In this paper, we describe the primitives that we have implemented in NonStop SQL/MX, a commercial DBMS, to support the knowledge discovery process.These primitives, combined with the high-performance SQL&IX engine, represent a powerful kernel for performing basic knowledge discovery tasks in a scalable and efftcient manner.

The goal of the Papyrus project [3] is to provide tools and services to enable the integration and parallelization of specialized data managers so that data-intensive applications can be constructed easily and efficiently. In our terminology, a data manager (DM) is a set of specialized methods that manage persistent data. A collection of functions defines the interface to a DM and provides the only means of accessing its persistent data.

A design for AGNA, a persistent object system that utilizes parallelism in a fundamental way to enhance performance, is presented. The underlying thesis is that fine-grained parallelism is essential for achieving scalable performance on parallel multiple instruction/multiple data (MIMD) machines. This, in turn, implies a data-driven model of computation for efficiency. The complete design based on these principles starts with a declarative source language because such languages reveal the most fine-grained parallelism. It is described how transactions are compiled into an abstract, fine-grained parallel machine called P-RISC. The P-RISC virtual heap is implemented in the memory and disk of a parallel machine in such a way that paging is overlapped with useful computation. The current implementation status is described, some preliminary performance results are reported and the approach presented is compared to several recent parallel database system projects.>

A formal object-oriented approach to the data structuring and data management of semiconductor wafer structure and device information is presented. The profile interchange format (PIF) is extended beyond a file format 'intersite' version in order to enhance the storage and access of profile information, the communication of profile information between cooperating tools, and the integration and portability of technology CAD (computer-aided design) tools. An intertool PIF toolkit is a programmatic interface to profile information, consisting of a library of objects for the storage and manipulation of data by technology CAD tools. PIF/Gestalt is presented as a test implementation of the toolkit which provides C and Common Lisp language interfaces, implemented on a database for use in a CAD/CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) system for semiconductor process design and fabrication.>