The use of Datamanager in a conventional file environment
John D Copley · ITNOW · 1978
Rank Xerox is owned by the Xerox Corporation and the Rank Organisation; the Xerox Corporation owns a majority of the shares. Within the Information Systems function of the companies there has been, in recent years, a policy of using multinational systems which are developed at one location and distributed to other locations. This has led to the standardisation of the computer environment particularly at the large data centres which serve the processing needs of North America and Europe. Early experience showed that standard computer environments were not sufficient to ensure the successful transfer of multinational systems. In many cases there were problems interfacing to the parts of the existing systems which were to be retained; variations in the definitions of the data passed in the interface were the major problem. It was clear, therefore, that data definitions common throughout the whole company, or at least throughout a functional area, were necessary for the successful implementation of multinational systems. A computerised data dictionary facility was needed. At this time (the latter half of 1975) the company had in America and Europe three computerised data dictionaries in operation all using different software. Two had been developed inhouse and one was a commercially available package. It was recognised that standardisation of definitions would only be successful if there were standard data dictionary software.