In this issue of Communications we have a debate that is quite a rarity in computing research: a technical debate. A pair of Contributed Articles  …

C.A.R. Hoare's viewpoint "Retrospective: An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming" (Oct. 2009) reminded me of a saying attributed to both Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut and Yogi …

Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.

It's been an exhilarating first year as President of ACM. At the close of FY09, ACM stood as the largest educational and scientific computer society in the world. After seven consecutive …

Software release cycles are usually long, measured in months, sometimes in years. Each of the stages—requirements, design, development, and testing — takes time. Recently, some …

The unfilteredness of the Internet, while largely considered a plus, is taking some knocks. Abundant, easily accessible data sits side by side with "rumors, lies, and errors …

Buildings collapse. Wind and rain beat them, temperatures cycle from freezing to blistering, and random strikes of lightning threaten sudden obliteration. Even …

Remembering a legacy of practical and theoretical innovation.

India faces a daunting task trying to manually translate among 22 official languages, but assistance, in the form of advanced technology enabled by a lot of hard work, is on the way.

If search engines can extract more meaning from text and better understand what people are looking for, the Web's resources could be accessed more effectively.

The National Science Foundation's meeting on Internet architectures focused on designs related to emerging social and economic realities. The four-day,  invitation-only summit drew 90 U.S.-based researchers …

Former Communications editor-in-chief Robert L. Ashenhurst, who died last October at age 80, served ACM for 35 years with dedication, humor, and panache, according to fellow …

ACM is in the process of establishing ACM India as a legal entity and will hold its first conference in late January. Four A.M. Turing award winners, including Barbara Liskov …

How platform adoption can be an important determinant of product and technological success.

A tale illustrating the difference between individual and team skills.

How applicable are the approaches adopted by information and communication technology standards-setting organizations to biological standards?

Fundamental changes to computer science education are required to better address the needs of industry.

The first of a two-part series highlighting several of the world's museums dedicated to preserving, exhibiting, and elucidating computing history.

How streaming SQL technology can help solve the Web 2.0 data crunch.

Companies have access to more types of external data than ever before. How can they integrate it most effectively?

As hard-drive capacities continue to outpace their throughput, the time has come for a new level of RAID.

Parallel DBMSs excel at efficient querying of large data sets; MapReduce-style systems excel at complex analytics and ETL tasks. Neither is good at what the other does well. …

MapReduce advantages over parallel databases include storage-system independence and fine-grain fault tolerance for large jobs.

Exciting research in the design of automated negotiators is making great progress.

Google's Native Client is an intriguing new system that allows untrusted x86 binaries to run safely on bare metal.

Native Client is a sandbox for untrusted x86 native code. It aims to give browser-based applications the computational performance of native applications without compromising …

When you search for products on Amazon.com, you are seeing results from thousands of vendor databases that were developed before Amazon existed. Did you ever wonder how that happens?

Information integration is a key challenge faced by all major organizations, business and governmental ones alike. Two research facets of this challenge that have received considerable …

Prith Banerjee discusses collaborating with universities, his startup experiences, and Hewlett-Packard Lab's approach to research and development.

Rapid advances in technology pose severe challenges to organizations that are dependent on their technology for day-to-day operations as well as strategic renewal. For example, one major challenge is the decision of which new …

In response to a growing body of electronic records legislation, the storage community has enhanced data stores to include privacy, auditability, and a "chain-of-custody" for data. There are currently over 4,000 federal, state …

Traditionally, radiology is a support department that provides imaging services to other hospital departments. In this conventional framework, the primary concerns of a radiology department were how to enhance the productivity …

User-Generated Content (UGC) IS A BURGEONING social phenomenon being watched in today's world with keen interest. UGC is an online new-media content created by users rather than by conventional media such as broadcasters. A typical …

Many organizations are successful with software reuse at fine to medium granularities — ranging from objects, subroutines, and components through software product lines. However, relatively little has been published on very large …

Organizations are becoming increasingly serious about the notion of "data as an asset" as they face increasing pressure for reporting a "single version of the truth." In a 2006 survey of 359 North American organizations that

The potential of current technologies in smart automation has been largely unexploited. Pervasive computing vision is still far from being achieved, especially with regard to Domotics and home applications. In fact, even though …

Consider a stream of events received during a limited period of time, such as applications on the Internet. One event needs to be randomly selected as a "winner." Due to physical …