Communications of the ACM articles from December 1998

Communications of the ACM archives from December 1998

News Track.
December 1, 1998... "We not only have alliances with colleges, we've gone down to the high schools and given students aptitude tests." --a chief information officer at Comerica, Detroit, on the increasingly difficult search to find skilled staff to run and...

How Not To Prepare for a Consulting Assignment, and Other Ugly Consultancy Truths.
December 1, 1998... "Tell me it's unrealistic before you commit. Then do it anyway."--Mark Servello of ChangeBridge and Ravi Apte of Citicorp, discussing upper management's view of schedule negotiation in their keynote address to the Pacific Northwest Software...

The Threat of Long-Arm Jurisdiction to Electronic Commerce.
December 1, 1998... Unfortunately for those whose businesses rely on the Internet, an increasing amount of legal conflict is also arising in reaction to this new business medium. As attorneys and the courts attempt to sort out the Internet's legal status quo, both...

Social Impact of the Internet: What Does It Mean?
December 1, 1998... Using the Internet at home causes small but reliable declines in social and psychological well-being, according to our findings after conducting one of the first prospective studies examining the domestication of the Internet--the integration...

Computers in Education: Observations and Redress.
December 1, 1998... Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris were correct in observing that the statement, "Computers are the future; knowing how to work with them will help kids get jobs," misses the point ("Log on Education," Aug. 1998, p. 11). Most public school...

I Remember IANA.
December 1, 1998... Jonathan B. Postel, a computer scientist best known for his role in creating the Internet and operating the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), died on October 16 at the age of 55. Here, colleague and friend, Vint Cerf, remembers...

Guaranteeing Rights for the User.
December 1, 1998... The profile of people who use software and hardware systems has changed, while the systems and the culture in which they are developed have not made the necessary adjustments. Years ago, only the technical specialists who built systems used...

REQUIREMENTS TRACING.
December 1, 1998... In this ever-changing business and technology environment, the risk of inconsistencies in systems development and evolution multiplies. Experience reuse becomes a necessity in order to control quality, costs, and time, even when personnel...

FACTORS INFLUENCING REQUIREMENTS TRACEABILITY PRACTICE.
December 1, 1998... FINDINGS FROM A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY IDENTIFY THE MAJOR ISSUES THAT MOTIVATE USERS TO EMPLOY TRACEABILITY PRACTICES--OR NOT. Requirements traceability is viewed as a measure of system quality and is mandated by many standards governing the...

VISUAL ASSESSMENT OF ENGINEERING PROCESSES IN VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES.
December 1, 1998... AN ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT CALLED "PROVE" OFFERS VISUALIZATION I TECHNIQUES THAT HELP PROCESS DESIGNERS SEE THE BIG PICTURE. The wave of virtualization is beginning to hit engineering-oriented enterprises with full force. This trend...

ADAPTING TRACEABILITY ENVIRONMENTS TO PROJECTS-SPECIFIC NEEDS.
December 1, 1998... THERE IS A TRIO OF KEY CAPABILITIES THAT ENABLE PROJECT-SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS TRACEABILITY. ANOTHER COMPONENT IS A NEW FRAMEWORK THAT OFFERS A STRONG SOLUTION FOR FINDING ANY SHORTCOMINGS. Requirements traceability is defined as the ability...

A THREE-FACETED VIEW OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS.
December 1, 1998... AS INFORMATION SYSTEMS EVOLVE, PRACTITIONERS MAY FIND THE BEST WAY TO HANDLE CONTINUAL CHANGES IS TO EMPLOY A COHESIVE APPROACH THAT RECOGNIZES AN ARRAY OF FACTORS. Dealing with change is one of the most fundamental challenges facing IS...

3D VISUALIZATION OF SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURES.
December 1, 1998... Why struggle over reams of abstract code when you could walk through the architecture instead? Software architecture refers to the art and science of structuring very large programs and concerns the organization of a system in terms of its...

LEGACY OBJECT MODELING SPEEDS SOFTWARE INTEGRATION.
December 1, 1998... The capability to combine legacy information with new Technologies extends an organization's return on IT investment. The result keeps old systems and new running on the same track. Many organizations rely on legacy applications hosted on...

AN INFORMATION SYSTEM INVOLVING COMPETING ORGANIZATIONS.
December 1, 1998... Lessons from developing and deploying an extensive multihospital information system are prescribed. This article examines an innovative information system developed recently to share patient health care information among several competing...

Toward a Model of Type Inheritance.
December 1, 1998... Despite the fact that languages and products supporting some kind of type inheritance already exist (and have so done for some time), and despite the fact that type inheritance has been talked about for many years in books and articles and...

The Risks of Hubris.
December 1, 1998... Hubris is risky, a tautologous claim. But how to recognize it? Phaethon, the human child of Phoebus the sun god, fed up with being ridiculed, visited his father to prove his progeniture. Happy to see his son, Phoebus granted him one request....