IT Services pioneer F.C. Kohli joins the Board of The Else Institute

Author: Sudarshan Murthy

I am pleased to announce the appointment of F.C. Kohli to the Board of Directors of The Else Institute. Made at the institute's recently-concluded annual board meeting, this appointment enhances the institute's influence world-wide, particularly in the IT services sector.

I first met Mr. Kohli a few years ago when I attended a meeting of the board of India's Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) program: He was the board chair; I was a newbie member. Frankly, before that meeting, I had wondered if much of what I had heard about Mr. Kohli's accomplishments could be true. I had especially wondered how one person could have accomplished so much in one lifetime. Well, seeing Mr. Kohli in action in that meeting clarified it all for me: If there is anyone that could accomplish a lot, it had to be Mr. Kohli.

Database-research pioneer Len Shapiro joins The Else Institute

Author: Sudarshan Murthy

I am pleased to announce that Prof. Leonard Shapiro (Len) has joined The Else Institute as the Principal Researcher in Information Management. This addition increases the institute's research depth, enhances its influence, and makes available a great resource to the institute's researchers and to its beneficiaries.

I have known Len for over 10 years now: We were both affiliated with the Data Intensive Systems Center and Portland State University. We have discussed many database research topics at Database Reading Group meetings: first at the Oregon Graduate Institute; then at Portland State University.

Len is an accomplished researcher, an excellent teacher, and a successful industry consultant. He invented the Hybrid Hash Join algorithm used in modern relational database management systems. And, two of his publications are among the most-cited articles in database research.

On behalf of the staff, volunteers, donors, and friends of the institute, I extend a warm welcome to Len. I look forward to working with him on exciting research projects and also to reading his posts on the institute's blog.

Tweet-sized code #2

Author: Sudarshan Murthy


#include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("Goodbye Ritchie.\n"); }

And, thanks for Unix, C, and many other things computational.

Tweet-sized code #1

Author: Sudarshan Murthy


NODE* c=first;while(c?strcmp(c->val,s):0)c=c->next;return c;

1. What does this C fragment do?

2. Ignoring the lengths of variable names and type names, can this segment be any shorter? How, or, why not?

3. As shown, the fragment has a variable declaration, a loop with one statement in its body, and a return statement outside the loop. Is it possible to rewrite the segment to contain just a loop? It is OK if the variable declaration and the return statement are made part of the loop, but the loop body should be empty. It is also OK if the code gets slightly (but not significantly) longer. If it can be done, how? If it cannot be done, why not?

My take in another week or so. I rate these questions Easy.

Bring Tellico to this decade

Author: Sudarshan Murthy


I recently learned about Tellico, an application to catalog pretty much any collection. It includes templates to record details of books, audios, videos, stamps, coins, and other common kinds of collections and it can connect to many popular data sources such as Amazon, IMDB, and PubMed. Tellico is released under GPL.

To me, the best part of Tellico is its committed author, Robby Stephenson: He has actively maintained Tellico since its inception in 2002. And, he even lists alternatives to Tellico right on the Tellico page. Kudos Robby.

I can't comment on Tellico's usability (because I haven't used it enough), but judging by the screenshots, I see it can be quite useful in managing household collections. For example, my wife should be able to use Tellico instead of the MS Excel workbook she currently uses to catalog and track our household items. (Before you ask, my designated role at home is to move items around such that the catalog becomes unreliable.)

But, Tellico's age shows, and here is how.