International Business Machines Corporation

Shawn M Austvold

Joseph Phillip Bigus

Jonathan D Henckel

Paul A Hospers

Sujatha Pothireddy

Peter M Gaertner

Rebecca B Legler

Jim Evans

Daniel R Dahl

Neal Hale

Marshall P Cline

A framework for use with object-oriented programming systems includes one or more objects of a class called &ldquo;Socket&rdquo; that receive and process packets of work. As various applications execute, they require servicing of tasks, which correspond to the packets of work mentioned above. The packets of work are represented in the framework by objects of a class called &ldquo;WorkUnit&rdquo;. When a WorkUnit object is generated by an application, it in turn generates an object of a class called &ldquo;Retriever&rdquo; which is associated with the appropriate Socket object needed for servicing the WorkUnit. The Retriever object retrieves the Socket object to service the WorkUnit from an object of a class called &ldquo;SessionInfo&rdquo;. The SessionInfo object is a single object for maintaining registries of Socket objects and objects of a class called &ldquo;ApplicationInfo&rdquo;. ApplicationInfo objects contain application specific information that can be used, manipulated, and shared between one or more WorkUnits of a given application. WorkUnits of an application can retrieve ApplicationInfo objects from the SessionInfo object by use of a Retriever object which is associated with the appropriate ApplicationInfo object. The framework includes a core set of objects, including SessionInfo, Socket, ApplicationInfos, Retrievers, and WorkUnits, and permits user-defined, extensible instances of these objects that permit tailoring of tasks for particular needs.

Object oriented application program development framework mechanism

A neural network development utility assists a developer in generating one or more filters for data to be input to or output from a neural network. A filter is a device which translates data in accordance with a data transformation definition contained in a translate template. Source data for the neural network may be expressed in any arbitrary combination of symbolic or numeric fields in a data base. The developer selects those fields to be used from an interactive menu. The utility scans the selected field entries in the source data base to identify the logical type of each field, and creates a default translate template based on this scan. Numeric data is automatically scaled. The developer may use the default template, or edit it from an interactive editor. When editing the template, the developer may select from a menu of commonly used neural network data formats, and from a menu of commonly used primitive mathematical operations. The developer may interactively define additional filters to perform data transformations in series, thus achieving more complex mathematical operations on the data. Templates may be edited at any time during the development process. If a network does not appear to be giving satisfactory results, the developer may easily alter the template to present inputs in some other format.

Program product for facilitating use of a neural network

An enhanced neural network shell for application programs is disclosed. The user is prompted to enter in non-technical information about the specific problem type that the user wants solved by a neural network. The user also is prompted to indicate the input data usage information to the neural network. Based on this information, the neural network shell creates a neural network data structure by automatically selecting an appropriate neural network model and automatically generating an appropriate number of inputs, outputs, and/or other model-specific parameters for the selected neural network model. The user is no longer required to have expertise in neural network technology to create a neural network data structure.

Enhanced neural network shell for application programs

Apparatus and method for facilitating use of a neural network

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Shawn M Austvold