A study of systems implementation languages for the POCCNET system

The results are presented of a study of systems implementation languages for the Payload Operations Control Center Network (POCCNET). Criteria are developed for evaluating the languages, and fifteen existing languages are evaluated on the basis of these criteria

The DOE/NASA wind turbine data acquisition system. Part 3: Unattended power performance monitor

Software documentation, operational procedures, and diagnostic instructions for development version of an unattended wind turbine performance monitoring system is provided. Designed to be used for off line intelligent data acquisition in conjunction with the central host computer

DOE/NASA wind turbine data acquisition system. Part 4: Operations and maintenance manual (Plumbrook Station)

Preventive maintenance, calibration procedures, system verification, system operating procedures, systems software fundamentals, data base (program files), and patchboard layout are discussed

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Software Engineering Workshop

The four major topics of discussion included: the NASA Software Engineering Laboratory, software testing, human factors in software engineering and software quality assessment. As in the past years, there were 12 position papers presented (3 for each topic) followed by questions and very heavy participation by the general audience

A methodology for producing reliable software, volume 1

An investigation into the areas having an impact on producing reliable software including automated verification tools, software modeling, testing techniques, structured programming, and management techniques is presented. This final report contains the results of this investigation, analysis of each technique, and the definition of a methodology for producing reliable software

Equipment Development for Automatic Anthropometric Measurements

An automated procedure for measuring and recording the anthropometric active angles is presented. The small portable system consists of a microprocessor controlled video data acquisition system which measures single plane active angles using television video techniques and provides the measured data on sponsored-specified preformatted data sheets. This system, using only a single video camera, observes the end limits of the movement of a pair of separated lamps and calculates the vector angle between the extreme positions

Effective Performance Analysis and Debugging

Performance is once again a first-class concern. Developers can no longer wait for the next generation of processors to automatically optimize their software. Unfortunately, existing techniques for performance analysis and debugging cannot cope with complex modern hardware, concurrent software, or latency-sensitive software services. While processor speeds have remained constant, increasing transistor counts have allowed architects to increase processor complexity. This complexity often improves performance, but the benefits can be brittle; small changes to a program’s code, inputs, or execution environment can dramatically change performance, resulting in unpredictable performance in deployed software and complicating performance evaluation and debugging. Developers seeking to improve performance must resort to manual performance tuning for large performance gains. Software profilers are meant to guide developers to important code, but conventional profilers do not produce actionable information for concurrent applications. These profilers report where a program spends its time, not where optimizations will yield performance improvements. Furthermore, latency is a critical measure of performance for software services and interactive applications, but conventional profilers measure only throughput. Many performance issues appear only when a system is under high load, but generating this load in development is often impossible. Developers need to identify and mitigate scalability issues before deploying software, but existing tools offer developers little or no assistance. In this dissertation, I introduce an empirically-driven approach to performance analysis and debugging. I present three systems for performance analysis and debugging. Stabilizer mitigates the performance variability that is inherent in modern processors, enabling both predictable performance in deployment and statistically sound performance evaluation. Coz conducts performance experiments using virtual speedups to create the effect of an optimization in a running application. This approach accurately predicts the effect of hypothetical optimizations, guiding developers to code where optimizations will have the largest effect. Amp allows developers to evaluate system scalability using load amplification to create the effect of high load in a testing environment. In combination, Amp and Coz allow developers to pinpoint code where manual optimizations will improve the scalability of their software

Computer systems analysis methodology - Studies in measuring, evaluating, and simulating computer systems

Computer systems analysis and simulation studies on design, development, and management of complex computer system

Application of advanced technology to space automation

Automated operations in space provide the key to optimized mission design and data acquisition at minimum cost for the future. The results of this study strongly accentuate this statement and should provide further incentive for immediate development of specific automtion technology as defined herein. Essential automation technology requirements were identified for future programs. The study was undertaken to address the future role of automation in the space program, the potential benefits to be derived, and the technology efforts that should be directed toward obtaining these benefits