R68-42 On Designing Generalized File Records for Management Information Systems

The author has chosen a somewhat inappropriate title for this paper; the file records he discusses are not "generalized," but rather tailored to predictable real world constraints, and the "management information systems" he considers form only a portion of the spectrum. Nevertheless, he presents an objective technique for file record design quite applicable in certain cases. Given 1) known and predictable data and basic interrelationships subject to 2) known and predictable use (processing/querying), then the design techniques presented by the author should certainly ease the designer\´s conscience, if nothing else, and will probably materially assist in "tuning" a record- oriented data management system. The analytic design techniques presented form one element in a suggested iterative design loop "of data collection, preliminary file design, simulate (sic), analyze (sic) results, . . . ." Additional consideraton of "tuning" a system might well lead to consideration of special instrumentation, special reduction for the data gathered by such instrumentation, adaptive systems which "tune" themselves for optimum performance, and other subjects. This article concentrates on the analytic design techniques, to the exclusion of the other aspects of the complex design cycle