[Simh] MUMPS, MUMPS-11, DSM-11, ISM-11, etc

[Tom Morris]

On Thu, 21 May 2020 19:53:53 +0100, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net>
 wrote:

 > Along those lines: is there MUMPS-11 anywhere?  That's nicely obscure.
 > Another obscure one is CAPS-11, though that's probably far less
 > interesting.
 >
 > MUMPS was a database system, apparently a very good one.  It was used as
 > the core for ASSIST-11, a telephone directory assistance database.  In
 > other words, the database that 411 operators would consult to answer
 > your request for a phone number in a second or two.  Database lookup in
 > a million-record or so database, in around a second, on a PDP-11 in
 > 1978.  Nice.

MUMPS-11 integrated an operating system, database, and language interpreter
(for MUMPS, the MGH Utility Multiprogramming System). It was succeeded by
DSM-11 (Digital Standard MUMPS) and then Vax DSM. The core data structure
for MUMPS is a sparse array of arbitrary dimensions, so you could say
things like set user(80,"name", "last")="Bell" to write to the database
instead, just put a caret (^) in front set ^user(80,"name","first")="Gordon".
The database was implemented as a prefix-compressed B-tree which gave its
speed.

MUMPS-11 was a product of the Medical Systems Group (MSG) and the EMS email
system was written in DSM-11 by the neighbor Laboratory Data Products (LDP)
for their own internal use before it was adopted by corporate MIS. The
DECmail product was written in Vax DSM based on EMS, but rewritten from the
ground up, by Jerry Melnick and I.

As far as I know, the VA's electronic health record system STILL runs on
MUMPS. Local company InterSystems which was DEC's primary competitor in the
market with ISM-11. It is still owned by its founder, Terry Ragon, 42 years
later where he's done well enough that he was able to donate $200M to MGH
last year and another $100M in 2009 to establish the Ragon Institute. Not
bad! InterSystems has diversified, but I think their Caché database product
is still based on the original MUMPS database.

More than you ever wanted to know about MUMPS...

Tom
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