PacFIN Brief for 1994

[Complete 1994 PSMFC Annual Report (401 KB pdf)]

During 1994, the staff of the Pacific Fisheries Information Network (PacFIN) Office began the task of re-developing the PacFIN system in a totally different hardware and software environment. The new platform is NMFS's IT95 central computing system for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) which is a Control Data (CDC) system that includes two Silicon Graphics (SGI) processors, the Unix operating system, and the Oracle database management system. The staff developed software to unload all data from the current system and began the process of unloading data and transferring it to the new IT95 system.

At the same time the PacFIN project employed the services of a database developer in order to design the PacFIN database within the context of Oracle. During the four months of March to June the three-member staff received training in all of the Unix and Oracle courses that were provided by the AFSC. While all of this redevelopment work was going on the staff continued to process regular input datafeeds, generate and distribute reports on a regular basis, respond to ad-hoc requests-for-information (i.e. special projects), and make modifications to the current system as necessary. Check-out and testing of the on-line catch summaries in conjunction with WDFW continued through August and was completed for 1987 through 1992, thus bringing the redefinition re-development project to a close for the Washington-Oregon-California (W-0-C) portion of the database for 1981 through 1994.

By the end of the year all Oracle tables were designed, established, one or more annual partitions had been loaded for testing purposes, and Oracle software had been developed to process each transaction type.

In September recruitment for an additional staff person began and the new analyst/programmer joined our group at the beginning of November bringing our head count to four full-time persons. With the new analyst came new computer systems with their attendant hardware/software installation challenges. With the close of 1994 Oracle software development was continuing, and since the Oracle database design had been finalized the final loading of data for 1981 through 1992 was initiated.