Initial experiences with an on-line catalog (abstract only)
Rebecca D. Dixon, Edmund D. Meyers · ACM SIGSOC Bulletin · 1981
P-STAT began as a collection of integrated commands which read rectangular files sequentially. A simple modification language for recoding and case selection was added in the late 1960's. Commands were added throughout the 1970's. Recently, however, a major effort has gone into language enhancement and file structure improvements.P-RADE, a random access data enhancement to P-STAT, is an example. This type of file structure supports up to 10 indexing keys, allowing a case or a group of cases to be accessed very rapidly. In addition, any P-STAT command can read a P-RADE file sequentially in any key order.In some ways, this approach blends aspects of database technology into statistical software. Examples of its use will be given.