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From: dmc@videovax.tek.com ("Donald M. Craig")
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Submission for mod-computers-vax
Message-ID: <8701192014.AA09976@videovax.TEK>
Date: Mon, 19-Jan-87 15:14:44 EST
Article-I.D.: videovax.8701192014.AA09976
Posted: Mon Jan 19 15:14:44 1987
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Path: videovax!dmc
From: dmc@videovax.Tek.COM (Donald M. Craig)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Mumps.
Message-ID: <4164@videovax.Tek.COM>
Date: 19 Jan 87 20:14:43 GMT
References: <8701180320.AA19101@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: dmc@videovax.Tek.COM (Donald M. Craig)
Organization: Tektronix Television Systems, Beaverton, Oregon
Lines: 30

Marty Sasaki writes:  "For some reason MUMPS became popular in medical
areas, but practically unheard of outside of it."

Well.  Almost.  When I worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
in Montreal, there was a large dual PDP-15 based MUMPS installation that
was used to schedule program material on the Radio-Canada French language
television network.  The system worked, and was integrated with the
automated television switching and vtr/telecine control system.  It
predated a number of commercial (non-MUMPS) systems by several years.

I also recall a field trip to the docks in Newark, New Jersey, where
we watched longshoremen race brand new cars two abreast towards a ramp
that would only hold one.  The container inventory and management system
of one of the major shippers was based on PDP-15 MUMPS.

The key to MUMPS power was the global sparse array.  Since it was sparse,
it was essentially a linked list, and the 'global' attribute meant that
it lived on the disk system, but pretty much transparently.  Programmers
didn't have to worry about 'access methods', and since the linked lists
were implemented directly in the MUMPS 'kernel', performance was
excellent, especially compared to things like COBOL.  The distance from
data on the disk to a formatted screen was very short with MUMPS.

All that said, MUMPS is indeed a dinosaur.  Fast data base applications
could be created in short order by experienced programmers, but maintenance
was nearly impossible, for all the reasons Marty said.

-- 
Don Craig			dmc@videovax.Tek.COM
Tektronix Television Systems	... tektronix!videovax!dmc