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Developer Tools for Evaluating Multi-Objective Algorithms

Multi-objective algorithms for scheduling offer many advantages over the more conventional single objective approach. By keeping user objectives separate instead of combined, more information is available to the end user to make trade-offs between competing objectives. Unlike single objective algorithms, which produce a single solution, multi-objective algorithms produce a set of solutions, called a Pareto surface, where no solution is strictly dominated by another solution for all objectives. From the end-user perspective a Pareto-surface provides a tool for reasoning about trade-offs between competing objectives. From the perspective of a software developer multi-objective algorithms provide an additional challenge. How can you tell if one multi-objective algorithm is better than another? This paper presents formal and visual tools for evaluating multi-objective algorithms and shows how the developer process of selecting an algorithm parallels the end-user process of selecting a solution for execution out of the Pareto-Surface.

multi-objective optimization↗

Methodology for object-oriented real-time systems analysis and design: Software engineering

Successful application of software engineering methodologies requires an integrated analysis and design life-cycle in which the various phases flow smoothly 'seamlessly' from analysis through design to implementation. Furthermore, different analysis methodologies often lead to different structuring of the system so that the transition from analysis to design may be awkward depending on the design methodology to be used. This is especially important when object-oriented programming is to be used for implementation when the original specification and perhaps high-level design is non-object oriented. Two approaches to real-time systems analysis which can lead to an object-oriented design are contrasted: (1) modeling the system using structured analysis with real-time extensions which emphasizes data and control flows followed by the abstraction of objects where the operations or methods of the objects correspond to processes in the data flow diagrams and then design in terms of these objects; and (2) modeling the system from the beginning as a set of naturally occurring concurrent entities (objects) each having its own time-behavior defined by a set of states and state-transition rules and seamlessly transforming the analysis models into high-level design models. A new concept of a 'real-time systems-analysis object' is introduced and becomes the basic building block of a series of seamlessly-connected models which progress from the object-oriented real-time systems analysis and design system analysis logical models through the physical architectural models and the high-level design stages. The methodology is appropriate to the overall specification including hardware and software modules. In software modules, the systems analysis objects are transformed into software objects.

Schoeffler, James D.↗

Fault-tolerant wait-free shared objects

A concurrent system consists of processes and shared objects. Previous research focused on the problem of tolerating process failure. We study the complementary problem of tolerating failures. We divide object failures into two broad classes: responsive and non-responsive. With responsive failures, a faulty object responds to every invocation, but responses may be incorrect. With non-responsive failures, a faulty object may also 'hang' without responding. For each class, we consider crash, and arbitrary types of failures. For each type of failure, we are seeking a universal implementation for fault-tolerant wait-free shared objects. We present (deterministic) implementations for all types of responsive failures, including arbitrary failures. In contrast, we show that even the most benign type of non-responsive failures requires the use of randomization. Of special interest is the problem of implementing fault-tolerant objects using only objects of the same type. We present such fault-tolerant self-implementations for many common object types. Graceful degradation is a desirable property of fault-tolerant implementations: the implemented object never fails more severely than the base objects it is derived from, even if all the base objects fail. For several failure models, we show whether this property can be achieved, and, if so, how. In addition to the above possibility/impossibility results, we also consider the resources complexity of fault-tolerant implementations. In many cases, we present lower bounds and give matching algorithms.

Jayanti, Prasad↗

An Object-Oriented Interface to the CCSDS Ground Telecommand Services

The Telecommand Data Routing and Channel Services defined by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) are flexible enough to support a myriad of commanding models. Because the standard is so broad, the traditional approach has been to implement only the portion of the standard needed by the particular spacecraft being tested/operated. Tasked with providing Telecommand Services for an entire class of spacecraft, where each spacecraft may choose any valid CCSDS commanding model, NASA Code 584 designed a common architecture capable of handling the full CCSDS protocol. The solution uses another CCSDS standard - the Standard Formatted Data Unit (SFDU) as the interface to the Telecommand Services. SFDUs provide a consistent way of labelling data objects, as well as allowing data objects to encapsulate other data objects. The resulting interface is: - Flexible: The full Data Routing and Channel Services are available via a single interface. The client (i.e. the command source) may enter commands at any layer within the protocol stack, specify any of the data aggregation or segmentation methods, and dynamically set any configuration parameter defined in the standard. - Object-oriented: Each object specifies both the data and the actions to be performed with the data. An object may contain other objects. - Expandable: New capabilities are added by defining new objects. Objects pass thru the protocol layers until they reach the applicable layer. The resulting design is: - Modular: The logic for each protocol layer is contained in a separate Application Program Interface (API). The objects used for the external interface are also used for communication between layers. - Distributable: The design can be split along any layer boundary for distribution across multiple machines. The objects ensure data consistency across platforms. This paper describes the SFDU-based interface and the resulting protocol implementation. The implementation is currently used by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) for integration & test of the microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) and Earth observer-I (EO-l) spacecraft. It will be used for post-launch operations of these spacecraft as well as the Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft.

Ray, Timothy Joseph↗

Using Machine Learning to Track Objects Across Cameras

Video surveillance is one of the most important technologies used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in international safeguards. At large, complicated facilities, multiple surveillance cameras are deployed to monitor the transfer of safeguards-relevant objects across the site. During inspections, all surveillance videos are reviewed to ensure the objects are not manipulated or diverted during transfer, a laborious, time-consuming task. This work describes using deep machine learning algorithms to track objects automatically across multiple cameras, greatly improving the efficiency of the review process. The fundamental problem in this object tracking task across multiple cameras is how to associate the same object, which may show extreme intra-class variations, such as viewpoints, occlusions, and various scales, in different and even non-overlapped cameras. Object re-identification (Re-ID) in nuclear facility video surveillance is even more challenging than classic person or vehicle Re-ID problems because different instances in the same category may display an identical appearance. One observation from nuclear facility surveillance videos is that all objects must be carted (e.g., via forklift) to move. Therefore, the spatial context information of an object, which provides the feature from the carrier, is critical for the object Re-ID task. This work proposes a two-stream convolutional neural networks model that takes features of objects and their surrounding regions into account. Moreover, the custom videos usually are gleaned from different scenes from the training data, which may have extreme variations in illumination changes and/or cluttered backgrounds. Directly applying the trained model to custom videos will dramatically decrease the performance. To tackle this problem, an advanced domain adaptation technique is proposed to mitigate the gap between the data taken from different scenes. The proposed framework will track objects of interest across a nuclear complex. The resulting tracks can be used in further analyses, such as event/activity recognition, anomaly detection, etc.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Object sense and avoid system for autonomous vehicles

A system for determining a travel path for an autonomous vehicle (“AV”) to travel to a target while avoiding objects (i.e., obstacles) without the use of an imaging system is provided. An object sense and avoid (“OSA”) system detects objects in an object field that is adjacent to the AV and dynamically generates, as the AV travels, a travel path to the target to avoid the objects. The OSA system repeatedly uses sensors to collect sensor data of any objects in the object field. An object detection system then detects the objects and determines their locations based on triangulating ranges to an object as indicated by different sensors. The path planner system then plans a next travel direction for the AV to avoid the detected objects while seeking to minimize the distance traveled. The OSA system then instructs the AV to travel in the travel direction.

Beer, N. Reginald↗

Modeling Buried Object Brightness and Visibility for Ground Penetrating Radar

Comparing the observed brightness of various buried objects is a straightforward way to characterize the performance of a ground penetrating radar (GPR) system. However, a limitation arises. A simple comparison of buried object brightness values does not disentangle the effects of the GPR system itself from the system's operating environment and the objects being observed. Therefore, with brightness values exhibiting an unknown synthesis of systemic, environmental, and object factors, GPR system analysis becomes a convoluted affair. In this work, we use an experimentally collected dataset of over 25,000 object observations from five different multistatic radar arrays to develop models of buried object brightness and control for these various effects. Additionally, our modeling efforts provide a means for quantifying the relative brightness of GPR systems, the objects they detect, and the physical properties of those objects that influence observed brightness. To evaluate the models' performance on new object observations, we repeatedly simulate fitting them to half the dataset and predicting the observed brightness values of the unseen half. In addition, we introduce a method for estimating the probability that individual observations constitute a visible object, which aids in failure analysis, performance characterization, and dataset cleaning.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Optical and radio properties of X-ray selected BL Lacertae objects

The eight BL Lac objects from the HEAO 1 A-2 all-sky survey and from the Einstein medium-sensitivity survey (MSS) form a flux-limited complete X-ray selected sample. The optical and radio properties of the MSS BL Lac objects are presented and compared with those of the HEAO 1 A-2 sample and with those of radio-selected BL Lac objects. The X-ray selected BL Lac objects possess smaller polarized fractions and less violent optical variability than radio-selected BL Lac objects. These properties are consistent with the substantial starlight fraction seen in the optical spectra of a majority of these objects. This starlight allows a determination of definite redshifts for two of four MSS BL Lac objects and a probable redshift for a third. These redshifts are 0.2, 0.3, and 0.6. Despite the differences in characteristics between the X-ray selected and radio-selected samples, it is concluded that these eight objects possess most of the basic qualities of BL Lac objects and should be considered members of that class. Moreover, as a class, these X-ray selected objects have the largest ratio of X-ray to optical flux of any active galactic nuclei yet discovered.

Stocke, J. T.↗

Robot Acting on Moving Bodies (RAMBO): Interaction with tumbling objects

Interaction with tumbling objects will become more common as human activities in space expand. Attempting to interact with a large complex object translating and rotating in space, a human operator using only his visual and mental capacities may not be able to estimate the object motion, plan actions or control those actions. A robot system (RAMBO) equipped with a camera, which, given a sequence of simple tasks, can perform these tasks on a tumbling object, is being developed. RAMBO is given a complete geometric model of the object. A low level vision module extracts and groups characteristic features in images of the object. The positions of the object are determined in a sequence of images, and a motion estimate of the object is obtained. This motion estimate is used to plan trajectories of the robot tool to relative locations rearby the object sufficient for achieving the tasks. More specifically, low level vision uses parallel algorithms for image enhancement by symmetric nearest neighbor filtering, edge detection by local gradient operators, and corner extraction by sector filtering. The object pose estimation is a Hough transform method accumulating position hypotheses obtained by matching triples of image features (corners) to triples of model features. To maximize computing speed, the estimate of the position in space of a triple of features is obtained by decomposing its perspective view into a product of rotations and a scaled orthographic projection. This allows use of 2-D lookup tables at each stage of the decomposition. The position hypotheses for each possible match of model feature triples and image feature triples are calculated in parallel. Trajectory planning combines heuristic and dynamic programming techniques. Then trajectories are created using dynamic interpolations between initial and goal trajectories. All the parallel algorithms run on a Connection Machine CM-2 with 16K processors.

Davis, Larry S.↗

Formation and Migration of Trans-Neptunian Objects

We consider that trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with diameter d greater than 100 kilometers moving now in not very eccentric orbits could be formed directly by the compression of large rarefied dust condensations (with a greater than 30 AU), but not by the accretion of smaller solid planetesimals. Probably, some planetesimals with d approximately 100- 1000 kilometers in the feeding zone of the giant planets and even large main-belt asteroids also could be formed directly by such compression. Some smaller objects (TNOs, planetesimals, asteroids) could be debris of larger objects, and other such objects could be formed directly by compression of condensations. A small portion of planetesimals from the feeding zone of the giant planets that entered into the trans-Neptunian region could left in eccentrical orbits beyond Neptune and became so called "scattered objects". Our computer runs in which gravitational interactions of bodies were taken into account with the use of the spheres method, showed that the embryos of Uranus and Neptune could increase their semimajor axes from less than 10 AU to their present values, moving permanently in orbits with small eccentricities, due to gravitational interactions with the migrating planetesimals. Later on, Thommes et al. considered a similar model using direct numerical integration. The total amount of water delivered to the Earth during the formation of the giant, planets was about the mass of water in the Earth oceans. The end of such bombardment could be caused mainly by the planetesimals that became scattered objects. For the present mass of the trans-Neptunian belt, the collisional lifetime of 1-kilometer TNO is about the age of the Solar system, but only a small portion (less than 1%) of 100-km TNOs could be destroyed during this age. The probability of destruction of a typical TNO (with 30 less than a,less than 50 AU) by scattered objects can be of the same order of magnitude as that by typical TNOs. TNOs could be even more often destroyed during planet formation than during last 4 Gyr. The analysis of the results of the orbital evolution of Jupiter-crossing objects (JCOs) and TNOs showed that, in principle, the trans-Neptunian belt can provide up to 100% of Earth-crossing objects, but, of course, some of them came from the main asteroid belt. Most of the collisions of former JCOs with the Earth were from orbits with aphelia inside Jupiter's orbit and belonged to a small portion of objects which moved in such orbits for a long time. About 1 of 300 JCOs collided with the Sun. The ratio of the total mass of icy planetesimals that migrated from the feeding zone of the giant planets and collided with the planet to the mass of this planet was greater (by a factor of 3 in our runs) for Mars than that for Earth and Venus.

Ipatov, S. I.↗

Adaptive Morphological Feature-Based Object Classifier for a Color Imaging System

Utilizing a Compact Color Microscope Imaging System (CCMIS), a unique algorithm has been developed that combines human intelligence along with machine vision techniques to produce an autonomous microscope tool for biomedical, industrial, and space applications. This technique is based on an adaptive, morphological, feature-based mapping function comprising 24 mutually inclusive feature metrics that are used to determine the metrics for complex cell/objects derived from color image analysis. Some of the features include: Area (total numbers of non-background pixels inside and including the perimeter), Bounding Box (smallest rectangle that bounds and object), centerX (x-coordinate of intensity-weighted, center-of-mass of an entire object or multi-object blob), centerY (y-coordinate of intensity-weighted, center-of-mass, of an entire object or multi-object blob), Circumference (a measure of circumference that takes into account whether neighboring pixels are diagonal, which is a longer distance than horizontally or vertically joined pixels), . Elongation (measure of particle elongation given as a number between 0 and 1. If equal to 1, the particle bounding box is square. As the elongation decreases from 1, the particle becomes more elongated), . Ext_vector (extremal vector), . Major Axis (the length of a major axis of a smallest ellipse encompassing an object), . Minor Axis (the length of a minor axis of a smallest ellipse encompassing an object), . Partial (indicates if the particle extends beyond the field of view), . Perimeter Points (points that make up a particle perimeter), . Roundness [(4(pi) x area)/perimeter(squared)) the result is a measure of object roundness, or compactness, given as a value between 0 and 1. The greater the ratio, the rounder the object.], . Thin in center (determines if an object becomes thin in the center, (figure-eight-shaped), . Theta (orientation of the major axis), . Smoothness and color metrics for each component (red, green, blue) the minimum, maximum, average, and standard deviation within the particle are tracked. These metrics can be used for autonomous analysis of color images from a microscope, video camera, or digital, still image. It can also automatically identify tumor morphology of stained images and has been used to detect stained cell phenomena (see figure).

McDowell, Mark↗

An Upper Bound on Orbital Debris Collision Probability When Only One Object has Position Uncertainty Information

Upper bounds on high speed satellite collision probability, P (sub c), have been investigated. Previous methods assume an individual position error covariance matrix is available for each object. The two matrices being combined into a single, relative position error covariance matrix. Components of the combined error covariance are then varied to obtain a maximum P (sub c). If error covariance information for only one of the two objects was available, either some default shape has been used or nothing could be done. An alternative is presented that uses the known covariance information along with a critical value of the missing covariance to obtain an approximate but useful P (sub c) upper bound. There are various avenues along which an upper bound on the high speed satellite collision probability has been pursued. Typically, for the collision plane representation of the high speed collision probability problem, the predicted miss position in the collision plane is assumed fixed. Then the shape (aspect ratio of ellipse), the size (scaling of standard deviations) or the orientation (rotation of ellipse principal axes) of the combined position error ellipse is varied to obtain a maximum P (sub c). Regardless as to the exact details of the approach, previously presented methods all assume that an individual position error covariance matrix is available for each object and the two are combined into a single, relative position error covariance matrix. This combined position error covariance matrix is then modified according to the chosen scheme to arrive at a maximum P (sub c). But what if error covariance information for one of the two objects is not available? When error covariance information for one of the objects is not available the analyst has commonly defaulted to the situation in which only the relative miss position and velocity are known without any corresponding state error covariance information. The various usual methods of finding a maximum P (sub c) do no good because the analyst defaults to no knowledge of the combined, relative position error covariance matrix. It is reasonable to think, given an assumption of no covariance information, an analyst might still attempt to determine the error covariance matrix that results in an upper bound on the P (sub c). Without some guidance on limits to the shape, size and orientation of the unknown covariance matrix, the limiting case is a degenerate ellipse lying along the relative miss vector in the collision plane. Unless the miss position is exceptionally large or the at-risk object is exceptionally small, this method results in a maximum P (sub c) too large to be of practical use. For example, assuming that the miss distance is equal to the current ISS alert volume along-track (+ or -) distance of 25 kilometers and that the at-risk area has a 70 meter radius. The maximum (degenerate ellipse) P (sub c) is about 0.00136. At 40 kilometers, the maximum P (sub c) would be 0.00085 which is still almost an order of magnitude larger than the ISS maneuver threshold of 0.0001. In fact, a miss distance of almost 340 kilometers is necessary to reduce the maximum P (sub c) associated with this degenerate ellipse to the ISS maneuver threshold value. Such a result is frequently of no practical value to the analyst. Some improvement may be made with respect to this problem by realizing that while the position error covariance matrix of one of the objects (usually the debris object) may not be known the position error covariance matrix of the other object (usually the asset) is almost always available. Making use of the position error covariance information for the one object provides an improvement in finding a maximum P (sub c) which, in some cases, may offer real utility. The equations to be used are presented and their use discussed.

Frisbee, Joseph H., Jr.↗

System and method for adaptive object-oriented sensor fusion for environmental mapping

The present disclosure relates to a mapping system adapted for detecting objects in an environmental scene, by scanning an environmental scene with propagating energy, and receiving reflected energy back from objects present in the environmental scene, in a prioritized manner, for later use. The system may comprise an imaging subsystem which includes a detection and ranging subsystem for initially identifying primitive objects in the environmental scene. The imaging subsystem may also include an identification and mapping subsystem for prioritizing the primitive objects for further scanning and analysis, to ultimately identify one or more of the primitive objects as one or more abstract objects. An environmental model, updated in real time, is used to maintain a map of the primitive objects and the known abstract objects within the environmental scene, as new primitive objects and new abstract objects are obtained with repeated scans of the environmental scene.

Panas, Robert Matthew↗

srMO-BO-3GP: A sequential regularized multi-objective Bayesian optimization for constrained design applications using an uncertain Pareto classifier

Bayesian optimization (BO) is an efficient and flexible global optimization framework that is applicable to a very wide range of engineering applications. To leverage the capability of the classical BO, many extensions, including multi-objective, multi-fidelity, parallelization, and latent-variable modeling, have been proposed to address the limitations of the classical BO framework. In this work, we propose a novel multi-objective BO formalism, called srMO-BO-3GP, to solve multi-objective optimization problems in a sequential setting. Three different Gaussian processes (GPs) are stacked together, where each of the GPs is assigned with a different task. The first GP is used to approximate a single-objective computed from the multi-objective definition, the second GP is used to learn the unknown constraints, and the third one is used to learn the uncertain Pareto frontier. At each iteration, a multi-objective augmented Tchebycheff function is adopted to convert multi-objective to single-objective, where the regularization with a regularized ridge term is also introduced to smooth the single-objective function. Finally, we couple the third GP along with the classical BO framework to explore the convergence and diversity of the Pareto frontier by the acquisition function for exploitation and exploration. The proposed framework is demonstrated using several numerical benchmark functions, as well as a thermomechanical finite element model for flip-chip package design optimization.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Intelligent Process Visualization through Nuclear Operation Process Modeling, Reasoning, and Object Detection from Field Videos (Final Report)

This report is a deliverable for the “Final Report” task of DOE NEET Project 19-16790, "Context-Aware Safety Information Display for Nuclear Field Workers." This project's overall goal is to test the hypothesis that integrating computer vision and process reasoning methods will enable proactive visualization of the safe operation and maintenance processes of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) for field workers. Augmented Reality (AR) glasses adopting such proactive safety information visualization techniques can significantly increase personnel safety and reduce the NPP’s operating costs. The current practice of monitoring NPPs requires workers to switch between digital models, data, and physical workspaces in identifying relevant but potentially occluded objects and in assessing the risks of operation and maintenance processes. On the other hand, frequently changed field conditions require field workers to report to supervisors for real-time guidance. Such guidance is essential to ensure that changing conditions will not invalidate or endanger the work order and other ongoing processes that may jeopardize NPP operations. Additionally, incorrect recognition of equipment objects can result in communication errors and safety problems. AR techniques can assist engineers in viewing the physical workspaces with objects labeled with detailed operation procedures and safety reminders during field operations. The project team developed an “Intelligent Context-Aware Safety Information Display” (ICAD) for supporting Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) field workers in achieving safe and efficient execution of a series of operational tasks in uncertain and changing workspaces of an NPP. Before designing the ICAD-AR prototype, the project team synthesized NPP operational knowledge models through literature review studies, surveys, interviews with domain experts, and knowledge modeling. The project team conducted an extensive study of the operational procedures of various NPPs, and digital technologies that can support the safe and efficient execution of those procedures in different NPP operational contexts. This literature review helped the project team conduct surveys and interviews with nuclear engineers and field workers to identify three categories of information. The NPP knowledge modeling efforts reveal that the three categories of information identified have different levels of importance in a typical procedure of carrying out a series of tasks to achieve a specific NPP operation goal (e.g., shutdown, mode changes). These three categories of information include 1) Workspace dynamics – the changing spatial arrangements of workspaces, tools, protection equipment, and supporting materials, 2) Workflow prognostics – the dynamic dependencies between different parts of an NPP that functionally support and influence each other in terms of safety and efficiency, and 3) Hazards – objects and spaces that contain hazardous materials or physical conditions that can pose risks to workers or mechanical systems. The project team has profiled the importance levels of these categories of information into a knowledge model. This knowledge model specifies what types of information are more critical for a given task in a given workspace so that computers can automatically identify critical objects and sensors in a scene for delivering context-ware safety information to field workers through AR devices. Significant research development of this project results in technical research outcomes and a prototyping system that illustrates the technical feasibility of establishing an ICAD-AR system supporting the proactive safety information display for nuclear field workers. This final report summarizes the project team’s technological achievements in the past three years. Overall, the project team completed the development and integration of five techniques into a prototype ICAD Augmented Reality (ICAD-AR) system and demonstrated the developed system’s real-time execution in a mechanical room. The project team completed the analysis of using this prototype in other types of workspaces based on 3D image data and digital design models collected from two additional workspaces (a water treatment plant and a flow loop training facility). The integrated techniques include 1) Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms supporting the generation and updates of nuclear fieldwork process models based on text analysis of work packages and operation manuals; 2) sensor log analysis for predicting control actions in given sensor reading contexts; 3) computer vision algorithms for automatic localization and navigation of workers; 4) object detection algorithms for identifying task-related objects and correlated sensors for safety checking; 5) AR technique as a platform for supporting the integration. The testing results of these five techniques have shown that 1) the sensor log analysis model can predict the next control action with an accuracy of 0.883; 2) the trained natural language processing model can extract more than 80% of the critical information from paper-based procedures (PBPs); 3) the navigation algorithm with the integration of Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) and Non-Recursive Bayesian Filter methods make operator’s trajectory estimation resilient to drift error; 4) the computer vision algorithm can detect task-specific and safety-critical objects with an average accuracy of 95.3%. The project team used work procedures collected from a flow loop training facility and two datasets collected from two mechanical rooms simulating the workspaces of NPPs to demonstrate the technical capabilities of the developed ICAD-AR prototype. The demonstration validated the technical feasibility of establishing the ICAD-AR system for nuclear field workers and identified the challenges in 1) automatic text analysis of work packages; 2) use of limited samples of sensor logs for predicting the proper timings of control actions; 3) reliably tracking workers and their task progress in mechanical rooms with many similar objects.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Towards a general object-oriented software development methodology

An object is an abstract software model of a problem domain entity. Objects are packages of both data and operations of that data (Goldberg 83, Booch 83). The Ada (tm) package construct is representative of this general notion of an object. Object-oriented design is the technique of using objects as the basic unit of modularity in systems design. The Software Engineering Laboratory at the Goddard Space Flight Center is currently involved in a pilot program to develop a flight dynamics simulator in Ada (approximately 40,000 statements) using object-oriented methods. Several authors have applied object-oriented concepts to Ada (e.g., Booch 83, Cherry 85). It was found that these methodologies are limited. As a result a more general approach was synthesized with allows a designer to apply powerful object-oriented principles to a wide range of applications and at all stages of design. An overview is provided of this approach. Further, how object-oriented design fits into the overall software life-cycle is considered.

Seidewitz, ED↗

Engineering the object-relation database model in O-Raid

Raid is a distributed database system based on the relational model. O-raid is an extension of the Raid system and will support complex data objects. The design of O-Raid is evolutionary and retains all features of relational data base systems and those of a general purpose object-oriented programming language. O-Raid has several novel properties. Objects, classes, and inheritance are supported together with a predicate-base relational query language. O-Raid objects are compatible with C++ objects and may be read and manipulated by a C++ program without any 'impedance mismatch'. Relations and columns within relations may themselves be treated as objects with associated variables and methods. Relations may contain heterogeneous objects, that is, objects of more than one class in a certain column, which can individually evolve by being reclassified. Special facilities are provided to reduce the data search in a relation containing complex objects.

Dewan, Prasun↗

Considerations of persistence and security in CHOICES, an object-oriented operating system

The current design of the CHOICES persistent object implementation is summarized, and research in progress is outlined. CHOICES is implemented as an object-oriented system, and persistent objects appear to simplify and unify many functions of the system. It is demonstrated that persistent data can be accessed through an object-oriented file system model as efficiently as by an existing optimized commercial file system. The object-oriented file system can be specialized to provide an object store for persistent objects. The problems that arise in building an efficient persistent object scheme in a 32-bit virtual address space that only uses paging are described. Despite its limitations, the solution presented allows quite large numbers of objects to be active simultaneously, and permits sharing and efficient method calls.

Campbell, Roy H.↗