# Presentation: 713272

## History

**History**

**November 7, 2001**

**Notes:**
An overview of the history of development of the EPA STORET System, with some comments on future timelines and plans.

## STORET 1963

**Honeywell 400 **
**Assembler and Autocoder**
**Data Storage by Drum**
**Public Health Service, Cincinnati OH**
**Andy Breidenbach, Sted Green, Clarence Tutwiler**

**Notes:**
The original STORET System was written for the Honeywell 400 computer by two young men just out of Virginia Tech, Clarence Tutwiler and Sam Conger, who had joined the Public Health Service in Cincinnati as a way to avoid the military draft.
The public Health Service had responsibility for the safety of the drinking water supplies for many major cities which drew their water from large streams, and the monitoring program conducted there was based on the simple fact that one must know the quality of the stream water in order to properly treat it so as to make it safe to drink.  Monitoring was conducted at 800 sites, and managing the data was the responsibility of the Branch to which these two were assigned.
Their Branch fell under the supervisory scope of a man named Sted Green, whose idea for the computerization of monitoring data led to STORET, and Andy Breidenbach, whose career would lead him to become Administrator of the EPA Office of Water, and in whose memory the EPA has named the Cincinnati facility the Andrew W. Breidenbach Environmental Research Center.
The 800 monitored sites were the first 800 stations stored in STORET.  The number of STORET stations would grow to over a million over the next 35 years.

## STORET 1968

**IBM 360/50, OS MVT **
**PL/I and Assembler**
**Data Cell Storage**
**Department of Interior, Federal Water Pollution Control Administration.**

**Notes:**
By 1968, the branch in the Public Health Service had been moved into the DC Offices of the Department of the Interior, and folded into its Federal Water Pollution Control Administration.  The STORET System was converted to the IBM Mainframe environment.  Tut rewrote all the code in the new language, PL/I, and forced the existing page structure of STORET onto a mass storage device called a Data Cell.  The Data Cell was essentially a large carousel with strips of 70 mm tape hanging from dozens of clips, and data "direct access" was obtained by pulling the correct strip across the read/write head, after spinning the carousel into position.
The basic structure of STORET, with data managed within "pages" held on a direct access storage device, would not change again, and would later be used by Database designers at both IBM and Oracle as the basis for their very successful database management tools.
Joyce Boyd joined Sam and Tut at Interior.

## STORET 1971

**IBM 360/65, OS MVT**
**PL/I and Assembler**
**Hard disk storage**
**Department of Interior, Federal Water Pollution Control Administration.**
**Leased Time Sharing capacity, dial-up access.**

**Notes:**
In 1971, discouraged by the limited hours during which database work was permitted on the Interior Department computer (no access until after the personnel and payroll updates finished each day), Tut and Sam Conger arranged with a fledgling firm (U.S. Time Sharing, Mario Morino, president) to run STORET, and using Sam's pickup truck, moved STORET out of the main Interior computer facility at midnight one night, and brought it up by sunrise on the new facility.
During our stay at U.S. Time Sharing, data was transplanted from the Data Cell to hard disk for the first time, a move facilitated by the page-based design of the database, which was largely device-independent.
Partly by using the STORET revenue, Mario Morino would go on to form a hugely successful information technology firm, Morino Associates, which would make him wealthy.
U.S. Time Sharing would close its doors several years after STORET moved on.
Ann Detemple, for many years a key STORET User Support person, got her start as a U.S. Time Sharing employee.
EPA was formed in 1971 by combining the Federal Water Quality Administration (formerly the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration in Interior) with related organizations from several other agencies, and STORET management moved to its Office of Water.
Lee Manning joined STORET in 1971.
Phil Lindenstruth arrived shortly before Lee.
Louis Hoelman joined a year or two later.

## STORET 1973

**IBM 360/65, OS MVT, TSO **
**PL/I, Fortran and Assembler**
**Leased Time Sharing capacity, dial-up access.**
**Automated User Front End.**

**Notes:**
In 1973, STORET moved from U.S. Time Sharing to Boeing Computer Services, a very small operation based in Philadelphia.  Over the next few years, Boeing would move this operation to McLean, Virginia, and expand it to become a major player in the "Beltway" game.  This move also provided the opportunity for many former U.S. Time Sharing staff to become again employed in the facility supporting STORET.
Boeing introduced the IBM TSO interactive computer system following this move, and STORET staff developed a fully interactive front end for STORET, enabling remote terminal access for our national client base for the first time.
Ann Detemple joined STORET during this time.

## STORET 1975

**IBM 360/65, OS MVT, COMNET ALPHA, NIH WYLBUR **
**PL/I, Fortran and Assembler**
**Leased Time Sharing capacity, dial-up access.**
**User Front End Lost**

**Notes:**
The conversion of STORET from the Boeing Computer Services system first to the NIH WYLBUR System, and then to the ComNet system, driven by changes in our prime contractor for computer support, would eliminate access to TSO, and with its loss, the fully interactive front end would go on hold, not to return until 1980.
The STORET system, now based on a proprietary operating system (ComNet Alpha), would require little internal change, again due to its page-based, system-independent design.
Considerable new code was added to STORET during this time, including the addition of graphic outputs like data plots and maps.

## STORET 1980

**IBM MVS, TSO**
**PL/I, Fortran and Assembler**
**In House Computer, EPA/NCC/RTP**
**User Front End Back**

**Notes:**
In 1980, EPA decided to abandon its approach for obtaining computer services, which had been centered around leased mainframe capacity, and instead to purchse its own mainframe, and construct a data center around it, located at RTP.

STORET was moved to this National Computer Center (NCC) as soon as it was operational, and because it was using the IBM MVS/TSO operating system, the STORET interface from the early 70's was once again up and running.

STORET concentrated on improvements to this interface over the next several years.

## STORET 1984

**In House Computer, EPA/NCC/RTP**
**STORET Control moved from Water to Information Management**
**Development de-emphasized, Operations Stabilized.**
**Pass the million station mark.**

**Notes:**
By 1984, EPA was determined to centralize its ADP support functions in a single, centrally located office, and it created the Office of Information Resources Management (OIRM).

The entire STORET staff, numbering over a dozen people, was moved to this new organization, and their skills began to be redirected to many of the other parts of the agency's organizations.  Development of new STORET functions slowed as the staff were reassigned, and contractors were hired to perform day-to-day support duties.  Across EPA, a major shift toward privatization occurred, with the result that most of the STORET function fell to contractors for its operation.

Data continued to flow into STORET from our many clients, and STORET passed the million-station mark in the mid 1980s.

## STORET 1991

**STORET Responsibility Returns to OW**
**Vision for the Future**
**Modernization effort begins**

**Notes:**
In 1991, the management of STORET was returned to the Office of Water.

The need for a modernized approach to the management of monitoring data in the Office of Water was changing.

Management approval for a multi-year modernization effort was obtained, and the task began.

## STORET 1993

- Requirements documented
- 17 Joint Design Sessions with Clients
- Data Modeling Begins

**Notes:**
Modernizing STORET was in full swing by 1993.  EPA management had fully funded the project as a multi-year effort, and we went to the field to determine the universe of business needs that must be met by a modernized STORET System.

Over a two year time span, the Office of Water conducted 17 Joint Application Design (JAD) sessions, during which existing users told us which of their business needs were not fully met by the legacy STORET System, and potential clients who had never before used STORET helped us discover which of their needs had prevented their use of the legacy STORET System.  Over 200 current and potential STORET clients participated in this requirements collection effort.

Information gathered in these sessions was documented using  Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tool, and this data capture formed the basis of the data definition for the new STORET.

## STORET 1996

**STORET Business Requirement captured in CASE technology**
**Software Code Generated by CASE Tool**
**Final Prototype confirmed by Users**
**Clarence Tutwiler dies.**

**Notes:**
By 1996, through a series of prototype releases (we called the process cumulative prototyping), we were able to finalize the CASE tool statement of the STORET business requirement, and to construct a simple system which displayed all the data entry screens which would be required to manage it.

In December 1996, we presented the completed prototype to an audience of over 200 STORET clients and EPA managers, who confirmed that we had properly understood the requirements they had articulated over the previous several years.

In August of 1996, Clarence Tutwiler, who had written the original STORET in 1962, passed away.  While we were somewhat slow to realize the full impact of this event, our lack of system documentation meant that, in effect, STORET's source code went with him.

## STORET 1996

**Prototype v 4.1 (Final)**
**IBM OS/2 Operating System, IBM DB-2/2 Database Engine, COBOL code**
**Converted to Windows 95, Oracle Database engine, C++ code**
**Three working days.**

**Notes:**
Prototype v 4.1 (the final in the series of "cumulative prototypes") represented a watershed event in our confidence in the CASE tool.

Up until just before Thanksgiving 1996, we had been using the CASE tool to generate a STORET Database in the IBM OS/2 Operating System, building the database objects in the IBM DB-2/2 database environment, and asking the CASE tool to generate code in COBOL.  We had been enjoying remarkable success, with the result of every code generation being a fully functional database and software system.  However, it was becoming obvious that neither OS/2 nor DB-2/2 would be an acceptable platform for the delivery of STORET to end users.

The Microsoft Corporation was experiencing huge success with its marketing of Windows 95, and its own version of the "C" programming language, and the Oracle Corporation had just been selected by EPA as its preferred choic for database work in the future, and one week before the National Conference was scheduled to begin, we asked our development team if it would be possible to generate a second copy of STORET, using the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, the Oracle database, and the Microsoft Visual C++ programming language.

Using the CASE tool, and changing only parameters (no source code changes), and obtaining all the necessary software licenses required only 3 working days, and in the first week of December, we demonstrated STORET in Windows 95 for the first time.

## STORET 1998

- Production version 1.0
- Generated by CASE Tool
- Oracle, Windows 95, C++
- 500 Copies distributed
- STORET Web Site first appears

**Notes:**
In late August 1998, we released STORET to the public, as Production version 1.0.  It was generated using the same CASE tool as the prototype, now using only Windows 95, Oracle, and the Visual C++ programming language.  It was distributed on CD-ROM (also a relatively new technology at the time).  500 copies were run, and all 500 were distributed.

Also in 1998, we first placed a STORET web site on the internet, for the purpose of disseminating current information about STORET, as well as minor changes, bug fixes, advisories, and system updates.  Planning was begunb on a web application which would allow the public to browse and download STORET data.

Legacy STORET stopped permitting updates, allowing samples collected only up to December 31, 1998.

## STORET 1999

- Production version 1.1
- Generated by CASE Tool
- Oracle, Windows 95, Windows NT
- 1000 Copies distributed
- STORET Web Site offers Data Query
- Legacy STORET goes up on the Web

**Notes:**
In 1999 we released STORET version 1.1, primarily to fix reported problems with version 1.0, and to replenish our supply of CD-ROMs.  Version 1.1 offered support for Windows NT (for the first time), and as we were to learn later, was also compatible with Windows 98, even though its companion Oracle package (Oracle version 7.3.x) was not certified for Windows 98.

This time we made 1000 copies.  We ran out again, but not until 2001.

The Modernized STORET System web site offered data browse and download to the public for the first time.

The legacy STORET data (minus the USGS information) was made available on the web at the same time, also fro browse and download by the public.

## STORET 2000

- Production version 1.2
- Generated by CASE Tool
- Oracle, Windows 95/98, Windows NT
- Distributed via the Internet
- STORET Web Site 100% Functional
- Mainframe Legacy System Shut Down

**Notes:**
We completed work on STORET version 1.2, mostly fixing known problems with version 1.1, and arranged it so that it could be distributed over the internet, using the STORET web site.  Later we would create this release in CD-ROM form, so it could be used by clients for the initial install of STORET.

This version was officially announced for Windows 95, 98, and Windows NT, as we had (by now) tested it for successful operation in all 3 environments.

The STORET web site reached maturity with the arrival of the full design set of data retrieval capabilities, and the addition of dynamic information about such things as the STORET training schedule, and the further distribution of database minor updates.

The legacy mainframe STORET System, which had not been accepting updates since early in 1999, was shut down for retrieval as well.  At its final shutdown, it had been running for 37 years.

## STORET 2001

**Production version 2.0 in Preliminary Testing**
**Generated by CASE Tool**
**Windows 95/98/me, Windows NT,2000**
**Oracle 8i**
**Version 1.2 now on CD-ROM**

**Notes:**
Work is now proceeding on STORET version 2.0.  A functioning module without full features has been delivered and is undergoing preliminary tests.

This version of STORET will be the last generated entirely by a CASE tool.  It will extend STORET to the various Windows operating environments up through Windows Me and Windows 2000.  It will link STORET to the Oracle 8i version now widely in use.

In 2001, the previous version of STORET, version 1.2, was added to our CD-ROM suite, and packaged together with all of our updates as distributed through the Internet, and made available free to interested users.  

The first National Modernized STORET Users Conference was held in November.

## STORET 2001

**SIM 1.2 in Final Testing**
**Reporting Software 1.2 Distributed via CD-ROM**
**Preliminary steps toward full EDAS integration**

**Notes:**
In 2001, the STORET Interface Module (SIM) version 1.2 completed final testing, and was distributed to a limited number of users.  It significantly enhances the ability of STORET users to update their copy of STORET with batches of data, including batches of station description data, project description data, and water samples and results.

STORET reporting software was replaced with a completely new suite of software developed using Oracle forms and reports.  This new environment gave us a much more maintainable software package, and completely eliminated problems with the predecessor reports module caused by incompatibility between separate releases of the Microsoft Access product, on which it had been dependent.

The EDAS (Ecological Data Assessment System) system, already in use in many offices also using STORET, was targeted for full integration with STORET.  Work planning was begun for a series of contractual efforts to achieve this goal.

## STORET 2001

**Office of Water designates STORET as its Primary Repository for Monitoring Data.**
**STORET Version 2 Design Finalized**

**Notes:**
Management in the EPA Office of Water designate STORET as its official repository for monitoring data.  This will lead to linkage between grant monies and data feeds to STORET.

The design of STORET version 2.0 is finalized.  Among key new features will be the ability to store large data objects inside the database.  Available data object types include Portable Document Format (PDF) files, and graphics in Bitmap (BMP) or Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) formats.

## STORET 2002

**STORET Production Version 2.0 Completed.**
**STORET Web Site, Reporting Module, and SIM upgraded to version 2.0.**
**Version 3 Design Phase Begins.**

**Notes:**
STORET Production version 2.0 is planned for completion in mid 2002.  It will feature several major enhancements, including the ability to add entire files containing documents such as Project Plans, or digital images such as photographic evidence gathered during site visits, directly into the STORET database.

Several internal database changes will be implemented as improvements to STORET version 2.0, and the STORET Web browse and download software will have to be upgraded for compatibility with the new database structure, as will the Reporting Module and the STORET Interface Module (SIM).

Design of STORET version 3.0 will begin during the second half of 2002.

## STORET Beyond 2002

**CASE Tool Technology Abandoned**
**Oracle Designer/Developer Adopted**
**Full use of Database Constraints**
**Database Events will Trigger Imbedded Software, Validity Checking**
**Monolithic Single Module Approach Abandoned.**

**Notes:**
With version 3.0, STORET will abandon the use of the long standing CASE environment in which all previous STORET software design has been done.  We will adopt instead, the Oracle Designer/Developer Suite of software products, and move toward a significantly different software structure for STORET.

In version 3.0, STORET will implement full use of database constraints, imbedded software, and event triggers, to be used in combination to enforce the business rules under which STORET operates.  To field users, this will have the effect of opening our architecture, as it will become both easier and safer to consider writing software applets which will update your STORET database directly.

Further, the basic design of STORET, now as a single, monolithic software module with all the functions built in, will be broken up into a suite of software modules, each with a responsibility over a portion of the STORET System, and which can be started simultaneously or separately, in separate windows, and which can be used as needed, with little or no lengthy navigation by pushbutton.  We expect this change to make STORET much easier to learn and to use for day-to-day data maintenance than it has been in the past.

## STORET Beyond 2002

**Retrieval and Analysis Software Development Takes Center Stage**
**Third Party Software Role Increases**
**EPA Staff Mix Changing to Acquire Needed Skills**

**Notes:**
We plan to spend less time working on the design of the STORET database structure (in fact, little remains to be done), and more time working on specialized software for the retrieval and analysis of STORET data.  While we do not expect to be a major supplier of STORET analytical software, there are areas of specialty (calculations of biotic diversity, calculations of relationships among physical-chemical constituents (un-ionized ammonia, dissolved oxygen saturation) which are better done by STORET.

We expect third party software, both contributed voluntarily by STORET clients, and written to be marketed for profit by commercial firms, to become a dominant force in the STORET environment, and we will work to keep the architecture of STORET open, and the details of its internal structure public, to encourage this outcome.

We expect to bow to pressure to own different skills at the central offices of STORET, to keep up with changing technology, and we expect our own hiring practices to come into play to support this need.  There will be turnover, and we must use these events to our advantage.

## 2005

**Lee Retires**
**Any Questions ?**

**Notes:**
This is a staff turnover event which can already be predicted, for which planning can begin at any time.

EPA is committed to the premise that nobody can leave and take STORET with them.  Not even Lee.