System information database: an automated maintenance aid

  • Authors:

  • Linda Brice;John Connell

  • Affiliations:

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico;Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

  • Venue:
  • AFIPS '84 Proceedings of the July 9-12, 1984, national computer conference and exposition
  • Year:
  • 1984

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Abstract

Documenting application systems has long been considered a necessary evil. Necessary because documentation provides a map to present systems, serves as a maintenance aid, and is required by the auditors; evil because it is an activity generally dreaded by those who develop the systems. Since normal behavior regarding unpleasant chores is avoidance, application systems documentation is sometimes absent and often incomplete. Documenting may be unpopular for a number of reasons, including psychological ones. One very obvious problem is that, except for a few automated tools at the program level, documentation is a manual process used in an automated environment. Automating the process is a way to reduce the laboriousness of the task. This paper is a case study of how one data processing organization applied student labor and a relational database management system in a prototype to automate much of their applications systems documentation function. The capabilities, fringe benefits, and future enhancements of the tool are discussed.