Adapting a General Purpose Information Processing System UDC 68L3 01 MEDATA to a New Environment

General Purpose Information Processing Systems provide the capabilities of filing and retrieving discrete data. These capabilities are independent of the source or nature of the data, and of the format and content of the reports to be generated from it. MEDATA is an example of such a system. The concepts of the MEDATA system were written at UCSD in PL/1, for processing on a time-shared interactive utility computing service.PL/1 proved to be a desirable programming language for this application.-The service provided by the time-shared utility has been satisfactory and the concept of performing this type of data processing on such a utility appears to be sound. The system is now operational on a service basis and is being used for a variety of purposes. In addition to providing service, it will serve as a model for teaching, and as a basis for further research into information processing systems.