Classical (unbounded) genericity in 03 defines the interactions between generic data types and algorithms in terms of concepts. Concepts define the requirements over a type (or a parameter) by expressing constraints on its methods and dependent types (typedefs). The upcoming 0x standard will promote concepts from abstract entities (not directly enforced by the tools) to language constructs, enabling compilers and tools to perform additional checks on generic constructs as well as enabling new features (e.g., concept-based overloading). Most modern languages support this notion of signature on generic types. However, generic types built on other types and relying on concepts to both ensure type conformance and drive code specialization, restrain the interface and the implementation of the newly created type: specific methods and associated types not mentioned in the concept will not be part of the new type. The paradigm of concept-based genericity lacks the required semantics to transform types while retaining or adapting their intrinsic capabilities. We present a new form of semantically-enriched genericity allowing static generic type transformations through a simple form of type introspection based on type metadata called properties. This approach relies on a new Static Object-Oriented Programming (SCOOP) paradigm, and is adapted to the creation of generic and efficient libraries, especially in the field of scientific computing. Our proposal uses a metaprogramming facility built into a library called Static, and doesn’t require any language extension nor additional processing (preprocessor, transformation tool).

Since the end of the last century, the Internet has shown that it is a different media, a media of citizen journalists. This paper surveys e-democratic tools used at the local level in France in order to see how the Internet can change our democracy and people’s participation. It describes the official tools provided by municipalities and administrations as well as citizens’ tools, like blogs, which become more and more important in today’s democratic debate. It analyses how they help for more transparency, accountability and participation, which might lead to define new democratic rules.

Compiler construction is a widely used software engineering exercise, but because most students will not be compiler writers, care must be taken to make it relevant in a core curriculum. Auxiliary tools, such as generators and interpreters, often hinder the learning: students have to fight tool idiosyncrasies, mysterious errors, and other poorly educative issues. We introduce a set of tools especially designed or improved for compiler construction educative projects in . We also provide suggestions about new approaches to compiler construction. We draw guidelines from our experience to make tools suitable for education purposes.

Shared decision diagram representations of a state-space have been shown to provide efficient solutions for model-checking of large systems. However, decision diagram manipulation is tricky, as the construction procedure is liable to produce intractable intermediate structures (a.k.a peak effect). The definition of the so-called saturation method has empirically been shown to mostly avoid this peak effect, and allows verification of much larger systems. However, applying this algorithm currently requires deep knowledge of the decision diagram data-structures, of the model or formalism manipulated, and a level of interaction that is not offered by the API of public DD packages. Hierarchical Set Decision Diagrams (SDD) are decision diagrams in which arcs of the structure are labeled with sets, themselves stored as SDD. This data structure offers an elegant and very efficient way of encoding structured specifications using decision diagram technology. It also offers, through the concept of inductive homomorphisms, unprecedented freedom to the user when defining the transition relation. Finally, with very limited user input, the SDD library is able to optimize evaluation of a transition relation to produce a saturation effect at runtime. We further show that using recursive folding, SDD are able to offer solutions in logarithmic complexity with respect to other DD. We conclude with some performances on well known examples.

Implementing binary methods in traditional object-oriented languages is difficult: numerous problems arise regarding the relationship between types and classes in the context of inheritance, or the need for privileged access to the internal representation of objects. Most of these problems occur in the context of statically typed languages that lack multi-methods (polymorphism on multiple arguments). The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, we show why some of these problems are either non-issues, or easily solved in Common Lisp. Then, we demonstrate how the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) allows us not only to implement binary methods in a straightforward way, but also to support the concept directly, and even enforce it at different levels (usage and implementation).

This paper copes with the optimization of Markov Random Fields with pairwise interactions defined on arbitrary graphs. The set of labels is assumed to be linearly ordered and the priors are supposed to be submodular. Under these assumptions we propose an algorithm which computes an exact minimizer of the Markovian energy. Our approach relies on mapping the original into a combinatorial one which involves only binary variables. The latter is shown to be exactly solvable via computing a maximum flow. The restatement into a binary combinatorial problem is done by considering the level-sets of the labels instead of the label values themselves. The submodularity of the priors is shown to be a necessary and sufficient condition for the applicability of the proposed approach.

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks are of much interest due to their capacity of providing extremely high security keys to network participants. Most QKD network studies so far focus on trusted models where all the network nodes are assumed to be perfectly secured. This restricts QKD networks to be small. In this paper, we first develop a novel model dedicated to large-scale QKD networks, some of whose nodes could be eavesdropped secretly. Then, we investigate the key transmission problem in the new model by an approach based on percolation theory and stochastic routing. Analyses show that under computable conditions large-scale QKD networks could protect secret keys with an extremely high probability. Simulations validate our results.