Feasibility Study for Incorporating a Data Structure Definition and Manipulation Facility Within the Comrade Data Management System.

摘要

A scheme is described for enhancing the COMRADE (Computer-Aided Design Environment) Data Management System. This scheme would produce benefits in data management efficiency, user convenience, power, and cost effectiveness by representing the data structure of a COMRADE data base apart from the data records and by adding a system specifically designed to handle pointer information. In particular, such techniques would: reduce COMRADE use of disk I/O for data block relationships; simplify the organization and administration of the data base; enable the use of a powerful data-definition/data manipulation language; enable the use of an inferential search mechanism; and permit existing programs involving pointer relationships to remain essentially unchanged. The degree of effectiveness achieved under this scheme can be further enhanced by giving the data base administrator a greater role in developing and maintaining the data base in a way to capitalize on the greater flexibility provided. The procedures involved in implementing the proposed scheme and the benefits to be realized from such a scheme are illustrated by describing a hypothetical COMRADE/GIRS system. GIRS (Graph Information Retrieval System) is an in-house developed system written in FORTRAN that is particularly efficient at manipulating pointers. It is easily portable to other machines.