This dissertation describes the development of software specifically designed to facilitate simulation analysis of bulk material transportation systems. Use of the term simulation analysis indicates a special variation of the systems analysis process in which the model developed is a digital computer simulation model. Specifically, the software aids in model development, execution, and presentation of the simulation results. Simulation analysis is currently utilized by bulk material transport operators in a limited manner. The problem is that use of available simulation languages requires knowledge concerning language syntax and semantics. Additionally, system operators are not typically trained in how to perform an analysis of their bulk material transportation system. The common solution to these problems is to retain analytical experts who are unfamiliar with the system to be analyzed. The system operators for whom the analysis is performed, and who are responsible for implementation of analytical results, are therefore removed from the analysis process. The considerably reduces the credibility of the analysis. The simulation software described in this dissertation provides a means for a system operator, or anyone not familiar with simulation language use, to develop and execute a simulation model of their system. By increasing the operator role in the analysis process, the acceptability of the analysis is increased. The software is specifically designed for bulk material transportation systems analysis, a research area which can be greatly benefited through the use of simulation model analysis. The simulation software package embodies concepts somewhat similar to those of expert systems, a concept derived from the study of artificial intelligence. The software is "expertly" structured to represent bulk material transportation systems. It contains a knowledge base oriented toward both simulation analysis and bulk material transportation systems analysis. The computer languages C and SIMAN were used for software development. The software is structured in three parts; 1) input interface, 2) SIMAN code generator, and 3) output interface. The user interacts with the input interface, providing information as to the system to be analyzed. This information is utilized by the code generator to create executable SIMAN simulation programs. The output interface provides the simulation output in the system terminology initially selected by the user. / Ph. D.

This thesis describes the design, development, implementation, and output results of a software monitor program which measures job turnaround time on an IBM 360 system under OS/MFT and HASP. This program is designed to be used in conjunction with other monitors and accounting data to measure the performance of the System/360. In this thesis, relevant RASP logic is summarized, followed by design specifications of the monitor, solutions to design problems, and a full description of the monitor's program logic. Actual results obtained by the monitor are included.Ball State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306

The demand for systems i·ntegration has become more and more significant in higher education as institutions want systems that provide coherent information with data that is up to date and not redundant and can seamlessly support the end user experience. Institutions have become more reliant on information systems to support both administrative functions and those involved in teaching, learning and research, but because each department supports a diverse array of computing platforms and applications, it becomes very difficult to integrate these systems. SOA is classified as an innovative approach to integrating existing systems involving the use of independent services that can be accessed without knowledge of the underlying platform implementation. Unfortunately, the SOA initiative will not be success if it is not understood and used correctly by various applications and systems throughout the organisation. SOA introduces complexity and challenges in systems integration, acceptance, governance, data, development planning, security and external opportunities. If an organisation does not embrace or enable change in each of these areas, it is not ready for the adoption of SOA. This research investigates the systems integration challenge in selected South African universities and explores factors for SOA adoption. The framework for the adoption of SOA comprises seven factors, of which Systems Integration is the most significant and represents an efficient starting point for institutions considering SOA adoption. Acceptance, Governance, Data, Development Planning, Security and External Opportunities are other factors of SOA adoption that require careful and thorough consideration before an institution can successfully adopt SOA. The results of this research emphasise the importance of being able to embrace change and innovation and modify strategies in order to reflect the constant changes required for the adoption of SOA. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The classification of consumable media by mining relevant text for their identifying features is a subjective process. Previous attempts to perform this type of feature mining have generally been limited in scope due having limited access to user data. Many of these studies used human domain knowledge to evaluate the accuracy of features extracted using these methods. In this thesis, we mine book review text to identify nontrivial features of a set of similar books. We make comparisons between books by looking for books that share characteristics, ultimately performing clustering on the books in our data set. We use the same mining process to identify a corresponding set of characteristics in users. Finally, we evaluate the quality of our methods by examining the correlation between our similarity metric, and user ratings.