Computer Science Series – serie

Traditionally, computer programming has been sequential in nature. There has been the need to write a program to follow an exact sequence of steps to attain the required result. As parallel computers become more common, and the operation of existing computers itself becomes more parallel, there is a need to have the ability to write parallel programs. This guide provides an introduction to one such parallel language, OCCAM 2, and aims to provide support for practical programming in concurrency. The text contains an overview of the operation of a transputer and its characteristic novel architecture, which illustrates many of the important features that the language uses to achieve parallelism. Several practical examples are developed throughout the text to illustrate a few of the applications suitable for parallel programming techniques. No previous experience of writing parallel programs is required by readers of this text, however a general knowledge of programming techniques is beneficial.

The COBOL language needs little introduction. Created over 30 years ago for batch data processing, COBOL has withstood major changes in hardware capabilities, new applications and new programming ideas. It remains the most widely used commercial application language with no successor. This book is concerned with language skills and language understanding rather than programming methodology. No mention is made of testing, and no attention given to the environment in which programs must be entered, or executed. It is assumed that a reader will be familiar with these matters.

This introduction to the SQL database manipulation language, based around the 1986 ANSI standard, uses DB2, dBASE IV SQL, Informix and Oracle as representatives of the range of over 50 SQL implementations.

A revised and updated edition of this student introductory textbook, it has new diagrams and illustrations, with updated hardware examples. A new concluding chapter on graphical user interfaces is added. There is also more emphasis on client-server systems.