[Chapter 4]
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON SYSTEM PLANNING
A. THE NEED FOR ON-LINE COMPUTER SYSTEMS
The ultimate justification for assembling and using on-line data-acquisition systems must be made in terms of research output. The same considerations underlying judgments on the support of experimental research in other ways must therefore apply to computer systems. Some reasons often given for the use of on-line computer systems are these:
1. Modern experiments produce vast quantities of data which can be handled efficiently only by automatic calculating machinery. The experimenter gains greatly in effectiveness when the data are immediately converted into machine language, reduced by the computer, and presented to the experimenter in a convenient form.
Comment: Undoubtedly true. Fortunately a small system can satisfy this requirement in many cases.
2. Some experiments "cannot" be done by other means.
Comment: More likely true in practice than in principle.
3. Investment in a computer system is sometimes sound because it leads to a net reduction in the overall cost of performing experiments, either by eliminating some of the labor cost, by reducing the consumption of accelerator time, or in some other way.