Database Application Engineering With Daida

In the early 1980s, a trend towards formal undeIStanding and knowledge-based assistance for the development and maintenance of database-intensive information systems became apparent. The group of John Mylopoulos at the UniveISity of Toronto and their European collaboratoIS moved from semantic models of information systems design (Taxis project) towards earlier stages of the software lifecycle. Joachim Schmidt's group at the University of Hamburg completed their early work on the design and implementation of database programming languages (Pascal/R) and began to consider tools for the development of large database program packages. The Belgian company BIM developed a fast commercial Prolog which turned out to be useful as an implementation language for object oriented knowledge representation schemes and as a prototyping tool for formal design models. Case studies by Vasant Dhar and Matthias Jarke in New York pointed out the need for formally representing process knowledge, and a number of projects in the US and Europe began to consider computer assistance (CASE) as a viable approach to support software engineering. In 1985, the time appeared ripe for an attempt at integrating these experiences in a comprehensive CASE framework relating all phases of an information systems lifecycle. The Commission of the European Communities decided in early 1986 to fund this joint effort by six European software houses and research institutions in the Software Technology section of the ESPRIT I program. The project was given the number 892 and the title DAIDA - Development Assistance for Intelligent Database Applications.

This book presents the work of researchers in the Esprit Fully Integrated Data Environments (FIDE) projects which had the goal of substantially improving the quality of complex application systems while massively reducing the cost of building and maintaining them. It reports on the design and development of new integrated environments to support the construction and operation of persistent application systems, and on the principles employed to design, test, and implement such systems.

The fourth international conference on Extending Data Base Technology was held in Cambridge, UK, in March 1994. The biannual EDBT has established itself as the premier European database conference. It provides an international forum for the presentation of new extensions to database technology through research, development, and application. This volume contains the scientific papers of the conference. Following invited papers by C.M. Stone and A. Herbert, it contains 31 papers grouped into sections on object views, intelligent user interface, distributed information servers, transaction management, information systems design and evolution, semantics of extended data models,accessing new media, join algorithms, query optimization, and multimedia databases.

Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering presents a systematic and pragmatic approach to `building quality into' software systems. Systems must exhibit software quality attributes, such as accuracy, performance, security and modifiability. However, such non-functional requirements (NFRs) are difficult to address in many projects, even though there are many techniques to meet functional requirements in order to provide desired functionality. This is particularly true since the NFRs for each system typically interact with each other, have a broad impact on the system and may be subjective. To enable developers to systematically deal with a system's diverse NFRs, this book presents the NFR Framework. Structured graphical facilities are offered for stating NFRs and managing them by refining and inter-relating NFRs, justifying decisions, and determining their impact. Since NFRs might not be absolutely achieved, they may simply be satisfied sufficiently (`satisficed'). To reflect this, NFRs are represented as `softgoals', whose interdependencies, such as tradeoffs and synergy, are captured in graphs. The impact of decisions is qualitatively propagated through the graph to determine how well a chosen target system satisfices its NFRs. Throughout development, developers direct the process, using their expertise while being aided by catalogues of knowledge about NFRs, development techniques and tradeoffs, which can all be explored, reused and customized. Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering demonstrates the applicability of the NFR Framework to a variety of NFRs, domains, system characteristics and application areas. This will help readers apply the Framework to NFRs and domains of particular interest to them. Detailed treatments of particular NFRs - accuracy, security and performance requirements - along with treatments of NFRs for information systems are presented as specializations of the NFR Framework. Case studies of NFRs for a variety of information systems include credit card and administrative systems. The use of the Framework for particular application areas is illustrated for software architecture as well as enterprise modelling. Feedback from domain experts in industry and government provides an initial evaluation of the Framework and some case studies. Drawing on research results from several theses and refereed papers, this book's presentation, terminology and graphical notation have been integrated and illustrated with many figures. Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering is an excellent resource for software engineering practitioners, researchers and students.

This volume aims to pave the way to a greater understanding of the information system development process. Traditionally, information systems have been perceived as a slice of real world history. This has led to a strong emphasis on the development of conceptual models, the requirements specifications of which can readily be expressed. However, the route to such an expression, or the process of development, has not received any substantial attention. It is now agreed that a study of the development process affords notable benefits. Firstly, it helps to create an understanding of what a realistic development process is and how it proceeds from an initial specification to its acceptable representation. Secondly, the nature of guidance that can be provided by the next generation of CASE tools can be substantially improved. It can be expected that these tools will cease to be mere drafting aids and consistency checking programs. Instead it is likely that they will provide a procreative environment in which the development engineer will play an important role. This tool/user symbiosis should have a beneficial impact on both the productivity of the developer and on the quality of the product. In bringing together researchers and practitioners from such diverse areas as AI, Software Engineering, Decision Support and Information Systems, it is hoped this publication will take the quest to comprehend information system development processes a significant step forwards.

This is an introductory text to the science of neurobiology, describing animal nervous systems, what they consist of, how they work, and how they are studied. Unlike many other neurobiology texts, considerable discussion is given to both human and non-human nervous systems. Written in an easy-to-read style, it will be useful for both biology and medical students. It provides the opportunity for self-testing at the end of each chapter, with objectives and questions. A CD-ROM entitled 'The Human Brain' (ISBN 3-540-14666-0) has been produced to accompany this text, and can be purchased either separately or together with the book (ISBN 3-540-63778-8).

This coherently written book is the final report on the IPSEN project on Integrated Software Project Support Environments devoted to the integration of tools for the development and maintenance of large software systems. The theoretical and application-oriented findings of this comprehensive project are presented in the following chapters: Overview: introduction, classification, and global approach; The outside perspective: tools, environments, their integration, and user interface; Internal conceptual modeling: graph grammar specifications; Realization: derivation of efficient tools, Current and future work, open problems; Conclusion: summary, evaluation, and vision. Also included is a comprehensive bibliography listing more than 1300 entries and a detailed index.