1996

-- Privacy is Key --	1996
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Description of Work – 07/95 - 08/96

Introduction

In 1995 and 1996 we continued to build scaffolding for our investigations. Our expanded concept of **‘data packaging’** led us to re-cast our notion of ‘compressible/incompressible’ to **processable/processed** so that the abstractions used in our code would be applicable to various uses. Due to the complimentary nature of the items we wished to manipulate, we anticipated that the program scaffolding would be similar, even if each item was put to separate use. In practice many of these items co-exist anyway

Work Performed

We built two versions of a tool which we call internally **‘DMGR’** (data manager). The first version (shown on the page following) was a test shell to build and test code to manipulate different types of disk files and to allow queries and updates to a local relational database. The second version (titled **‘Data Organizer’** on the page following) was a tool to allow creation and maintenance of a remote database server, in anticipation of the requirement of an external server to perform analysis of very large data sets.

Measures of Progress to date

To date, Trantor has made significant progress in pursuit of its goals, albeit in unexpected ways. Our explorations into the nature of data compression by way of encryption came full circle and led to the creation of the program code named **‘Crypt’**. This program embodies some of our insights into the nature of **randomness and predictability**. It also utilizes the conventional data compression engine, makes use of our vector generating code for encryption, strong key generation and error detection. A description of the Alpha test program is given in appendices D and E.

Our goal as a technology company is to produce ***working*** software that advances the state of the art. Our emphasis is on **‘working’ software**, since it is in the nature of software to act as its own specification. When source code and documentation differ, it is the source code that is the final reference. We take a **holistic approach** to the design and creation of software since our experience shows this yields the best results. As a result of our approach, it is difficult to measure incremental progress except when we have a program that works end-to-end. Fortunately, we have been able to produce such a program with Crypt.

Next Steps

Our work continues into the exploration of tools for packaging streams of data. Our main pursuit is still a **‘magic hash function’** which will allow the transformation of unprocessed streams to processed streams. We have made progress on a number of fronts which will allow us to proceed with this work, as demonstrated by our Crypt program.

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