Use of Scientific Data with the ''MASTER CONTROL'' And ''INGRES'' Data Management Systems

摘要

Experiences with the two systems, which span a decade of development and use of data management, are compared. This comparison includes, therefore, not only the evolution in approach but also very different hardware and software environments. Most significant, perhaps, is the change in the user community. In earlier years, it was primarily the programer or computer-knowledgeable person who translated the requests of the scientist, engineer, or administrator into data management commands. Today, the professional and program administrator expect to use the system themselves. Master Control is essentially a flat-file, direct random access system with secondary indices. Its strengths are highly developed routines for the manipulation of variable-length text and numerical data. It is written in an advanced version of Fortran. It has been used during the past ten years with a variety of diversified, medium-sized, textual and numeric data bases ranging from large collections of bibliographic citations of the scientific literature, to the San Francisco Bay Area Atmospheric Pollution model and the ecological study of the San Bernardino Forest near Los Angeles. Ingres is a relational system for essentially fixed-length data, written in the ''C'' computer language. It is closely linked to the highly flexible and unique Unix operating system of the PDP-11 family of machines. A novel Meta-Machine concept for data management was designed and implemented. 28 figures, 1 table. (ERA citation 03:054219)