From Item To Information

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From Item To Information

• SIR Databases in BGU
• School of Medicine
• David de Leeuw
• Ben Gurion University of the Negev
• david_at_bgumail.bgu.ac.il
• June 2001

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Historical Overview - I

• 1982 SPSS was the main analytical tool used at
  Ben Gurion University
• We understood we had a problem with
  data-management of non-flat files
• A salesperson presented SIR in the university.
  With its close relationship to SPSS, SIR seemed
  to be just the tool we were looking for.

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Overview II

• 1982 to 1988 Intensive use of SIR for students
  administration and a number of research projects.
• In 1988 at the SIR conference in Chicago Tony
  gave us a diskette with SIR/TEXT.
• Soon we recognized its use as a tool to manage
  our examinations and questions bank.

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Overview III

• Since 1988 we developed a fully integrated
  management system (all in Hebrew) for the medical
  school.
• In 1997 a School in International Medicine was
  established (in English) with Columbia
  University.
• Both schools now run all exams from the SIR
  database
• Also national final exams of four medical schools
  are produced from the database

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Some details

• We run about 300 exams a year
• All is automated using specialized scanning
  software, VB, Pascal, 80 Sir databases for exam
  generation and 2 Sir database for student data.
• Runs in Hebrew and English

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Production of exams

• Exams are generated in a number of versions
• Questions may be chosen randomly, according to
  subject, previous use, other statistical criteria
  or by hand
• Output is produced camera-ready, including images
• Reports are produced for evaluation
• Key for analysis of the exam is generated
• Statistics are read back to the bank

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Students information system-terminal entry and
retrieval (SISTER)

• Runs almost 20 years without major changes
• Interfaces automatically with examination
  analysis software
• Produces all reports and forms by student, and by
  class
• Interfaces with the University students
  management system

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My experience

• Based on years as a programmer, designer,
  manager, analyst, user, husband of programmer
  concerning
• Mumps, Magic, Dbase, Paradox, Access, SQLServer,
  Oracle and SIR

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SIR and Total Cost of Ownership

• Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) includes all of
  the costs involved in operating networks and
  computers, whether leased or owned. It is
  traditionally used by businesses to help control
  costs and make strategic decisions.
• http//www.cosn.org/tco/about.html

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Points of discussion

• Servers and operating systems
• PQL Vs. SQL
• Stability, bugs and crashes
• DBA, tuning and management
• Support
• Development tools
• Manpower

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Servers and operating systems

• We use and used SIR on all kinds of operating
  systems (CDC/NOS, NOS/VE, VAX, IBM UNIX, Linux,
  Win98, WINNT)
• We never needed to buy or replace a computer for
  SIR but used what is available. Our present main
  server is a six years old IBM/AIX system.
  Performance over the years improved incredibly.

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PQL vs. SQL

• In my opinion PQL follows the human mind much
  more closer than SQL.
• Especially if a number of ifthen statements
  are involved in a multiple record-type retrieval,
  SQL statements get extremely complicated. I never
  came across a problem of data retrieval and
  analysis PQL couldnt handle effectively and
  elegantly.

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Stability, bugs and crashes

• Our main applications still run Sir 3.2 (a 1993
  release!). We are soon moving all to 2002.
• We never encountered unexpected crashes.
• With a code base of about 15000 lines, there are
  just a few dealing with workarounds for bugs.

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DBA, Tuning and management

• DBA, Tuning etc.
• I understand a DBA (Database Administrator) is
  a well paid job, tuning disk-sizes, blocks and
  pointers to keep the database healthy.
• I have been running SIR databases of hundreds of
  thousands of records on IBM XT. Never came across
  an issue of DBA management.

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Support

• One company (guess..) we pay money for a
  subscription on their problems database. From
  that company we never got answers on any problem.
• SIR as a small company provides a very direct
  link with the developers. Participating in
  beta-tests, we are very confident that all we
  need runs perfectly in the next release.

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Development tools

• My wife was at an Oracle course on Developer
  2000, while I was at a lecture by a senior Oracle
  rep, who declared Developer 2000 dead (and this
  in the year 2000)
• The SIR philosophy of having the tools generate
  PQL is important to prevent endless conversion
  problems between application and application

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Manpower

• Maybe the weakest link as far as Sir is
  concerned There are no SIR programmers around.
  We need to train a programmer from scratch.
• Any programmer can become proficient in SIR in a
  number of weeks.

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Subjective score for SIR

• Servers and operating systems
• PQL Vs. SQL
  
• Stability, bugs and crashes
  
• DBA, tuning and management
• Support
  
• Development tools
  /-
• Manpower
  -

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Total Cost of Ownership - TOC

• Considering total expense hardware software
  maintenance licensesmanpowerdevelopment time
  support divided by database size complexity
  application-lifetime SIR is a definite candidate
  to have the lowest TOC of all.

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Thank you

!