Why is astronomy considered a science while astrology is considered only a pseudoscience? In other words, how can we prove that a theory faithfully describes reality, and that this theory can then be used to predict unknown facts? Karl Popper, the well-known philosopher, studied these problems and summarized his conclusions in one...

In developing the New Perspectives Series, our goal was to create books that give students the software...

The use of modular and parallel programming languages, and the development of distributed architectures is having a profound influence on computer programming and systems design; hardware and performance can now conspire to produce much higher operating speeds than could previously be achieved through sequential processing. Executing...

The use of symbol sequences to study dynamical systems originates in the work of Kocbe [Koc27, Koe29] and Morse [Mor87j, who both used symbol saliences to code geodesies on a...

You use word processors to write documents, Web browsers to explore the Internet, and email programs to send email. These are all examples of software that runs on computers. Software is developed using programming languages. There are many programming languages—so why Java? The answer is that Java enables...

Simulation is an essential tool in any field related to engineering techniques, whether it is used lor teaching purposes or in research and development. When teaching technical subjects, lab works play an important role, as im portant as exercise sessions in helping students assimilate theory. The recent introduction of simulation...

To this day, enterprise message queuing is a concept that is not well understood by most software developers. Commercial message-oriented middleware (MOM) did not help to encourage adoption of the process; most of the MOMs on the market were closed source, were costly to buy and support, and required trained system administrators for...

In developing the New Perspectives Series, our goal was to create books that give students the software concepts and...

In the last 15 years, some of us have witnessed mail becoming e-mail, grocery stores becoming www.store, and step-by-step technology becoming part of our daily life. Technology development has radically changed the enterprise's way of doing business. First, daily tasks such as sales, client, and vendor management became...

Thinking in terms of facts and rules is perhaps one of the most common ways of approaching problem definition and problem solving both in everyday life and under more formal circumstances. The best known set of rules, the Ten Commandments have been accompanying us since the times of Moses; the Decalogue proved to be simple but...

In April 2009, one of the authors of this book, Thomas Meinl, was attending the World Wide Web conference in Madrid, Spain. There, he gave a talk, in which he presented the idea of Web service reservation via derivative mechanisms. During the following discussions, it became clear that for many researchers, practitioners and managers...