CGL Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, May 10, 1995

Location:

DC 1304

Time:

1:30 PM

Chair:

Yanchun Zhao

1. Adoption of the agenda - additions/deletions thereto.

2. Coffee Hour and Next Meeting:

Coffee hour this week:

???

Coffee hour next week:

???

Next Meeting

Time:

May 17, 1995

Location:

DC 1304

Chair:

Richard Bartels

Tech Presentation:

Riston Tapp

Forthcoming: (list next 4 and trades)

Chairs:

John Beatty

Ian Bell

Leith Chan

Stewart Chao

Tech presentations:

Greg Veres

Julie Waterhouse

Yanchun Zhao

Richard Bartels

3. Technical Presentation:

Presenter:

Haroon Sheikh

Title: An Introduction to Open Inventor

Abstract:

I will introduce Open Inventor through a summary of "The Inventor Mentor" book. Open Inventor is an object oriented 3D graphics toolkit. It allows objects to be stored in a hierarchical database. These objects can have several types of operations performed on them, eg. rendering. Open Inventor also provides a set of tools that allows editing, viewing and manipulation of objects in the database.

4. General Discussion Items:

1. Anne, lab duties.

5. Action List (remember to update AL_active)

6. Directors Meeting:

1. ???

7. Seminar(s):

                   The University of Waterloo
                      200 University Avenue
                        Waterloo, Ontario

           The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)

                    Presents a Colloquium on

       Cognac:  Using Metaobject Architecture to Improve Flexibility,
           Efficiency and Object Mobility in Distributed Systems



by:     Dr. Eric G.Manning
        Department of Computer Science, and Department of
        Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Victoria

        Dr. Ken-ichi Murata
        Department of Computer Science, and Department of
        Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Victoria,
        and Sony Computer Science Lab, Tokyo


Date:   Wednesday, May 10, 1995
Time:   3:30 pm.
Place:  William  Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1304
        (Note:  Room Change)


Abstract:

Object-oriented technique is  attractive,  particularly  for  the
construction  of large, complex distributed software systems.  To
support such applications, direct  operating  system  support  of
application-level  objects  is necessary.  Such operating systems
are called object-oriented distributed operating systems  (OODOS)
and  they  must support concurrency and a distributed runtime en-
vironment for object execution.

We review the object facilities of  some  early  OODOS  and  then
briefly  describe  Apertos,  a  reflective  OODOS being developed
through cooperative research between the  Sony  Computer  Science
Lab (Tokyo) and the University of Victoria.  Apertos provides for
each user object o, a set of objects  called  metaobjects,  which
collectively comprise the Metaspace of o, MS(o), and which dynam-
ically define the user object's computational  environment.   Re-
flection  is achieved via communication between o and MS(o), per-
mitting on-the-fly change to o's runtime  environment.   We  then
introduce a Smalltalk-based reflective programming language, Cog-
nac, which permits easy change of both language semantics and  of
runtime  environment.   Finally,  we  describe the Cognac system,
which supports the Cognac language and provides both kinds of re-
flection on top of the Apertos base OS.


Everyone is welcome.  Refreshments served.

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DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

MASTER'S THESIS PRESENTATION

                    -Friday, May 12, 1995

Randall  William  Horman, graduate student, Dept. Comp.
Sci., Univ. Waterloo, will speak on "Towards a General,
Theoretic Foundation of Software Architecture".

TIME:                1:30-2:30 p.m.

ROOM:                DC 1331

ABSTRACT

As  the  computational  capacity  of  computing systems
advances  at an unrelentless and exponential rate, ever
larger   and   more   complex   software   systems  are
constructed   to   solve  increasingly  more  elaborate
problems.  Recently,  a new level of abstraction, known
as  Software  Architecture, has emerged, the purpose of
which  is  to  elevate  the  solution space of software
systems  to  a  level  on  par with the intricacies and
complexities inherent in the contemporary problem space
of  distributed  and  heterogeneous  computing,  multi-
databases,  large multi-user, interactive environments,
secure   and   fault-tolerant   systems,   and  massive
parallelism.  During  its formative period, the nascent
discipline  of  Software Architecture has witnessed the
proffering   of   numerous,   alternative   abstraction
mechanisms   and  techniques  by  software  engineering
researchers   and   practitioners,  each  of  which  is
intended  to  address adequately various aspects of the
practice    of   this   new   level   of   abstraction.
Unfortunately,  there  is no well-established, general,
theoretical  foundation  for Software Architecture, the
existence  of  which would act as a unifying influence,
guiding  the  effective  formulation and application of
the  corresponding  architectural tools, processes, and
notations.  Toward  this  end,  a Software Architecture
Model  of  Well-Organized  Complexity  is developed and
applied  as a metric to judge the acceptability of four
discovered approaches to a comprehensive, cohesive, and
general  foundation  of  Software  Architecture.  As  a
result  of this suitability analysis, several desirable
attributes  or  characteristics  of  a  well-conceived,
general,    theoretical    foundation    of    Software
Architecture are proposed.

8. Lab Cleanup (till 2:30pm or 5 minutes, whichever is longer)