Group items tagged

We consider the problem of specifying combinations of data structures with complex sharing in a manner that is both declarative and results in provably correct code. In our approach, abstract data types are specified using relational algebra and functional dependencies. We describe a language of decompositions that permit the user to specify different concrete representations for relations, and show that operations on concrete representations soundly implement their relational specification. It is easy to incorporate data representations synthesized by our compiler into existing systems, leading to code that is simpler, correct by construction, and comparable in performance to the code it replaces.

When Sven Groot was in town a while ago we dropped by Erik Meijer's world and got a look at what he and team have been and still are working on (thus there is no out-of-date property of this fun and insightful interview that is off-the-cuff as it gets: deep Channel 9 ). It's great that we were able to put a real live Niner into fire in one of Erik's team meetings. There is a great deal to learn here. Thank you, Sven, for being a real sport! Great stuff in here. Tune in!

Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques. Even better, flare features a modular design that lets developers create customized visualization techniques without having to reinvent the wheel. View the demos and sample applications to see a few of the visualizations that flare makes it easy to build. To begin making your own visualizations, download flare and work through the tutorial. You should also get familiar with the API documentation. Need more help? Visit the help forum (you'll need a SourceForge login to post). Flare is open-source software released under a BSD license, meaning it can be freely deployed and modified (and even sold for $$). Flare's design was adapted from its predecessor prefuse, a visualization toolkit for Java

Did you know you can use F# type providers to access thousands of statistical packages from R, with auto-complete and documentation? Those of you into data analysis will be aware of the use of the R system by statisticians and other data workers. The F# community and BlueMountain Capital have created a type provider for F#-R interop which embeds all installed R packages directly into F#, with intellisense.  See the  example below. 

In mathematics, computer science, and related subjects, an 'algorithm' is an effective method for solving a problem expressed as a finite sequence of instructions. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and many other fields. (In more advanced or abstract settings, the instructions do not necessarily constitute a finite sequence, or even a sequence; see, for example, "nondeterministic algorithm".) Each algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task. Starting from an initial state, the instructions describe a computation that proceeds through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate randomness. [source = Bing Reference]

When a data (typically a variable) can be accessed by several threads, you must synchronize the access to the data to ensure visibility and correctness.

OpenGL 3.1 introduced two new sources from where shaders can retrieve their data, namely uniform buffers and texture buffers. These can be used to accelerate rendering when heavy usage of application provided data happens like in case of skeletal animation, especially when combined with geometry instancing. However, even if the functionality is in the core specification for about a year now, there are few demos out there to show their usage, as so, there is a big confusion around when to use them and which one is more suitable for a particular use case. Both AMD and NVIDIA have updated their GPU programming guides to present the latest facilities provided by both OpenGL and DirectX, however I still see that people don’t really understand how they work and that prevents them from effectively taking advantage of these features. Once, at some online forum, I found somebody arguing why is this whole confusion introduced by the Khronos Group and why there is no general buffer type to use instead and the decision whether to use uniform or texture buffers should be a decision made by the driver. This particular post motivated me to write this article.

In this demo we showcase efforts in MSR to collaborate with external researchers to explore the application of new technologies, specifically Dryad and DryadLINQ, to big data research problems in science. We also highlight our efforts to provide software and services to academics across the world, through the release of Dryad and DryadLINQ free of charge to the research community, along with associated programming guides, user documentation, and code libraries. Dryad is a general-purpose distributed computing engine, more flexible than MapReduce or Hadoop!, that was designed to simplify the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of Windows computers. DryadLINQ is an abstraction layer which simplifies the process of implementing Dryad-based applications. Microsoft Research is acutely aware of the ubiquity of big data and the challenges this presents. We are offering researchers the tools, resources and collaboration to explore this new area.

Introducing Functional Programming Server-Side Functional Programming Developing Client-Side Applications Numerical Computing Working with Data Visualizing Data with .NET Charts

I happened to write this code sometime back that took Excel data and converted it to specific xml format. It was a simple Linq statement and here is the code

Today sees the launch of Visual Studio 2010, at five launch events around the world, as announced by Bob Muglia, Jason Zander and S. Somasegar, and presented live today in Las Vegas.   Visual Studio 2010 includes the official version 2.0 of the F# language. As is our custom on the F# team, we also release a matching MSI and ZIP of F# 2.0 (for use with Visual Studio 2008 and as a standalone compiler on a range of platforms)   Today represents the culmination of 7 years of work on the language at Microsoft Research, and, more recently, the Microsoft Developer Division. I am immensely proud of what we’ve achieved. F# brings a productive functional and object-oriented programming language to .NET, extending the platform to new audiences in technical, algorithmic, data-rich, parallel and explorative domains, and its inclusion in Visual Studio 2010 represents a huge milestone for the language.   To help understand what we’re doing with F#, I’ve listed some of the common questions people have about the language below.  We thank everyone who has been involved in the production of F#, especially the many users who have given us feedback on the language!

CHESS is a tool for disciplined testing of concurrent programs. CHESS requires users to develop concise concurrent tests for that explore one concurrency scenario—or a few scenarios—in their programs. Given such a test, CHESS systematically enumerates all behaviors of the program being tested to find concurrency errors, data races, deadlocks, and livelocks.

F# is ideal for data-rich, concurrent and algorithmic development: "simple code to solve complex problems". F# is a simple and pragmatic programming language combining functional, object-oriented and scripting programming, and supports cross-platform environments including PC, Mac, and Linux. We'll provide the tutorials, resources and tools you’ll need to begin working with F# right away.