Dyalog User Conference 2007 - Conference Program

This version was revised on Monday September 24th. Last-minute changes are still possible.

Training Courses

Sunday September 30th

Unless last-minute registrations change the picture, it is likely that the courses on Office Automation and the Introduction to Rain / SharpPlot and NewLeaf will only run on Wednesday October 3rd. The expected schedule for Sunday is therefore:

Program - Monday October 1st

Program - Tuesday October 2nd

Wednesday October 3rd

At present, all courses are expected to run on Wednesday October 3rd:

Kdb+ and Dyalog Workshop: Tuesday October 2nd

On Tuesday October 2nd, from 13:30 to 17:00, Stephen Taylor, Jeffry Borror and Adrian Smith will be presenting a workshop on using Dyalog as a front-end for the development of GUI and reporting applications on top of data hosted, analyzed and extracted from kdb+. Preceding the workshop will be two presentations:

(1) Simon Garland, kx (Switzerland): 2+2=22 (for some values of 2)

Simon Garland discusses some of the areas where APL and kdb+ complement each other - and the benefits of staying within a similar mindset when forced to go beyond a single language solution to complex problems.

(2) Morten Kromberg: A Fast, Vector-Based FrontEnd for kdb+

Following on from Simon Garlands talk, Morten will demonstrate how Dyalog can be used to put a graphical front end on kdb+ - and how Dyalog applications can use kdb+ as a fast database system.

Dyalog Presentations

(3) John Daintree: New Features of the Dyalog Development Environment

In addition to Unicode, version 11.1 delivers a number of enhancements to the IDE to support development of classes and the use of Microsoft.Net components. John will be our guide to the new functionality in 11.1 and a few useful features from other recent releases.

(4) Morten Kromberg: Introduction to Unicode

The defining feature of Dyalog Version 11.1 is support for Unicode character data. Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the world's writing systems. It assigns a number, or code point, to each of approximately 100,000 characters, including the APL character set.

This presentation will demonstrate the new features which have been introduced in order to support Unicode, and discuss the benefits that Unicode provides. Morten will discuss the most significant issues that will arise during conversion of existing Dyalog applications to Unicode, and introduce some issues that developers of Unicode applications must confront.

(5) Daniel Baronet: SALT, Subversion and the Dyalog Code Library

The Simple APL Library Toolkit (SALT) is a mechanism for storing Namespaces and Classes as text files, rather than using internal binary formats. Dyalog is planning to use SALT as the delivery mechanism for code libraries. Dan will should how SALT can be used together with an industry standard source code management system, and launch a web-based "open source" code repository that everyone is invited to contribute to.

(6) Stephen Taylor: Ultralight Web Development

Stephen will show how Dyalog can be used to implement static and dynamic web pages using techniques which any Dyalog user can master. No heavy machinery involved.

(7) Morten Kromberg: New Tools for Distributed Applications

The Dyalog Remote Communicator, also known as Congo, is a new tool for enabling the easy construction of client/server and peer-to-peer applications, which will be delivered as part of version 11.1. Congo supports Secure Sockets and makes it straightforward for Dyalog users to implement web client and server programs, and "remote procedure call" mechanisms.

Morten will also review the status of the Dyalog File Acceleration Server, a new product which is targeted for availability in 2008. The FAS aims to provide a faster, more robust file system for large applications where many users are sharing files across heavily loaded corporate networks. The FAS will also provide statistics, instrumentation and backup capabilities which are not available from the existing file system.

(8) Geoff Streeter: Keyboards in the New World

With version 11.1 and Unicode support, Dyalog will no longer use special input and output translation mechanisms, but join the rest of the world in accepting Unicode input from standard "Input Mode Editors" and "x keyboards" defined using standard operating system mechanisms. Geoff will review the platforms on which our products are available, and discuss mechanisms for defining keyboards in each environment.

(9) Nicolas Delcros and John Scholes: Version 11.1 Performance Enhancements

In addition to Unicode support, we have taken time out to review the performance of several key primitive functions and other internal mechanisms. Nic and John will present some of the results of this work and invite you to argue for future improvements that you would like to see.

(10) John Scholes: An Investigation into Higher Level Operators

John will take us on a tour of hyper-operators and other exotic constructs that he has been looking into recently.

Customer and Partner Presentations

(11) Michael Baas, Dynamic Logistics Systems (Germany) and
John Miller, HologramBI (Australi): Networking for APLers

During Dyalog 2005 in Elsinore, John Miller presented his Business Intelligence System "Hologram", and Michael Baas was in the audience. This talk will tell the story of how they subsequently got together, which benefits they have derived from their co-operation, and how Hologram was able to add (another) world-famous customer-logo to their reference-list. The presenters would like to encourage fellow APLers to get together and explore similar opportunities for partnerships.

(12) Alex Balako, CheckFree Investment Services (USA)

Exploring Microsoft DirectX interface with Dyalog APL 11.0
DirectX is a set of low-level application programming interfaces (APIs) for creating games and other high-performance multimedia applications. Since version 9, it supports .NET interface. The presentation explores resources of Managed DirectX using features of Dyalog APL version 11.0. Several examples will demonstrate building of simple multimedia player, creating image viewer and Virtual Reality player, demonstrating operations with 3D objects and special effects.

(13) Roger Kumler, CommSoft (USA):
Script Driven Data Exchange between Incompatible Systems

The hardware components of the telephone industry: order and billing systems, switches, cable TV head-ends, voice mail systems and so on, were never designed to talk to each other. For the last 15 years, two APL applications have made it possible for telephone companies to automate the interaction between an order system and all of the external devices that must be updated to fulfill a customer's order. User-defined scripts, interpreted by APL programs drive the entire process and accommodate complex relationships between the devices.

(14) Phil Last (UK): Vindaloo

Computer language research uses the term currying to refer to the composition of functions with arguments. Phil will present some conjectural extensions to APL involving powerful curry mixtures.

Eric Lescasse, Lescasse Consulting (France)
Porting your Dyalog APL application to the Internet.

This paper discusses the advantages of, and provides a recipe for using Microsoft.Net and C# to transform Dyalog applications into "rich client applications" making use of the Windows GUI, packaged in such a way that they can be launched with a single click and run from within a browser by anyone having an internet connection. The resulting applications load and start on client computers without installing any local files, and access Dyalog code and data on a server.

Unfortunately, Eric is unable to attend the conference - but his paper will distributed at the conference, and we invite you to read and discuss with Dyalog and other conference participants. John Daintree will discuss Eric's proposal at the .Net Masterclass.

(15) Steven W. Levine, ExxonMobil (USA)
Compositional Modeling in the Petroleum Industry with APL.

Dyalog APL is an enabling tool in the detailed modeling of petroleum refinery chemistry and processing.  Traditionally, this type of modeling is very difficult due to the complex nature of petroleum.  APL helps to manage the complexity and frees the modeler to spend time addressing the science instead of writing code.  Dyalog APL is also used to easily deliver the models as desktop applications to users,  who in turn use them to make money for the company.  This talk is an overview of our modeling effort, with periodic forays into APL which demonstrate its fit for use.

(16) John Miller, HologramBI (Australia) & Adrian Smith, APL-385 (UK):
Dealing Room Pricing in Pure Managed Code, Driven by APL, Presented in Excel

Pricing and analytics for the capital markets at SocGen (Australia) are created in Dyalog, translated to C# and delivered to the users in Excel thanks to the Stocastics managed XLL interface. This allowed a large base of tested APL work to be delivered as pure managed code in accordance with the latest company guidelines. New routines can be efficiently coded, translated and delivered very productively - this will be demonstrated during the presentation.

(17) Alexey Miroshnikov, Infostroy (Russia): Modern APL Application Design

Any software project is a compromise between marketing goals, requirements of existing customers, available resources (individuals and teams), and the choice of new versus tried and tested technologies.
Without claiming to be particularly original, Alexey will present his ideas on pragmatic software design and management based on his experience with the design and development of a portfolio management system GamaGlobal that is under development at InfoStroy in St.Petersburg, Russia.

(18) Risto Saikko, Techila Oy (Finland): Grid Computing with Dyalog

Over 95% of the PC power available in most companies is wasted; between mouse-clicks, keystrokes and spikes of application activity, the average PC sits idle. Techila Oy are a Finnish company who provide technology which can harness unused CPU cycles to create an aggregate computational resource known as a PC grid. Risto Saikko will explain the steps required to "gridify" a Dyalog application and explain how and when you can benefit from PC grid technology.

(19) Lars Villadsen, SimCorp (Denmark): Version Control 101

The software configuration management team of SimCorp Dimension holds up till 16 different versions of the product.  The major challenge is to ensure that every single piece of the system is known and controlled. Following up on Lars' high-level presentation at Dyalog'06, this session is a more technical discussion of the actual implementation of tools and the utilities used to keep this environment running smoothly.

(20) Lars Villadsen, SimCorp (Denmark): Types in APL

One of the major advantages of APL is the lack of types - it is also one the major weaknesses. At SimCorp, we have implemented our own type system (and syntax) that runs in development mode of our system. The session will give an introduction to our type interface and the use in our system by showing examples of the types. The session will also show how these types are used for signature comparisons and validation of code used before any code can be committed to our version control system.