Regardless of which approach was taken, it became obvious that multilingual descriptions and references are necessary. Such a feature is simple to implement. References are just entered and stored as they appear in the name of the source document. Each reference is itself referenced by a unique number so that document information can be easily related back to the original reference.
Textual descriptions of descriptors are not actually stored with the values of the descriptors. They are only retrieved when one wishes to print a report (either on a screen or line printer). They are thus stored separately either in programme format or held in a separate file, so that whenever a given descriptor is referenced its associated description can be printed. Many different descriptions of the same descriptor, each one in a different language, can be stored. The user may nominate any language and have all descriptions printed out in that language. Translation facilities would be difficult to implement. It should be sufficient if textual information entered as the value of a trait always appeared on reports as it was entered.
Software could be provided to allow entry of multilingual descriptions.
There are many factors to be considered when buying software. In most applications it is more important than the hardware. Often, however, the hardware already exists and software must be adapted to it.
Software may either be bought as an off-the-shelf product, providing you have or can get the hardware to match it, or a new package can be developed specifically for the application in mind (or perhaps modified from an existing package to meet specific requirements). There are arguments for and against both these approaches. These arguments are detailed below with reference only to data management packages.
Advantages
- These packages are generally produced for a large market and so development costs can be spread over many potential installations rather than just one; they are, therefore, cheaper than a once-off package.
- They are intentionally written as a general purpose tool and so suit a variety of applications.
- They generally have easy to use report writing facilities that enable report formats to be changed at will.
- Many allow the data bank to be restructured without modification to software. This is of great importance if the data bank cannot be fully defined at the outset.
- A myriad of search types is available. It is still advisable to predefine as many as you can of the search types that you will need to use to make sure a package will suit your needs. But if, during production, another type cones to mind a good package will allow you to do the search on the spot, without further software development.
- Most packages have an interface to another commonly used high-level language to allow you to further tailor the system to your needs.
Disadvantages
- The packages available may often do more than you require. In this instance, you may end up paying more for your software than you would if a customized solution was written.
- Because packages are designed to be a general solution, they may run slower than a customized solution would. This depends very much on the languages used for comparison, machine usage, type of application, etc.
- For the same reason they may take up more computer memory.
- Software support is often harder to achieve than with in-house written software. If the package is purchased and then found unsuitable there is very often little one can do than bear the loss and try another solution. The only people who can modify the package are the original suppliers. Even if they are prepared to make modifications, their changes may be substantially higher than in-house costs.
Advantages
- Software can be written that best fits the application. It should take up the minimum amount of memory, should run as fast as possible and should be as easy to use as possible. It does one job and it does it well.
- If the software is written in-house (as opposed to being contracted to someone not normally responsible to the “company”), modifications can generally be made fairly quickly to someone proficient with the system.
- The software can be made available i.e. not all applications can be satisfied by the off-the-shelf packages.
Disadvantages
- Development costs are high where the software can only be used for one application.
- Skilled personnel are required to maintain the software. Apart from logic errors in the programme itself, flows in the initial design may soon become apparent. Lack of generality early in development can become a very serious and costly problem in later stages.
