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Conference iosg::all-in-1_v30

Title:*OLD* ALL-IN-1 (tm) Support Conference
Notice:Closed - See Note 4331.l to move to IOSG::ALL-IN-1
Moderator:IOSG::PYE
Created:Thu Jan 30 1992
Last Modified:Tue Jan 23 1996
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:4343
Total number of notes:18308

1629.0. "Fuzzy directories ..." by BRUMMY::MARTIN::BELL (Martin Bell, TCC, Birmingham UK) Mon Oct 19 1992 18:25

This isn't a pure ALL-IN-1 question, but as the solution has to run (and
be usable under ALL-IN-1) i will post it here.

ALL-IN-1 provides 2 "kinds" of directory.

The first kind is a simple RMS file, with one record for each entry. This 
is used for PROFIL, NETWORK, personal and corporate directories. It is rather
slow unless you are searching via a keyed field, and maintaining the data
network-wide can be tricky.

The second kind is DDS, and has a much cleverer search algorithm (so i am
told), allowing you to search across several occurences of a field in
one go, and doing efficient network propagation. It still, however, consists
of lots of records with a fixed number of fields, and if you want to store
something that MAILbus engineering didn't think of (eg secretaries address),
then you are stuck.


Now what one of my customers really wants is a directory that you can ask
things like ...

"Get me the number of the nearest phone to some place or other"

or

"What is the name of the administrator who dealt with me last week?"

or

"I need the mail address of my garage"

... so it is a kind of "fuzzy logic", with no predefined structure. but
the data itself does fit into some structure that builds as information is
added.

Maybe i am asking for the impossible, but surely someone out there must
have thought about this one before.

Anybody got any ideas?

mb
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
1629.1One solutionSCOTTC::MARSHALLMon Oct 19 1992 18:5319
Hi,

>> Anybody got any ideas?

A relational database.

OK, a bit of a vague, flippant answer, but I think of all the readily-available
data structures, it's the only one that comes close to doing what you want.

You could also roll-your-own using multiple RMS files driven off entry forms
(possibly with entry forms mapping more than one file and all sorts of horrible
cross-referencing).

Implementing this is left as an exercise for the interested reader... :-)

Scott

PS Note that a do-everything directory was on the original list of things
being considered for V3.0, but it wasn't considered important enough...
1629.2SRA almost (but not quite) as clever as DDS!AIMTEC::WICKS_ABraves Win, Braves Win, Braves Win!Tue Oct 20 1992 04:5911
    Martin,
    
    I'm glad you think DDS is clever (:==:). 
    
    Have you seen SRA for ALL-IN-1? which is basically the RDB access ASSET
    that Joe Duncan used to plug in all his notes replies. It has a
    notesfile on node ASIAGO.
    
    Regards,
    
    Andrew.D.Wicks
1629.3I think i need some mind expanding drugs!BRUMMY::MARTIN::BELLMartin Bell, TCC, Birmingham UKMon Oct 26 1992 10:2227
Thanks for the replies so far!

Some kind of relational database may be the answer (using SRA, if it is
still available), but the harder i think about it, the more unstructured
it becomes.

The "opportunity" is for a clever hospital phone directory, so one phone
may have several owners, eg. nurses in a ward, and another phone may have
none, eg. in a corridor (luxury, we used to _dream_ of a corridor). Plus all
the other permutations and combinations that you can think of. It would
be even nicer if there was some intelligence built in, so that different
times of day or shifts could be taken into account, and even the ability
to include bleepers.

At the moment, a plain VMS SEARCH of a text file containing everybodies
phone number does quite a good job, but i am sure that some structure 
(or even un-structure) would do a better job.

Re: .1

Scott, were there any specifications produced for the do-everything
directory that never happened?


Cheers

mb
1629.4SCOTTC::MARSHALLMon Oct 26 1992 11:5110
Hi,

>> were there any specifications produced for the do-everything directory

Yes, but it's IOSG-internal only.  I don't think it would help you much anyway;
it was basically a single "directory" that mapped all the current directories
(eg corporate, personal, profile, etc) without the user needing to worry which
specific directory contained the record.

Scott