How archaic are ASSET/DSRO/VCOE?

How archaic are ASSET/DSRO/VCOE?

[Gregory Aharonian]

   What follows is an abstract from a technical report coming out of one
of the academic software research centers.

	Index Structures for Selective Dissemination of Information

   The number, size and user population of bibliographic and full text
document databases are rapidly growing.  With a high document arrival
rate, it becomes essential for users of such databases to have access
to the very latest documents; yet the high document arrival rate also
makes it difficult for users to keep themselves updated.  It is desirable
to allow users to issue queries that are constantly evaluated, called
standing orders, so that they will be automatically informed of new
additions that may be of interest.  Such service is traditionally called
Selective Dissemination of Information.

   The huge number of users and the timeliness requirement of the service
pose a challenge.  In this paper, we propose several index structures
for standing orders and algorithms that efficiently match documents
against large number of orders.  We also present analysis and simulation
results to compare their performance under different scenarios.

(Copies of the report are available through me for $500).
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   Why can't the defense community expect a similar capability from the
DoD funded software reuse centers?  A service that truly facilitates reuse
by reaching out to the customer. Instead, we have a system where you have
to ask permission to be able to use a retrieval system that few people
speak highly of.  Their technology is outdated, and somewhat embarassing
(for all of the tax dollars going into these centers) when compared to
what's going on in the rest of the world.  With systems like this indexing
scheme, natural language interfaces to reusable libraries, and hypertext
access to CD-ROM collections, it is becoming more and more apparent that
the real goal of the DoD reuse centers is not to promote software reuse,
but to promote control of reusable software.

   The DoD does not need three software reuse centers.  It is pure waste.

(Of course, ASSET/DSRO/VCOE could be doing these things.  But since they
hate publicizing what they do, who knows what they are doing.)

Greg Aharonian
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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178