Database reverse engineering: From requirements to CARE tools

This paper analyzes the requirements that CASE tools should meet for effective database reverse engineering (DBRE), and proposes a general architecture for data-centered applications reverse engineering CASE environments. First, the paper describes a generic DBMS-independent DBRE methodology, then it analyzes the main characteristics of DBRE activities in order to collect a set of desirable requirements. Finally, it describes DB-MAIN, an operational CASE tool developed according to these requirements. The main features of this tool that are described in this paper are its unique generic specification model, its repository, its transformation toolkit, its user interface, the text processors, the assistants, the methodological control and its functional extensibility. Finally, the paper describes five real-world projects in which the methodology and the CASE tool were applied. This is a heavily revised and extended version of “Requirements for Information System Reverse Engineering Support” by J.-L. Hainaut, V. Englebert, J. Henrard, J.-M. Hick, D. Roland, which first appeared in the Proceedings of the Second Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 136–145, July 1995. This paper presents some results of the DB-MAIN project. This project is partially supported by the Région Wallonne, the European Union, and by a consortium comprising ACEC-OSI (Be), ARIANE-II (Be), Banque UCL (Lux), BBL (Be), Centre de recherche public H. Tudor (Lux), CGER (Be), Cockerill-Sambre (Be), CONCIS (Fr), D'Ieteren (Be), DIGITAL, EDF (Fr), EPFL (CH), Groupe S (Be), IBM, OBLOG Software (Port), ORIGIN (Be), Ville de Namur (Be), Winterthur (Be), 3 Suisses (Be). The DB-Process subproject is supported by the Communauté Fran?aise de Belgique.     

Kinetics of benzonitrile nitration with mixed acid under homogeneous conditions

Chemical kinetics of benzonitrile nitration with mixed acid is investigated in the temperature range 283–299 K. Pseudo-first-order rate constants are evaluated by means of rate experiments on homogeneous reacting mixtures having large stoichiometric excesses of nitric acid. The second-order kinetic constants for nitronium ion attack to the aromatic substrate are derived on the basis of the assessed nitration mechanism. An activation energy of 604 ± 37 kJ mol^?1 is calculated for this reaction step. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Essential self-adjointness of operators associated with the Cauchy problem for the wave equation

A sufficient Hartman-Ismagilov type condition for the essential self-adjointness of a one-parameter family of unbounded operators that arise in the solution of a Cauchy problem for the wave equation is established. An analog of this result is stated for unbounded integral operators.Translated from Ukrainskii Matematicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 44, No. 7, pp. 940–948, July, 1992.     

Gibbs random fields invariant under infinite-particle Hamiltonian dinamics

The Liouville operator for an infinite-particle Hamiltonian dynamics corresponding to interaction potentialU is used to introduce the concept of a locally weakly invariant measure on the phase space and to show that if a Gibbs measure with potential of general form is locally weakly invariant then its Hamiltonian is asymptotically an additive integral of the motion of the particles with the interactionU.Moscow State University. Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 90, No. 3, pp. 424–459, March, 1992.     

Solar probe: a rendezvous with the Sun

Summary A study has been promoted by NASA to evaluate the scientific return and the technological problems of a close-to-the-Sun mission (Solar Probe). It has come out that using current technology it is possible to deliver at 4 solar radii from the Sun's centre a scientific payload with such performances to allow a great improvement of our understanding of the coronal phenomena. The mission concept currently under study uses planetary encounters to reach the required orbit. The final orbit period is 2.5 years, the estimated mission duration about 9 years. The orbit inclination is such as to give the maximum coverage in terms of heliographic latitude. During the perihelion phases a conical structure shields the spacecraft from the intense solar radiation. Paper presented at the V Cosmic Physics National Conference, S. Miniato, November 27–30, 1990.     

The star chromatic number of a graph

We study a generalization of the notion of the chromatic number of a graph in which the colors assigned to adjacent vertices are required to be, in a certain sense, far apart. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.