Total Network Data System: Central Office Equipment Reports for Stored Program Control Systems

Abstract

Stored Program Control System Central Office Equipment Reports (SPCS COER) is one of the earliest of the family of Operations Systems. Deployed on a centralized time-shared system, it produces engineering and administrative reports for Stored Program Central Office Equipment. This paper describes the user needs that motivated the design of SPCS COER. It traces the development of the system from a joint experiment of Bell Laboratories and the New York Telephone Company's Manhattan Engineering Department to the present system serving over 2800 electronic central offices from three centralized Amdahl V6 computers. We explain the functional system design from the user's point of view and outline the structure of the software, emphasizing the “tools” approach that is central to the development. The project management featured a research and development style, which we call the “whole-job” approach and discuss in some detail. Finally, we explore possible future directions for the project.