No abstract

The performance of several Fourth Generation Language (4GL) tools is analyzed empirically and compared with equivalent programs written in the third generation COBOL programming language. A set of performance benchmarks consisting of thirteen separate functions is presented which encompasses the areas of simulating the operators of the relational algebra, accessing records in the database, and updating the database. This serves as a baseline for comparing the various 4GL systems.

CPU processing speed is rapidly increasing on PCs, resulting in a widening gap between disk access and CPU speed. The performance of three common disk caching systems are examined in an effort to determine a technique for reducing the gap. RAM Disk DOS 3.3 provides a device driver named VDISK that allows some of the memory to be used as a simulated disk drive. While this kind of RAM disk has several operational disadvantages, it is a useful comparison tool since VDISK implements a zero-wait disk with no seek 246

The comparative performance characteristics of COBOL programs in a small versus large computer systems are investigated. The vehicle consists of a set of synthetic benchmark COBOL programs, each measuring a particular aspect of COBOL computations, data manipulation, and inputloutput is made on both a large scale computer (IBM370/158) and a minicomputer (Texas Instruments TI980). Results of a number of such experiments are presented and comparisons made between results obtained from the two systems.

In many disciplines, the introductory courses are well standardized as to what should be covered, how the subject is to be taught, and how student's performance is to be measured. Such is certainly not the case in Computer Science, where we constantly debate what should be taught, what programming language is to be used, the nature of assignments to be given, etc. We wanted to see how other schools were teaching this first course, so we sent questionnaires to all the Universities listed in the ACM Graduate Assistantship Directory. From the 44 schools responding to the survey, we want to share some interesting facts concerning the manner in which Computer Science is taught.