Abstract
In this paper, the structure of a nation-wide information database for vegetables and fruits, NAPASS (Nation-wide Agricultural products Price Analysis Support System) is presented and the evaluation of the system is made. The database covers the daily quantity and price data for 55 commodities of vegetables and 68 commodities of fruits from January, 1977 to December, 1990 in 77 major wholesale markets in Japan. More than 9.8 million records with 570MB volume are stored in magneto-optic (MO) disks on a UNIX workstation, and the data retrieval and the processing operation under various condition is available with an interactive program coded in FORTRAN 77.
The source data for the database is originally surveyed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and stocked into monthly computer compatible magnetic tapes. Since total volume of source data is more than 5.4GB, a data compression techniques with code conversion is applied, where the data compression ratio is 10.7%. Finally the system is evaluated from the view points of response time, networking between the database and personal computer, the function of the database and portability to other OS. The results imply that the database is reasonably practical as a research support system.
