15815014
The Revolution Yet to Happen
By 2047 almost all information will be in cyberspace—including a large percentage of knowledge and creative works. All information about physical objects, including humans, buildings, processes, and organizations, will be online. This trend is both desirable and inevitable. Cyberspace will provide the basis for wonderful new ways to inform, entertain, and educate people. The information and the corresponding systems will streamline commerce but will also provide new levels of personal service, health care, and automation. The most significant benefit will be a breakthrough in our ability to communicate remotely with one another using all our senses.
25154953
Queues Are Databases
Message-oriented-middleware (MOM) has become an small industry. MOM offers queued transaction processing as an advance over pure client-server transaction processing. This note makes four points: Queued transaction processing is less general than direct transaction processing. Queued systems are built on top of direct systems. You cannot build a direct system atop a queued system. It is difficult to build direct, conversational, or distributed transactions atop a queued system. Queues are interesting databases with interesting concurrency control. It is best to build these mechanisms into a standard database system so other applications can use these interesting features. Queue systems need DBMS functionality. Queues need security, configuration, performance monitoring, recovery, and reorganization utilities. Database systems already have these features. A full-function MOM system duplicates these database features. Queue managers are simple TP-monitors managing server pools driven by queues. Database systems are encompassing many server pool features as they evolve to TP-lite systems.
40830661
Greetings from a Filesystem User
17985549
An approach to decentralized computer systems
The technology for distributed computing is available. However, it is argued that decentralized systems will always require more careful design, planning, and management than their centralized counterparts. The rationale for and against decentralization is given, and a technical approach to decentralized systems is sketched. This approach contrasts with the popular concept of a distributed integrated database which transparently provides remote IO against single system image. Rather, it proposes that functions be distributed as `servers' which abstract data as high-level operations on objects and communicate with `requestors' via a standard message protocol. This requestor-server approach has the advantages of modularity and performance.
33551622
The Theory of Sequential Relations
Suppose that one has some system with inputs drawn from a set Z* which produces outputs in some set Lx*. The system is assumed to have sonm state set S. Suppose that all possible experiments are run on the system ill the sense that we can tabulate a relation R of all inpuVoutput pairs which the system can produce. (We will vary the starting state.) A problem of some importance in systems theory (Zadeh and Desoer, 1963) is to synthesize a system which has as its relation R where R has been "given" in advance. In this paper, we study sequential relations which are the relations which arise in this manner when the system is a finite sequential machine. Our main results include synthesis procedures for constructing the sequential machine when the relation is "reasonably given." Also several characterizations of sequential relations are given as well as connections with other families of relations studied in automata theory. This study was stimulated by a lecture given by Professor 5i. A. Aizermann in July 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Aizermann described a method for the synthesis of sequential machines by a "question-answer" procedure. Since the technical details of the method were omitted, we derived a method which satisfied the general characteristics mentioncd by Professor Aizernmnn. Recently, the original algorithm has become available (see Tal, 1964). I t turns out that the two methods have very little in common. Our method is • 7, presented as an appendix to this ]oa~dr. , Our method synthesizes a sequential function f by constructing the minimal sequential machine which computes f; this machine has a dis-
215936012
Evolution of Data Management
Society has made great strides in capturing, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data. These tasks are generically called data management, and this article sketches its evolution through ...
35790813
Mobile technologies for the world's children
In this panel, academic, non-profit, and industry professionals will discuss their global perspectives on mobile technologies for the world's children. Panelists will explore such issues concerning children's access to mobile devices, the decreasing age that children have access to these technologies, mobile innovations for learning, and challenges/opportunities in diverse countries. This interactive session will begin with each panelist giving a short summary of their work-to-date with children and various mobile applications. Then the panelists will be asked questions by children from different countries via pre-recorded video. Audience members will be invited to offer their thoughts and comments as well as the panelists during the video question period. Audience members will also be able to ask further questions throughout the panel discussion.
41817845
Why TP-Lite will Dominate the TP Market
13482322
Triumphs, Sins, and Challenges of Database Benchmarking
10432009
Increasing the Effectiveness of OS Research
10364748
Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?
An analysis of the failure statistics of a commercially available fault-tolerant system shows that administration and software are the major contributors to failure. Various approaches to software fault-tolerance are then discussed -- notably process-pairs, transactions and reliable storage. It is pointed out that faults in production software are often soft (transient) and that a transaction mechanism combined with persistent processpairs provides fault-tolerant execution -- the key to software fault-tolerance.