Rajesh Veeraraghavan

Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool

Rural PC kiosks have become prominent recently as a way to impact socio-economic development through computing technology. Despite the significant backing these projects receive from governments and other large organizations, there are very few rigorous studies which measure their actual impact and utility. We have developed and deployed a software PC logging tool that allows us to gain exact quantitative insight into the usage statistics of kiosks on which the tool is installed. In field trials in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, India, we collected over 120 days of software tool logging data from 13 separate kiosks, while we also questioned the kiosk operators during the same period. We show some evidence that the software based logging tool complements the existing survey based and other ethnographic approaches for data collection. We also show that the tool does a better job in gathering certain usage statistics as compared to questioning the kiosk operator

Toward Automated Support for Transparent Interoperable Queries

Many Object-Oriented Databases (OODBs) use programming languages that predate Java, such as C++, CLOS and Smalltalk. Thus, there is a growing need for interoperating these OODBs with new applications that require Java. Unfortunately, there are few mechanisms that allow software developers to easily integrate Java applications with non-Java OODBs. Although various interoperability mechanisms have been developed over the years, these approaches have some significant drawbacks in practice. They are often difficult to use, provide little, if any, automated support, and produce software that is difficult to engineer and maintain. In this paper, we describe an interoperability approach that allows application developers to seamlessly and transparently access non-Java OODBs from Java applications. We first present JOQL, a Java-based object query language that we are developing. JOQL queries are embedded in Java applications and are used to perform queries over C++-based OODBs. We also describe an accompanying toolset that processes Java programs containing JOQL queries. The toolset produces all the necessary code allowing Java applications to access and manipulate a C++-based OODB. As a result, application developers are free to work in Java without having to concern themselves with the details of interoperating with C++. Finally, we provide some preliminary experimental data that demonstrates our approach incurs a reasonable performance overhead.