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North-Holland 195 Microprocessing and Microprogramming 17 (1986) 195-203 Designing a Computer Workstation for Researchers in the Quantitative Social Sciences Tony Cornford and Brian Hayes Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Re- lated Disciplines, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE This paper reviews the applicability of the workstation con- cept to the tasks undertaken by quantitative social scientists and provides an outline of the software to be found on such a workstation. Keywords: Workstation, Integrated software, Social science computing. 1. Introduction ~ There are times when technology develops ahead of applications, and thus many useful computer sys- tems could feasibly be produced if only the poten- tial user knew what to ask for. This paper is an at- tempt to catalyse this process. Here we are outlining a specification for a computer system of hardware and software to assist the research worker in the quantitative social sciences. It is our intention that such a machine should not function as a particular tool in a toolbox, but as the toolbox itself- the point of access to almost all other support services. Recent years have seen the proposal of this type of system in practically all branches of knowledge work. In some areas, such as CAD/CAM and Office systems, practical progress has been made and sys- tems exist, often designated as 'Workstations'. Such systems rely on the increasing cost effectiveness and power of VLSI microprocessor technology together with winchester disks and high resolution graphics. Examples of the supporting hardware include machines such as the Xerox Star, Apollo, Dorado 1This work was undertaken as part of a research project finan- cially supported by the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines. and PERQ [7]. In each case the workstation will in- clude sophisticated software tailored to the applica- tion domain. Nonetheless for the majority of appli- cations it is common to use function specific pack- ages, such as Wordstar 2, Lotus 1-2-3 3 or dBase 114, operating within the context of some widely ac- cepted operating system and lower powered stan- dard microcomputer hardware. Alongside the increasing power of VLSI devices networking technology has had a major influence on the development of workstations. Networking strategies are a principle aspect of the design of many workstation products [10]. For example the designers of the Rainbow workstation state that 'even in the age of VLSI, the processing power and data storage hardware necessary to support today's applications sit uneasily in an office environment, and are likely to continue to do so given the current expectations of growth in software functionality' [9]. This quote is challenging for two reasons, firstly because we are not convinced that useful applica- tions, at least for our target users, cannot sit within a single microcomputer, and secondly because the authors see the limitation as achieving for users the expected levels of software functionality. It is with this issue that the rest of this paper is concerned. 2. Software Functionality Limitations of software functionality on a worksta- tion may arise from a lack of raw computing re- 2Wordstar is a trademark of Micropro International Corpora- tion. 3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Corpora- tion. 4 Dbase II is a trademark of Ashton Tate.

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Page 1: Designing a computer workstation for researchers in the quantitative social sciences

North-Holland 195 Microprocessing and Microprogramming 17 (1986) 195-203

Designing a Computer Workstation for Researchers in the Quantitative Social Sciences

Tony Cornford and Brian Hayes Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Re- lated Disciplines, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

This paper reviews the applicability of the workstation con- cept to the tasks undertaken by quantitative social scientists and provides an outline of the software to be found on such a workstation.

Keywords: Workstation, Integrated software, Social science computing.

1. Introduction ~

There are times when technology develops ahead of applications, and thus many useful computer sys- tems could feasibly be produced if only the poten- tial user knew what to ask for. This paper is an at- tempt to catalyse this process. Here we are outlining a specification for a computer system of hardware and software to assist the research worker in the quantitative social sciences. It is our intention that such a machine should not function as a particular tool in a toolbox, but as the toolbox i t s e l f - the point of access to almost all other support services.

Recent years have seen the proposal of this type of system in practically all branches of knowledge work. In some areas, such as CAD/CAM and Office systems, practical progress has been made and sys- tems exist, often designated as 'Workstations'. Such systems rely on the increasing cost effectiveness and power of VLSI microprocessor technology together with winchester disks and high resolution graphics. Examples of the supporting hardware include machines such as the Xerox Star, Apollo, Dorado

1 This work was undertaken as part of a research project finan- cially supported by the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines.

and PERQ [7]. In each case the workstation will in- clude sophisticated software tailored to the applica- tion domain. Nonetheless for the majority of appli- cations it is common to use function specific pack- ages, such as Wordstar 2, Lotus 1-2-3 3 or dBase 114, operating within the context of some widely ac- cepted operating system and lower powered stan- dard microcomputer hardware.

Alongside the increasing power of VLSI devices networking technology has had a major influence on the development of workstations. Networking strategies are a principle aspect of the design of many workstation products [10]. For example the designers of the Rainbow workstation state that 'even in the age of VLSI, the processing power and data storage hardware necessary to support today's applications sit uneasily in an office environment, and are likely to continue to do so given the current expectations of growth in software functionality' [9].

This quote is challenging for two reasons, firstly because we are not convinced that useful applica- tions, at least for our target users, cannot sit within a single microcomputer, and secondly because the authors see the limitation as achieving for users the expected levels of software functionality. It is with this issue that the rest of this paper is concerned.

2. Software Functionality

Limitations of software functionality on a worksta- tion may arise from a lack of raw computing re-

2Wordstar is a trademark of Micropro International Corpora- tion.

3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Corpora- tion.

4 Dbase II is a trademark of Ashton Tate.

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196 T. Cornford and B. Hayes / Designing a Computer Workstation

sources (MIPS, Gigabytes etc.), or more probably from a lack of suitable software. For our user com- munity the available software is drawn from the mass marketed function based packages, and a limited number of special statistical and numerical programs, supplemented by user written programs. The porting of the software base existing on mini- computers and mainframes has proceeded slowly with limited success. It is therefore clear that the set of available software does indeed pose severe func- tionality problems for social scientists. The unsuita- bility or disfunctionality can be broadly broken down into three categories.

There is simple presentational unsuitability which arises when the user is unwilling or unable to adapt to the format of the user interface provided by soft- ware. In such cases a simple modification of the pre- sentation would usually be sufficient, tailoring it to the specific needs of the user, though this is often made remarkably difficult by package vendors, or even impossible. An obvious example is the fact that current microcomputers are capable of display- ing bold or underlined text on their screens, or even second character sets, while the most common wordprocessing software packages are incapable of exploiting this.

In the second category of procedural unsuitabil- ity, the users find themselves constrained to change their style or sequence of work to that of the pack- age, something they may or may not be willing to do. Usually, with some minor changes in presenta- tion, they will alter their work style simply because the difference in cost between that and obtaining a purpose written system is so great. This, however, is not always to the benefit of efficiency.

Finally there is functional unsuitability, in which the user simply cannot realize some requirements within the available packages. This can result in anything from a patchwork solution to the rejection of the microcomputer and package approach alto- gether and total reliance on bespoke software, mainframe systems, or even the rejection of compu- terised systems altogether.

One of the results of these unsuitabilities has been a plethora of packages which are specifically de- signed for a particular type of user, anything from the newsagent to the chartered surveyor. The varia- bility in the quality of this application specific soft-

ware is clearly in part a result of the market frag- mentation implicit in the targeting of specific user groups, a fragmentation which does not permit in- vestment at a suitable level. The other result has been the disproportionate growth and success of 'productivity' packages, such as Visicalc 5 and its de- rivatives, or dBase n. These software items provide end users with application development tools and to some extent bypass the conventional process of development or acquisition of application software, while still allowing the user to tackle individually the problems of presentation, procedure and func- tion. Currently interest is turning to 'integrated packages' in which a range of previously discrete productivity tools are put together with a common user interface (Framework 6, SymphonyT).

This paper attempts to look at the software needs of a particular user group, quantitative social sci- ence research workers, a class of users who have been ill-served by the predominantly business oriented software that has been available. We are not, however, concerned with how a microcom- puter can ease the administrative burden on an aca- demic educator, who is perhaps well accommodat-

ed by present business software, although such a person may well have a dual persona.

In the past, perhaps the most glaring functional unsuitability has been in the dearth of mathematical word processing facilities, but rather than catalogue past unsuitabilities, in this paper an attempt is made to identify the range of functions which our target users might require, the software facilities required to implement them, and the computing environ- ment in which they are based. This is done by first outlining what quantitative social scientists do and the computing environment within which they operate, and then outlining a set of inter-related software services that a social scientist's worksta- tion might offer,

3. The Quantitative Social Scientist

The quantitative social scientist, as a knowledge

s Visicalc is a trademark of Software Arts Incorporated. 6 Framework is a trademark of Ashton Tate. 7Symphony is a trademark of Lotus Development Corpora-

tion.

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T. Cornford and B. Hayes / Designing a Computer Workstation 197

worker, is primarily involved in the production of papers, reports and other types of presentation. Other aspects of their work, such as the use of stat- istical packages, are intended to provide material for inclusion in such documents. This is not to den- igrate the importance of these other activities, for without them the papers could not be produced, it is simply to put the ultimate function of the proposed system into perspective.

The documents produced are far more isolated from the external environment than would be the case in a typical business application. On average our user will produce two or so papers a year, and the occasional book, although these may evolve from a number of drafts and working papers with a fairly large circulation.

The work that is presented in these papers usually consists either of the marshalling of data in various forms to demonstrate a proposition, or of the straightforward application of a mathematical mo- del or models to a particular set of data, with a dis- cussion of the estimation procedures and results. The models employed may be devised for a particu- lar project, or adapted from existing generic mo- dels. Occasionally mathematical manipulation of these models is required. The estimation procedure for such models may range from a simple linear re- gression to a highly model specific procedure in- volving staggering quantities of computer time.

The amount of input, in terms of documents or papers can be surprisingly small. This is in part due to the highly particular nature of social science re- search projects, and also to the fact that research publications in the social sciences often tend to be more substantial than those in the physical sciences. In any case, once papers, books etc. are read they are seldom required for constant reference although substantial bibliographies are often maintained.

The datasets used vary widely in size, although most tend to be rectangular, at least at the analysis stage, as most statistical procedures operate on two- dimensional matrices. Typical datasets will contain under 10000 items of information, but users of large government datasets such as the United Kingdom Family Expenditure Survey, can find themselves with upward of two million data points. Increasingly, researchers expect to capture their data in machine readable form, whether from a sur-

vey archive, a government department, or an online commercial data base. Implicit in this is the as- sumption that most analysis done is in fact secon- dary, reflecting the high costs of surveys of the scope, complexity and size demanded by modern work in the social sciences. There will, of course, continue to be a requirement to handle smaller sur- veys locally.

Researchers are usually organised in small group- ings for the investigation of identical or related top- ics, in peer and hierarchical fashion. Collaborating individuals can be located in separate institutions at great distances from each other.

Finally our target user will very often conduct a substantial proportion of their research work at home or away from the 'office'. The nature of the work undertaken away from the office can be quali- tatively different, although perhaps drawing on a common source of material, but often the user sim- ply wishes to continue during the evening or week- end that which was started during the course of the working day.

4. The Computing Environment

Armed with this thumb-nail sketch of the quantita- tive social scientist, we can start to place them in a realistic computing environment. We can then con- sider what functions can or should be performed on a microcomputer workstation, and what functions should, or must, be allocated to other facilities with- in that environment.

Any system that is unable to support the home/ workplace dichotomy is not simply procedurally unsuitable, but functionally unsuitable. Since the workstation under consideration is intended to be the point of access to all services, it is important that the social scientist does not feel constrained by having to work in a particular location, otherwise a user will refrain from committing sections of his work to the system and the holistic approach will fail. If, for instance, a person wrote best at home during the weekend, then he would not only be un- likely to use the wordprocessor at an early stage, but he would also not avail himself of the support facilities such as those for keeping and cataloguing notes which could assist him at that stage. This

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would result in the operation of manual or lower power and possibly incompatible systems in tandem with the workstation and the wasted effort involved in transferring material between them.

A workstation of limited local intelligence ope- rating through a network overcomes these objec- tions, but we would rule this out simply because public telecommunications are not capable of hand- ling the high data rates necessary for an acceptable human interface, nor does it offer sufficient reliabili- ty. It is impractical to consider running conditioned leased lines to the home of every research worker which effectively provides a limit of data transmis- sion rates of 1200 baud, when the costs of modems are considered. Even 9600 baud is in practice too slow for the graphical presentation we would like to see on a workstation.

There are two methods of overcoming this prob- lem. One is to make the workstation itself portable, the other is to make it cheap and therefore reprodu- ceable both in the workplace and at home. Clearly if the latter is chosen then the system status must be portable, in the form of some compact high density storage device.

On the other hand one must accept that micro- computers are simply not capable of supplying all the needs of social science researchers, most notably those concerned with large data bases and extensive computational procedures. There will therefore be a need for a processing interface to machines provid- ing these services.

In addition there is a requirement for a document interface to mail systems and electronic publishing, as well as a simple terminal interface for access to conventional systems without compatible network- ing facilities.

In general the external facilities available from the workstation will split into two groups, those that would be provided within the workstation if the technology were available, and a second group of services that are intrinsically foreign to the work- station. Services in the former group should, as far as possible, be emulated in the workstation at least for the purposes of learning and debugging.

5. Software Architecture

To accomplish the goal of providing a personal

workstation within the framework of the assumed computing environment, the workstation should provide software services to users in the broad func- tional areas detailed below.

The software supporting each of these functions is described here as a server. The actual implemen- tation model for each server is a two layer software module, the lower layer providing the generic ser- vice, the upper layer providing a choice of interfaces to the service. Thus the user can utilise any server via a user interface while any specific server can make use of any other server in performing its tasks via a lower level interface based on a communica- tion facility such as bounded buffer pipes. Thus for example the user can directly use the database server via a high level interface, as can all other pro- cessors via the low level interface.

5.1. Communications Server

• I ,

As outlined above, the workstation will be required to operate in a distributed environment• This de- mands that it can achieve simple asynchronous ter- minal access to a wide range of mainframe and mi- nicomputer systems. At the same time the worksta- tion, at least in the workplace, will require to con- nect to a LAY and to WAN gateways, and to support appropriate high level protocols for database ac- cess, document transfer and job transfer and ma- nipulation. In the previous section we have charac- terized these as the processing, document and ter- minal interfaces.

We can illustrate this with examples from net- work functions which are intrinsically external to the workstation. Within a research project there may be a central dataset, with various derived vari- ables, from which any particular researcher only operates on a relatively small subset. Through the processing interface the researcher can access the project data dictionary, construct a subschema ap- propriate to immediate requirements and at the ap- propriate time download a local copy of this data- set. Having produced results, in the form of esti- mated equations or tables, the researcher can then prepare a paper perhaps also using data captured from a national macroeconomic database which had to be accessed via the terminal interface and stored as it was listed on the screen• A draft of the

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paper can then be circulated to interested members of the research project through the mail system prior to presentation at a seminar or publication.

5.2. Symbolic Text Server (STS)

As emphasised earlier the raison d'etre of this sys- tem is the preparation of documents, and these doc- uments are likely to include significant quantities of mathematical text and graphics structures such as network and block diagrams, or graphs, pie charts and other statistical presentations. Conventional word processing is thus just a subset of a more gen- eral symbolic text processing facility. Perhaps the meaning of the word text is being stretched rather far to include illustrations, but terms like display manager do not carry the same flavour and there do already exist text processing systems with built-in graphics capabilities.

To underline the primacy of the document pro- duction function within the workstation we make the following requirement of all modules within the system. All displays and outputs must be capable of being captured by, or transferred to, the Symbolic Text Server, and there edited for presentation or in- corporated into larger documents.

In designing software to support symbolic text structures there are two related but distinct design problems to be resolved. The first design problem is the extent to which a system should be based on a filter/formatter principle, in which the user, in pre- paring and editing a document, sees only a symbolic representation of the text on the screen, or whether a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) approach should be adopted in which the user sees as faithful a representation of the final text as possible.

The second design problem is to decide whether the special symbols and diagrams presented are to be treated as a particular form of graphics to be em- bedded as a window in a matrix of words, or whether they are to be considered as part of the line- ar stream of text and expanded appropriately where encountered. In any case the methods seen in many microcomputer mathematical word processing sys- tems available today, in which an operator emulates the actions of a conventional typist manipulating multiple golf balls, by selecting unit sized character fonts is quite unacceptable.

In general the wysiwyg approach lends itself more to considering formulae, etc. as windows in the text, and thus making them editable only through those windows. The linear approach on the other hand has successfully been used for a number of years in a filter/formatter environment. Thus sys- tems such as TEX [5] consider mathematical formu- lae as a linear stream of text, which is suitably ex- panded for display according to separately specified rules.

While the wysiwyg mode of usage is what we sus- pect users really want, there is the associated prob- lem that when a formula is viewed purely pictorial- ly, it is hard to recover its semantics, or to manipu- late it naturally. Even so, in the workstation the se- mantics have to be exchangeable with other mo- dules in the system. A further advantage of the filter/formatter approach is the overall consistency of presentation that it can provide, following preset rules for lists, tables, paragraphs etc.

As a compromise solution the following architec- ture is proposed. A document consists of a stream of text segments each with associated (alterable) presentation rules both for editing and the printing of final output. The underlying representation would be linear and compatible with the other servers mentioned below. Ultimately, a perfect pre- sentation must be determined on a formula by for- mula and a page by page basis. This is achieved by editing the printer presentation rules. At the editing stage the user has some choice as to how simple or complex the presentation is to be, ranging from a simple view of the underlying linear text form, to as good a representation of the final product as possi- ble.

5.3. Image Server (Is)

The visual display of quantitative information has long been important to the study of the social scien- ces, not only in successfully presenting ideas sup- ported by the numbers, but often in causing the re- searcher to come to his conclusions in the first place [8]. The scope for the exploitation of this last func- tion has perhaps increased in recent years with the ability of the computer to generate graphic displays, and this has led to a renewed and increased interest in such displays as a research tool [1], without which

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any workstation for research in the quantitative so- cial sciences would be sorely deficient.

Although facilities should be available for sketch- pad drawing and labelling, which would involve ac- cessing the Image Server directly, for the most part the Image Server provides services to other mo- dules. Quantitatively oriented graphics are generat- ed by the Database Server or Model Server as re- quired using the Image Server. Similarly flow charts, or network maps are generated by the Net- work Symbolic Server.

5.4. Network Symbolic Server (Nss)

Networks and graphs are a basic modelling tool. The NSS offers service to the user, as well as to other aspects of the software. The functions of the net- work symbolic server are the representation and manipulation of networks, functional dependencies and the like, while the graphic presentation of net- works is handled by the Image Server and Symbolic Text Server.

The yss is the primary tool for creating, storing and retrieving lists and other pointer based struc- tures. It also contains a set of standard algorithms such as those for finding a minimal spanning tree, or the equivalence of two structures, and is capable of executing functions on graphs and networks ena- bling Path analysis, PERT, dynamic programming and other techniques to be employed. It also offers its services to other modules, in particular the Data- base Server.

The NSS can also be directly useful. For example the NSS can link definitions of derived variables ac- cording to dependency. If a particular variable defi- nition was altered, the NSS could be used to list those variables which depend on it and must themselves be recalculated. Of course if the Database Server was sufficiently sophisticated this could be made au- tomatic.

5.5. Algebraic Symbolic Server (ASS)

The segments of text containing formulae can be derived from the Algebraic Symbolic Server and in- corporated into the text just as segments of pro- grams are in modern computing books. As well as forming a natural bridge between research and pre-

sentation, this increases confidence in the work pre- sented and guards against typographical errors.

Services offered by the ASS include basic algebraic operations of substitution, syntax checking and symbolic integration and differentiation. Based as it is on list and tree structures, the ASS will make use of a low level service from the NSS.

5.6. Database Server (DS)

The machine must be able to define and manipulate large databases, as indicated in the previous section, and where necessary, handle distributed databases. This is achieved by the implementation of a relatio- nal database, complete with data dictionary sup- port, data administration facilities and a powerful quantitative query language.

The needs of the quantitative social scientist in this field, apart from the orientation of the query language, are not particularly different from those of other users. However the database should be in- tegral to the low level system, supplanting conven- tional files. As such it must have interfaces from all languages and servers on the system.

5.7. Document Administration Server (DAS)

The Symbolic Text Server and the Image Server provide a general set of tools for document design and screen painting. These include the obvious text and graphics layout functions. The DAS is intended to provide the tools for control of generated docu- ments, providing version control and distribution information and also facilities for the use of ' turn round' documents, which are items such as ques- tionnaires generated by the computer and intended ultimately to return as input.

In practice the user of a personal workstation is not able to take the machine everywhere, and not able to persuade every other person in the vicinity to make direct or network contact with it. There- fore any tools that help to smooth the interaction of remote persons and organisations are highly desir- able. Thus one example of the function of the OAS is the design of questionnaires. The DAS recognises standard questionnaire formats, multiple choice questions etc, and generates the corresponding database definitions, data vetting and input proee-

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dures, and the questionnaire printing and distribu- tion with names, addresses etc.

5.8. Model Server (MS)

The database query language should provide the bulk of standard and simple statistics, the MS takes over when the requirement outstrips it. Functions of the MS include model definition, model editing and version control. It provides the 'structured mi- lieu for storing, manipulating and retrieving mo- dels' [3] as well as the facility to run models with data. As such the Ms provides the primary interface to the library of statistical and mathematical func- tions described below.

The Model Server, of course, makes extensive use of other services. Suppose, for instance, a re- searcher wished to do a path analysis. He would define the equations of the system in terms of vari- able names comprehensible to the Database Server, and include such transformations as seem appropri- ate, such as squared or log terms. This same set of equations could, of course, also be estimated on another occasion using other simultaneous equa- tion techniques. The MS would apply the statistical routines to the data, and then use the NSS and the IS to construct a path diagram of the results which could be passed to the STS for further annotation.

5.9. Other Software Modules

In addition to the software services provided by the servers listed above there need to be a number of ancilliary support modules in the workstation which the user can make use of, although there would be no direct user interface.

Thus the machine would provide a library of stat- istical mathematical and graphical routines, com- plete with documentation, at least of the breadth of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) library. To include such a vast amount of software and docu- mentation is perhaps best achieved through the net- working facilities. The advantages of this are not least in the rapid dissemination of updates and ad- ditions through the user community.

The system alas needs to include a programming language of the old school such as c or FORTRAN, with an imbedded assembler, and debugging tools.

These languages interface with the Database and the standard Numerical and Statistical Library. This is required if any existing software is to be ported to the system. The writing of programs is not

however the primary role of this workstation and the level of integration of such languages with the server tools will be weak. A declarative language such as PROLO6 might also be provided as an aid in model building.

If one accepts that it is unlikely that programs produced on other systems will be required or even capable of being transported directly onto the sys- tem we are describing, then one could easily envis- age a system specific language, such as Smalltalk, with other systems built on top of it.

There will also need to be a set of miscellaneous utilities, built from the previously mentioned com- ponents including spreadsheets, calendars, desk di- aries, and the like.

6. The Processing Environment

It would seem natural to advocate an integrated working environment for the tools and servers out- lined above. It is however worth pausing to consid- er the merits and implications of such an approach.

Though integration is a prevalent buzz word at the moment, what it means in practice is not so clear. An integrated approach to software has at least five dimensions. These are (1) the integration of the various tasks required by a user to undertake a particular piece of work; (2) the integration of the user command language, of whatever style, across functions; (3) the integration of the users visible in- terface (windows etc); (4) the sharing of code among separate functions; and (5) the sharing of logical and physical data structures. In order to achieve integration of type 1 the designer is forced to consider types 2 and 3, and this in general leads to types 4 and 5.

Integration of type 4, the sharing of low level code, tends to force integrated systems to supplant or duplicate operating system functions. Thus the ad hoc development of specialised integrated envi- ronments will break the standardization and open market for operating systems, a circumstance that has enabled a wide range of activity to proceed in

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parallel with developing the potential of the micro- computer. Perhaps this is to be regretted. What is clear is that the development of standards for the elaboration of the user interface beyond the glass teletype, and the operating system interface beyond simple character devices and files, is an urgent re- quirement, both to overcome the presentational and procedural unsuitabilities noted above, and as the primary route to portability and increased effi- ciency in using the technology. In the medium term the transition from conventional operating system to integrated operating environment is inevitable. The basic kernel of functions that will be provided will include graphics, windows and menus, mouse functions, concurrent processing, more sophisticat- ed file management, and networking and communi- cations facilities. The Apple Macintosh 8 is perhaps the clearest pointer to what future systems will provide.

A system implementor can go some way to alle- viating the problem of predicting these new stan- dards by choosing a system, which is itself a likely candidate for a new standard, as a basis for the en- vironment. Thus one might consider two possible host environments for the workstation software, UNIX 9 and Smalltalk-80 [4, 6].

The UNIX operating system has become the de facto standard for high power microcomputer workstations. The features of UNiX that make it most appropriate are its inherent portability, its clear model for support of secondary storage, and the shell. UNIX is tailorable to meet all the require- ments that we have outlined so far, but it does have some shortcomings. The system could never be more than a low level implementation tool. It does not have an adequate user interface, nor does it as such provide the tools to build one, which would in- clude a standard graphics interface.

Another possible base environment is that pro- vided by Smalltaik-80. A number of implementa- tions are coming onto the market, and the various features of the model of user interaction inherent in Smalltaik, and to a lesser extent in its relatives, such as the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, is in closer accord with the style of system proposed. Smalltalk has

8 Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computers. 9 UNIxTM is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Incorporated.

other interesting features, not least of which is the compact size of its object system, quoted as 40 000 lines of source against 400 000 for UNIX [2]. This is achieved in part by an orthogonal set of high level operating system functions, and in part by exploita- tion of the concept of inheritance. Inheritance also provides a large measure of consistency among the components of a system aiding the development

• and adaption of integrated systems.

7. Conclusions

In this paper we have attempted to look at the func- tions to be sought on a workstation for quantitative social scientists. It could certainly be argued that in general these requirements are not unlike those of any other quantitative knowledge worker, and in- deed that may be the case. The underlying hardware that supports workstation systems will for econom- ic reasons certainly tend to be drawn from a sub- stantially similar class of machine.

The approach used in this paper, starting by looking at the inadequacies of current provision, and the general working environment of target users, does however lead to an approach to the con- ception and design of a workstation that does iden- tify a number of significant features appropriate to the target user group. Such an approach must be the primary route to addressing the pressing prob- lem of providing adequate software functionality.

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[3] D.R. Dolk and B.R. Konsynski (1984) Knowledge Re- presentation for Model Management. I EEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 1 O, No. 6.

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quently held several research and computing posts. For the past five years he has been in the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines where he is a Research Fellow. His research interests cover the broad field of the non-numerical applications of computing to the social sciences, and in particular they include the construction of microcosmic models, the use of microcomputers in social re- search, and the development of decision support systems for public policy analysis.

Brian Hayes received his BA degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto in 1972 and his MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics in 1975, where he has subse-

Tony Cornford received his BSc (Economics) and M.Sc Operational Research degrees from the London School of Economics where he is currently a Lecturer in Computing. His research interests include the use of information technology in social science and in social administration.