October 1998 -- Real-Time Computing


FEATURES

JAVA GARBAGE COLLECTION FOR REAL-TIME SYSTEMS

by Alexandre Petit-Bianco

The software specifications and hardware constraints of real-time systems result in unique problems when it comes to garbage collection. Alexandre examines the issues involved in choosing a garbage-collection scheme for real-time systems, then describes the garbage collector used by Kaffe, a freely available Java virtual machine.

DEVICE DRIVERS & REAL-TIME SYSTEMS

by Robert Krten

Robert examines two radically different device drivers and their implementation under QNX Software's QNX 4 real-time operating system.

A REAL-TIME WEATHER STATION

by Richard M. Smith

Need to know which way the wind blows? Richard describes a real-time, web-based weather station located on the roof of his company offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

REAL-TIME SOUND PROCESSING

by Randall Cook

Conceptually, real-time audio processing is simple. In practice, however, it is anything but easy. Randall discusses the issues involved in real-time sound processing and how to encapsulate operating system differences behind a cross-platform layer.

THE BENCH++ BENCHMARK SUITE

by Joseph M. Orost

Bench++ is a benchmark suite designed to measure the performance of code generated by C++ compilers. Bench++ 1.0 consists of more than 17,000 C++ source lines and contains more than 120 tests.

WINDOWS CE DEVICE DRIVER DEVELOPMENT, PART I

by James Y. Wilson

In this first installment of a two-part series, Jim provides a crash course in Windows CE device-driver development, by describing what you need to get started in CE driver development.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

FORTH AND REAL-TIME CONTROL

by William M. Stein

William describes an intelligent Forth-based controller that utilizes New Micros' Forth implementation running on a Motorola MC68HC11-based system.

INTERNET PROGRAMMING

THE WEB REPORT DATABASE REPORTING TOOL

by Lauren Hightower

The Web Report lets you connect users to ODBC-compliant databases, then lets them create ad hoc queries and reports using the Web as the query-building interface. Lauren knits The Web Report together by using Active Server Pages, JavaScript, and DHTML.

PROGRAMMER'S TOOLCHEST

EXAMINING THE MICROSOFT HTML HELP TOOLKIT

by Keith Bugg

Keith uses Microsoft's HTML Help 1.1 toolkit to develop an application that illustrates one approach to building HTML-based help files. Also, Max Fomitchev discusses HTML Help in distributed environments.

VISUAL BASIC 6 FILESYSTEM OBJECTS

by Paul Lomax

Among the enhancements to Microsoft's Visual Basic 6 is the extended File-System Object Model, which is made available to you via the Scripting Runtime Library.

COLUMNS

PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS

by Michael Swaine

This month, Michael praises various underdogs, including a couple of "little" operating systems, a new magazine, a new web site, and a new book.

C PROGRAMMING

by Al Stevens

Al reports on his trip to Kuala Lumpur and keeps up to date on the C++ namespace goings on.

JAVA Q&A

by Mike Criscolo

In examining queuing techniques in Java, Mike presents one approach to multithreading he has implemented, and examines the differences between centralized- and distributed-queuing models.

ALGORITHM ALLEY

by Steven Pigeon and Yoshua Bengio

Although simple and often effective, Huffman's compression algorithm requires a lot of memory for 16-bit Unicode text files, and it doesn't adapt to varying conditions within the data. Steven and Yoshua explain how they updated Huffman's classic technique.

DR. ECCO'S OMNIHEURIST CORNER

by Dennis E. Shasha

Lives are at stake as Dr. Ecco and Liane are faced with the challenge of re-Balkanizing the Balkans by redrawing the maps.

PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF

by Sean McGrath

Tcl and Python are Sean McGrath's focus as he examines Effective Tcl/Tk Programming, by Mark Harrison and Michael J. McLennan, and Internet Programming with Python, by Aaron Watters, Guido van Rossum, and James C. Ahlstrom.

FORUM

EDITORIAL

by Jonathan Erickson

LETTERS

by you

NEWS & VIEWS

by the DDJ staff

OF INTEREST

by Eugene Eric Kim

SWAINE'S FLAMES

by Michael Swaine


Copyright © 1998, Dr. Dobb's Journal