Reading between the lines, Program control-parameter 
handling as I have described here is well served by 
data-dictionary methodologies. This approach provides, as 
fallout. immediate  translatabilitu of menus, messages and 
prompts to other natural languages. 
All programs and analyst-written procedures must be 
dispatched for execution using a single syntax structure. 
In this uay, supplied-programs and the procedures created 
for (or bu) the analyst on-site will appear to be dispatched 
in the same manner - simply as commands to the machine to do 
something. 
6. 5: PROCEDURAL CONTROL 
ALL program modules and program set-up commands must be 
dispatchable from automated command PROCEDURES. Such 
procedures are arbitrarily long sequences of system 
commands. 
These procedures must be NÈESTABLE. This means that a 
procedure can itself dispatch another procedure. A caution 
is in order here. If you rely on your operating system 
utilities to program this capability you can’t readily 
transport it to another system. 
These procedures must have CONDITIONAL dispatch 
capabilities, one of the fundamental prerequisites of 
so-called ‘expert’ systems. This implies that in addition 
to an ‘IF’ statement, access to application control 
parameters and local arithmetic capabilities must be 
provided. 
These procedures should have capabilities for internal 
COMMENTS, on-line HELP documentation and a way to show a 
control parameter MENU without actually dispatching the 
procedure for execution. {If these HELP documents and MENUS 
look like the ones provided by the actual application 
programs, so much the better.) 
à à: EDITING OFERATOR PROCEDURES 
The interface should provide a mindlessly simple EDITOR to 
create such procedures. {The model for such an editor might 
look like a critical subset of the BASIC editor available on 
most personal computers.) The analyst should be able to 
STORE, RECALL and ALTER such procedures both temporarily and 
permanently. 
216