General purpose information retrieval program written entirely in FORTRAN 4 was developed and can be used with any file of fixed format documents. This program is easily used by noncomputer personnel and provides flexibility in search requests and output format

Ryan, E.

English

Request oriented general purpose information retrieval program written in Fortran IV FOR use with any file of fixed format document

NASA Technical Reports Server

A request oriented information selection program

December 1968	 Brief 68-10451 
NASA TECH BRIEF 
NASA Tech Briefs are issued to summarize specific innovations derived from the U.S. space program, 
to encourage their commercial application. Copies are available to the public at 15 cents each 
from the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information; Springfield, Virginia 22151. 
Request-Oriented Information Selection Program 
The problem: 
The Lewis Research Center Office of Reliability and 
Quality Assurance had obtained magnetic tapes which 
contain failure and consumption reports and inspec-
tors' reports on parts used by the Atlas and Centaur 
projects. Through a 5-year period, over 300,000 such 
reports were collected. Personnel of the office needed 
the ability to search through all the reports, recog-
nize reports on failures of a particular kind, extract 
some of the information from those reports, and or-
ganize the extracted information into a meaningful 
format. 
The solution: 
A general purpose information retrieval program 
written entirely in Fortran IV was developed and can 
be used with any file of fixed formal documents. The 
program is easily used by noncomputer personnel and 
provides flexibility in search requests and output 
format. These features together with efficient design 
enable the program to satisfy users' requests for in-
formation promptly and inexpensively. 
How it's done: 
The reports to be searched are stored on magnetic 
tapes which will be referred to as the search tapes. 
At the beginning of each search tape is a file of infor-
mation which describes the format of the reports on 
the search tape. This file is designated the directory 
file. The program begins by reading the directory file 
in order to prepare itself for the particular kind of 
documents on the search tape. The directory file com-
pletely describes the documents on the search tape. In 
order to implement the program for a new application, 
therefore, one must simply prepare search tapes whose 
directory files describe the documents to be used, for
example, personnel records, library files. The user's 
input cards which contain the search and output re-
quests are read and interpreted next. After this, the 
actual search begins. In making the search the pro-
gram incorporates the AND, OR, and NOT opera-
tors. The program also uses the following relational 
operators: greater than, less than, equal to, not equal 
to, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to. 
These relational operators are used in searching values 
of certain identifying numbers. 
Documents are read From the search tape and com-
pared to the user's search request. When a document 
is found to match the request, it is copied onto an 
intermediate tape which will be called the hit tape. 
This process continues until all documents from the 
search tape have been checked. The documents which 
were accumulated on the hit tape are then read, and 
the requested information fields are copied from them. 
The copied information is sorted and formatted, ac-
cording to the user's output request, and printed. 
Notes: 
1. This program is written entirely in Fortran IV 
for use on the IBM 7094/44 computer. 
2. Inquiries should be made to: 
COSMIC 
Computer Center 
University of-Georgia 
Athens, Georgia 30601 
Reference: B68-10451 
Patent status: 
No patent action is contemplated by NASA. 
Source: Elizabeth Ryan 
Lewis Research Center 
(LEW- 10255) 
Category 06 
This document was prepared under the sponsorship of the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration. Neither the United States 
Government nor any person acting on behalf of the United States
Government assumes any liability resulting from the use of the 
information contained in this document, or warrants that such use 
will be free from privately owned rights.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680000449 2020-03-12T06:04:05+00:00Z


A request-oriented information selection program

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