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"Handheld Computing," by Col. Kenneth L. Alford, Ph.D. -- This author outlines how personal digital assistants (PDAs) are used in the military, future uses, procurement considerations, developing PDA resource material, and more. "How to Secure Windows PCs and Laptops," by Terry Bollinger -- Here are seven defensive strategies to reduce the risk from hardcore spyware invading your home and small business systems. "How and Why to Use the Unified Modeling Language," by Lynn Sanderfer -- This article addresses the Unified Modeling Language and its purpose, constructs, and application to defense software development applications. "Effective Practices for Object-Oriented System Software Architecting," by Rich McCabe and Mike Polen -- These authors describe some typical pitfalls of object-oriented development and recommend a number of architectural practices that will help programs avoid or mitigate these dangers. "Identifying Your Organization's Best Practices," by David Herron and David Garmus -- Here is how three different organizations used a combination of quantitative measures and qualitative values to identify their best practices, then used these results to improve their performance. "Application-Specific Knowledge Bases," by Dr. Babak Makkinejad -- This author recommends ways to capture and record specific issues that are encountered and resolved during software development to build a knowledge base. "Process Therapy," by Paul Kimmerly -- Drawing on personal experience, this author relates how his recovery from a spinal cord injury follows process improvement in an unhealthy organization as it moves toward recovery.

Interoperability is the ability to use resources from diverse origins as if they had been designed as parts of a single system. Over time, individual interoperability problems tend to disappear as the resources involved literally become part of one system through integration and standardization, but the overall problem of interoperability itself never disappears. Instead, it simply moves up to a new level of complexity that accepts earlier integrations as a given. Interoperability is especially critical for military systems, where international politics can lead to abrupt realignments where yesterday's foe becomes today's coalition partner. This report on interoperability has five sections. The first section is an introduction to the interoperability problem, and the second section describes fundamental interoperability concepts and develops a terminology for describing interoperability issues and needs. The second section also addresses the vital issue of interoperability security. The third section is about the processes by which interoperability technologies are standardized, including comparisons of the interoperability benefits of different processes. The fourth section is an overview of a number of emerging information technologies relevant to interoperability, and the fifth section suggests opportunities for further action., Project No. 0700V13A-AA. The original document contains color images.

IDA Document D-754 summarizes the Reuse in Practice Workshop which was held at the Software Engineering Institute. The objective of this workshop was to assess the current state of the practice of software reuse and provide recommendations to the research and user communities to enhance software reuse. The workshop focused on four areas of software reuse: domain analysis, implementation, environments, and management. Position papers from several of the attendees are included as part of the document.