Fully transportable natural language interfaces to database management systems (DBMS) have been under study for some years I but until now I all have suffered from a lack of response ability and lack of natural language update ability. Response generation is relatively easy to overcome, but the second problem, lack of update ability, is more serious. Adding update capacity involves primarily three tasks. First, the system must be able to recognize and process update requests. Processing an update typically involves both altering the knowledge base to reflect the new state of the database and performing dynamic extensions to the lexicon. Second, the intermediate language used to communicate with the database manager must be extended to cover update information. Third, the post-processor must be extended to transform commands into DBMS update requests. The system described here uses a flexible and unified knowledge base to recognize and process update requests. Through information stored in the knowledge base, the system can recognize and resolve certain classes of ambiguity. The update request is then converted into an unambiguous intermediate query language. This language is easily translated to the target database management language using simple syntactic methods. The response generator uses the intermediate query language, the knowledge base I and the results returned by the target DBMS to form a response for all database accesses. / Master of Science

This project is a development and tracking system for graduate students in the Department of Computer Science of CSUSB. This project will cover front-end web site development, back-end database design and security. This website provides secure access to information about ideas for projects, status on on-going projects, and reports of finished projects using My SQL and Apache Tomcat.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 C67 / Master of Science

The evidence of project management is known for centuries as can be observed from the construction of the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China. In the modern age, project-based approaches are increasingly being adopted in almost all areas of product development. Project management has emerged as a specialised discipline since the importance of completing projects within time, cost and quality constraints is crucial for organisations to continue to survive in the competitive world. Project Management, in general, has been developed under the assumption of economic, political, cultural and social rationality. Little is known about indigenous project management in developing countries. The concepts and principles put forward in Western/European countries have been applied to developing countries without much prior studies. Developing nations are struggling constantly to maintain their projects within the constraints of time, cost and quality. Software development companies have found it difficult to adopt methodologies/models/standards that have shown evidence of success in the developed world. This thesis comprises the study of software project management in developing countries. Mauritius, as an instance of developing countries, with problems related to social, economic, cultural and political conditions are discussed. However, these conditions differ from country to country. It is believed that adjustments are required in a software project management framework to fit the requirements of a country. An evolutionary software project management maturity model is proposed for managing software development in developing countries. This model adopts an evolutionary approach, whereby areas of interest (called key process areas) progressively attain maturity. Three levels of maturity are defined along with key process areas that are applicable over all the maturity levels (called the i continuous process improvement group of KPAs). The model is also applied to two software projects in Mauritius to test its effectiveness. Given the studies carried out and its successful application to the Mauritian context, this model for software project management is expected to contribute towards a higher software project success rate. Notwithstanding the application in the Mauritian context, it is plausible that other developing countries may also customise this model as similar problems occur across these countries. / Computing / D.Phil. (Computer Science)

Over the past decade, two types of decision aids, i.e., decision support systems (DSS) and expert systems (ES), have been developed along parallel paths, showing some significant differences in their software architectures, capabilities, limitations, and other characteristics. The synergy of DSS and ES, however, has great potential for helping make possible a generalized approach to developing a decision aid that is powerful, intelligent, and friendly. This research establishes a framework for such decision aids in order to determine the elementary components and their interactions. Based on this framework, a generalized intelligent problem solving system (GIPSS) is deveolped as a decision aid generator. A relational model is designed to provide a unified logical view of each type of knowledge including factual data, modeling knowledge, and heuristic rules. In this knowledge model, a currently existing relational DBMS, with some extension, is utilized to manage each type of knowledge. For this purpose a relational resolution inference mechanism has been devised. A prototype GIPSS has been developed based on this framework. Two domain specific decision aids, COCOMO which estimates software development effort and cost, and CAPO which finds optimal process organization, have been implemented by using the GIPSS as a decision aid generator, demonstrating such features as its dynamic modeling capabilities and learning capabilities.

A major purpose of this dissertation is to design and develop data structures for the Critical Path Method-Material Requirements Planning (CPM/MRP) methodology. The data structures developed consider the trade-off between processing time required to perform the required operations on data structures and the computer capacity utilization to store data. The CPM/MRP technique was designed to combine the capabilities of the critical path method and material requirements planning system. The critical path method is a project planning and control technique which schedules projects subject to technological sequence constraints and activity durations. When combined with material requirements planning, the methodology explicitly considers both the resources required by the activities comprising the project and the lead time to acquire the required resources. CPM/MRP contains algorithms for project scheduling subject to technological sequence and resource constraints. The early start and late start algorithms find feasible early start and late start schedules for both activity start times and resource order release times. The major drawback of the FORTRAN IV computer program which incorporated the CPM/MRP algorithms was the tremendous computer memory capacity requirements. This prohibited application of the CPM/MRP to large projects. The data structures developed in this dissertation are efficient with respect to both computer memory utilization and processing time. To design the data structures, the characteristics of storable and non-storable resources and the necessary operations within each resource category is studied. Another purpose of this dissertation is to develop an algorithm to schedule operating rooms for surgery procedures in hospitals subject to resource constraints to increase operating suite utilization. Since the major reason for low operating suite utilization is lack of required resources when they are needed and where they are needed, the CPM/MRP concept is applied to schedule surgeries. The late start algorithm outlined in this dissertation schedules surgeries and resources required for each surgery. The data structures and the surgery scheduling algorithm are incorporated into a FORTRAN IV computer program. The program has been tested with actual data gathered from a hospital. The results met the objectives of both computer memory utilization and low computation time.

A computerized data base system for managing clinical activity of faculty and residents has been developed and tested in The Department of Anesthesiology, University Medical Center, Tucson, AZ. Using d-Base III+ and an IBM PC AT the system provides the department residents with tabulated data on a monthly and year-to-date basis, which can be easily transposed onto annual clinical activity reports required by The American Board of Anesthesiology. The system maintains a clinical activity history for the faculty, which allows for equitable work scheduling. The system also tabulates anesthesia equipment usage and problems. The system has been in operation since October, 1987 with residents and faculty receiving clinical activity reports on a monthly basis. System operation requires 10 to 12 hours of secretarial time weekly.

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