmm, goes right to 5NF. Don't know ... a February 2003 article. B R C O M M U N I T Y . C O M : A Vertical Community For Business Rule Professionals. This site has an article by Codd and a different one by Date on Normalization. I am too tired to register, but I probably will anyhow. Fundamentals - The Relational Model - Pal's Linux RDBMS Library. A pile of links that I haven't explored yet. Much more on relational models, with more links to articles by Chris Date. Open Directory - Computers: Software: Databases: Relational: Model. A lengthy list of great resources. Metacrap. This is Cory Doctorow's article on the 7-straw men of the meta-utopia, version 1.3, 2001-08-26, or another reason why what they tell you about the Semantic Web is hoo-hah, so what is really going on? Database Programming and Design. A column by C. J. Date in 1994, on Normalization is No Panacea (but i's a lot better than the alternative). He gives some examples where normalization and functional dependency work lead to different optimizations, and also talks about how denormalization can also be costly. Walla Walla College Computer Science Department Course CPTR 415 Introduction to Databases. Apparently offered in Fall 2003. University of Calgary - Haskayne School of Business. This is the bio page for Barb Marcolin, the instructor for MGIS331 in Winter 2000.
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