Bernd Mathiske

E-Mail:

mathiske@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

Voice:

+49-40-54715-330

Snail Mail:

Bernd Mathiske

Arbeitsbereich Datenbanken und Informationssysteme

Fachbereich Informatik der Universität Hamburg

Vogt-Kölln-Stra├če 30

D-22527 Hamburg

Room:

F-511

Workstations:

dbis9 (Sun), dbis38 (Mac)

Position:

Research assistant

Research Interests:

In general: programming language implementation, distributed programming, programming language interfacing - and whatever comes my way...

Recent hot spots: migrating persistent threads, binding support for thread migration, higher order remote procedure calls, transparent callbacks from C to complex function closures.

Next attack: integrating my thread migration techniques with a progressive object oriented language (TooL). My thread migration approach scales well to WANs, because site autonomy is preserved as much as possible. Conventional distributed object systems tend to deteriorate site autonomy. Hence their full potential is nowadays more or less restricted to LANs. Enough hints...?

Projects:

Being in employ of the Fully Integrated Data Environment (FIDE-2) project funded by the European Community as an ESPRIT basic research activity, my major research framework is the development of the Tycoon System, a scalable polymorphic persistent programming environment.

I am one of the founders and have been the initial coordinator of the local Network Competence Group (NCG).

Curriculum Vitae:

I first appeared in society on June 18, 1964 in Berlin, Germany. Since 1975 I am living in Buchholz (a town 30 kilometers south of Hamburg).

After finishing school in 1983, I served in the German army in Lüneburg for 15 months.

From 1984 till 1992 I studied computer science and (minor) mathematics at the University of Hamburg, specializing in artificial intelligence, image processing, programming languages and compiler construction.

In parallel to my studies I have been working part-time as a software developer and consultant:

• In 1985 I developed a recording and statistics program for failures and damages of pumps in a refinery. (Hardware: HP 3000; OS: MPE; PL: Fortran-77; Tool: FormSpec)
• Between 1987 and 1989 I developed a combined graphical user interface and terminal program (including a VT-100 Emulator) for a medical gamma processor system. (Hardware: Atari ST, DEC PDP-11; OS: TOS, RT-11; PLs: Modula-2, Pascal; Tools: GEM, RCS)
• In 1989 I also developed an error analysis tool for the complex database application generator of an insurance company. This work comprises the development of a rule-based error description language, a compiler and an execution unit with an "expert system"-like look-and-feel. (Hardware: IBM/370; OS: MVS; PL: PL/1)
• From 1990 till 1993 I developed and maintained various database applications, participating in the product management. (Hardware: Apple Macintosh; OS: System 6, System 7; PLs: 4D from ACI, C, Pascal; Tools: 4D from ACI)

  Standard software:

  • an invoice system,
  • an acquisition support system, "localized" to English, French and German,
  • a combined text processor and address database.

  Individual programs:

  • an integrated business and production support system for a manufacturer of heavy-duty hoses, including a hose database with an integrated compiler for complex calculations on hose data,
  • a casting support system for radio advertising spots,
  • a job applicants database.

Since March 1993 I am a research assistant in the database and information systems group (DBIS) of the Computer Science Department at the University of Hamburg. I am one of the main developers in the Tycoon project.

Research and development in the Tycoon project:

During my master's thesis and in preparation of my intended PhD thesis I have worked on the following topics:

Value representation, code generation:

• A code generator with machine code generation via C. Machine code could be stored directly in a persistent object store - not only in external shared libraries.
• Support for incremental compilation.
• Support for and checking of recursive value bindings comprising functions, arrays, tuples and records.
• Integration of the representation of variant and non-variant tuples in order to support sub-typing.
• Implementation of nested functions with lexical scope as first class language values. Design of and code generation for flat closures and hierarchical literal vectors.
• Implementation of persistent threads which are first class language values, too.

Runtime system:

• A portable and scalable runtime frame program.
• Interoperability support: C-calls and transparent callbacks (Tycoon closures can be passed around and called in C as function pointers).
• Dynamic exception handling in C, Tycoon exception handling and mixtures of both.
• Multi-threading, persistence of threads.
• Basic persistent synchronization mechanisms.
• Runtime support for various Tycoon features.

Tycoon Store Protocol:

• Implementation of a single-user store (tymem) that entirely resides in main memory.
• Enhancement of the stream-oriented I/O-facility: user-defined I/O-handler functions, dynamic linking.
• Enhancement of the garbage collection interface.

Type-safe and type-complete Remote Procedure Call:

• Universality: every tuple of functions can be installed dynamically as a remote service.
• Orthogonality: arbitrary Tycoon values, even functions and threads can be transferred.
• Transparency: uniform syntax of local and remote calls - no language extension.
• Seamless embedding: no interface definition language.
• Implementation: one kind of stub fits it all - no reflective stub generator.
• Portability: employment of almost arbitrary underlying middleware (e.g. BSD-Sockets, SunRPC, DCE).

Distributed programming:

• Autonomous long-lived wide area network agents.
• Thread migration.
• Type-safe dynamic binding to remote resources.
• Dynamic rebinding of ubiquitous resources by means of dynamic linking.
• Automatic replication in combination with dynamic rebinding.
• Automatic recreation of volatile resources.

Studienarbeit (a half size master's thesis which is an obligatory excercise before the real master's thesis in Germany):

SIM - Simple Image Manipulation - or a Simple System for the Manipulation and Presentation of Images (in German )

Oliver Ludwig and Bernd Mathiske

Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, 1989

Master's Thesis:

Code Generation for Programming Languages with Persistence, Polymorphism and Higher Order Functions (in German )

Bernd Mathiske

Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, December 1992

Publications:

The Tycoon System and Library Manual

Bernd Mathiske, Florian Matthes and Sven Müssig

DBIS Tycoon Report 212-93, Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, December 1993

On Migrating Threads

Bernd Mathiske, Florian Matthes, and Joachim W. Schmidt

Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Next Generation Information Technologies and Systems (NGITS '95) in Naharia, Israel, June 1995.

Scaling Database Languages to Higher-Order Distributed Programming

Bernd Mathiske, Florian Matthes, and Joachim W. Schmidt

Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Database Programming Languages (DBPL-5) in Gubbio, Italy, September 1995.

Teaching (in German ):

Project seminar: Practical Introduction into Data Communication

Summer semester 1991 - Winfried Lamersdorf, Bernd Mathiske

Excercise course for the lecture Generic Development of Data -Intensive Applications

Summer semester 1993 - Bernd Mathiske, Joachim W. Schmidt, Ingrid Wetzel

For this course I developed most of todays Tycoon programming excercises.

Project: Database Programming

Winter semester 1993/94 - Bernd Mathiske, Andreas Rudloff , Joachim W. Schmidt

Project seminar: Anatomy of the Database Programming System Tycoon

Summer semester 1994 - Bernd Mathiske, Andreas Gawecki , Joachim W. Schmidt

Proseminar: Computer Science: Markets, Standards and Products

Winter semester 1994/95 - Bernd Mathiske, Joachim W. Schmidt

Project seminar: Anatomy of the Tycoon System for Database Programming

Summer semester 1994 - Bernd Mathiske, Andreas Gawecki, Joachim W. Schmidt

Associated students:

Markus Breilmann

Studienarbeit: Porting Tycoon to Apple Macintosh and Apple Power Macintosh

Martin Göllnitz

Studienarbeit: Client/server programming

Marcel Kornacker

Master's thesis: Persistent savepoints in interoperable environments

Nico Johannisson

Studienarbeit: Higher-Order Remote Procedure Call

Master's thesis: Distributed workflow execution

Andreas Piellusch

Master's thesis: Synchronization of long-lived activities

Kai Shen

Master's thesis: Porting Tycoon to MS/Windows, integration with OLE 2.0

Nastaran Vaziri Pour

Studienarbeit: Dynamic rebinding, dynamic linking and automatic replication

People:

Detlef Kreuz, a research assistant at the Technical University of Harburg, and I use to talk about various philosophical, scientific, technical and pragmatic subjects and other questions concerning life, the universe and everything.

I often discuss specific FIDE research aspects with Miguel Mira da Silva, a member of the persistent systems group at the department of computing science at the University of Glasgow.

Foreign Languages:

English, French and a little Spanish.

Sports:

Windsurfing (Mistral Screamer and Tiga 257), scuba diving (I also use a "Diveman" equipment).

Formerly: martial arts, swimming, tennis.

Interests:

Tropical islands and coral reefs (e.g. in the Indian Ocean), animals (e.g. fishes, whales, birds).