After completing this self-contained course on server-based Internet applications software, students who start with only the knowledge of how to write and debug a computer program will have learned how to build web-based applications on the scale of Amazon.com. Unlike the desktop applications that most students have already learned to build, server-based applications have multiple simultaneous users. This fact, coupled with the unreliability of networks, gives rise to the problems of concurrency and transactions, which students learn to manage by using the relational database system.
Computing remains a heavily male-dominated field even after twenty-five years of extensive efforts to promote female participation. The contributors to Women and Information Technology look at reasons for the persistent gender imbalance in computing and explore some strategies intended to reverse the downward trend. The studies included are rigorous social science investigations; they rely on empirical evidence—not rhetoric, hunches, folk wisdom, or off-the-cuff speculation about supposed innate differences between men and women.
Recent advances in biotechnology, spurred by the Human Genome Project, have resulted in the accumulation of vast amounts of new data. Ontologies—computer-readable, precise formulations of concepts (and the relationship among them) in a given field—are a critical framework for coping with the exponential growth of valuable biological data generated by high-output technologies.
Much of the business transacted on the Web today takes place through information exchanges made possible by using documents as interfaces. For example, what seems to be a simple purchase from an online bookstore actually involves at least three different business collaborations—between the customer and the online catalog to select a book; between the bookstore and a credit card authorization service to verify and charge the customer's account; and between the bookstore and the delivery service with instructions for picking up and delivering the book to the customer.
The Text REtrieval Conference (TREC), a yearly workshop hosted by the US government's National Institute of Standards and Technology, provides the infrastructure necessary for large-scale evaluation of text retrieval methodologies. With the goal of accelerating research in this area, TREC created the first large test collections of full-text documents and standardized retrieval evaluation. The impact has been significant; since TREC's beginning in 1992, retrieval effectiveness has approximately doubled.
The American economy has experienced renewed growth since 1995, with this surge rooted in the development and deployment of information technology (IT). This book traces the American growth resurgence to its sources within individual industries, documents the critical role of IT, and shows how U.S. investment in IT has important parallels in other developed countries.
Innovators across all sectors of society are using information and communication technology to reshape economic and social activity. Even after the boom—and despite the bust—the process of structural change continues across organizational boundaries. Transforming Enterprise considers the implications of this change from a balanced, post-bust perspective.
The goal of participatory IT design is to set sensible, general, and workable guidelines for the introduction of new information technology systems into an organization. Reflecting the latest systems-development research, this book encourages a business-oriented and socially sensitive approach that takes into consideration the specific organizational context as well as first-hand knowledge of users' work practices and allows all stakeholders—users, management, and staff—to participate in the process.
Much of the discussion about new technologies and social equality has focused on the oversimplified notion of a "digital divide." Technology and Social Inclusion moves beyond the limited view of haves and have-nots to analyze the different forms of access to information and communication technologies. Drawing on theory from political science, economics, sociology, psychology, communications, education, and linguistics, the book examines the ways in which differing access to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion.
As our social institutions migrate into cyberspace, the digitally disenfranchised face increasing hardships. What happens when—in search of quick and cheap fixes—a government office shuts down and is replaced by a public Web site? What happens when a company accepts only online job applications? Inevitably, those most in need of the services and opportunities offered are further marginalized.
