This is not the place for that story, which is tangential to the automation depth of information access. The database management system emerged through several generations. The common denominator was that they were all software tools to enable programmers to produce reports more quickly and effectively than before, and were complete separate from the recorder or transaction processing function.Īt the same time, data storage was evolving. The result of this thinking was a whole industry that itself evolved over time, and played out in multiple environments and took multiple forms. These people began to think in terms of reporting itself, so naturally they broke the problem into natural pieces: accessing the data you want to report on, processing it (select, sort, sum, etc.), and formatting it for output. ![]() But various clever people saw that by creating a whole new language and software environment, the process of writing reports could be tremendously enhanced and simplified. The fact that COBOL was cumbersome for this purpose was reflected in the fact that specialized syntax was added to COBOL to ease the task of writing reports. The most frequent such language was COBOL. Originally, the language that was used for transaction processing was also used for generating the report. This first generation of power tools were specialized software packages generally called “report writers.” The power tool was directed at the programmer who had to create the report. Information access was now a key goal in itself, and was so important and done so frequently that specialized tools were built to make it easy, which is always the sign that you’re into the “power tool” phase. ![]() The first of these was the separation of reporting from transaction processing. The “power tool” stage of automation depth had two major sub-stages. The core transaction processing was “touching” the transactions and the master files while it was doing this, it could be updating counters and adding to reports as it went along, so that you wouldn’t have to re-process the same data multiple times. What if lots of people want the reports? You build (in the early days) or acquire (as the market matured) a report distribution system, to file the reports and provide them to authorized people as required.Įfficiency was a key consideration. What if you need reports for different purposes? You enhance the core program and the associated reports. Why would you have one program doing things, and a whole separate program figuring out and reporting on what the first program did? It makes no sense. ![]() Reporting is usually thought to be an integral part of the recording process – you do it, and then report on what you did. The reports would include the changes made, the new status of all the accounts, and whatever else was needed to run the bank.Īt this initial stage, the program that does the recording also does the reporting. The posting program would perform all the updates and create reports. For example, all the checks written and deposits made at a bank would be recorded during the day then, at night, all the daily activity would be posted to the accounts. In the case of information access, early programs were written to record the basic transactions that took place as part of the recording operation, reports were typically produced, summarizing the operations just performed. “Recorder” is the first stage of the automation depth pattern of software evolution. In this section, I’ll show how the entire pattern played out in “information access,” which is the set of facilities for enabling people to find and use computer-based information for business decision making. ![]() I’ve tried to give examples to show how the principles are applied. Automation depth in Information AccessĮach of the patterns of software evolution I've described are general in nature. Unlike the progression of software applications from custom through parameterized to workbench, customers tend to resist moving to the next stage of automation for various reasons including the fear of loss of control and power. I have illustrated these stages with a couple examples that illustrate the surprising pain and trouble of going from one stage to the next. I have described the concept of automation depth, which goes through natural stages starting with the computer playing a completely supportive role to the person (the recorder stage) and ending with the robot stage in which the person plays a secondary role.
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