About Us

by Alla Kholmatova | Author & Designer

This book presents a perspective on design systems based on the author's experience as an interaction and visual designer. Without touching on related areas such as Information architecture, content strategy, or research its plainly evident this book is a technical resource. While packed with plenty of discussion on front end practices, ultimately this a design book, but isn't about what to design.  It is about how to approach your design process in a more systematic way and ensure your design system helps to achieve the purpose of your product.

edited by Kevin De Souza | Professor at Arizona State University

This book presents cutting-edge research and thinking on agile information systems. The concept of agile information systems has gained strength over the years, coming into the MIS world from manufacturing, where agile manufacturing systems has been an important concept for decades now. The idea of agility is powerful: with competition so fierce today and the speed of business so fast, a company’s ability to move with their customers and support constant changing business needs is more important than ever. Agile information systems:

• have the ability to add, remove, modify, or extend functionalities with minimal penalties in terms of time, cost, and effort

• have the ability to process information in a flexible manner

• have the ability to accommodate and adjust to the changing needs of the end-users.

This is the first book to bring together academic experts, researchers, and practitioners to discuss how companies can create and deploy agile information systems. Contributors are well-regarded academics known to be on the cutting-edge of their fields.

by  Alistair Croll  & Benjamin Yoskovitz  | Entrepreneurs & Authors

Marc Andreesen once said that "markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are." Whether you're a startup founder trying to disrupt an industry, or an intrapreneur trying to provoke change from within, your biggest risk is building something nobody wants.

Only by measuring and analyzing as you grow, you can validate whether a problem is real, find the right customers, and decide what to build, how to monetize it, and how to spread the word. Focusing on the One Metric That Matters to your business right now gives you the focus you need to move ahead--and the discipline to know when to change course.

"A vital part of the founder's toolkit. If you're starting a company you need to read this." - Mark Peter Davis, Venture Capitalist & Incubator

"Your competition will use this book to outgrow you." -- Mike Volpe, Hubspot.

"No innovator should be without this book." -- Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

"As useful for today's multi-billion dollar companies as it is for entrepreneurs." -- John Stormer, Salesforce.com.

Melvin E Conway | Scientist at Rand Corporation , published in DATAMATION Magazine

Conclusion — The basic thesis of this article is that organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. We have seen that this fact has important implications for the man- agement of system design. Primarily, we have found a criterion for the structuring of design organizations: a design effort should be organized according to the need for communication.

This criterion creates problems because the need to communicate at any time depends on the system concept in effect at that time. Because the design which occurs first is almost never the best possible, the prevailing system concept may need to change. Therefore, flexibility of organization is important to effective design.

Ways must be found to reward design managers for keeping their organizations lean and flexible. There is need for a philosophy of system design management which is not based on the assumption that adding manpower simply adds to productivity. The development of such a philosophy promises to unearth basic questions about value of resources and techniques of communication which will need to be answered before our system-building technology can proceed with confidence

Donald D. Chamberlin & Raymond F. Boyce. | Scientists IBM Research Laboratory. San Jose, California

Abstract — Structured English Query Language (SEQUEL) which can be used for accessing data in an integrated relational database. Without resorting to the concepts of bound variables and quantifiers, SEQUEL identifies a set of simple operations on tabular structures, which can be shown to be of equivalent power to first order predicate calculus. A SEQUEL user is presented with a consistent set of keyword English templates which reflect how people use tables to obtain information. Moreover, the SEQUEL user is able to compose these basic templates in a structured manner in order to form more complex queries. SEQUEL is intended as a database sublanguage for both the professional programmer and the more infrequent database user.

Charles Severance, | Researcher University of Michigan 

Abstract — Guido van Rossum discusses the initial development of Python, which has increasingly become the programming language of choice for many scientific fields due to its extensibility and ease of use. This paper is a discourse in which author Charles Severance reviews his interview with Guido van Rossum about the birth of the general-purpose, high-level Python programming language.

Created by Brian Ingerson , Clark C. Evans, Oren Ben-Kiki | Software Engineers

Abstract — YAML (pronounced "yaamel") is a straight-forward machine parable data serialization format designed for human readability and interaction with scripting languages such as Perl and Python. YAML is optimized for configuration settings, log files, Internet messaging and filtering. This specification describes the serialization format, a "C" API for the parser and emitter, and several language bindings.

Jacques Savoy | University of Montreal

Abstract — Browsing is the foremost method in searching through information in a hypertext or hypermedia system. However, as the number of nodes and links increases, this technique is far from satisfactory, and other search mechanisms must be provided. Classical search techniques such as menu selection hierarchies, string matching, Boolean query, etc., are already available, but they treat nodes as independent entities rather than considering the link semantics between nodes. Moreover, in order to write a query the users often encounter many problems such as how to find the appropriate terms that describe the information needs, how to correctly write a query in a language using artificial syntax, etc. This paper describes an alternative based on a Bayesian network that structures the indexing terms and stores the user’s information needs. In our approach, the user does not have to write a formal query because the computation required is accomplished automatically and without any prior information or constraint. Moreover, using a constrained spreading activation, our solution uses link semantics to search relevant starting points for browsing.

Theodor Fink | Published in Information Systems , Pergamon Press Ltd.

Abstract — A  general model for distributed database systems based on the three-level architecture is presented. How concrete architectural forms can be derived from the general model is ilhtstrated by means of the CODASYL database model. A new language is introduced, the data partition language, in which all distribution specific statements are concentrated. The application of distribution predicates in the data partition language to form distribution units leads to the concept of a “distribution graph".  It is a subset of the schema graph and defines the validity scope of a distribution predicate. Global database keys, global currency indicators and multiple record access are suggested to manipulate distributed CODASYL databases.

Faruk Hasic , Johannes De Smedt, Seppe vanden Broucke, & Estefanıa Serral | IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SERVICES COMPUTING

Abstract — Separating decision modelling from the processes modelling concern recently gained significant support in literature, as incorporating both concerns into a single model impairs the scalability, maintainability, flexibility and understandability of both processes and decisions. Most notably the introduction of the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard by the Object Management Group provides a suitable solution for externalising decisions from processes and automating decision enactments for processes. This paper introduces a systematic way of tackling the separation of the decision modelling concern from process modelling by providing a Decision as a Service (DaaS) layered Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) which approaches decisions as automated and externalised services that processes need to invoke on demand to obtain the decision outcome. The DaaS mechanism is elucidated by a formalisation of DMN constructs and the relevant layer elements. Furthermore, DaaS is evaluated against the fundamental characteristics of the SOA paradigm, proving its contribution in terms of abstraction, reusability, loose coupling, and other pertinent SOA principles. Additionally, the benefits of the DaaS design on process-decision modelling and mining are discussed. Finally, the DaaS design is illustrated on a real-life event log of a bank loan application and approval process, and the SOA maturity of DaaS is assessed.