Book Reviews

Compmer Related Risks, by Peter G. NEUMANN. ACM Press Series; Addison-Wesley; Reading, MA, USA; 1995; 368 pp.; $24.69; ISBN: 0-201-55805-X

Reviewed by: Mark MAJCHER Rockledge, FL, USA

This book is a fascinating set of work, that I will refer to on a frequent basis. R is an engrossing read, providing an entertaining presentation of computer technology mishaps and oddities. The narrative is chock-full of nuggets of information not disclosed elsewhere. Mr. Neumann's discussions are informa- tive, and taken from a vantage point that seemingly only a corporate insider would hole[ I suspect that, since the author is the moderator of the Internet Risks Forum (comp.risks Usenet discussion group), this may offer a reason for the heightened perspec- tive he holds of this subject.

It is a well-constructed text, yet it appears sometimes as an almost freewheeling compilation of tales run- ning the gamut of aviation, mifitary, space, public safety, finance and the health-care fields, to cite a few. This book coddles the browser. In other words, the reader could consume the chapters in any order, and incur no loss of continuity or content.

The general organization of this nine-chapter book is as follows, AS would be expected, the first and last chapters provide an introduction and conclusion to the subject of computer-related risks. From Chapters 2 through 6, it is hard to turn a page without finding several specific comlmter-~Imed ~ ~ discussed for illustration. I personally found Chapter 7 to be at odds to the style of the overall book Here the author has transferred to a completely different format, by ceasing the use of s ~ i f i c real-world exam~es. He explores a concel~ almost in pondering fashion, of those actions that would be required to alleviate all computer-related risks in the future. Chapter 8 re- turns to the book's characteristic f a s t - l ~ d tempo, and into a lively discussion of the human-oriented perspective and its attendant missteps and miscues. A pleasin~ unique feature of this guide is the Appendix, where over 30 pages of author's notes and background materials guide the reader to additional resource materials if desired.

Many comlmter-related books try to cover too much material, and any book that attempts to discuss software at a popular level has a lot of ground to cover. The book does itself justice by limiting its attention solely to the subject of "risk". Neumatm's

explanations are always clear and easy to absorb. The book should be a great help to the novice and pro alike, who simply want to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes history of hardware and software development. It is an invaluable "lessons learned" treasure-trove for designers, programmers and engi- neers who would be well advised to learn from the mistakes of others.

Every successful piece of non-fiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought she or he didn't have before. In this instance it is the knowledge that the computer-human combination is fallible, yet continually seeking to achieve a level of serf-correetion.

Boundary Scan Test: A Practical Approach, by H. BLEEKER, P. VAN DEN EIJNDEN and F. DE JONG. Kluwer Academic Publishers; Boston, MA; USA; 1993; 225 pp.; $70.00; ISBN: 0-7923-9296-5

Reviewed by: Dan ROMANCHIK Test & Measurement World, Newton, MA, USA

As electronic components get smaller, it gets harder to test printed-circuit-board assemblies. Often, there is just not enough room to probe circuit nodes. This is a problem when testing an assembly on an auto- marie tester, or when trying to troubleshoot boards by probing them manually. To solve the problem of access to circuit nodes, boundary-scan testing was developed. To help you get started with boundary scan, Kluwer has published this book.

Boundary scan testing is one of the most important test methods to come along in recent years. It solves the problem of limited access on today's printed- circuit boards, and you can use it at nearly every level of testing~ from IC test to system test. Another strength is that the boundary-scan test standard, IEEE 1149.1, is widely supported by component manufacturers and test-equipment manufacturers.

Components that support boundary-scan have boundary-scan registers on each I/O pin. These registers are connected internally into a boundary- scan chain. On a PCB assembly, the chains of all the components are chained together to form one long chain for the whole board. You read and write test data to and from these registers serially, via a four- wire interface.

As its name implies, Beundary Scan Testing: A

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434 Book Reviews

Practical Approach is a book for working engi- neers, including test engineers, design engineers and engineering managers. For all three groups, there is a good description of the IEEE 1149.1 standard, and of how boundary-scan registers work. There is also a chapter that describes how to use the Boundary- Scan Description Language (BSDL) to describe the features of boundary-scan components.

The real value of this book, however, lies in the chapters that describe boundary-scan applications. For test engineers, Chapter 5, Test Technology Topics, includes a section on how to diagnose boundary-scan test failures. This chapter also in- dudes a section on using boundary scan for testing mentory clusters. Chapter 3, Hardware Test Innova- tions, shows how to use boundary scan for system- level testing. This chapter also includes a discussion of how Motorola implemented boundary scan on its 68040 CMOS processor. This section would be of interest to design engineers faced with having to include boundary-scan registers in their own designs.

For engineering managers, there is a chapter that includes discussions of how to justify the cost of boundary-scan testing and how to set up a design project to successfully implement Ixaatdary-scan testing. This last aspect is crucial, since s'uca:essful implementation requires the participation of design engineers at both the board level and the IC level.

Throughout the book, the authors have avoided covering products that support boundary-scan test. So, the book won~ help you choose a boundary-scan tester, or components that SUl~rt tmmulary-scan testing. It will, however, give you a good under- standing of the tol~, which should allow you to make reasonable decisions after you~e done your research.

Medeliag, A m d y ~ gad Control of Dynamic Eimtk Malfi-Lhtk Strnetara, by J.E. LAGNESE, G. LEUGERING and E.J.P.G. SCHMIDT. Systems and Control: Foundations and Applications Series; Birkhguser-Verlag; Boston,/vIA, USA; 1994; xv + 338 pp.; $69.50; ISBN: 0-8176-3705-2

Reviewed by: Jerzy SASIADEK Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

The perpose of writing this book was, according to the authors, threefold: firstly, to provide rigorous mathematical models, and an analysis of multi-link flexible structures; secondly, to provide a good modeling tool and approximation methods using d i s t r i b u t e d ~ system description; and thirdly, to develop control methods for flexible struc- tures by the use of the models. In my opinion these

goals have been met, especially in the modeling part of the book. The control part of the book has not been quite as successfully developed as that devoted to the modeling and analysis.

This book contains eight chapters, a preface, a bibli- ography and an index. Chapter 1 is an introduction, and presents a general overview of the book. Chap- ter 2 describes the modeling of networks of elastic strings. The authors describe nonlinear elastic strings, linearization and weil-posedness problems, controllability and stabilizability. Chapter 3 deals with networks of thermoelastic beams. The equation of motion, rotating beams, nonlinear and linear 3-D beams are considered. Also, geometric and dynamic joint conditions in the network of beams are dis- cussed. Chapter 4 presents a general hyperbolic model for networks, the existence and regularity of solutions, energy estimates for hyperbolic systems, and exact controllability and stabilizability of the network model. Chapter 5 shows the spectral analysis and numerical simulations for networks of strings, Timoshenko beams and Euler-Bernoulli beams. Chapter 6 introduces systems of intercon- nected membranes, nonlinear elastic membranes and controllability problems. Chapter 7 deals with sys- tems of linked plates, linked Reissner plates, linked Kirchhoff plates, well-posedness and the controlla- bility of such plates. Chapter 8 presents plate-beam systems, modeling of the plate-beam junction, well- posedness, observability and geometric conditions for different cases. This book has an extensive bibliography, and a relatively good subject index.

This book should be considered a monograph ad- dressed to applied mathematicians, physicists and, above all, research engineers working on the model- ing of complex, connected and flexible structures. This applies especially to aerospace and mechanical engineers, but also to electrical engineers working m the area of control systems. Civil engineers working on the modeling and control of flexible structures will find this book interesting as well. The flavor of this book is very theoretical, with many theorems and rigorous proofs.

Control of distributed-parameter systems is a very di~cult subject. For many years only theoretical descriptions were possible, since there were no distributed sensors or actuators m practice. These limits have changed. There are distributed sensors and actuators at our disposal, and distributed- parameter control systems have once more become "fashionable." In such context, this book should be even more widely appreciated. Personally, I like this rigorous, analytical approach with some numerical examples presented by the authors, and I am confi- dent that many of those working on flexible robots, or the control of flexible structures or elastic bodies will appreciate it as well.