ACM Computing Classification System

The ACM Computing Classification System is a subject classification system for computing devised by the Association for Computing Machinery. The system is comparable to the Mathematics Subject Classification in scope, aims, and structure, being used by the various ACM journals to organise subjects by area.

History

The system has gone through seven revisions, the first version being published in 1964, and revised versions appearing in 1982, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1998, and the now current version in 2012.

Structure

The ACM Computing Classification System, Version 2012, has a revolutionary change in some areas, for example, in Software that now is called "Software and its engineering" which has three main subjects:

Software organization and properties. This subject addresses the programming language theory and, in a broad sense, what software is.
Software notations and tools. This subject classify some practical concerns about software development.
Software creation and management. This subject is which we know traditionally as Software Engineering (SE), but SE as category as missed.

The ACM Computing Classification System,version 1998, is hierarchically structured in four levels: three outer levels, coded by capital letters and numbers, and an uncoded fourth level of subject descriptors. Thus, for example, one branch of the hierarchy contains

I. Computing Methodologies, which contains:

I.2 Artificial Intelligence, which contains:

I.2.4 Knowledge representation formalisms and methods, which contains:

Temporal logic.

Each top-level category has two standard subcategories: "general", coded with a "0", and "miscellaneous", coded with a "m". For instance, I.0 denotes the "general" subcategory of Computing Methodologies, while I.m denotes its miscellaneous subcategory. Several subtopics are listed as uncoded subject descriptors in these standard subcategories.

ACM Computing Classification System

The 1998 version of the ACM classification has the following main categories.

A. General Literature	is for general computing literature. It includes subtopics for introductory and survey material, and for reference works.

B. Hardware	Has subtopics for control structures and microprogramming, arithmetic and logic structures, memory structures, input/output and data communications, register-transfer-level implementation, logic design, integrated circuits, and performance and reliability.

C. Computer Systems Organization	concerns computer systems organization. The subtopics of this section are processor architectures, computer-communication networks, special-purpose and application-based systems, performance of systems, and computer system implementation.

D. Software	This section includes two subtopics on software development: programming techniques and software engineering. Two more subtopics concern the software infrastructure needed to run other software: programming languages and operating systems.

E. Data	includes subtopics on data structures, data storage representations, data encryption, coding and information theory, and files.

F. Theory of Computation	includes several topics from the theory of computation: computation by abstract devices, analysis of algorithms and problem complexity, logics and meanings of programs, mathematical logic, and formal languages.

G. Mathematics of Computing	Its subtopics are numerical analysis, discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, and mathematical software.

H. Information Systems	It includes subtopics for models and principles, database management, information storage and retrieval, information systems applications, and information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI).

I. Computing Methodologies	Covers a diverse set of subtopics concerning different application areas of computation: symbolic and algebraic manipulation, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, image processing and computer vision, pattern recognition, simulation and modeling, and document and text processing.

J. Computer Applications	also covers computer applications, but with a focus more on the different application areas and less on the different styles of computation one does in each of those areas. Its subtopics are administrative data processing, physical sciences and engineering, life and medical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, arts and humanities, computer-aided engineering, and computers in other systems.

K. Computing Milieux	The subtopics of this section are the computer industry, history of computing, computers and education, computers and society, legal aspects of computing, management of computing and information systems, the computing profession, and personal computing.

References

Coulter, Neal (1997), "ACM's computing classification system reflects changing times", Communications of the ACM (New York, NY, USA: ACM) 40 (12): 111–112, doi:10.1145/265563.265579 .
Coulter, Neal (chair); French, James; Glinert, Ephraim; Horton, Thomas; Mead, Nancy; Ralston, Anthony; Rada, Roy; Rodkin, Craig; Rous, Bernard; Tucker, Allen; Wegner, Peter; Weiss, Eric; Wierzbicki, Carol (January 21, 1998), "Computing Classification System 1998: Current Status and Future Maintenance Report of the CCS Update Committee", Computing Reviews (New York, NY, USA: ACM): 1–5 .
Mirkin, Boris; Nascimento, Susana; Pereira, Luis Moniz (2008), "Representing a Computer Science Research Organization on the ACM Computing Classification System", in Eklund, Peter; Haemmerlé, Ollivier, Supplementary Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS-2008), CEUR Workshop Proceedings 354, RWTH Aachen University, pp. 57–65 .

External links

ACM Computing Classification System is the homepage of the system, including links to four complete versions of the system, for 1964 , 1991 , 1998 , and the current 2012 version .
The ACM Computing Research Repository uses a classification scheme that is much coarser than the ACM subject classification, and does not cover all areas of CS, but is intended to better cover active areas of research. In addition, papers in this repository are classified according to the ACM subject classification.

ACM Computing Classification System

History

Structure

See also

References

External links