mwang@watmath.UUCP (mwang) (02/07/84)
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- Thursday, February 16, 1984.
Dr. J.S. Devitt of The University of Lethbridge will
speak on ``SIS - A Scientific Information Management
System.''
TIME: 3:30 PM
ROOM: MC 6091A
ABSTRACT
A Number of information systems exit which deal with
scientific information. Typically, such systems deal
only with numeric information in the form of tables or
graphs. Scientific formulas, if dealt with at all, are
treated as text. This permits storage and retrieval of
symbolic data but no interactive manipulation.
In the course of problem solving, a researcher or en-
gineer must combine these activities. Information
relevant to his problem must be retrieved from a hand-
book, textbook or data base. This information must
then be manipulated or combined with other information,
often using numeric or symbolic techniques. This pro-
cess may be iterated several times. The resulting data
might in turn be used as input parameters to various
programs or subroutines.
Scientific Information System (SIS) is a software sys-
tem which combines the facilities of data base manage-
ment systems with with those of symbolic computation.
The user interface is similar to that of Query by Exam-
ple and may also be used to invoke subroutines from li-
braries interactively.
This talk will describe the data model being used, and
in particular how the relational data base model has
been modified to accommodate symbolic formulae. A pro-
totype which relies heavily on the symbolic language
Maple, for both the symbolic manipulation and data base
operations, will also be described.
February 7, 1984
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February 7, 1984