Communications of the ACM articles from October 1997

Communications of the ACM archives from October 1997

Embedding technical self-help in licensed software. (applying the principle of repossession)(Column)
October 1, 1997... We all know that if we default on a car loan, the creditor from whom we borrowed the money for the car has the legal right to take it away from us. The law gives creditors who have secured loans to customers by getting them to agree that certain...

One organization's use of Lotus Notes. (Housing and Development Board of Singapore)
October 1, 1997... The Housing and Development Board (HDB) of Singapore was established as the country's public housing authority. Its mission is to provide high-quality affordable housing and to build communities. Apart from its main role, HDB is in charge of many...

After 400 years, print is still superior. (continuing importance of printed technology)
October 1, 1997... It's been over 20 years since Xerox coined the phrase "the paperless office." This was the prevailing conventional wisdom when mainframes arrived, and again with the advent of the personal computer, the office-wide network, the laptop, and most...

Object-oriented application frameworks. (includes related article on related trends)
October 1, 1997... Computing power and network bandwidth have increased dramatically over the past decade, yet the design and implementation of complex software remain expensive and error-prone. Much of the cost and effort stems from the continuous rediscovery and...

Frameworks = (components + patterns). (frameworks for object-oriented software development)
October 1, 1997... How frameworks compare to other object-oriented reuse techniques. Frameworks are an object-oriented reuse technique. They share many characteristics with reuse techniques in general [8], and object-oriented reuse techniques in particular....

An adaptive framework for developing multimedia software components.
October 1, 1997... A framework simplifies development by promoting the reuse of code, design patterns, and domain expertise. Recent improvements in microprocessor performance have made possible the migration of continuous media processing from specialized...

Systematic framework design by generalization. (computer software development)
October 1, 1997... How to deduce a hot spot implementation from its specification. A framework [5] is a generic application that allows the creation of different applications from an application (sub)domain. Due to the inherent flexibility and variability of a...

Framework development for large systems. (object-oriented software development projects)
October 1, 1997... Experiences with successful large-scale industrial banking projects provide the basis for the concepts and techniques presented here. In the present business climate, many establishments such as hospitals, banks, and insurance companies tailor...

Design guidelines for 'tailorable' frameworks. (balancing flexibility and customizability in open systems architectures)
October 1, 1997... Three guidelines - interoperability, extensibility, and distribution - help design open system architectures by identifying hot spots and contracts, thereby balancing flexibility and tailorability. Since the early 1980s, OO frameworks have...

The framework life span. (application software development)
October 1, 1997... Frameworks evolve, adding new components while maintaining old relationships with specific pattern languages and application domains. A framework is an integrated set of domain-specific software components [6] that can be reused to create...

From custom applications to domain-specific framework. (application software development)
October 1, 1997... Because customizing real-world applications is a genuinely complex operation, developers must look beyond the seductive appeal of filling in hot spots in frameworks. As a provider of broadcast planning software for television stations, we have...

The LearningWorks development and delivery frameworks. (object-oriented software development)
October 1, 1997... Learning with virtual reality. LearningWorks is a learning environment in which to explore ideas about computing and software system architectures, making use of a programming language that supports dynamic object modeling and libraries of...

SEMATECH's experiences with the CIM Framework. (software development for computer integrated manufacturing)
October 1, 1997... Using a structured framework for manufacturing semiconductors provides valuable business lessons. SEMATECH, the semiconductor manufacturing technology consortium, has worked since 1991 with the major U.S. semiconductor companies to develop a...

Lessons learned: building reusable OO frameworks for distributed software.
October 1, 1997... Developing complex distributed applications can be an expensive and error-prone process. As a result, contemporary organizations are increasingly faced with a "distributed software crisis" - computing hardware and networks get smaller, faster,...

Computer immunology. (computer security systems; includes related article on a process database)
October 1, 1997... Analogies with immunology represent an important step toward the vision of robust, distributed protection for computers. Natural immune systems protect animals from dangerous foreign pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and...

Art on the Web, the Web as art. (includes related articles on several Web sites and projects)
October 1, 1997... Almost from the very first moment that images went out over the Web, artists began to look at the Web as a space that could be colonized for art. The infinite real estate of the Web has been swiftly invaded, initially by artists carving out...

The incredible shrinking pipeline. (women students of computer science)
October 1, 1997... The ratio of women involved in computer science from high school to graduate school has been dwindling at a startling pace over the past decade. Is there hope in sight? The pipeline shrinkage problem concerning women in computer science is a...

Constructivism: teaching for understanding of the Internet.
October 1, 1997... Constructivism emphasizes a creative approach to learning - a process that's particularly useful when applied to the sometimes intimidating world of the Internet. Computing power and network bandwidth have increased dramatically over the past...

Why inheritance means extra trouble. (object-oriented programming)
October 1, 1997... Do squares form a subclass of rectangles? Baclawski and Indurkhya [1] explain that finding the answer is not easy. Inheritance is commonly viewed as a problem in which semantic relations mix with design concepts and the particular mechanisms of...

Integrity in software development.(Column)
October 1, 1997... In the September 1997 "Inside Risks," David Parnas made a compelling case for defining the core body of software knowledge, evaluating the curricula, and licensing software practitioners the same way engineers are licensed. A desirable obligation...