Landside Information Control
Database Driven Architecture

In the past software was written that only a programmer could modify. This type of software is much easier for a programmer to understand and less expensive to create. To change the decisions that the software was making, someone had to tinker with the programming. Today, there are new software techniques. There have been innovations that allow software to make decisions using tables and parameters saved in the database. Two of the easiest innovations to understand are:
  • Screen Processing System
  • Report Writer
These techniques give the marine terminal, itself, the capability via a CRT to configure and modify the computer system to meet current and future needs. In addition, much of the required software maintenance can be performed without the need of a computer professional. Today, the same software can be given to two different marine terminals and in a short time it would be unrecognizable by the other terminal operator. Software can be written today that has the same flexibility as a coat hanger given to two people and bent into a preferred shape. Neither shape is the same, even though both started with identical coat hangers. This incremental tuning and molding of the software by terminal management over time will become a major management investment. This is the long term investment that the judicious use of the previous techniques is designed to protect.

Screen Processing System

The user interface is the how someone in front of a CRT interacts with the terminal control system; naively, the screens presented on the CRT. In recent years, much progress has been made in breaking the bond between the user interface and the Level-3 terminal control program [reference 34]. Effectively these techniques isolate the Level-3 terminal control program from ever being aware of the picture seen on a screen by the CRT operator. The screen processing system is another service center in the computer. A typical message to the screen processing system from the terminal control program would be: display the container screen (see Figure 9).