Interactive Information Management Systems

This paper and the three that follow it discuss various aspects of the problem of using computers to store, retrieve, and manipulate 1681 1682 THE BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL, DECEMBER 1 9 7 3 information. In particular they describe computer systems for carrying out important parts of such work. These parts have been integrated into a system for handling information. The system described in these papers has been designed so that a user and the computer system can interact heavily in reaching the solution to a problem posed by the user. Systems generically related to the ones described here have appeared in great numbers in the past decade. 1-6 In general they all use a computer to store, process, and provide results from information contained in a "data base" controlled by the computer. However, this deceptively simple description hides the many differences between the systems which make them less generally applicable than would seem immediately evident. No attempt will be made in the following to be complete in categorizing such systems. However, enough information will be given to place the present work in perspective with respect to important requirements placed on such systems in various applications. To circumscribe the work reported here and its potential field of application, let us characterize information systems according to the properties indicated in Table I. The systems which have been implemented using the tools reported here generally are most useful in applications corresponding to the earlier-given of the choices in the various categories.