Dyalog ’06

The presenters have been redeveloping this summer in Dyalog 11.0 a long-serving application originally developed on a mainframe and subsequently ported to PCs. The redevelopment goals are:

• to reduce code volume by one order of magnitude
• to encode simplifying abstractions not visible to the original designers
• a layered architecture, including an executable domain object model underlying batch-processing scripts, a GUI and automated test suites
• a formal source-code management
• GUI implementation to allow cheap deployment to ASP.NET encode data as XML files
• to produce high-quality documents as PDFs, or editable documents in the OpenOffice and Office 2003-2007 XML formats

In 1993, we started to design a new kind of personal information management system (PIMS) using the "semantic networks" concept borrowed from Artificial Intelligence. It has been sold to customers for Market Intelligence, Patents Analysis, and Knowledge Management. By 2000, it was transformed into a multi-user HTTP server, allowing for cooperative information and knowledge processing directly by end-users. Now it is a Thales product, and is used by several Military Intelligence Units.

We will explain how and why we chose Dyalog APL in 1993, and why it is still the case today. We will share our main design decisions and we will outline potential evolutions. Some suggestions will be made about the algorithmic needs for symbolic/networked information processing.

Complex products like cars and trucks are preferably described as configurations rather than as a limited list of products. The products are almost endless in the possibility to create different variants. The large number of markets, the speed at which the offer changes, the extensive use of design features and the increase in electronic and software equipment all contribute to the complexity. The intense competition also increases the trend towards specific offers to the customers. This information is used for a lot of purposes in an automotive company. Keeping this information updated is a difficult and heavy task.

Working for Volvo Cars and Volvo trucks we describe offer of vehicles and how it varies in time. This is done using complex nested arrays where the possible combinations are described as well as technical restrictions. This array information is then published in a server offering web services to other applications, for example, verification of a car order.

Currently we develop our own tools in this area with our own description method. The C-grid tool is used to update and maintain configuration data. One of the specific functions is that we directly verify the complete set of rules as they are updated.

The C-master tool publishes this information and provides services to be used for planning, sales configuration, ordering, pricing, technical information etc.

I will describe some of the Dyalog APL technology used for configuration handling as well as the use at the customer. I will also give demonstrations of our products.

The positioning of the APL symbols on the physical key tops has been a progression of historical accidents, which has left us with a layout that is far from mnemonic for new users. The default layouts supplied by APL2000 and Dyalog cannot be used in other applications (such as Word or Outlook) because of conflicting demands on either the Alt or Ctrl keys.

This talk suggests a radical rethink along the lines proposed by Adin Falkoff in 1989, but taking account of modern Windows conventions and internationalisation issues. Drivers are available for both Dyalog APL and Windows applications in general.

Over the years I have been working in large organisations where everyone dances to the tune of "Strategic Direction" and that old classic "IT Infrastructure". Trying to persuade anyone in such companies to adopt something a little different is like pushing water uphill with chopsticks – difficult and often futile. The benefits to the corporation, the contractor and to APL in getting up that hill can be, and often are, huge.

In the first part of this presentation I will discuss of how we have succeeded in climbing that hill and the methods that have served us so well. OK, this is a very high hill, and we are not at the top yet, but now some managers are giving us buckets to carry the water even if others just provide new chopsticks.

During the second part of this presentation I will open the discussion out to the floor and hopefully explore some of the experiences of others.

By the end I hope that we will have had an informative and light-hearted discussion of issues surrounding the adoption of APL systems together with a few new ideas to take home.

The Shopping Cart for IT Services is a central Procurement Tool used and developed at DATEV Corp. It is implemented using Dyalog APL as a Web Application based on IIS 5.0, storing its data on SQL Server. Special emphasis has been placed on high reliability, fully integrated interfaces and automated business workflow.

The presentation will discuss implementation details, the business workflow and steps for stability and quality assurance. It will also examine the use of error trapping with APL as an interpreter language.

HARRYVectorServer is a dedicated datamart for data analysis allowing exceptional performances on data analysis and extraction. Designed with Dyalog, it allows numerous users – simultaneously – to access huge amounts of data residing on Windows, UNIX and Linux, for business intelligence purposes.

Through the HARRYSuite it provides end-users real autonomy to conduct their own studies or manage their measures. It also provides a very fast and sophisticated WEB application design facility to deliver interactive BPM functions or Dashboards to any users through your Intranet or extranet. Paul will show a live demo during the presentation.

Vista brings new tools and new challenges. RainPro becomes SharpPlot and targets XAML instead of VML and SVG. NewLeaf gets compiled (speed, speed, speed) and does PDF font sub-setting and lots of new formatting tricks. Soon it will do XDOC and XPS which embed XAML charts in zipped XML documents. This talk is a good place to start finding out what tools you may need for graphics and reporting, and how to integrate them into your Dyalog 11 environment.

Do we live in a space of more than 3 or 4 dimensions? Physicists are currently searching for super symmetric particles – sparticles such as squarks and leptons – whose existence could confirm that we live in a 10 or 11 dimensional universe. We exemplify our new multi-dimensional database system, written entirely in Dyalog APL, with simple superspace models as well as with more comprehensible ubiquitous multi-dimensional business applications. You may think of it as 'APL with labels'. An array is seen as a thoroughly labelled slice of a multi-dimensional database (or 'volume') and programs are operations on and between arrays. With this system, it is easy to manipulate very large multi-dimensional labelled volumes with unique colour-coded programs in order to produce arbitrary rectangular views and unique multi-dimensional graphical representations. The system can cope with data far more voluminous than the workspace size and giant-sized programming becomes simple.

Most APL users have heard of k, but very few have come into contact with it. Simon will talk about the history of k and give examples of how and where people use it to handle very large data volumes.

k (and more recently q) will be immediately familiar to APL users and yet on closer inspection there are interesting differences – we'll look at some of those and the reasons why some un-APL-like choices were made.

Richard will discuss some of the new features being developed for APLX Version 4. Included in the presentation will be the first public showing of MicroAPL's language extensions for easy access to the .NET languages and to fashionable object-oriented scripting languages such as Ruby.

Integrated with Visual Studio, Visual APL puts a session into Visual Studio, so exploring .NET is now as easy as using your APL session. Of course, Visual APL is also a first class .NET language which creates CLS compliant assemblies and makes use of no unsafe code. Whether it is taking advantage of the Forms Designer, WebProject Designer, ClickOnce deployment or a host of other designers and features in Visual Studio, or simply writing traditional APL code, Visual APL moves APL into the future, ready for Vista, Avalon, 64-bit and all of the new technologies Microsoft is releasing this year. Visual APL is also cross-platform compatible, so taking advantage of a new Macintosh or Linux machine for development or deployment is now a reality.