DEVELOPMENT OF A CD-ROM OF DATABASES ON AGING

IT IS PLANNED TO DEVELOP CD-AGING, A CD-ROM CONTAINING DATABASES USEFUL TO RESEARCHERS ON HUMAN AGING. THE PROJECTWILL INVOLVE SELECTING AND REFORMATTING THE DATABASES, AND EMBEDDING THEM IN A PC ENVIRONMENT THAT WILL SUPPORT EASY ACCESS TO THE DATA FOR VIEWING AND FOR PROCESSING BY FAMILIAR ANALYSIS TOOLS, INCLUDING SPREADSHEETS, RELATIONAL DBMS, AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS SOFTWARE SUCH AS SAS, SPSS-X,AND BMDP. WITH THE GRAYING OF THE OVERALL U.S. POPULATION, THERE IS AN INCREASED NEED TO ADDRESS RESEARCH QUESTIONS PERTINENTTO THE OLDER POPULATION. TO THIS END, MANY USEFUL DATABASES HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED, ESPECIALLY BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS (NCHS). THIS PROJECT WILL MAKE SOME OF THESE DATABASES MORE CONVENIENTLY AVAILABLE BY STORING THEM IN AN APPROPRIATE SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT ON CD-ROM. CD-ROM IS A COMPUTER STORAGE MEDIUM, LIKE THE FLOPPY DISK, BUT WITH MUCH GREATER CAPACITY (ABOUT 650 MEGABYTES PER DISK) AND WITH FASTER ACCESS PARAMETERS. UNLIKE THE FLOPPY DISK, CD-ROM IS A READ-ONLY DEVICE (IT IS WRITTEN ONCE AT THE TIME OF ITS CREATION). FURTHERMORE, IT IS INEXPENSIVE TO MAKE AND WORKSVERY WELL WITH IBM-COMPATIBLE PCS, MAKING IT POSSIBLE TO PERFORM DATABASE OPERATIONS ON A PC THAT FORMERLY REQUIRED MAINFRAME COMPUTERS.