FILE The Computerized Filing System for Hardcopy Documents by Peter M. Hurley September 7,1979 FILE is a tool intended to computerize office filing systems. It has been designed to work well for one person's files or to centralize the access to hardcopy documents distributed throughout an entire office area. FILE does not force any of the people using the computerized filing system to reorganize any of their individual file cabinets. Instead, FILE has been designed to augment all manual filing operations. FILE lets you find all documents related to a particular subject or combination of subjects quickly, no matter who received the document or no matter where the document is physically filed. You can narrow down the list of possibly desirable documents by specifying the author (or list of authors), by specifying before or after dates, or by specifying a list of subjects each of which must be included in the document before it would be chosen. FILE is a TOPS-20 program that will run on any DECSYSTEM-20 computer. It is a highly optimized data base system capable of handling over one million document entries efficiently. FILE uses all of the ease of use facilities of the DECSYSTEM-20 to provide an easy to learn and convenient tool that can be used by everybody. FILE allows simultaneous access by more than one person to the same data base. It keeps a transaction log of all references to the data base. It provides a mechanism for dumping the data base onto a file that can subsequently submitted directly to the batch system to rebuild the data base from scratch. It also provides a mechanism for checking the consistency of the data base and for determining if the data base needs rebuilding. FILE also outputs several reports which can be used for manual searches for documents. These reports provide a list of documents sorted by author, keyword, file cabinet location, or title. Page 2 How to use FILE 1) Setting up a computerized filing system The first step is to decide who is going to use the computerized filing system. It is necessary that all of the people who will be entering information into the system or who will be using FILE to find what documents are available have read/write access to the FILE data base. This means that when the computerized filing system is set up, the FILE data base be put in a directory that is commonly accessible by everybody. This can be done through the correct setting of the directory and data base file protections, by the appropriate use of directory and user groups, or by letting each person directly connect to the common directory area by giving out the password of the directory to each user of the filing system. 2) Choose a name for the data base Whenever anybody runs FILE, it will ask them for the name of the data base that they want to use. The name of the data base must be chosen the very first time an entry is made to the data base. From then on, the same name must be specified to reference the documents already entered in the data base. The default name (used if the user does not enter anything) is "FILE.DATA-BASE". Any legal TOPS-20 file name is acceptable. The transaction log that is automatically kept by FILE will have the same file name as the data base and will have the file type ".TRANSACTION-LOG". 3) Adding new entries to the data base New entries are added to the data base by using the "ADD DOCUMENT" command. (See below for a detailed description of all of the commands.) This command will ask for the title of the document, the author(s), the date of the document, the physical location of the file cabinet and the name of the folder within the file cabinet where the document is filed, and a set of keywords or key phrases that represent the subject matter of the document. The physical location of the file cabinet is usually shortened to something easy to remember and recognize such as the initials of the person who owns the file cabinet, or the name of the file cabinet (e.g. "PMH", "SAC", "1", "2", "A", "B", ...). Page 3 The keywords or key phrases should be carefully chosen such that other people interested in finding this document would think up the same word or phrase. The number of keywords for each document is not limited, so entering more than one keyword where appropriate is useful. The exact ordering of the words within a key phrase is not required for a match to be obtained. Likewise, plurals, past tenses, and even some misspellings will be correctly matched. 4) Modifying an entry If a mistake is made while entering the information about a document, it can be corrected by using the "SET" commands. 5) Searching for documents To search the data base for documents, you use the "FIND" command. This command will ask for the qualifiers that you want to use to narrow down the list of possible documents. The available qualifiers are: author, after date, before date, and keywords. Whenever a qualifier is specified, the document must match that qualifier before it is chosen. If multiple qualifiers are specified, then the document must match all of these qualifiers before it is chosen. 6) Deleting documents If it becomes necessary to clean out a file cabinet and throw away some documents, it is possible to mark that those documents are no longer available by using the DELETE command. This can also be done if the document gets lost. If the document ever gets returned to the file cabinet, it can be marked as such by using the UNDELETE command. Page 4 File Commands: ADD DOCUMENT This command allows you to enter new documents into the data base. It will prompt for five items. Title: Author: (a list of names is also acceptable) Date: (the date the document was written) Keywords: (or key phrases) File cabinet location/Folder name: At the end of the command, FILE will type out the document number that has been assigned to this document. This number only serves the purpose of identifying the document when changing information about the document or when typing out the available information about a document. This number should be copied onto the document before the document is filed away in the file cabinet. CHECK-DATABASE This command checks that the data base is consistent. It is used only as maintenance function. If the data base has become inconsistent, it should be rebuilt. See the DUMP-DATABASE command for this procedure. DELETE DOCUMENT number The DELETE command is used to mark that a document has been deleted from the file cabinet. Deleting a document will cause that document to always be skiped during a FIND command. DUMP-DATABASE (TO CONTROL FILE) file-name This command creates a batch control file that can be used to rebuild the data base. The purpose of this feature is to allow the user of FILE to occasionally take a checkpoint of the data base. Then, if the data base ever gets accidentally messed up or deleted, it can be rebuilt up to the point of the last checkpoint. EXIT This command exits back to the EXEC and ends the session. Page 5 FIND The FIND command is used to locate documents in the data base. This command will prompt the user for the author, a range of dates, and a set of keywords. You do not have to answer each question (i.e. type a carriage return to go to the next prompt). For example, if you want to find all documents on a particular subject, enter the desired subject name when it prompts for a keyword. If you want to limit the list to just documents by a particular author, enter the author's name when it prompts for author names and then proceed on to enter the desired keywords. LIST argument file-name TYPE argument The LIST and the TYPE commands are primarily used to print the information about any document in the data base. The LIST command goes to a file or the line printer, and the TYPE command goes to the terminal. These commands take the following arguments: AUTHORS Prints list of all authors DOCUMENT-NUMBER number Prints specified document info FILE-CABINET-FOLDER-NAMES Prints list of all folder names KEYWORDS Prints list of all keywords TITLES Prints list of all titles In order to get a sorted list of authors, folder names, keywords, or titles, output the list to a disk file and then use SORT to sort it. For example: FILE>LIST KEYWORDS KEYS.UNSORTED FILE>EXIT @SORT SORT>SORT /REC:150 /KEY:10,40 /ASCII /SEQ KEYS.UNSORTED KEYS.SORTED SORT>EXIT @ Page 6 SET argument The SET command is used to change specific information about any document in the data base. The arguments to the SET command are: SET AUTHORS (OF DOCUMENT) number (TO) author name, author name, ... SET DATE (OF DOCUMENT) number (to) date SET KEYWORDS (OF DOCUMENT) number (TO) keyword, keyword, ... SET LOCATION-OF-FILE-CABINET (OF DOCUMENT) number (TO) file cabinet/folder name SET TITLE (OF DOCUMENT) number (TO) title UNDELETE DOCUMENT number This command will undelete a document that had been previously deleted.