STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER Computing Newsletter Published Irregularly by the ACME Staff Vol. 9, No. 6 October 23, 1972 Item Page 1. Do You Have Data Storage and Retrieval Problems? ....cccccecccccccccee 1 2. Pilot Study/Implementation of Public Data Bank Programs ........ eee eee 1 3. Time Oriented Data Bank Seminar ..ecssececcccccccecccce see e ween eanee 1 4. Comment on Pageminute ACCOUNTING cece vcceccccerecccevccscctcecevuceuce 1 2+ GE, Terminet Terminals wc... cele cece ccc caceeaeessteeueeeuaeenees 2 6. Terminal Demonstration ...cececeuccceceecuceceucececcucuceveucecsccecs 2 7. New PUBLIC Programs: QSORT, QRANK, and SORTEXT - Sorting Routines .... 2 8. New PUBLIC Program TEACHER: Teaches PL/ACME ........ccecccecece teens 2 9. "Super" ACME Index ....eceeeceee cece eb seseessece ee ee ues seseuseusces 2 10. Recovery from Realtime Input/Output Failures cocccccsccccccccccesecuce 3 il. New and Revised ACME Notes Since Last Newsletter(Sept. 14,1972) ...... 3 J-L6 Page 1 1. Do You Have Data Storage and Retrieval Problems? ACME is presently reviewing the area of storage and retrieval of patient-related in- formation. A number of users are finding that they are expending more effort than originally planned in designing and maintaining their patient-related data files in an efficient form, resulting in high storage charges and/or high page- minute charges. In order to better understand the problems and requirements of this group of users, ACME has recently conducted a survey, "Present and Potential Patient Data Bases" in the Medical Center. if you have not yet discussed your data bank requirements with ACME, please contact Frank Germano at ext. 5758. A summary of this study will be available soon in ACME Note DBS. F. Germano 2. Pilot Study/Implementation of Public Data Bank Programs ACME has recently designed a series of public programs to set-up, maintain, and use a data bank which contains patient-related information. The design is a generali- zation of Dr. Jim Fries's Time Oriented Medical Records Data bank, which has been operational for over a year. The generalized system of programs will allow con- siderable flexibility among individual users, both in number of stored elements and in kinds of retrieval. The philosophy behind the study is discussed in ACME Note PMOD and the more detailed implementation design can be found in ACME Note TODD. The present implementation of data bank programs will provide a common basis for the study of the patient-related data storage question. The programs are designed to collect statistics which will help optimize the use of the present programs and help plan future implementations. F, Germanc 3. Time Oriented Data Bank Seminar A seminar will be held on Wednesday, October 25, at 4:15 in Room TALUS to discuss the scope and purpose of the Time Oriented Data (10D) public programs. All inter- ested groups are urged to attend. Both present and future capabilities of the system will be discussed. Contact Frank Germano at ext. 5758 if you have any questions concerning the TOD programs or seminar. F, Germano 4, Comment on Pageminute Accounting Current ACME accounting programs do not record pageminutes used during terminal sessions interrupted by a system crash. Historically, this has been considered de- sirable since the user should not be charged for terminal sessions in which major inconvenience is experienced. Recently, however, we find that a number of users have logged on early in the morning and have remained logged on throughout the day. Therefore we are considering a modification to the accounting program such that pageminute utilization would be recorded at hourly intervals; only pageminutes used since the last recording would be lost in event of system crash. A change to this effect will be implemented over the next few months. The refund policy will also Jako Page 2 be revised to aid the users who have long execution problems where a system crash prior to job completion negates the value of all cycles received prior to the crash. Ron Jamtgaard 5. G.8. Terminet Terminals Five GE Terminet 300 terminals have arrived and have been installed in user areas. One of these terminals has been placed in the Machine Room user area to allow you to try it out for yourself. Its operation is described in ACME Note TNET. If you have a large amount of output, you might be interested in this terminal. F. Germano 5. Terminal Demonstration There will be a Terminal Demonstration in the Machine Room user area on Thursday afternoon, October 26, from 1:00-2:00 p.m. and from 3:00-4:00 p.m. The advantages and disadvantages of various terminals will be discussed. All interested users are urged to attend. Yr, Germano 7. New PUBLIC Programs: QSORT, QRANK, and SORTEXT - Sorting Routines Three new sorting programs are now available on the public file. All three use an efficient sorting algorithm known as 'QUICKSORT'. The sorting programs are named QSORT, QRANK, and SORTEXT. The first two are used as subroutines while SORTEXT is an interactive program that can be used to sort text files. See ACME Note ESORT. ACME Staff &. New PUBLIC Program TEACHER: Teaches PL/ACME TEACHER, an interactive program which teaches the PL/ACME language, is now available on the PUBLIC file. Based to a great extent on a question-response teaching method, TEACHER will make it easier to learn PL/ACME and get a quick exposure to most of the features of the language. TEACHER is intended to be used on CRT display terminals tecause of the faster transmission time but the program may be used on any of the other available terminals. Since the new GE Terminet terminal is faster than the present IBM 2741, its use is recommended for the TEACHER program. The program TEACHER is best used in conjunction with the PL/ACME class. F,. Germano 9. "Super" ACME Index A new "super" ACME index has been constructed using the public concordance program, CONCORD. This index is a keyword index to the present ACME index. Since it is quite large (100 pages), only two copies are available: one in the ACME office, TCLOL, the other in the Machine Room user area, F. Germano J-h6 Page 3 10. Recovery from Realtime Input/Output Failures A new ACME Note, URECOV, gives suggestions for coding to be included in user programs to aid in recovery from realtime input/output failures. A copy of this note has been mailed to all users on ACME's "1800" mailing list. If you have not received a copy, and need help with these realtime problems, please obtain URECOV from the ACME office. R. Frey 11. New and Revised ACME Notes Since Last Newsletter (Sept. 14, 1972) New COUNT-1 Structure of the Count File JQPUBLIC.ACME.count (M. Goheen) Sep- tember 28, 1972. ESORT=1 ACME Program Library QSORT, QRANK, SORTEXT, and GENSORT: Sorting (M. Goheen/M. Neimat) September 19, 1972. ETRAS-L Organization of the Computer~-Assisted Instruction Project on ACME: TEACHER PUBLIC (M. Neimat) September 22, 1972. ETEAU-1 ACME Program Library TEACHER: Teaches PL/ACME Language (M. Neimat) September 22, 1972. FOCP-1 Opening or Closing a User Disk Pack (R. Frey) October 18, 1972. KASCII-1 ACME Use of the ASCII Character Set (B. Stainton) September 18, 1972. SUMINI-1 Minicomputer Support at SUMEX (Medical Center Computer Planning Note) (G. Wiederhold) October 10, 1972. TNET-1 User Instructions: Western Union or G.E. Terminet 300 Terminals (B. Stainton) October 16, 1972. TODD-1 Definition of the PL/ACME Time-Oriented Data Bank Protocol (S. Weyl) October 18, 1972. TRMTYP-1 Format of ACME Control Block TRYTYP (B. Stainton) October 2, 1972. Revised AA-36 ACME Notes Index (E. Baxter) October 10, 1972. AAOBS-8 Obsolete ACME Notes (E. Baxter) October 10, 1972. ADD-4 Useful Additions to the ACME Software (G. Wiederhold) September 19,1972. BSPD~2 Sharing Patient Data Files (G. Wiederhold) October 16, 1972. cons—4 Consulting Schedule (F. Germano) October 16, 1972. EAK-5 ACME Subroutine UTEST: Mann-Whitney U-test (J. Whitner) October 13,1972. EDJ-3 ACME Program Library LINSYS: Solution of Simultaneous Equations (J. Whitner/R. Jones) October 16, 1972. J=h6 Page 4 Revised (con't) EPORT=2 User Instructions: Execuport 300 Terminal (B. Stainton) October 10, 1972. FTR-2 ACME/OS Files Conversion (R. Frey) October 4, 1972. FUTIL-2 File System Utility Library (R. Frey) October 18, 1972. Fy-4 File Addressing (R. Frey) October 18, 1972. KL-8 Tables in ACME Dependent on System Parameters (G. Wiederhold/C. Granieri/ S. Miller) October 18, 1972. UART-5 Access to Real-Time Directory Entries (G. Wiederhold/R. Frey) October 10, 1972. YM-9 ACME Monthly Accounting Programs ACCTTING and NEWACCT (S. Miller) October 12, 197e. YMC-7 Billing Cards for scc (S. Miller) October i2, 1972.