A RESOURCE CONTROL AND MONITORING
PROGRAM
Published in FIRST ANNUAL TAFE COMPUTER CONFERENCE
1984
by CHRIS MORRIS, Faculty of MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
ABSTRACT
Briefly describes a program written on the VAX computer system, to
control
and monitor the use of the VAX computer resources at Sydney Institute
of
Technology.
While the program is written specifically for Sydney Technical
College,
the possibilities for application of this type of program in other
colleges
is extensive.
PREAMBLE
At Sydney Institute of Technology there are two VAX 11760 that are
connected
to seven rooms each containing fifteen terminals and a printer.
Prior
to 1984 allocation of these rooms was initially made by faculties
making
bids and bargains at meetings which were hold early in each semester.
As
classes were canceled or initiated during the semester, time booked was
released or time free was booked. The computer department managed these
processes, and kept it's records on a white board in Building E.
In 1984 the computer user group agreed to manage these functions,
and
the task of chief arbitrator - record keeper was delegated to me.
Several
changes to procedure were made.
-
The Initial allocations were made in the last days of the semester
preceding
that for which the bookings were required.
-
Alterations during semester were made by phoning the record keeper, who
was available for half an hour on four days of each week.
This arrangement was inferior to the previous method because of the
inconvenience
of contacting the record keeper, and because telephone communication
does
not permit graphic display of available time slots. To solve this
problem, I wrote a programme that would be permanently available to VAX
users, that would maintain a record of bookings.
DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
-
The program should contain a complete record of all week day bookings
for
the 18 (eighteen) weeks of a semester.
-
Any user (i.e. teacher) should be able to access the program at any
time,
to establish whether his School had any particular terminal room booked
for any time during the semester.
-
A school representative should be able to book or cancel a terminal
room
for his school but should not be able to inadvertently interfere with
the
bookings made by other schools.
-
The program should be easy to use, and it should be invulnerable to
anything
but a determined effort to corrupt it.
DETAILS
-
The program is written in PASCAL and occupies about 55
blocks.
The compiled version is about 40 blocks.
-
The program is executed by logging in to the account "SEMESTER1" or
"SEMESTER2"
in the appropriate Semester on the Base Computer and then entering the
command "RUN BOOK"
-
The number of schools is limited to 24 (the free letters of the
alphabet)
-
The number of rooms that can be booked is not restricted (except by
practical
considerations).
-
The number of hours that can be booked each day is limited to 14. (i.e.
28 half-hour
slots).
1
-
For operational simplicity, the weeks that can be booked are the normal
18 weeks of semester.
-
To avoid deadlock situations, only one user can access the file at any
one time. If a second user attempts to use a program, then the program
will fail for the second user on a file protection fault.
-
There is a menu with six options. The first three options are for
inspection
of bookings. The fourth is to make or cancel a booking. The fifth
prepares
a file from which hard copy of the bookings may be prepared for a
semester.
The sixth terminates the program.
-
All options except the fourth are available to the casual user. The
fourth
option requires a password that is entrusted to the school
representative,
and permits the representative to either book time for his school, or
release
free time held by his school.
-
The system is fail safe. If information is incorrectly
entered
then the program will either request its re-entry, or crash. The
integrity
of the database file will not he corrupted.
-
Execution can be interrupted (with CTRL C)
-
Changing of passwords, room names, school names, or identification
codes
can only be achieved at program level.
-
Since only a compiled program is held in accounts SEMESTER1 and
SEMESTER2
these programs cannot he altered by any user. The program is not
suitable
for general distribution to other than Pascal programmers having full
documentation.
-
In operation, the program maintains a file (called SEMESTER.DAT) that
contains
a (coded ) record of bookings. Menu option five creates a file (named
TIMETABLE.DAT)
that may be printed.
CONCLUSION
The program has been operational since April 1984, and in this time
has failed once (due to corruption of the main program). Recovery was
achieved
the next day with no data losses.
General opinions of the computer users group is that the program
fulfills
its purpose effectively, and that it is user friendly. At
the
request of J. McSweeney the program has had a statistical package
added,
and a statistical analysis of bookings is available.
It should be possible to modify the program so that it would check
(in
real time) whether bookings made were being :utilized. This task would
require a not inconsiderable programing effort, and perhaps access to a
higher priority account.
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