Virtual Report Processing: The Mapper Story

Copyright © 2001 by Louis Schlueter.

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CONTENTS

REGISTERED TRADEMARKS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

This book is dedicated to the developers and supporters of

MAPPER systems at Unisys Corporation as well as the users of

MAPPER systems throughout the world.

By their efforts, examples and success have made MAPPER

software systems a proven success and have proved the validity

of the Report Processing and User Designed Computing

concepts discussed in this book.

REGISTERED TRADEMARKS

Unisys, LINC, MAPPER, and ClearPath are registered trademarks and PowerClient is a trademark of Unisys Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. IBM is a registered trademark and RS/6000 is a trademark of IBM Corporation. Informix is a registered trademark of Informix Corporation. Windows 95 and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Sybase is a registered trademark of Sybase Corporation. Sequent is a trademark of Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. SPARC is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other brand names are the exclusive property of their respective owners.

Portions of this book are based on MAPPER system documentation and are used with the permission of Unisys Corporation. The perceptions and opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Unisys Corporation.

PREFACE

The electronic-data-processing power of computers is awesome. Hundreds of millions of logical computations can be performed in just seconds. In recent years we have seen the millisecond, microsecond and nanosecond computer instruction become realities in computer technology. Not too many years ago the speed of light, at which electricity travels, was thought to be a significant limitation to computer-processing speeds. It takes some fraction of time for current to now through the interconnecting wires of the computers. Then circuit patterns were photo reduced to create micro circuitry, which then made the distance among logic elements microscopic and simultaneously improved mass production of circuitry manufacture. Resistance to current flow is now being eliminated with the introduction of circuitry operating in resistance free environments. Computer performance and capability have thus improved dramatically in the past decades and they will continue to grow exponentially in the future.

Many significant events and milestones have occurred in the field of electronic data processing since the invention of the ENIAC with its more than 18,000 vacuum tubes (1943-1946). From 1955 to 1983 mainframe computers improved in gate density from 10,000 to 500,000. Switching speed increased from 2 microseconds to 1 nanosecond. And today we have INTEL’s Pentium III at 700 MHZ clock rates. But even more spectacular than the hardware architecture advancement have been the accomplishments in the software world. For without the software, one has nothing more than high technology, high quality piles of iron.

The drawback in computer technology is the fact that all digital computers rely exclusively on yes and no logical decisions, albeit performed with electronic speed. Thus computers are fast and stupid. In other words, computers are powerful information processors, but they perform only as disciplined by the art of programming.

The first programming endeavors were in the areas of scientific language development with FORTRAN being the first high level language to receive wide usage. John Backus and colleagues at IBM in the mid-1950s developed FORTRAN. However, even though scientific applications dominated the first computers the business world was not totally ignored.

Languages were also being developed for the business community, the first of which was FLO-MATIC developed at Remington Rand Univac by Grace Hopper and her colleagues in the mid-1950s. FLOW-MATIC was the first English oriented language and played a major role in the development of COBOL—Common Business Oriented Language.

Development was occurring not only in the area of languages, but also in the area of data handling. Three major events transpired in data handling that would now be called technical approaches to data base management systems. Charles Bachman of General Electric proposed the first method around 1964. This was a concept based on a network scheme for storing data. The second method was the hierarchical or tree structure approach, which was released by IBM in 1969 as the backbone of their Information Management System. The third method was conceptually introduced in 1970 by E. F. Codd of IBM and is the relational database. The relational concept consists of tables of data where information is not repeated.

Today the text book cliche of the non-redundant database referenced through a common dictionary must be abandoned for the myopic relic that it is. The schema for the massive set of enterprise control information will exist across a worldwide network of systems of all sizes from PCs to mid frames to mainframes. Mostly, the schema that ties all this data together will exist in the minds of the user-designers. There will be data redundancies and many computerized dictionaries of many forms with some of the relationships reflected in on-line repositories. There will be islands of highly structured and indexed databases interfacing to masses of highly departmentalized and personal data sets. The IS challenge is to seamlessly facilitate cooperative processing across this federation of systems.

Another significant event in the field of electronic data processing was the development of real time multi-user environments. In 1968, once an adequate hardware input device was available in form of the UNISCOPE 300 CRT display, work began at Sperry Univac to design and develop a real time multiuser environment to solve manufacturing problems. The system design requirements stipulated the support of a heavy mix of retrieval and database updating of course at the same "real-time. The software design was first implemented on the Sperry Univac 418 CRT-Report Processing system which was the beginning of Virtual Report Processing.

The disciplining of computers, programming, has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. However, there are few end-users (those who must apply information from computers) who are comfortable or even satisfied in their dealings with programmers and programming establishments. Communicating with the programmer is often a source of great frustration and expense for the user. The user more often than not finds his or her needs to be of too low a priority to be computerized. Only the largest, company wide applications can be justified for programming. Few small companies can afford the expense and resources required to create the specific applications they need. To get the competitive advantage of computing, they often have to modify their company operations to adapt to the use of standard software packages. If the need is great enough to warrant the cost of designing a new application, the user encounters other difficulties. The demand for programmer talent is intense. Actual program design and debugging, once started can take many months or even many years to complete and are very costly.

The problem of communicating with the programmers is worse than the problems of costs and delays. Defining the task for the computer to accomplish is the greatest problem. However, the key to that problem is the programmer’s ability to think about the task definition as if he or she were the user. Therein lies the crux of the problem: the art of computer programming is technically complex and syntactically confusing to the layman and the operational world of the user is equally complex and confusing to the computer programmer. So the tasks to be programmed must be carefully defined, usually with written, detailed specifications. Needless to say, much is missed or confused in the process of specification. The result is great expense, delays, confusion, and programs that when completed do not suit the ideal operational environment. The very best the user can get is what the programmer thinks the user wants or what the programmer thinks the user needs.

When programs are made operational, user management soon discovers that the implementation of new management policies must take into account the costs and delays in reprogramming. Sometimes extensive programmed systems calcify and even direct corporate policy instead of remaining flexible and passively utilitarian. Indeed, considering all the costs, delays, frustrations, and communication problems in the programming discipline, it is not surprising that so little of the total business or institutional information-processing requirement is computerized even today.

Energy sources have been cited as a limiting factor to our economy. But the programming bottleneck may be an even greater limiting factor. Vast amounts of computer power are already available at reasonable costs, and computer power will be even more abundant and cheaper in the future. Effective use of this enormous power could unleash fantastic productivity in all our industry, institution, and government operations. But even with current levels of computer use, severe shortages of programmer resources exist. It is essential that this resource crisis be overcome so that the power inherent in our current and future computer technologies can be effectively harnessed. Thus computer systems must be capable of being directly adapted to information-processing applications without programming intermediaries.

The computer industry is in a situation similar to that faced by the telephone industry years ago. When telephone call connections were made manually with plugs by telephone operators. The telephone company made an assessment of the potential growth in the volume of telephone calls to be made in the future. It was obvious that the armies of telephone operators that would be needed to match the demand for telephone service created an unacceptable limitation to the telephone service of the future. So the phone company’s solution to the problem was to automate and computerize the switching mechanisms and to place in the user’s hands the ability to direct this switching. The result was the dial telephone. When the customer dials a number, he or she directs the computer power of the telephone system. The customer is then the operator. And by placing the power to direct their switching computers in the customers’ hands, the telephone operator bottleneck was overcome.

A similar situation exists in the computing industry today. A tremendous need exists to computerize the flow of real-time control information. Data processing staffs are burdened with maintenance of the existing structured systems. They face large backlogs of service requests for new programs, and adequate personnel can neither be hired nor trained fast enough to meet the demand. Thus there exists a trend toward user-oriented computer systems. Again, placing in the hands of the users the ability to direct computer power is a giant step forward in meeting the demand for computer technology.

Virtual Report Processing, the subject of this book, makes accessible to users that which is impossible with structured professional programming. The user-oriented age of computers arrives. User-designed computing becomes a reality.

The system that provides Virtual Report Processing capabilities offers in one integrated, scalable software system: Availability across a wide range of industry Open systems, A Report Structured Database with interfaces to industry Relational DB’s, A complete, Powerful, 4GL Application Development Language, Client-Server Networking across a range of system sizes and vendors, Internet Integration and accessibility, A full set of system, user and database security controls, Upward application compatibility from MS Windows PC’s to client-server and mainframes,

This Virtual Report Processing system is essentially an industry secret. This is remarkable considering that the system has been in development and worldwide implementation in a multibillion $ hardware base for over 30 years.

The story of the survival and accomplishment of this system is a testimonial to the entrepreneurial spirit of the developers, and customer users. The system survives in spite of corporate resistance and neglect simply because it successfully provides a kind of programmerless information processing that users feel is the way that computers are supposed to be used.

Today it offers the most powerful set of information processing and database capability in the world, bar none. Properly implemented, it could be the next major Killer Application, greater in productivity potential than word processing and spread sheets combined. It offers enormous profit potential either through effective marketing or as the basis of an investment stock IPO.

CHAPTER 1

The Secret System

There is an information processing system that is more powerful and has greater general productivity potential than any software system existing today. It is very likely you have never heard of this system and know nothing of its capabilities.

This system has been installed for use in a hardware base worth more than $3 Billion. It can be used on any size hardware system from single user, personal computers to multi user, client-server, networked mainframe systems. It can also be used on main frame systems capable of supporting 10’s of thousands of simultaneous users. Its full set of functionality with over 150 Information Power Tool functions with more than 750 options is available on all these configurations. This system with its unprecedented set of Information Power Tools was created through annual new functional system releases spanning over 30 years. Its Report Processing capabilities have been translated for use in more than 15 languages including Chinese and Japanese.

This system has been used for applications in almost all kinds of industries such as; manufacturing, financial, transportation, recreation, etc. as well as city, state and federal government agencies and all of the armed services.

As remarkable as the extensive market and implementation of this software system is, it is undoubtedly the best kept secret in the industry.

Its history parallels that of its parent corporation that evolved in name from Remington Rand Univac, to Sperry Univac, to Sperry to its current name of Unisys Corporation.

This writing will examine the origins and evolution of this system. Its story spans over 30 years. It preceded DOS, Windows and even Unix operating systems. It offers enormous productivity potential by its unique, extensive functionality that supports Virtual Report Processing and the ability of users to design their own applications without conventional programming. We will examine the invention of the system concepts that support the programmerless use of computers and their evolution to the extensive, Information Power Tool set that is available today.

Because of the system’s user oriented nature, the story of this system is one of the involvement and interaction of people who were computing professionals as well as end-users. Its user driven concepts evoked enormous resistance, especially in its early years, when the idea of users having any significant role in application design was not only inconceivable by the data professionals it was even considered threatening to data processing professional establishments.

These were the days when most important business applications were written in the COBOL programming language using highly structured database management systems under the auspices of Management Information Systems (MIS) organizations.

Report Processing concepts were created in one of the largest computer system corporations. The invention of the concepts that evolved to the execution of Virtual Report Processing was possible because of a special internal corporate environment that supported