A0 system: APL in construction planning

ABSTRACT

This paper describes an automation system for construction planning, named A0. A0 was developed for usage by big building companies at various stages of preparing and executing construction works. It supports different tasks starting with calculation of project estimates, bills of materials, and schedules of works and ending by providing the company executives with complete information for the supervision of the building process in their company. A0 includes also a DBMS for the All Union Data Base on Construction. The amount of data in the data base is about 45MB for the Leningrad region only. At present the system is used by the Leningrad Building Corporation.A0 is all written in APL★PLUS/PC. The system will be distributed with the run-time system of APL★PLUS for the Soviet customers just after the performance test. The A0 system was developed in market competition with six similar projects using different programming systems: FoxBase, Clipper, Turbo-Pascal, and the MS C-compiler. The advantages of the system under consideration were, in many ways, ensured by choosing APL. Some advantages and disadvantages of using APL for that kind of application system are discussed in the paper as well.

REFERENCES

• 1: Alexey L. Miroshnikov, Algorithm alterable models and APL, ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad, v.20 n.4, p.271-273, July 1990
• 2: Steven I. Promisel , James V. Merrill, Managing a diamond jewelry manufacturing business using APL, ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad, v.20 n.4, p.304-311, July 1990

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: APL

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.8 Problem Solving, Control Methods, and Search
          Subjects: Plan execution, formation, and generation

  J. Computer Applications
  J.6 COMPUTER-AIDED ENGINEERING
      Subjects: Computer-aided design (CAD)

General Terms:
Design, Languages