Reinventing the wheel, revisitedTaylor, Gregg W.
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151398pmid: N/A
I am a cyclist. I've ridden since before my paper route at age twelve; I rode to high school; and for 12 years I rode to work. I no longer ride to work, but I try to ride about an hour a day. In all those years I never really paid much attention to my wheels. Sure, I repaired flats, greased the bearings, and learned that the axle hung from the top of the wheel rather being supported from the bottom. But all-in-all, I mostly took my wheels for granted. They worked fine, did their job, and I never considered there was much else to worry about.
Whizbang!Sykes Jr., Roy A.
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151399pmid: N/A
Originally, APL had only one set function, membership ( L∈R ). Defined as EQUATION, it simply flagged whether each element of its left argument was found anywhere in its right argument. With the introduction of nested arrays, the definition was refined to EQUATION so that nested items could be be searched as well as simple elements. Users immediately noticed the ∪ and ∩ keys on the APL keyboard and wondered why they were not implemented as set union and intersection. Several implementations did include them, but APL2 implemented only without ( L ~ R ).
A quote quad interview: Timo LaurmaaPolivka, Ray
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151404pmid: N/A
APL usage occurs in many places throughout the world. Many have heard that APL is popular in the financial world. To find that APL is in use in the banking industry should not be surprising. But to find APL playing an important role in a bank whose only customers are other banks is exciting. The Bank for International Settlements in Zurich, Switzerland is such a bank.
Observations at the J user conference: held at the University of TorontoReiter, Clifford A.; Jones, William R.
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151406pmid: N/A
The Conference Attendees were graciously greeted and registered on Monday morning. Coffee and other goodies were available and the hundred plus attendees quickly fell into spirited conversation. In fact, there always seemed to be snacks or lunch and conversation outside the lecture rooms where Strand had software, books and T-shirts available and demonstration machines were set up. A table was covered with papers from the talks and from some non-presenters. The rooms in the Koffler Institute for Pharmacy Management were comfortable and each contained an overhead and computer demonstration equipment.
Personal reflections on APL96Jones, Curtis A.
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151407pmid: N/A
APL96 was a fine conference. The folks in Lancaster are friendly and helpful. Well, Lancaster Castle has served, and still serves, as a prison. In 1660 one of the prisoners was George Fox, whose objections to the Church of England not only landed him in the castle but started the Quakers. His reputation has improved, and the conference was mostly held in a building named after him.
Data warehouse processing and query by mailGordon, Ken
doi: 10.1145/1151395.1151410pmid: N/A
Much effort in I/S is currently going into creating "Data Warehouses." These are stores of data periodically extracted from older legacy applications, converted to common standards and made accessible for user analysis. The warehouse acts as a WORM (Write Once, Read Many times) storage. Where the extract and transfer is performed nightly, they provide access to what is termed "Near Operational" data and can be used to replace much of the existing reporting. In other cases they are used to store mostly historical data for analysis of trends, market impact, financial status and do on. While often implemented with a variety of different clean up tools, languages, data base products and query tools, this article describes an implementation done almost entirely with APL. It includes a query capability termed "Query by Mail" which enables anyone with access to E-Mail to send queries to the Warehouse and receive responses or extracts of data by return mail. The "query" includes customized analysis of field content to allow identification of fields and records containing invalid data. Built upon a proprietary inverted file system, it provides rapid response to user queries and little load on the server system.