NCSU/CSC: Alan L. Tharp

Alan L. Tharp

Alumni Distinguished Professor

Ph. D., Northwestern University, 1969

Dr. Tharp's primary research interest is in the area of developing new and improved file structures. Of particular interest are structures which improve system performance and ones which allow new applications - tasks which were previously not doable because of a lack of appropriate data structures. He is also interested in database architectures, in improving the usability of software systems, and in computer science education.

In the area of file structures, he is currently investigating improvements to perfect hashing techniques, file structures for use with optical disks and with information filtering. In database architecture, he is examining distributed architectures which incorporated recent computer technologies such as optical disks.

For user interfaces, he is considering what makes computer software usable. In computer science education, he is interested in encouraging greater emphasis on teaching endeavors and in improving the quality of instruction.

Representative Publications

File Organization and Processing, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1988, 398 pp.
"Gray Code Chaining: A High Performance Hashing Algorithm for Limited Storage Applications", (with M. Loeb), Information Technology, 2007. ITNG '07. Fourth International Conference on 2-4 April 2007, pp.1014-1020.: “Tridirectional Computed Chaining: an efficient hashing algorithm for limited space applications,” (with M. Loeb), Proceedings of the
29th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2005), pp. 381- 387.: "Adaptive Hashing with Signatures," (with E. A. Schweitz), Information Systems, Vol. 18, No. 8, 1994, pp. 597-608.
"Using Tries to Eliminate Pattern Collisions in Perfect Hashing," (with M. D. Brain), IEEE Transactions on: Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1994, pp. 239-247.; "Multi-character Tries for Text Searching," (with L. K. D. Cooper), Information Processing & Management, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1993,
pp.197-207.
"High Storage Utilization for Single-Probe Retrieval Linear Hashing," (with S. F. Ou), The Computer Journal, Vol 34,: No. 5, 1991, pp.455-468.; "Users, a Software Model, and Product Evaluation," (with R. Holcomb), Interacting with Computers, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1991, pp.155-166.

Personal

Department of Computer Science, Box 8206
College of Engineering,
North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695

(last update 3-12-08)