Development and application of computer software techniques to human factors task data handling problems Final report, 21 Jun. 1965 - 21 Jun. 1966

Computer software techniques applied to human factors task data handling problem

The caCORE Software Development Kit: Streamlining construction of interoperable biomedical information services

BACKGROUND: Robust, programmatically accessible biomedical information services that syntactically and semantically interoperate with other resources are challenging to construct. Such systems require the adoption of common information models, data representations and terminology standards as well as documented application programming interfaces (APIs). The National Cancer Institute (NCI) developed the cancer common ontologic representation environment (caCORE) to provide the infrastructure necessary to achieve interoperability across the systems it develops or sponsors. The caCORE Software Development Kit (SDK) was designed to provide developers both within and outside the NCI with the tools needed to construct such interoperable software systems. RESULTS: The caCORE SDK requires a Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool to begin the development workflow with the construction of a domain information model in the form of a UML Class Diagram. Models are annotated with concepts and definitions from a description logic terminology source using the Semantic Connector component. The annotated model is registered in the Cancer Data Standards Repository (caDSR) using the UML Loader component. System software is automatically generated using the Codegen component, which produces middleware that runs on an application server. The caCORE SDK was initially tested and validated using a seven-class UML model, and has been used to generate the caCORE production system, which includes models with dozens of classes. The deployed system supports access through object-oriented APIs with consistent syntax for retrieval of any type of data object across all classes in the original UML model. The caCORE SDK is currently being used by several development teams, including by participants in the cancer biomedical informatics grid (caBIG) program, to create compatible data services. caBIG compatibility standards are based upon caCORE resources, and thus the caCORE SDK has emerged as a key enabling technology for caBIG. CONCLUSION: The caCORE SDK substantially lowers the barrier to implementing systems that are syntactically and semantically interoperable by providing workflow and automation tools that standardize and expedite modeling, development, and deployment. It has gained acceptance among developers in the caBIG program, and is expected to provide a common mechanism for creating data service nodes on the data grid that is under development

A system overview of the Aerospace Safety Research and Data Institute data management programs

The NASA Aerospace Safety Information System, is an interactive, generalized data base management system. The on-line retrieval aspects provide for operating from a variety of terminals (or in batch mode). NASIS retrieval enables the user to expand and display (review) the terms of index (cross reference) files, select desired index terms, combine sets of documents corresponding to selected terms and display the resulting records. It also allows the user to print (record) this information on a high speed printer if desired. NASIS also provides the ability to store the strategy of any given session the user has executed. It has a searching and publication ability through generalized linear search and report generating modules which may be performed interactively or in a batch mode. The user may specify formats for the terminal from which he is operating. The system features an interactive user's guide which explains the various commands available and how to use them as well as explanations for all system messages. This explain capability may be extended, without program changes, to include descriptions of the various files in use. Coupled with the ability of NASIS to run in an MTT (multi-terminal task) mode is its automatic accumulation of statistics on each user of the system as well as each file

An investigation into evolving support for component reuse

It is common in engineering disciplines for new product development to be based on a concept of reuse, i.e. based on a foundation of knowledge and pre-existing components familiar to the discipline's community. In Software Engineering, this concept is known as software reuse. Software reuse is considered essential if higher quality software and reduced development effort are to be achieved. A crucial part of any engineering development is access to tools that aid development. In software engineering this means having software support tools with which to construct software including tools to support effective software reuse. The evolutionary nature of software means that the foundation of knowledge and components on which new products can be developed must reflect the changes occurring in both the software engineering discipline and the domain in which the software is to function. Therefore, effective support tools, including those used in software reuse, must evolve to reflect changes in both software engineering and the varying domains that use software. This thesis contains a survey of the current understanding of software reuse. Software reuse is defined as the use of knowledge and work components of software that already exist in the development of new software. The survey reflects the belief that domain analysis and software tool support are essential in successful software reuse. The focus of the research is an investigation into the effects of a changing domain on the evolution of support for component-based reuse and domain analysis, and on the application of software reuse support methods and tools to another engineering discipline, namely roll design. To broaden understanding of a changing domain on the evolution of support for software reuse and domain analysis, a prototype for a reuse support environment has been developed for roll designers in the steel industry

Treatment of Semantic Heterogeneity in Information Retrieval

"Nowadays, users of information services are faced with highly decentralised, heterogeneous document sources with different content analysis. Semantic heterogeneity occurs e.g. when resources using different systems for content description are searched using a single query system. This report describes several approaches of handling semantic heterogeneity used in projects of the German Social Science Information Centre." (author's abstract