Amiga Collections: MegaDisc/MegaDisc 07 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip/MegaDisc 07 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf/ARTICLES/databases

Text File | 2000-04-10 | 16KB | 274 lines

                    AN OVERVIEW OF DATABASES


    Here is an idea of some of the databases available for access via
 telecommunications. Most are available for direct dial-up on your Amiga,
 while some are manned by researchers who tap away until they've answered
 the inquiry. Some are as easy as Viatel to access and interrogate from a
 home computer. This list is by no means complete, as business finds uses
 for information more are added almost daily. Australians are on par with
 the rest of the worldfor use of databases. "Australia is an
 information society in which more people are employed in collecting,
 storing, retrieving, amending and disseminating data than are producing
 food, fibres and minerals, and manufacturing products... Access to
 knowledge and capital or wealth is roughly equivalent and there is a
 widening gap between the information rich and the information poor
 whereby the unskilled become an intellectual proletariat" (Barry Jones,
 Sleeper's Awake!). A list of Soviet databases fell into my open hands so
 I have included that too, for what it is worth.

    VIATEL. Now three years old, with over 30,000 subscribers and 200
 information providers. The Viatel database is located in Melbourne,
 although there is talk of a new one for Sydney when they have enough
 subscribers. The Melbourne database is accessed by a local call charge
 from anywhere in Australia. Viatel is administered by Telecom, which
 provides the phone line links (through AUSTPAC data lines) and the
 database. Private enterprise provide the information and services.
 To ensure Viatel's success the Commonwealth Bank was asked to be one of
 the first service providers. Telebanking, Telebroking, TeleTAB and many
 financial services abound as the Viatel's main customer is business.
 The Telebank will improve in popularity as EFTPOS (Electronic Funds
 Transfer Point of Sale) debit cards are introduced due to the up-to-the-
 minute bank statements. Both the National Bank and Westpac are coming
 on-line with similar services. Australian Associated Press (AAP)
 is also looking at the possibilities of providing a news service. Many
 other services including dating services, software databanks (although
 there is a problem obtaining the rights to Commodore/Amiga software),
 travel services and others. Subscriptions are $12.50 per month for
 business, and $3.50 per home per month plus local fee per connection
 plus a fee per page. MEGADISC provide a good pd software package for
 access. the best way to see if VIATEL suits you is to subscribe for a
 month or two and have a look around the system. Write to: Viatel
 Freepost 20, GPO Box 188C, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001 or call you local
 Telecom office.
        [ED. NOTE: Check the review of GPTERM in this issue, for
                   a good local  communications program for Viatel.]

    AUSINET. Owned by ACI Computer Services, based in Victoria with
 48 different databases and about one million records. Accessable from your
 computer on subscription. The Ausinet Executive Service comprises AUSINET
 databases:

  STATEX (a 20 year share price & financial history collected by the
 Sydney Stock Exchange with the ability to manipulate data to construct
 an infinite variety of Time Series reports;

  PRO-FILE INFORMATION, a world reporter service accessing the major
 international news-agency wire services.

  AUSINET TEXT DATABASES includes the AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS INDEX (ABIX):
 items of business, financial and economic interest published in the
 Australian media;

  SOFTWARE LOCATOR (SOFT) a full text of software descriptions from
 "Today's Computers" and "The Australian Software Guide", unfortunately
 the emphasis is with IBM business software;

  UNION LIST OF HIGHER DEGREE THESIS (HDEG) contains a listing of theses
 accepted for higher degrees in Australian Universities;

  AUSTRALIAN LEISURE INDEX (LEIS) covers material in the fields of
 recreation, leisure, sport, physical education, health, fitness,
 tourism and related fields,

  AUSTRALIAN ART INDEX (AART) visual art and artists from 1984, AUST.

  BUREAU of STATISTICS (ABST) from 1953,

  CUMULATIVE ABSTRACTS OF DEFENSE READINGS (CADRE) and others.

  PRO-FILE INFORMATION users can call up on their Amigas the ASSOCIATED
 PRESS (AP) world news wire service providing news and analyses of  world
 events and quotes from major speeches and profiles of news makers.

  TASS, the official Soviet newswire offers an insight into the Soviet
 view on international current events.

  Other news wire services, including the BBC (Britain) and ASAHI NEWS
 SERVICE (Japan) combine to make the PRO-FILE Service. The computer
 package used to search Ausinet is STAIRS (Storage an Information
 Retrieval System) with enhancements by ACI, so it is only for
 Amiga 2000 users at this stage. Fee structure is mainly geared for the
 business user, with a monthly account maintenance fee of $40 applying to
 research databases with $30-80 per hour connect time, and about 20-25
 cents per offline print. Business databases are $150 per hour
 connect time, and about 50 cents per offline print. ACI AUSINET Service,
 PO Box 42, Clayton, Victoria, 3168, Australia.

  CTC DATABASE. This educational resource database contains The
 Macquarie Dictionary, Thesaurus, and other Macquarie publications
 such as The Macquarie Book of Events, History of Ideas, The Dictionary
 of Trees and Shrubs, Dictionary of Motoring, etc. and The Australian
 Encyclopeadia, Grolier Universal Encyclopeadia, E.R.I.C. Educational
 Resource Information Centre and others. Set up as a resource facility
 for students at high-school and university level, by Computer
 Telecommunications Corporation Limited, 11th Floor, 189 Kent Street,
 Sydney, NSW, 2000. An on-line charge  applies, quoted as being around 25
 cents a minute.

  CSIRONET. An autonomous agency run by the Commonwealth
 Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation. Facilties exist to
 connect home and business computers to the mainframes of CSIRO. The host
 systems are Control Data Cyber "supercomputers" with up to 400 million
 floating point operations per second (400 megaflops), with support for
 Basic, Cobol, Fortran and Pascal languages (written for the IBM, but
 with modifications should be available for the Amiga). Invaluable if
 large number-crunching applications are necessary for an Amigan's
 project. CSIRONET, Clunies Ross Street, GPO Box 1800, Canberra, ACT,
 2601, Australia.

  CREDIT REFERENCE ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA. This database is not
 for access by outside computers, and for good reason. I've included
 it here so that Amigans have an understanding of the uses of data, and
 where data-files on business and individuals are kept. Banks and other
 financial institutions use CRAA as a co-operative agency to collect and
 process information on the credit history of their clients. Every time
 you apply for a loan (credit) with a bank or apply for a house to rent,
 a check is made with this database for your credit rating history.
 Information on your past loan repayments and financial history
 for the past five years is on file. Details of insurance claims, bank
 charge cards, all loans with banks and credit unions, business credit
 hitory and rental history are maintained. The banks, credit houses
 and insurance groups contribute information in exchange for access. If
 you are refused credit for any reason, you are entitled to see your
 file. It is a good idea for you to check your file from time to time  as
 errors can creep into the system, such as someone else with the same
 name as you, or just plain wrong information. In NSW, The Privacy
 Committee is the public watchdog on the CRAA to ensure fair dealings
 and confidentiality. In NSW, the CRAA office is on the 3rd Floor, 44
 Market St, Sydney, NSW. The NSW Privacy Committee can be contacted
 at GPO Box 6, Sydney, NSW, 2001.

  INFO-LINE & MONEY WATCH. Two databases, at last count (May'88)
 still part of Fairfax's Australian Financial Review. Money Watch is
 accessed through Viatel, while Info-Line is the Fin-Review's inhouse
 information service which is accessed by their own researchers.
 Info-Line is regularly updated and enhanced data on market trends,  new
 products, biographies, backgrounders on many topics, takeovers and
 company statistics (no credit checks, although appraisals, profiles
 and financial analyses on companies are done). Info-Line researchers  can
 access the huge Fairfax editorial and photographic library, specialist
 files, surveys and reports built up over 15 years, and their
 international press network, and they can also interrogate specific
 Australian and international databases like DIALOG, and SDC ORBIT. They
 are the Australian agents for the agency network SVP INTERNATIONAL, a
 20-country member information service network based in Paris.
 They can also interrogate the databanks of the World Bank, USGPO  (United
 States Government Printing Office), NTIS, and OECD (Organisation for
 Economic Cooperation and Development). MONEY WATCH is available for home
 computer use via Viatel and contains information useful for
 the executive businessman in managing a stock portfolio.

  NTIS, ORBIT & DIALOG. Three very large American databases. NTIS
 NATIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE is the world's largest technical
 information databank. Contains the latest data on every possible field
 of academic, industrial and institutional research. For example, NTIS
 publishes all the latest computer product bench tests by the US Defense
 Department, the world's largest computer user. The Star Wars technology
 reports are there, as well as the latest CIA reports on foreign
 economies, agriculture and industry. NTIS, an agency of the US Department
 of Commerce, is the central source for the public sale of US
 Government-sponsored research and development reports, as well as
 foreign technical reports and other analyses prepared by national and
 local government agencies. The Australian government contributes with
 their reports in exchange for access. Offers American translation of
 overseas reports including many Russian titles. Nearly two million titles
 including the NTIS Bibliographic Data Base, Patent Data Base, Energy
 Data Base. Reports are generally $80 upwards depending on inquiry.
 Australian agent is Info-Line, but individual subscriptions can be
 obtained direct from NTIS. DIALOG and ORBIT are all heavily sponsored
 by the US Defense Department. ORBIT is owned by Burrows, a financial
 institution. DIALOG is part of Locheed Aviation, with 200+ databases and
 over 100,000,000 titles or records -statistics, profiles & reports
 obtained from publishers, corporations, government agencies. Australian
 agent for DIALOG Information Services is INSEARCH Ltd., Box K16,
 Haymarket, Sydney, NSW., in the University of Technology, Sydney.
 Overseas addresses for applications are: NTIS, National Technical
 Information Services, U.S. Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road,
 Springfield, VA, 22161. USA; SDC ORBIT, Systems Development Corporation,
 2500 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, California 90406. USA; and DIALOG,
 3460 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto, CA. 94304. U.S.A.

  OTHER AMERICAN DATABASES. These are some of the databases in the
 USA, accessed by an international telephone call from your Amiga.

  PLAYNET. A full colour graphic system, mainly for game playing and
 downloading. Includes electronic mail, teleshopping, public domain
 software, and general-interest lectures. Address: PlayNet, 200 Jordan
 Road, Suite 180, Troy, NY 12180, USA.

  MICROCOMPUTER INDEX. This database contains abstracts from dozens of
 publications in the microcomputer field. It can save you time when
 seeking information on when and where articles are published. Write to
 Microcomputer Information Services, 2464 El Camino Real, Suite 247,
 Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA.

  COMPUDEX. This mainframe computer is connected by the phone line to your
 home computer when large number-crunching problems arise. Write to:
 Source Telecomputing, 1616 Anderson Road, McLean, VA 22102, USA.

  US CENSUS DATABASES. The US Census is counted every ten years, the
 last being taken in 1980. This database provides the raw census data.
 National Planning Data Corporation, PO Box 610, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.

  GLASNOST. In the spirit of Soviet openness, here is a list of
 some of the USSR's databases. No doubt it would be very hard to
 get a subscription and very hard to access, unless you understand
 Russian. The Soviets are upgrading the network of computer information
 databases (Perestroika is Russian for Restructuring) and increasing
 the accessibility allowing better flow and use of data. The network is
 for use of the Soviet military and now industry and business. The
 Russian telephone system is still primitive by Western standards which
 would cause problems in making a usable connection.  So, here is
 the structure of the USSR State System of Scientific and Technical
 Information. VINITI is the head institute of SSSTI, the All-Union
 Institute for Scientific and Technical Information containing world
 scientific and technical information on natural, exact and applied
 sciences. GPNTB is the State Public Scientific and Technical Library -
 databases on the location of domestic and foreign books and periodicals.

  INION is the Institute for Scientific Information on Social
 Sciences - Soviet and foreign publications on social sciences.
  VNIIPI :
 the All-Union Technical Patent Information. VPTB contains domestic and
 foreign patent documentation.
  VKPA, All-Union Books Chamber contains all kinds of Soviet publications.
  VNTIZ is the All-Union Scientific and Technical Information Centre -
 reports on research and development, dissertations, algorithms and
 programs. VZIO the Centre for Information on Equipment - catalogues and
 information on industrial equipment.
   VZP is the Centre for Translation containing translations of scientific
 and technical literature and documents.
   VNIIKI is the Research Institute
 for Technical Information, Classification and Coding - standards,
 technical requirements, and VDNKH the Permanent Exhibition
 of Soviet Economy Achievements - exposition of new developments and
 products of Soviet industry, agriculture and science. There are 17 STI
 centres in the Ukraine, Five in Byelorussia, 5 in Uzbekistan, 14 in
 Kazahstan and 3 in Azerbaidjan according to the Centre for Strategic and
 International Studies, Washington, DC.


  An international incident a couple of years ago caused great
 mirth amongst database researchers. It seems the Americans had
 contributed millions of dollars to the establishment and running of the
 United Nations library, which naturally is a big user of database
 telecommunications. Russians have held the top positions of the U.N.
 library for the past twenty years, so it came as no surprise when the
 U.S.A. found that the Soviets had been accessing NTIS, Orbit and
 other big American databases and literally taking home information on
 the U.S.A. military, industry and technology by the truckload. Congress
 quickly cut off funds and access, but not before the Russians had
 established a source of accurate information on the U.S.A. better than
 any spy could have supplied.


 Researched and written by MARK ANNING, GPO Box 1539, SYDNEY, NSW, 2001.
 Viatel mailbox number 266410490. Mark is studying Communications
 at the University of Technology, Sydney, and works for the Australian
 Associated Press (AAP).

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