A Working SIP: Kellogg Biological Research Station

Abstract

From the period of September 20th through December 20th I participated in an internship at the Kellogg Biological Research Station (KBS) as a software developer. My Supervisor, John Gorentz, is the system manager of the station's VAX 11/760. Just before I arrived, John had lost his assistant within the computer department and was operating as the only computer staff member. John's duties included everything at the station remotely related to computers. Along with completely wiring a new academic building for terminals, running a microcomputer classroom, maintaining the research station's computerized weather stations and the databases connected with them and all the other duties of a system manager, John had also created a vast system of subroutine libraries to perform many tasks at KBS. Although John admits software development is probably his favorite task, with his workload he no longer had the time to work on any new projects. Hence, he requested funds for an additional employee and my internship began. I was to develop a few of the projects John knew the station needed but that he did not have the time to work on. My intership concentrated on three different projects: WNOW (Weather NOW), a subroutine which displays current weather conditions on a terminal screen, updating the display every ten seconds. WNWS (Weather National Weather Service), a system of manually inserting data collected for the National Weather Service and allowing system users access to well formatted output of the data. TRANSFORM, a system of Transforming data stored in one database into the format of another.