HSPD Premise:

The premise in developing "a database by conservators for
conservators" (Battle, 1988) was that an appropriate, effective
system would best result from the contributions and interactions
of the user community (the cultural resource management and
maintenance professionals that the system is to serve).  This
underscored the importance of making a prototype of the system
available to the end users as quickly as possible in order to
facilitate design and programmatic review by them.  In response
to the objective of quickly assembling a working prototype, the
application developer selected an existing (off the shelf)
database management program (dBASE III PLUS) which had already
been designated as an NPS DBMS software standard.  The rapid
prototyping was also intended to encourage the contribution of
relevant data to the system derived from the professional
experiences of the individual users.  It was hoped that this
strategy would quickly bring a larger and more varied body of
knowledge to the system than might otherwise be realized (David
Battle: oral communication on 12/5/88).

<dfile17>   HSPD: Organization
<dfile19>   HSPD: Query Process
<dfile20>   HSPD: Update
<dfile33>   HSPD: Why DBMS?
<dfile35>   HSPD: Utility