			  February 15, 1993


To:   Charles Divest, President

From: Louis Reasoner, Distinguished Assistant
                      to the Associate Director 
                      of Information Services 

Re:   Cost Accounting in EECS


    At your request I have studied the problem of providing you with
accurate cost-accounting information.  I have constructed a prototype
database for you to evaluate.  If you find it helpful, I will engage
an army of UROP students to fill in the data for all subjects in all
departments.

The system is made up of two files.  The actual departmental data, and
some code that accesses that data.  To assist you in using this
database, you will see that the data is organized as a tree of
association lists, using standard methods of lookup.

You will see that the database is commented, describing the format of
the data and the units for numbers that appear.

I hope that this is helpful.  You may contact me at the following
email address:

   Reasoner@fin.admin.oas.is.mit.edu
