- 729. 
Explanations 
1 
10 
  
The transaction code "agua" invokes the online system 
AQUARIUS; the reporter's password and user name are checked 
as to whether he is authorized to enter STAIRS/VS. 
The reporter is. prompted io specify the name of the data 
base he wishes to search, prss. 
This command invokes the SEARCH function of .STAIRS/VS. 
The reporter starts his search with the query "government"; 
the system finds 478 documents in which the term "government" 
appears, too many for document browsing. 
In answer to this query, the system retrievers all documents 
that contain such phrases as "earlier retirement legislation" 
or "legislative assembly discusses early retirement motion". 
The character "2" after. "legis" means that all. words 
starting with "legis" are to be considered relevant. 
In this third query the reporter asks for all articles that 
contain the phrase "demoscopic survey". 
Now the reporter combines the results of the preciding 
queries with the logic operator "AND". The result consists of 
only those documents that satisfy each of the conditions set 
in the three queries referred to. 
A further restriction is imposed by the; pubidcat ion date: 
ose articles are of interest to e reporter 
re newspaper after 1968. To find. them, the SELECT 
function is invoked. The result of this query states all 
articles from those of the fourth query that have been 
published after the year 1968; in the sample case only one 
article. 
The reporter invokes the BROWSE function to display the 
selected article. 
The whole article and all formatted fields associated with 
it are displayed at the terminal. 
Wolf Dietmar Oberhoff is working for IBM Germany 
in Stuttgart, in the Department of Scientific 
Relations. His background is both engineering 
and economics. When he joinde IBM in 1974 he 
worked in the field of scientific application- 
program-transfer, for example 'Storage and 
Information Retrieval System (STAIRS)'. 
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