A DATA BASE WITH A VIEW

At the Car Product Development (CPD) Division of Ford Motor Company, over 150 end users can access multiple sources of data with a new mainframe computer interface called VIEW, which is an acronym for Virtual Interface Engineering Window. With VIEW, end users can access mainframe data base systems, such as DB2 and IMS and various types of flat files, to create necessary reports. The system especially benefits the information systems department, because it no longer has to create a second set of information for users to access. Now, users can go directly to the data bases they need, which saves system resources.

VIEW was written in four months, in the Focus 4GL, by systems analyst Wendy Balaka. It is menu driven and allows users to easily access data bases and create reports. For example, VIEW users created 12 reports in two months. It would have taken two years to create the reports with Ford's previous system, which required systems analysts to make repeated visits to clients to ask them what they want.

Users can store report formats in their personal libraries to create and print reports on the fly or overnight. VIEW also contains a global library, which lets users share their report formats with other users. The system is available only on the CPD mainframe, but there are plans to develop a PC equivalent so PC users can access data from a mainframe and download it to a spreadsheet or word processor.

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