Communications of the ACM articles from October 2000

Communications of the ACM archives from October 2000

Editorial Pointers.(Editorial)
October 1, 2000... WHEN considering this month's special section on component-based enterprise frameworks, I was reminded of the photomosaic works of Robert Silvers. You've probably seen many examples of this artist's work in recent years. He specializes in...

TECH SECTOR HOT FOR TEACHERS.(Industry Trend or Event)
October 1, 2000... "It is difficult to hold a computer science department together these days. You'd like to keep a lot of that entrepreneurial energy here. Faculty recruiting and retention are difficult. Ten years ago, industrial research labs were the enemy;...

What Defines a Programming Relic?(Industry Trend or Event)
October 1, 2000... GLASS'S DIFFERENTIATION OF art versus practice is right on the money (July 2000, p. 15). But what I see as the problem for the mature practitioner (besides the smugness of the younger ones) is not necessarily overcoming technical obsolescence...

Being Blank in Bright Waters.(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)
October 1, 2000... Drastic steps to take oneself out of the grid in order to regain privacy and anonymity in the white noise of the Net. In a world of billions of people, the individual becomes a little more anonymous every day. And every day millions find...

The Five Orders of Ignorance.(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)
October 1, 2000... Viewing software development as knowledge acquisition and ignorance reduction. In my first column (Aug. 2000, p. 19), I argued that software is not a product, but rather a medium for the storage of knowledge. In fact, it is the fifth such...

What Use is a Turing Chatterbox?(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Continuing the debate on machine intelligence. In October 1950, the British logician and computing pioneer Alan Turing examined the possibility of intelligence embodied in a computer. He devised a chat-session imitation game as a tool for...

COMPONENT-BASED ENTERPRISE FRAMEWORKS.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Recently, while exploring the ancient Mayan temples and pyramids in Guatemala, I was impressed with the pure technical achievement given the tools available to those ancient builders. The stairs on many of these structures are extremely steep,...

COMPONENT PRIMER.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Software component technology has emerged as a key element in the development of complex software systems. As systems have grown larger, more complex and more interdependent, the characteristics of cohesion and coupling have become important...

MODELING COMPONENTS AND FRAMEWORKS WITH UML.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... As localized objects evolve into distributed components, developers are asking that UML provide better support for component-based development using EJB and COM+. For more than a decade vendors have hyped and under delivered the promises...

ENTERPRISE FRAMEWORKS CHARACTERISTICS, CRITERIA, AND CHALLENGES.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... As information technology provides industry with the means to identify new product and service opportunities, the increasing demand for these products and services places new demands on information technology. This cycle has created...

LESSONS LEARNED THROUGH SIX YEARS OF COMPONENT-BASED DEVELOPMENT.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Adjusting to new processes and techniques is an important aspect of project success. There must be some truth to the theory that software development in "Internet time," much like a dog's life, actually compresses seven years of...

A HIERARCHICAL FRAMEWORK FOR PARALLEL SEISMIC APPLICATIONS.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Supporting the use of frameworks in the distributed parallel platform. Organizations are increasingly contending with a parallel and distributed software crisis [4]. In particular, the growing heterogeneity of hardware architectures and...

COMPONENT-BASED FRAMEWORKS FOR E-COMMERCE.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... The software paradigms of component-based frameworks for e-commerce promise to provide companies with the speed and agility they need to compete in Internet time. Forward-thinking companies have come to realize that e-commerce is neither...

THE Ups and Downs OF OBJECT-ORIENTED SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... If experienced developers believe so strongly in the advantages of OO systems development, why is there such controversy about the value of using it? BY ALL APPEARANCES, OBJECT-ORIENTED systems development (OOSD) is in the throes of a...

Enterprise Computing Environments and Cost Assessment.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... This OO enterprise computing framework model and its complementary cost-assessment model help design enterprise systems' far-flung objects and related business processes while calculating the costs of their planning, development, maintenance,...

ON THE Usability OF OO REPRESENTATIONS.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Paying close attention to the tasks OO is best suited for--rather than assuming it's the best option every time--may be one way to maximize the usability of OO approaches. THE NOTION OF USABILITY OF A FORMAL REPRESENTATION HAS BEEN A...

USING THE LESSONS OF Y2K TO IMPROVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE.(Government Activity)
October 1, 2000... Organizations miss a tremendous opportunity for gain by regarding the Y2K experience solely as a costly necessity they would just as soon forget. Preparing information systems for the 2000 date rollover was generally regarded solely as a...

Toward Intelligent Business Objects.(Technology Information)
October 1, 2000... Focusing on techniques to enhance BOs that exhibit goal-oriented behavior. With the increasing development of information and communication technologies, users are becoming more and more demanding on companies, requiring new types of...

Tapping on my Network Door.(Government Activity)(Column)
October 1, 2000... Readers of this column are familiar with the risks of illegal monitoring of Internet traffic. Less familiar, but perhaps just as serious, are the risks introduced when law enforcement taps that same traffic legally. Ironically, as insecure...