During the latter part of 1995 Detective Sergeant John Cooper of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, with the assistance of myself developed a computerised system for monitoring and tracking exhibits that are recovered during major investigations.

The system was first put to the test during January 1996 when a man was shot and killed in Bristol. The murder incident room was set up shortly afterwards and the just completed system was put into use within it. As it turned out the beginning of 1996 was to be even more trying, before March the same year we had experienced 8 further murders, many of which produced national television coverage. The new system was really being put to the test and was continually being developed during it’s use to take account of the users new found requirements.

THE MAJORINV SYSTEM
The system is constructed from a number of separate databases, and like all our systems it is linked together using the programming language. A lot of the functions and such have been built up over a number of years and these form the basis of our systems.

The system comprises of 11 data files;

LAB1
Retains basic detail as to the nature of the offence committed, i.e. murder. The details of the senior investigating officer, coroner, pathologist and so forth. This data file forms the basis of information required to produce forms for submission of articles to the forensic science laboratory.

For those of you who have seen some of our other systems you will notice that this menu structure follows the same pattern. This ensures a consistent user interface for persons who may use more than one package. This is a screenshot of the main menu, shortly after a person has ‘logged on’ with a valid username and password.

LABITEMS
Records details of items submitted to the lab along with some of the details of the previous two datafiles.

MAJORENT
The main data entry screen for items. Based around the majorinv database where all items are stored, linked with the item movements.

MAJORINV
Similar in appearance to the MAJORENT.VW with the exception of a few fields. Used in searching the database.

MOVEMENT
Each exhibit can be monitored independently, showing whether it is in the store, or out being used in an enquiry.

PASSWORD
All persons authorised to use the system are maintained in this database. This will usually only be the exhibits officer and possibly the senior investigating officer (SIO).

PERSONS
Any person, complainant, deceased or victim is represented in this database, again these details are utilised mainly by the lab. related paperwork.

STAFF
Full details of the enquiry, nature, start date, end date, key staff, pathologist and important telephone and address details.

STAFF1 and STAFF2
Two identical datafiles, each as a backup to the other but as two separate datafiles it allows two 'data file lookups' to be used on the same view. Data is only entered into one database and then automatically synchronised with the other copy.

Many long time users of Smartware will recognise the above program as originating  with Andrew SCHWARTZ, author of Smart Tips, Tricks & Traps. The program has undergone some modification since this time and the version shown here was written for Smartware V1.51. As such it suffers from 'screen flashing' when using the 'suspend command'. We call the program 'simbrows'.

DBKEY {numeric}

For example the section of the 'simbrows' program which reads as ;

elseif $key={PgDn}
     suspend
     keys PgDn,F8
     jump retry

Can be replaced with;

elseif $key={PgDn}
     dbkey({Down})
     jump retry

This will then dispense with the flashing as a program suspends and also results in smaller programs due to the reduced number of program lines.

TWIDDLING AGAIN
The Major Investigation System is quite printer intensive due to the nature of the reports it can generate and a lot of the time work is being done behind the scenes of the user interface. All the talk of 'twiddlers' set me to work on ways of improving this and the next release of the system will include a couple of enhancements.

Peter Singleton of FMI (our first supplier of Smartware back in 1991) produced a twiddler for the August 1997 newsletter, this reproduced on the 'code page' in case you cannot find it.

The function is included as part of a query and is called on each record change producing the twiddling effect. My version (suing Peter's as a starter) produces a 'bar effect', and is based upon another article submitted to the newsletter where the query is 'done by hand' also.

If you try the examples you will also see that my version (used under V2.65) can be passed parameters without crashing, in the case shown, background and foreground colours.

The first of the three screen exhibit entry. Concerned mainly with identifying the item, who deposited it and when. A two line description is also catered for which is usually more than enough to describe all but the most complex item.

The last screen is a table linked to the movement database. Each item will have a set of corresponding movements, in pairs, i.e. one 'out' movement must have one 'in' movement to compliment it.