TNAG-2789-FCO40-4028-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1993 — Page 155

&

布政司署

香港下亞舉道

**** Our Ref ;

CAB Ä8/7”

**** YOUR REF:

Ms Sue O'Donnell

Hong Kong Department

Foreign and Commonwealth office

London, SW1A 2AH

UNITED KINGDOM

Dear Sue,

Compendium

ENCI

40

GOVERNMENT SECRETASKA

LOWER ALBERT.ROAD

HỒNG KONG

27 January 1993

I refer to your fax of 18 January.

I

understand that Hong Kong Department intends to install a PC running the ZyIndex software in order to have access to our Compendium database. Before I answer the specific questions raised in your fax, I would like to draw your attention to a possible technical problem relating to the transfer of data. You may wish to consider this before you decide to install the PC and to purchase the software.

As explained in our earlier letter to Hong Kong Department, ZyIndex works through an index list which is a set of files storing the locations of each "content word". From the index list we can have assess to the text files (about 1,700 nos. at present). The index list is housed in the hard disk of a \ PC and the text files in a removable hard disk. Both the index list and the text files can be transferred through â Tallgrass FS 3001 tape drive (using Tallgrass software version 1.44) to a DC 2000 tape cartridge (produced by 3M) and then to hard disks for uses at a PC. However, the computer expert from our Information Technology Services Department has advised that during the transfer of the index list, there may be distortion of data. To ensure the effectiveness of the system, it may be necessary for

Hong Kong Department to create a new index list for the text files. (With the ZyIndex software, it takes a PC roughly 3 minutes to index a 3-page text file.) Hong Kong Department may also need to re-index additional text files received in the future.

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