The
IBM Storage and Information Retrieval System, better known by the acronym STAIRS, was a program providing storage and online
free-text search of text data. STAIRS ran under the
OS/360 operating system under the
CICS
IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.
CICS family products ...
or
IMS Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Gry Tofte Ims (born 1986), Norwegian footballer
* Rolf Anker Ims (born 1958), Norwegian ecologist
See also
* IMS (disambiguation) Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people wit ...
transaction monitors, and supported
IBM 3270
The IBM 3270 is a family of block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971
and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the te ...
display terminals.
History
STAIRS was introduced as a product in 1973, but had previously been developed in-house by IBM in support of its
antitrust lawsuit in 1969. Originally the product was called simply STAIRS but, with the advent of IBM's "
/Virtual Storage" operating systems (such as
OS/VS1), the non-CMS versions were later renamed to STAIRS/VS.
STAIRS was initially released as an application running under
IMS Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Gry Tofte Ims (born 1986), Norwegian footballer
* Rolf Anker Ims (born 1958), Norwegian ecologist
See also
* IMS (disambiguation) Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people wit ...
and
CICS
IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.
CICS family products ...
, but a
VM/CMS
VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers.
The following ver ...
implementation was developed by IBM Canada in the late 1970s and marketed mostly in Europe, called STAIRS/CMS.
STAIRS was succeeded by IBM SearchManager/370 and SearchManager/2 in 1991, and was discontinued in 1992, with support ceasing in 1994.
Description
STAIRS queries were formulated as
boolean expressions of desired terms. In addition to the normal boolean functions of AND, OR, and NOT, STAIRS recognized such modifiers as ''adjacent to'' or ''in the same paragraph as''. Plain text documents could also contain so-called ''formatted fields'', which could be used for additional selection. These might contain fixed information such as a date or state name.
A powerful feature was that queries could be saved and re-executed. Queries could also be extended; for example, by specifying the result of previous query five AND an additional search term.
When search results were displayed for the user, 3270 highlighting was used to emphasize occurrences of search terms.
Uses
STAIRS was used in-house by organizations such as large corporations and government agencies with large collections of unstructured documents. It was also bundled by database providers as a subscription service.
Technical details
STAIRS provided good search performance by indexing every word in a document except user-selectable ''stop words'', usually common words such as "and" or "the."
Two levels of index were used, a ''dictionary'' containing one occurrence of each word, and an ''inverted text'' file storing document identification and position information for each occurrence of each word. The actual document text was stored in a third ''text'' file.
STAIRS document databases could only be updated
off-line. The data (in the non-CMS implementations) was stored in ''
basic direct access method'' (BDAM) files, which caused upgrade and portability problems later in its life-cycle.
See also
*
BRS/Search
BRS/Search is a full-text database and information retrieval system. BRS/Search uses a fully inverted indexing system to store, locate, and retrieve unstructured data. It was the search engine that in 1977 powered Bibliographic Retrieval Services ...
References
{{reflist
External links
5740-XR1 IBM Storage and Information Retrieval System/Virtual Storage (STAIRS/VS OS/VS and PC)5695-070 IBM SearchManager/370 CICS/MVS or VM V1.3
STAIRS
Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...
Assembly language software
IBM mainframe software