MY LIBRaRy
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
PROTEST BY COMMON PEOPLE OF 'THEKKANKUTTOOR'
THEKKANKUTOOR is a small village in THALAKKAD gramapanchayath under TIRUR thaluk in MALAPPURAM district.
Monday, October 25, 2010
METADATA
INTRODUCTION
METADATA is any information that describes digital content. It can be describe the attribute and characteristic of digital content in structured and standardized way or in less standard way through the use of general description and tagging.
Although make it digital focuses on the use of metadata for digital content, metadata is also used to describe physical object such as book, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museum object, corporate records.
The term ‘META’ is derived from the GREEK word. META ‘means more fundamental kind’ or ‘some thing higher’.
Metadata can usefully describe any kind of digital content such as an image, video file or text. It can also describe all sorts of things about the digital content, for instance the person or organization that created the content, the date it was created, its length, and technical details such as who entered the metadata.
The term METADATA refers to any data that aids in identification, description, and location of worked electronic resources.
“METADATA’ is the catalogue of the digital library”.
It is the data which providing information about one or more other piece of data such as:
CONTENT
It consists of number of predefined elements.
Each element can have one or more values.
E.g.:-
ELEMENT VALUE
Title Web catalog
Creator MCAuliffe
Publisher U-sity of Queensland
Format Text/html
Relation Library website
DEFENITION
Metadata is simply defined as “data about data” or “information about information”.
“Structured information that describe, explain, locates or other wise make it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource.”(NISO, 2004).
FUNCTIONS
TYPES
Mainly two type of metadata, they are;
E.g.:- an abstract element may summarize what the digital document is all about.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE METADATA: - Administrative metadata is designed primarily to manage the digital content. Those manage the content over time need to be able to under take activities such as:
E g; - Preservation metadata: It is the example of a metadata scheme for administration. This scheme can be used for long term management of any type of digital content. It is used in digital repositories.
METADATA SCHEME
METADATA is most often prepackaged and ready to use by professional subject committees and sectors in what is known as a metadata scheme.
A metadata scheme provides a standard and consistent way to create, manage and share metadata. A scheme generally made up of;
A set of specification, which can contain information about the purpose for which the schemes is intended.
It maintenance agency.
The name of metadata elements with their meaning and ways the elements can be used
Recommended values for the element themselves, such as thesauri use and encoding schemes.
An abstract or entity-relationship model illustrating a high level purpose or view of the scheme.
E g: - Dublin core metadata initiative element, VRA core 4.0 (by Visual Resource Association’s Data standard committee, it is indented for image management), ONIX etc…
CONCLUSION
Metadata is data associated with object which reveals their potential users of having full advance knowledge of their existence or characteristics. In the digital era digital library has a good role. So metadata is inevitable. Metadata is also used to describe physical object such as books, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museums objects etc...
INTRODUCTION
METADATA is any information that describes digital content. It can be describe the attribute and characteristic of digital content in structured and standardized way or in less standard way through the use of general description and tagging.
Although make it digital focuses on the use of metadata for digital content, metadata is also used to describe physical object such as book, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museum object, corporate records.
The term ‘META’ is derived from the GREEK word. META ‘means more fundamental kind’ or ‘some thing higher’.
Metadata can usefully describe any kind of digital content such as an image, video file or text. It can also describe all sorts of things about the digital content, for instance the person or organization that created the content, the date it was created, its length, and technical details such as who entered the metadata.
The term METADATA refers to any data that aids in identification, description, and location of worked electronic resources.
“METADATA’ is the catalogue of the digital library”.
It is the data which providing information about one or more other piece of data such as:
- Means of creation.
- Purpose of data.
- Time and date of creation.
- Creator and author of data.
- Location of data.
- Identification.
- Description.
- Location.
CONTENT
It consists of number of predefined elements.
Each element can have one or more values.
E.g.:-
ELEMENT VALUE
Title Web catalog
Creator MCAuliffe
Publisher U-sity of Queensland
Format Text/html
Relation Library website
DEFENITION
Metadata is simply defined as “data about data” or “information about information”.
“Structured information that describe, explain, locates or other wise make it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource.”(NISO, 2004).
FUNCTIONS
- The primary function of metadata is resource discovery: metadata increases the odds that a user will able to retrieve appropriate information and access its usefulness and availability.
- Another important function provided by metadata is control of electronic resources, whether through metadata for validating information and tracking use; right and permission metadata for controlling access; or content rating metadata, a key component of some webfiltering application.
- Metadata is data. As such, metadata can be stored and managed in a database, often called a registry or repository. However, it is impossible to identify metadata just by looking at it. We don’t know when data is metadata or just data.
- Resource identification and location.
- Resource documentation.
- Resource selection, evaluation and assessment.
- Improving the quality and quantity of results.
- In libraries.
- In photographs.
- In videos.
- In audios.
- In web pages.
- In museums. Etc…
- Libraries: - Metadata is used in digital libraries. This may be a catalog record of digital document presently in term refers to any data used to aid and location of the information.
- Photographs: - Metadata may be written in to digital photo file that will who owns it, copyright and contact information, what camera created the file, along with exposure information and descriptive information such as keyword about the photo, making the file searchable on the computer and / or the internet. Some metadata may be written by the camera and some in put by the photographer and / or software after downloading the computer.
- Video: - metadata is particularly useful in video, where information about contents is not directly understandable by the computer, but where efficient search is desirable.
- WebPages: -WebPages often include metadata in the form of metatags. Description and keyword metatags are commonly used to describe the webpage’s content. Most search engineers use this data when adding pages to their search index. Etc…
TYPES
Mainly two type of metadata, they are;
- DESCRIPTIVE METADATA: - which describe the digital content i.e., which include the creator of the resource, its title, subject heading and the other (describe the attribute and characteristics of digital content) that elements that will be used to search for and locate the item.
E.g.:- an abstract element may summarize what the digital document is all about.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE METADATA: - Administrative metadata is designed primarily to manage the digital content. Those manage the content over time need to be able to under take activities such as:
- Archive digital content.
- Track digital content and its representation.
- Ensure file format can be read and transformed.
- Ensure authenticity and integrity of digital content over time.
- Identify for the source the metadata and up dates.
E g; - Preservation metadata: It is the example of a metadata scheme for administration. This scheme can be used for long term management of any type of digital content. It is used in digital repositories.
METADATA SCHEME
METADATA is most often prepackaged and ready to use by professional subject committees and sectors in what is known as a metadata scheme.
A metadata scheme provides a standard and consistent way to create, manage and share metadata. A scheme generally made up of;
A set of specification, which can contain information about the purpose for which the schemes is intended.
It maintenance agency.
The name of metadata elements with their meaning and ways the elements can be used
Recommended values for the element themselves, such as thesauri use and encoding schemes.
An abstract or entity-relationship model illustrating a high level purpose or view of the scheme.
E g: - Dublin core metadata initiative element, VRA core 4.0 (by Visual Resource Association’s Data standard committee, it is indented for image management), ONIX etc…
CONCLUSION
Metadata is data associated with object which reveals their potential users of having full advance knowledge of their existence or characteristics. In the digital era digital library has a good role. So metadata is inevitable. Metadata is also used to describe physical object such as books, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museums objects etc...
Sunday, October 10, 2010
INFONET CONSORTIUM
Consortium is described as a 'a group of people, countries, companies etc.. who are working together on a particular project.
A library consortium is a group of libraries who are joined together and agree on the basis of legal terms and conditions to share their information resources to satisfy the needs of information seekers of that participating libraries.
The UGC INFONET e-journal consortium has been setup for promoting the use of electronic databases and access to full text e-journal by the student, faculty members, research scholars of higher learning institutions under affiliation of UGC are the primary beneficiaries and ultimately this opportunity will go up to college level in near future.
The UGC INFONET consortium was indicated in 2003 .It is the Gateway to scholarly information available globally. The program is wholly funded by the UGC and monitored by INFLIBNET center Ahmadabad. INFLIBNET center is Autonomous inter inter-university center(IUC) of UGC involved in creating infrastructure for sharing of library and information resources and services among Academic and Research institutions. INFLIBNET works collaboratively with Indian university libraries to shape the future of the academic libraries in the evolving information environment.
Under the consortium there are about 4600 plus Full text scholarly electronic journals besides indexing and abstracting databases and Gateway portals from 25 publishers across the globe can be accessed. The whole program has been implemented in different phases, so far 100 universities out 171 Indian universities ,which come under the purview of UGC, have been provided access to these journals and it will gradually be extended to affiliated colleges as well.
ADVANTAGES
The consortial approach to electronic journals access plays an important role in facilitating access to electronic journals through co-operative purchase options. Advantages include minimizing acquisition cost of international scientific periodicals, consequently increasing user satisfaction.
CONCLUTION
The consortia are increasingly negotiating (primarily cost and facilities) with publishers for access by their users to e-journal, e-book and up-date-databases etc. The concept of consortium is now shifted from sharing of information resources of libraries to sharing of expertise and also explore the information needs for libraries to make the most effective use of their funds collectively and efficiently.
Consortium is described as a 'a group of people, countries, companies etc.. who are working together on a particular project.
A library consortium is a group of libraries who are joined together and agree on the basis of legal terms and conditions to share their information resources to satisfy the needs of information seekers of that participating libraries.
The UGC INFONET e-journal consortium has been setup for promoting the use of electronic databases and access to full text e-journal by the student, faculty members, research scholars of higher learning institutions under affiliation of UGC are the primary beneficiaries and ultimately this opportunity will go up to college level in near future.
The UGC INFONET consortium was indicated in 2003 .It is the Gateway to scholarly information available globally. The program is wholly funded by the UGC and monitored by INFLIBNET center Ahmadabad. INFLIBNET center is Autonomous inter inter-university center(IUC) of UGC involved in creating infrastructure for sharing of library and information resources and services among Academic and Research institutions. INFLIBNET works collaboratively with Indian university libraries to shape the future of the academic libraries in the evolving information environment.
Under the consortium there are about 4600 plus Full text scholarly electronic journals besides indexing and abstracting databases and Gateway portals from 25 publishers across the globe can be accessed. The whole program has been implemented in different phases, so far 100 universities out 171 Indian universities ,which come under the purview of UGC, have been provided access to these journals and it will gradually be extended to affiliated colleges as well.
ADVANTAGES
The consortial approach to electronic journals access plays an important role in facilitating access to electronic journals through co-operative purchase options. Advantages include minimizing acquisition cost of international scientific periodicals, consequently increasing user satisfaction.
CONCLUTION
The consortia are increasingly negotiating (primarily cost and facilities) with publishers for access by their users to e-journal, e-book and up-date-databases etc. The concept of consortium is now shifted from sharing of information resources of libraries to sharing of expertise and also explore the information needs for libraries to make the most effective use of their funds collectively and efficiently.
WEBOMETRICS
The science of webometrics are also known as cyber metrics tries to measure the World Wide Web to get knowledge about the number and types of hyper links, structure of the World Wide web and usage patterns. The term webometrics was first coined by Almind and Ingwersen in1997.
DEFINITION
Ø Webometrics is "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric and info metric approaches."
Ø "The study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study" (Thelwall, 2009)
"The study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals Since 2004 the Webometrics ranking of world universities is offering information about more than 6,000 universities ranked according to indicators measuring Web presence and impact (link visibility). There are also Rankings Web devoted to Research Centers, Hospitals, Repositories and Business Schools etc.
'Web Impact Factor' (WIF) is one of the relatively straightforward measure introduced by Ingwersen (1998). Which (WIF)measure may be defined as the number of web pages in a web site receiving links from other web sites, divided by the number of web pages published in the site that are accessible to the crawler. However the use of WIF has been disregarded due to the mathematical artifacts derived from power law distributions of these variables. Other similar indicators using size of the institution instead of number of web pages have been proved more useful.
The webometrics Ranking of world universities, also known as Ranking Web of World Universities, is the largest classification of websites of higher education institutions, covering more than 20,000 universities worldwide. The aim of the Ranking is to improve the presence of the academic and research institutions and to promote the open access publication of scientific results. The ranking started in 2004 and it is based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web contents (number of web pages and files) and the visibility and impact of this web publications according to the number of external links (site citations) they received. The ranking is updated every January and July, providing Web indicators for more than 6,000 universities worldwide. The approach takes into account the wide range of scientific activities represented in the academic websites, frequently overlooked by the bibliometric indicators. There are similarly constructed web rankings for research centers, hospitals, business schools and repositories
E- BOOK
e- Stands for electronic
An e book is simply electronic copies of regular, printed books and are normally chaptered and indexed in same way or An electronic book or e-book or e-Book or digital book is a text- and image-based publication in digital form produced on, published by, and readable on computers or other digital devices. "Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book” but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Personal computers and some cell phones can also be used to read e-books.An e-book is created by scanning the pages of a traditional book in to PDF format, and then uploaded to the Internet for distribution. Number of e book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe with its PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers.
DEFENITION
- “An electronic version of book” (Webopedia)
- At its simplest level, an e- book consist of electronic content “Originating from traditional book, reference materials or magazines” that is down loaded from the INTERNET and viewed trough any number of hardware devices. These include computers or dedicated e book reader. (Ana Arias Terry)
- “An e-book, is a portable hardware software system that can display large quantities of readable textual information to the user and that lets the user navigate through this information” (Jan o. Broachers)
CHARACTERISTICS
- It must include commending and chatting tools.
- It must allow user to add link to external resources.
- It must be portable transferable and searchable.
- It must provide us with annotation, video, hyper-links.
KINDS OF e-BOOK
- According to Don Hawkins, e-books are following type;
- Down loadable e-book. (e.g.:- Glass books and Guttenberg )
- Dedicated e-book readers (e.g.:- Gemstar’s REBs and Franklins e-book man )
- Print-on-demand books (e.g.:- Columbia university online book project)
- Web-accessible e-books :on provider & accessed for a fee (e.g.:-Springer e-book collection )
• For users
-Searching: - capability to search within a book and across a collection of book.
-Customization: - One can customize the e book by changing its display, brightness, font size, and style. More over one can manipulate the text also.
-Accessibility and availability: - Easy access and non demand availability (accessible anytime, anywhere any person).
-Linking facility: - It can link to other external resources, including dictionaries and thesauri.
-Other features: - It include navigability, glossary look up, book marking, high lighting and annotate the content etc…
· For Libraries
-No risk of lose, damage, theft, misplace
-No physical space requirement.
-No specialized device requirements for access to its content. Etc…………
DISADVANTAGE
· Potential obsoleteness in the viewing technology.
· Difficult in identifying e title from publishers websites.
· Cost of device is regarded as a negative factor and there for the expense of these device is one of the major drawback to their wide spread use.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
GOOD FRIENDS
The broaken glasses, spider, grass hopper, seeds, charcoal, paintings, books, walls .......... Yeah. Iused to smile to them, had talk with them, & even used to smile with tears by telling about my sorrows. But now it happens rarely. I have to retake it. Because they could easily answer to my questions, they could smile for my smile, they were the consling facter for my sorrows & they also rectify my mistakes. I know when you here these, you could say that Iam mad. How can these walls, seeds, spider, speak to? How can they listen to? How can they listen your sorrows? How can they console you? You may ask me many questions like these. But I can replay you for these questions. You know , through these I just smile, weep, speak & telling my sorrows to My Own Mind.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
SYSTEM SOFTWARE
INTRODUCTION A computer system consist of three basic elements; hardware, software and human ware. A computer needs both hardware and software for its proper functioning. By software we mean computer instructions or data. Anything that can be stored electrically is software. The storage devices and display devices are hardware. Software refers to a computer program, procedure, rules and associated documentation and data pertaining to the operation of a computer system. There are mainly two type of software; application software and system software. System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide and maintain a platform for running application software. System software is generally applied by the hardware manufacture. System software consist of low level programs that interact with the computer at a very basic level. This includes operating system, compiler and utilities for managing computer resources. TYPES OF SYSTEM SOFTWARE OPERATING SYSTEM UTILITY SOFTWARE TRANSLATORS (a)Assemblers (b)Compilers (c) Interpreters 4. BIOS (BASIC INPUT / OUTPUT SYSTEM) 5. FIRM WARE OPERATING SYSTEM (OS) An operating system were originally developed to handle one of the most complex input or output operations; communicating with a variety of disk drives. An OS is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for management and coordination of activity and sharing of resources of a computer that act as a host for computing application run on a machine. OS contain the information that tells the computer how to handle its basic function such as receiving information, display information, storing and retrieving information and printing or telecommunicating information. As a host one of the purposes of an OS is to handle the resource allocation and access protection of the hardware. This relieves application programmers from having to manage these details. OS offers a number of services to application programs and user. Applications access these services through Application Programming Interface (APIs) or system calls. For hand and desk top computer, the user interface generally implemented as an application program that run outside the OS. OS acts as a master control program on a computer. It controls flow of signal from CPU. User Application Operating system Hardware UTILITY SOFTWARE Utility software is a kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called utility or tool. Utility software should be contrasted with application software, which allows users to do things like creating text documents, playing games, listening to music or surfing the web. Rather than providing these kind of user- oriented or output – oriented, functionality, utility software usually focuses on how the computer infra structure (including the computer hardware, OS, application software and data storage). Most utilities are highly specialized and designed to perform only a single task or also some utility suites that combine several features in one software. Most major OS come with several pre- installed utilities. TRANSLATORS A translator is a program which converts statements written in one language into statements in another language. Two types of translators have already been introduced but there are three basic types of translators. · Assemblers · Compilers · Interpreters Assemblers It is a computer program, which translates symbolic code, and symbolic addressed into actual machine addresses. Assembler do following:- - Includes the necessary linkage for closed sub- routines. - Allocates areas of main storage. - Indicate invalid source language instructions. - Produces the object program on disk or tape. - Produces a printed listing of the object program together with commends. Notice that one symbolic instruction is translated into one machine instruction which is one feature that distinguishes a low level language from high level language. Compiler A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code written in a computer language( the source of language) in to another computer language or the compiler translates whole of the high-level language source program into machine code object program prior to the object program being loaded into main memory and executed. The most common reason for the wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program. The name ‘compiler’ is primarily use for programs that translate source code from high-level programming language to a lower level language. A program that translates from a low level language to a higher level one is a ‘decompile’. A program that translates between high-level languages is usually called language translator or source-to-source compiler or source to source translator. A compiler is likely to perform many or all of the following operations: lexical analysis, preprocessing, parsing, semantic analysis, code generation and code optimization. If a compiler is used, the same program need only be translated once. Thereafter, the object program can be loaded directly in to main storage and executed. The compilers do the following program, (a) Translates the source program statement in to machine code. (b) Includes linkage for closed sub -routines. (c) Allocates areas of main storage (d) Produces a printed copy of the source and object program. (e) Produces the object programs on disk or magnetic tape. (f) Produces a list of errors found during compilation. E.g. the use of ‘works’ or statement not included in language vocabulary; or violation of rule of syntax. Interpreters An interpreter is used, the same program will be translated every time the program is executed. Execution carried out in this way may be ten times slower than the execution of the equivalent object programs. BIOS (Basic Input/ Output system) It is also known as system BIOS. It is the interface between hardware and operating system. The BIOS is a boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on. The initial function of BIOS is to identify, test and initialize system devices such as the video display card, hard disk, floppy disk, and other hardware. The BIOS sets the machine hardware in to known state, so that the software stored on compactable media can be loaded, executed and given control of the PC. This process is known as booting or booting up, which is short for boot strapping. BIOS programs are stored on a chip and are built with various devices that make up the complimentary chipset of the system. This provides a small library of the basic input or output function that can be called to operate and controlled peripherals such as the key board, text display function and so on. In the IBM PC and AT, certain peripheral card such as hard – drive controller and video display adaptors carried their own BIOS extension ROM, which provide additional functionality. Utility software and executive software functionality will provide replacement software inter-faces to application. FIRMWARE In electronics and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usully rather small, programmes and data structure that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples of devices containing firmware range from end-user products such as remote controls or calculators, through computer parts and devices like hard disks, key board TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instrumentation and industrial robotics. Also more complex consumer devices, such as mobile phone, digital cameras etc. contain firmware to enable to devices basic operation as well as complimenting higher level functions. There is no strict or well defined boundaries separate firmware from software. CONCLUSION The human expects from computer not only to solve our problem but also to provide a more user friendly environment to work with computer. The software developed to provide such an environment that is system software. System software includes any program that is designed to improve the use or the performance of a computing system.
INTRODUCTION A computer system consist of three basic elements; hardware, software and human ware. A computer needs both hardware and software for its proper functioning. By software we mean computer instructions or data. Anything that can be stored electrically is software. The storage devices and display devices are hardware. Software refers to a computer program, procedure, rules and associated documentation and data pertaining to the operation of a computer system. There are mainly two type of software; application software and system software. System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide and maintain a platform for running application software. System software is generally applied by the hardware manufacture. System software consist of low level programs that interact with the computer at a very basic level. This includes operating system, compiler and utilities for managing computer resources. TYPES OF SYSTEM SOFTWARE OPERATING SYSTEM UTILITY SOFTWARE TRANSLATORS (a)Assemblers (b)Compilers (c) Interpreters 4. BIOS (BASIC INPUT / OUTPUT SYSTEM) 5. FIRM WARE OPERATING SYSTEM (OS) An operating system were originally developed to handle one of the most complex input or output operations; communicating with a variety of disk drives. An OS is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for management and coordination of activity and sharing of resources of a computer that act as a host for computing application run on a machine. OS contain the information that tells the computer how to handle its basic function such as receiving information, display information, storing and retrieving information and printing or telecommunicating information. As a host one of the purposes of an OS is to handle the resource allocation and access protection of the hardware. This relieves application programmers from having to manage these details. OS offers a number of services to application programs and user. Applications access these services through Application Programming Interface (APIs) or system calls. For hand and desk top computer, the user interface generally implemented as an application program that run outside the OS. OS acts as a master control program on a computer. It controls flow of signal from CPU. User Application Operating system Hardware UTILITY SOFTWARE Utility software is a kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called utility or tool. Utility software should be contrasted with application software, which allows users to do things like creating text documents, playing games, listening to music or surfing the web. Rather than providing these kind of user- oriented or output – oriented, functionality, utility software usually focuses on how the computer infra structure (including the computer hardware, OS, application software and data storage). Most utilities are highly specialized and designed to perform only a single task or also some utility suites that combine several features in one software. Most major OS come with several pre- installed utilities. TRANSLATORS A translator is a program which converts statements written in one language into statements in another language. Two types of translators have already been introduced but there are three basic types of translators. · Assemblers · Compilers · Interpreters Assemblers It is a computer program, which translates symbolic code, and symbolic addressed into actual machine addresses. Assembler do following:- - Includes the necessary linkage for closed sub- routines. - Allocates areas of main storage. - Indicate invalid source language instructions. - Produces the object program on disk or tape. - Produces a printed listing of the object program together with commends. Notice that one symbolic instruction is translated into one machine instruction which is one feature that distinguishes a low level language from high level language. Compiler A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code written in a computer language( the source of language) in to another computer language or the compiler translates whole of the high-level language source program into machine code object program prior to the object program being loaded into main memory and executed. The most common reason for the wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program. The name ‘compiler’ is primarily use for programs that translate source code from high-level programming language to a lower level language. A program that translates from a low level language to a higher level one is a ‘decompile’. A program that translates between high-level languages is usually called language translator or source-to-source compiler or source to source translator. A compiler is likely to perform many or all of the following operations: lexical analysis, preprocessing, parsing, semantic analysis, code generation and code optimization. If a compiler is used, the same program need only be translated once. Thereafter, the object program can be loaded directly in to main storage and executed. The compilers do the following program, (a) Translates the source program statement in to machine code. (b) Includes linkage for closed sub -routines. (c) Allocates areas of main storage (d) Produces a printed copy of the source and object program. (e) Produces the object programs on disk or magnetic tape. (f) Produces a list of errors found during compilation. E.g. the use of ‘works’ or statement not included in language vocabulary; or violation of rule of syntax. Interpreters An interpreter is used, the same program will be translated every time the program is executed. Execution carried out in this way may be ten times slower than the execution of the equivalent object programs. BIOS (Basic Input/ Output system) It is also known as system BIOS. It is the interface between hardware and operating system. The BIOS is a boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on. The initial function of BIOS is to identify, test and initialize system devices such as the video display card, hard disk, floppy disk, and other hardware. The BIOS sets the machine hardware in to known state, so that the software stored on compactable media can be loaded, executed and given control of the PC. This process is known as booting or booting up, which is short for boot strapping. BIOS programs are stored on a chip and are built with various devices that make up the complimentary chipset of the system. This provides a small library of the basic input or output function that can be called to operate and controlled peripherals such as the key board, text display function and so on. In the IBM PC and AT, certain peripheral card such as hard – drive controller and video display adaptors carried their own BIOS extension ROM, which provide additional functionality. Utility software and executive software functionality will provide replacement software inter-faces to application. FIRMWARE In electronics and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usully rather small, programmes and data structure that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples of devices containing firmware range from end-user products such as remote controls or calculators, through computer parts and devices like hard disks, key board TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instrumentation and industrial robotics. Also more complex consumer devices, such as mobile phone, digital cameras etc. contain firmware to enable to devices basic operation as well as complimenting higher level functions. There is no strict or well defined boundaries separate firmware from software. CONCLUSION The human expects from computer not only to solve our problem but also to provide a more user friendly environment to work with computer. The software developed to provide such an environment that is system software. System software includes any program that is designed to improve the use or the performance of a computing system.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)