SIRIO: a distributed information system over a heterogeneous computer network

This paper presents the SIRIO project, a commercial experience within Spanish industry, developed for Tecnatom S.A. by the Data and Knowledge Bases Research Group at the Technical University of Madrid. SIRIO runs over a heterogeneous local area network, with a client-server architecture, using the following tools: Oracle as RDBMS, running over a Unix server, TCP/IP as a communication protocol, Ethernet TOOLKIT for the distributed client-server architecture, and C as the host programming language for the distributed applications (every one of them is rather complex and very different from the rest). The system uses computers with MS-DOS, connected to the server over the LAN. SIRIO is mainly based on the conceptual design of an Rdb, upon which several distributed applications are operational as big software modules. These applications are: 1.- The inspection programs, the management of their corresponding criteria and the automatic generation of queries. 2.- Graphics processing and interface definition. 3.- Interactive Rdb updating. 4.- Historical db management. 5.- Massive load of on-field obtained data. 6.- Report and query application. The approach of the SIRIO integrated information system presented here is a pioneering one. There are about two dozen companies worldwide in this field and none has developed such an advanced system to this day. From 1992, SIRIO is totally operational in the Tecnatom S.A. industry. It constitutes an important tool to obtain the reports (from different plants) for the clients, for the State control organizations, and for the specialized analyst staff.