Computer software

In 1981, Dr, Martin K. Solomon and Carl D. Kirshen published the paper, "PEIRCE: A Relational DBMS for Small Systems," that utilized Codd's relational algebra as a basis for this interactive database management system. Looking back, it is easy to see that PEIRCE was ahead of its time in many ways, especially by showing an early understanding of the relationship of triggers and virtual files, and recognizing the need for a user interface, known as the Clerk Oriented Interface. An historical overview of PEIRCE will be given, along with a comparison of PEIRCE to the ever popular state-of-the-art ORACLE relational database management system, as well as an explanation of my new extensions to the subsystems of the PEIRCE DBMS. The historical overview is useful because it covers the evolution of PEIRCE over a period of more than 15 years, and collects the previously disjoint information into one place. Also, this overview is interesting because it reflects the change in database and computer technology over that time.

This thesis describes the use and implementation of the
PEIRCE DBMS.
PEIRCE is an easy-to-use, efficient, portable and relationally
complete database management system.
The design philosophy behind PEIRCE is to provide a
powerful and efficient data manipulation language that
can be easily implemented on a variety of computers,
including microcomputers.
PEIRCE requires the user to learn only a small number of
simple, yet powerful commands. It is PEIRCE not the user
that bears the burden of efficiently implementing these
commands.
PEIRCE has been entirely written in C to enhance portability
to many computers.

G-LOG is a PROLOG semi-compiler written in the C
programming language. G-LOG was designed to be a
transportable, easily extensible non-procedural language
which provides easy access to routines written in other
programming languages. A primary use of G-LOG will be
for the construction of a non-procedural executive for
an expert system which calls existing routines to
execute procedural functions. This versatility should
enable industry investments in complex programs to be
updated into a customized expert system. The history
and philosophy of PROLOG is sketched first, then the
syntax required by G-LOG is presented. The
implementation of G-LOG is discussed in detail. Novel
aspects of G-LOG include semi-compilation of variables
and user-written system primitives. Guidelines for the
application programmer are given.

Reliability is a key system characteristic that is an increasing concern for current systems. Greater reliability is necessary due to the new ways in which services are delivered to the public. Services are used by many industries, including health care, government, telecommunications, tools, and products. We have defined an approach to incorporate reliability along the stages of system development. We first did a survey of existing dependability patterns to evaluate their possible use in this methodology. We have defined a systematic methodology that helps the designer apply reliability in all steps of the development life cycle in the form of patterns. A systematic failure enumeration process to define corresponding countermeasures was proposed as a guideline to define where reliability is needed. We introduced the idea of failure patterns which show how failures manifest and propagate in a system. We also looked at how to combine reliability and security. Finally, we defined an approach to certify the level of reliability of an implemented web service. All these steps lead towards a complete methodology.

In this thesis, a framework for improving model-driven system design productivity with Requirements-Driven Design Automation (RDDA) is presented. The key to the proposed approach is to close the semantic gap between requirements, components and architecture by using compatible semantic models for describing product requirements and component capabilities, including constraints. An ontology-based representation language is designed that spans requirements for the application domain, the software design domain and the component domain. Design automation is supported for architecture development by machine-based mapping of desired product/subsystem features and capabilities to library components and by synthesis and maintenance of Systems Modeling Language (SysML) design structure diagrams. The RDDA framework uses standards-based semantic web technologies and can be integrated with exiting modeling tools. Requirements specification is a major component of the system development cycle. Mistakes and omissions in requirements documents lead to ambiguous or wrong interpretation by engineers, causing errors that trickle down in design and implementation with consequences on the overall development cost. We describe a methodology for requirements specification that aims to alleviate the above issues and that produces models for functional requirements that can be automatically validated for completeness and consistency. The RDDA framework uses an ontology-based language for semantic description of functional product requirements, SysML structure diagrams, component constraints, and Quality of Service. The front-end method for requirements specification is the SysML editor in Rhapsody. A requirements model in Web Ontology Language (OWL) is converted from SysML to Extensible Markup Language Metadata Interchange (XMI) representation.

The need to achieve dependability in critical infrastructures has become indispensable for government and commercial enterprises. This need has become more necessary with the proliferation of malicious attacks on critical systems, such as healthcare, aerospace and airline applications. Additionally, due to the widespread use of web services in critical systems, the need to ensure their reliability is paramount. We believe that patterns can be used to achieve dependability. We conducted a survey of fault tolerance, reliability and web service products and patterns to better understand them. One objective of our survey is to evaluate the state of these patterns, and to investigate which standards are being used in products and their tool support. Our survey found that these patterns are insufficient, and many web services products do not use them. In light of this, we wrote some fault tolerance and web services reliability patterns and present an analysis of them.