



                          Accounting Enhancements to IAS/PDS
           
          Richard E. Evans
          Metcalf & Eddy, Inc.
          50 Staniford Street
          Boston, Mass 02114
	  617 367-4288

               The existing IAS/PDS system has two weaknesses that make the

          implementation of an in-house timesharing system difficult.



               The first weakness is the fact that  IAS/PDS  ties  security

          and  accounting  tightly together.  In an engineering office this

          is a problem because each employee should be able  to  accumulate

          system  resource  utilization charges for any number of accounts.

          In other words system security (LOGIN passwords) should be  keyed

          to  employees;   while  accounting  (connect  time, disk storage,

          etc.) should be keyed to active projects of the firm (accounts).



               The other weakness is  the  inadequate  amount  of  resource

          utilization  statistics that are captured and stored by IAS.  IAS

          simply accumulates two statistics (cummulative connect  time  and

          core-ticks) for each user during an accounting period.  Data that

          are required to charge clients for use  of  computing  resources,

          such as the following, are not collected:

               1.  Connect time by session and person.

               2.  Batch vs.  timesharing usage.

               3.  Usage of particular programs.

               4.  Disk storage usage.



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               To  strengthen  these  weaknesses  M & E   has   implemented

          enhancements  to the IAS/PDS accounting.  These enhancements have

          been implemented by means  of  patching  in  "hooks"  to  PDS  at

          strategic  locations.  These "hooks" are in two locations in PDS:

          in the LOGIN/LOGOUT processing module;   and  in  the  subtasking

          module.



               These  enhancements  includes  changes   to   the   password

          verfication  routine  and  additions to the subtasking routine to

          gather statistics on task usage.  These enhancements work  as  an

          addition  to, not as a replacement for, the regular PDS LOGIN and

          accounting.  


		To  get  a complete set of listings execute the PDS command

	  file LISTINGS.CMD.  The complete documentation is  in  MAEACT.DOC.

