Communications of the ACM articles from April 1992

Communications of the ACM archives from April 1992

Editorial pointers. (preview of following articles) (Editorial)
April 1, 1992... One of the topics Communications has often been asked to cover is computer-aided software engineering (CASE). This month's issue offers a special section of six articles in the general area of CASE as it relates to software quality, the...

Newstrack. (brief computer industry news items)
April 1, 1992... FAMILY NETWORK...There may be more personal computers than children in the average U.S. household before the turn of the century. A new survey by Dallas-based Channel Marketing Corp. predicts the typical American home will maintain 2.2 PCs...

Computing in the Brazilian Amazon. (International Perspectives)
April 1, 1992... The conflict between economic development and environmental preservation in the Amazon Basin has become an importance and contentious "global macro-problem" [4]. The Amazona region has been used for decades as a safety valve for absorbing...

CASE in the '90s: automating the software development process. (preview of following articles on computer-aided software engineering)
April 1, 1992... Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE)--as we know and think of it today--is moving into its second decade; yet its origins go back to at least the early 1970s with research projects and commercial products. The vision and functionality...

A self-assessment by the software engineering community. (the findings of the most recent International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering)
April 1, 1992... Software is increasingly identified as a critical constraint in the realization of all types of industrial and commercial systems. The findings of the last International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering (IWCASE), summarized...

A visual software process language. (the Canadian Department of National Defense funds development of the Visual Process Language) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... The Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) is responsible, through its software units, for the maintenance of tens of millions of lines of code (MLOCs) for weapons systems. Managing this software is a major challenge which is...

Elements of a realistic CASE tool adoption budget. (computer-aided software engineering) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... Recent interviews with information system managers and analysts by Computerworld [5] support the notion that would-be CASE implementers are "making a mistake to think of the transition to computer-aided software engineering (CASE) as a matter...

Exploiting reusable specifications through analogy. (computer-aided software engineering tool support for software specification reuse) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... Intelligent CASE tools require method and domain knowledge to assist the analytic process. While considerable research is currently focused on the development of knowledge-based CASE tools, little thought has been given to the practical...

CASE: a testbed for modeling, measurement and management. (computer-aided software engineering) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... Human activity in the developed world strives not only to maintain status quo activities and lifestyles, but to improve on them. In particular, the application of technology has been focused on improvement. Technology is central to...

Design maintenance systems. (computer-aided software engineering)(includes related articles on types of maintenance deltas and on effective reuse of a derivation history by integrating a functional delta) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... Traditional maintenance has proven difficult in the absence of design information [19]; maintainers often spend considerable energy trying to recover this design information before making changes [15]. Capture and reuse of certain kinds of...

Evaluation of vendor products: CASE tools as methodology companions. (computer-aided software engineering)(Computing Practices) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... The latest tools heralded as solutions to the software productivity problem are computer-aided software engineering (CASE) workbenches. A CASE workbench, broadly defined, is a software tool that provides automated assistance for software...

Survey of expert critiquing systems: practical and theoretical frontiers. (programs that critique human experts)(Computing Practices) (Technical)
April 1, 1992... Another definition of a critic is Karl Popper's concept of creating statements in such a way as to maximize their falsifiability see [19]. Ambiguous statements which have more than one meaning cannot be clearly confirmed logically, nor can...

Farewell to Grace Hopper - end of an era! (Obituary)
April 1, 1992... On January 1, 1992 an era in the computer field ended with the death of Admiral/Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. She saw the beginning of the computer field with her work on MARK I--a physically large electro-mechanical machine--and lived to see and...

Calendar of Events.
April 1, 1992... April 27-29* Scalable High Performance Computing Conference (SHPCC '92) Williamsburg, Va. Sponsor: IEEE CS. Contact Emily Todd, ICASE, M/s 1320, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23665; (804) 864-2175; fax:...

Calls for Papers.
April 1, 1992... April 22* PDC '92-Participatory Design Conference Cambridge, Mass. November 6-7. Submit proposals for papers (4,000 words max) to Michael J. Muller, Bellcore RRC-1H229, 444 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854; (908) 699-4892; fax:...

Protecting privacy. (the ethics of computer practice)(Inside Risks) (Column)
April 1, 1992... Few social issues seem to attract more interest in the computer profession than privacy. Maybe this is not surprising. The tie between public safety and privacy protection is well known in the RISKS world. And the ACM Code of Professional...