WINISIS
Introduction
The major features of the CDS/ISIS software are:
the handling of variable length records, fields and sub fields, thus saving disk space and making it possible to store greater amounts of information;
the handling of repeatable fields;
a data base definition component allowing the user to define the data to be processed for a particular application;
a data entry component for entering and modifying data through user-created data base specific worksheets;
an information retrieval component using a powerful search language providing for field-level and proximity search operators, in addition to the traditional and/or/not operators, as well as free-text searching;
a powerful sort and report generation facility allowing the user to easily create any desired printed products, such as catalogues, indexes, directories, etc.;
a data interchange function based on the ISO 2709 international standard used by leading data base producers;
an integrated application programming language (CDS/ISIS Pascal and the ISIS_DLL), allowing the user to tailor the software to specific needs;
functions allowing the user to build relational data bases, though CDS/ISIS is not based over a relational model;
powerful hypertext functions allow to design complex user interfaces.
A Windows interface between CDS/ISIS and IDAMS, the UNESCO software for statistical analysis, has also been developed.
From the outset, CDS/ISIS was created as a multi-lingual software, providing integrated facilities for the development of local linguistic versions. Thus, although UNESCO distributes only the English, French and Spanish versions of the package, user-developed versions exist in virtually all languages, including special versions which UNESCO helped in developing, for Arabic, Chinese and Korean.
