| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 69.1 | | STONED::MUNROE | | Tue Aug 06 1985 15:22 | 28 |
| I've no experience with in-house applications, but I got into DEC
in '74 on the basis of my work as a beta-test site for MUMPS-15.
We ran a very large radiology department with it, including:
patient scheduling
reporting
expert systems for tumor et al. diagnosis
...
The list was endless. The initial system took about 6 months to
develop and bring on-line. The full system was done in about 1.5
years. To the best of my knowledge it's still operating (Contact
Dept. of Radiology, University Medical Center, University of
Missouri, Columbia, Mo.).
I agree, it's a terrific system for low to mid-range performance
data base management systems. There are strategic reasons for
not pushing it, specifically, DEC hasn't seemed interested in
pursuing the end-user market. MUMPS is a product that sells
primarily to people who want a completely canned package. DEC
couldn't provide them (the DEC 3rd party software strategy wasn't
in place) and DEC basically abandoned the product. Anything you
are likely to get for your needs based on MUMPS will most likely
be available from outside the company. You might try advertising
on the TOOLSHED notes file (METOO::TOOLSHED) for what you need or
to find out what's been done.
Dick Munroe
|
| 69.2 | | HSK03::PLEINO | | Fri Aug 09 1985 20:18 | 19 |
| Hi Dick, and thanks for your response.
I do want to comment, though, as you seemingly have missed DEC Mumps
info completely;
We have DSM11 (Digital Standard Mumps) for PDP's;
It is a stand-alone integrated Language-database manager-operating-
system product, that has all ANSI'84 features and very good
performance. DSM runs on any PDP.
Then we have VAX-DSM;
There the situation is somewhat worse - ANSI standard is honoured,
but as it uses RMS for database management, the performance is
not as good as with compeating products. Firm plans to impovememt
have introduced, though.
So, MUMPS is up and running - within DEC as well! Enjoy the one of the
best performing languages. It is usable for any application!
regards,
-Pasi Leino- MUMPS, MUMPS
|
| 69.3 | | MOTHER::PHILPOTT | | Mon Aug 12 1985 16:14 | 42 |
|
Sure MUMPS is a good system, and is nice for certain
classes of database applications.
If I remember my DEC history correctly the lack of
interest in it today came about roughly as follows:
MUMPS, and its "children" (DSM-11, DSM/VAX) were the
progeny of the now no-longer with us, Medical Product
Line (whatever its exact name was), and only sales
people "belonging" to that product line were chartered
to sell it. Further the VAX product was targeted at
existing users of the 16-bit product.
Consequently those salesmen selling it had a narrow
charter (medical users), and restrictive rules on when
they could propose the VAX version.
When the product line "went away", and took the
restrictions with it very few sales people and support
specialists knew enough about the product to sell it, or
even to know when it would have been the appropriate
thing to sell.
It is a fact, albeit a sad one, that sales people only
sell what they know enough about to feel comfortable
with. The consequence is that when discussing either
language or database choices with customers many sales
people do not even mention DSM.
Certainly the existing market for MUMPS is largely a
package market, but that underplays the very real
strengths of both the language and the database system.
I suspect many programmers struggle with conventional
languages and database systems to code a system that
would be almost trivial using DSM, merely because no-one
with the requisite experience (ie having used both MUMPS
and conventional database systems) has analyzed the
requirements, and recognized the strengths of MUMPS.
/. Ian .\
|
| 69.4 | | OZONE::CRAIG | | Fri Oct 18 1985 22:01 | 114 |
|
I must take exception to several comments in the preceeding notes, and
correct some erroneous assumptions about MUMPS the language, and it's
place in Digital.
MUMPS is not only alive, but it's thriving, both within DEC and in the
outside world.
The Medical Systems Group (MSG), located in MRO3 provides VAX DSM and
DSM-11, and is doing very well, thank you. The product line never
"went away", rather it grew and has extended itself into new markets.
MSG has developed and is marketing two applications systems:
DECRad, a state of the art radiology system, and DECHealth, a large,
comprehensive occupational health system (currently being
used at several Digital facilities to protect the health of our
workers).
These two applications, by the way, are very large (a typical database
at a Decrad site is about 750,000 blocks), so it's not true to say that
MUMPS is "a terrific system for low to mid-range performance database
management systems..." They also demonstrate, by their presence that
Digital IS "interested in pursuing the end-user market..."
These applications were developed using an integrated set of MUMPS
code generators called DASL (Decmed Archiect System Library) which
were developed internally at MSG. I happen to be one of the
programmers on this project, which is currently in the process of
becoming a product. DASL allows a programmer to quickly and easily
define a MUMPS database, using a data dictionary, along with screens
and reports to access the database.
A list of MUMPS installations within Digital would include:
- DECMAIL, the electronic mail system many of you are familiar
with.
- The warehouse system at Westminster.
- The Order Administration system in Salem which I'm told
handles about 40% of DEC's hardware orders.
- The Point of Manufacture (POM) system recently written up in
Decworld as having saved the corporation zillions of dollars.
- The Fiscal Certs and Management reporting systems at MRO3
which provide daily reports on the corporations state of
affairs. The management reporting system recently expanded
to cover the entire US area.
Organizations outside Digital which use MUMPS systems extensively
include:
- The VA hospital system (developer of the File Manager, now
known as Fileman, and an electronic mail system called
Mailman), which uses MUMPS as it's exclusive programming
language. BTW, Digital is doing about $30 million in
business with the VA as a direct result of DEC's MUMPS
committment.
- All United States Armed services hospitals worldwide (again,
with heavy involvement by Digital).
- American Airlines' SABER system (a reservation system used by
thousands of travel agents).
- General Motors (DEC again!) which uses MUMPS heavily in
several manufacturing facilities.
- The world-wide inventory system of Shell Oil.
- Morgan Guaranty Trust Co.
It's no longer true to say that VAX DSM only uses RMS. The global
handler from DSM-11 has been converted to run on the VAX and it
provides SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS (at least double the speed) in
database performance over RMS.
VAX DSM is certainly NOT "targeted at the existing users of the 16-bit
product", except in the sense that we'd like to sell VAXen to them.
There are a significant number of VAX DSM installations around the
world which were developed on VAXen. And it certainly is more than
"...nice for certain classes of database applications...", it is
excellent for all classes of database applications.
If you want to find out more information about MUMPS in general, or
DSM in particular contact VAXWRK::DSM by VAXMAIL.
Also, on Thursday, November 21, 1985, there will be a DSM Applications
Meeting from 9am to 3pm in MRO3-3, West Wing, OEM Classroom.
The purpose of the meeting is to discuss current DSM applications
within DEC, and to review future enhancements in the DSM products.
If you are interested in attending, contact:
Sandy Wentworth DTN 297-5962
or Rick Proksell DTN 297-5962, USMRM4::RPROKSELL
There are also two VAX notes files which discuss MUMPS. They are:
VAXWRK""::SYS$NOTES:VAXDSM
and
VAXWRK""::SYS$NOTES:DSM
Copies of the interpreter, and documention may also be copied over the
net from the directory OZONE::DSM$KIT:
We've also set up a directory, OZONE::DSM$UTILITY: which has examples
of some MUMPS utility programs created by a number of MUMPS hackers.
|
| 69.5 | | OEDPUS::PHILPOTT | | Mon Oct 21 1985 14:00 | 7 |
| I stand corrected on the details: I was writing of my perceptions of events,
as seen in the field.
It is only a pity that it took 2 months for this note to appear and correct
the previous remarks.
/. Ian .\
|
| 69.6 | Another MUMPS comment | ASYLUM::SIMON | | Mon Mar 03 1986 19:53 | 40 |
| This is a very late entry, but I have just discovered this file.
I'd like to add a few comments:
Re: .0
What you forgot to mention was that the VA software was developed
using our tax dollars and is therefore available for free (ok, the
cost of the media).
There is also an application called COSTAR available in the
public domain. Both look pretty ugly, but at the sacrifice of some
readable code and a little performance, a non-programmer can have
a lot of flexibility.
Both applications are menu-driven and require a minimum of
MUMPS expertise to use.
Re .1
I think DEC has missed the mark on marketting potential with
it's handling of DSM. MUMPS was developed in the medical industry
and has been largely marketted there. If you look over the pond,
you see many people running DSM for all sorts of things. One huge
user there is a travel agency. Bob Craig pointed out in .4 several
non-medical sites and uses.
DSM runs on more types of machines than any other language and is
an ANSI STANDARD language. I think it has a huge potential if it
is marketted to the non-medical field more aggressively.
A final comment might be to liken DSM to a blind date. My first
impression of it was that it was really ugly. It definitely, however
has a great personality. Just like BASIC, the potential is there
to do some really ugly coding (and sometimes there are reasons to
get ugly), but it doesn't have to be that way. Good practices make
for good code in any language.
Denise Simon
|
| 69.7 | Mumps does it all | HSK03::PLEINO | Pasi Leino - TSSC Helsinki | Thu Sep 03 1987 20:12 | 8 |
| I just heard rumors that we are negotiating with VA about a 100 M$
(yes!) contract to replace their PDP based systems with VAX-based.
There is also a chance that VA takes VAX/DSM instead of a third
party implementation.
Good going,
-Pasi-
|
| 69.8 | MUMPS leverages $500M for DEC this year! | DSM::CRAIG | Nice computers don't go down :-) | Mon Dec 26 1988 17:05 | 69 |
| This past year and 1/2 have been very fruitful for DSM. About 2
years ago we left the Medical Systems Group and joined the Micro
Systems Development Group (MSD) which is headed by Dom LaCava out
of the Mill. So, we're no longer associated with a medical group
and are now associated with Central Engineering.
2 major government RFP's came out, and were involved heavily in
responding to them.
The first was for the Trimis system of the Dept. of Defense (DOD).
This award was for a completely integrated hospital information
system for all the DOD hospitals world-wide. The award was done
in stages. During the first stage proposals were submitted to the
government. In the second stage a cost-plus contract was awarded
to several vendors to develop the application. In the third stage
the various vendors demonstrated their applications and the government
chose the best implementation. In the final stages, the vendors
installed their systems at test sites, and eventually the goverment
selected a final winner.
Digital worked with SAIC of La Jolla (the prime contractor) and
DiStar of Walnut Creek, CA. (the original Fileman developers in
their own company) to produce the proposed system. SAIC and DiStar
developed the application, and we provided systems, hardware and
benchmark assistance.
When it came time for the first cut, SAIC, McDonnell-Douglas and
Baxter Travenol were selected to develop their applications. Baxter
Travenol later dropped out, leaving SAIC and McDonnell-Douglas.
SAIC developed the application on DSM, using expanded and enhanced
versions of the VA software supplied by DiStar. M-D developed their
application entirely in COBOL. This was a cost-plus contract, so
each vendor was free to spend as much money as thought necessary
to win the award.
At the end of the year SAIC was able to present an application with
100% of the required functionality. M-D was only able to present
60% of the required functionality. I think this speaks to how much
more productive a good MUMPS programmer is compared to a good COBOL
programmer.
A benchmark was staged at Franklin about 1 year ago, which was the
largest benchmark Digital has ever done. (The benchmarks were run
using VAX RTE, and 2 clusters of over 15 8550's each). SAIC finished
the benchmark within the response time criteria of the DOD, M-D was not
able to even finish the benchmark! SAIC and Digital won the award and
are implementing systems now.
The VA RFP came out during the same time period, and last March
Digital responded with a VAX DSM solution. Our proposal was accepted
and we spent almost 4 months at a VA site in Illinois demonstrating
VAX DSM functionality and performance. We also had to run benchmarks
using 2 clusters (maximum of 7 systems/cluster) of 8550/3500 LAVC
systems. (Interestingly, the VA wrote their own RTE, so they could
drive the tested system using MUMPS, rather than a vendors proprietery
product).
Digital won the award, and we are now in the process of converting
104 VA sites from DSM-11 to VAX DSM. The final configurations are
using a 62xx boot node and 3500/3600 satellites.
Bottom line: The DOD award was for $1.01 billion ($400 million to DEC,
the rest to the vendor), the VA award (all to DEC) was for $100
million. Therefore, Digital will receive a total of $500 million in
revenue which would have been lost if we didn't have a
high-performance, state-of-the art MUMPS solution. So, if you hear
anyone ask you if MUMPS is strategic, ask them if half-a-billion
dollars is a strategic amount of revenue!
|
| 69.9 | On-line info available | DSM::CRAIG | Nice computers don't go down :-) | Tue Feb 20 1990 12:51 | 19 |
|
I've recently written a "white paper", which discusses the MUMPS
language, in general, and VAX DSM, in particular. It's available over
the net at DSM::SYS$PUBLIC:DSM_INFO.* (.txt, .ln03, .ps formats). If
you want to learn more about MUMPS or DSM, feel free to copy it.
If I haven't mentioned it earlier, there are several DSM-oriented notes
files available:
DSM::VAXDSM Discusses DSM on VAX/VMS
DSM::DASL Discusses the DSM Application Software Library
(our 4th GL CASE tool)
DSM::DSM11 Discusses DSM on the PDP-11 (yes, it's still
selling!).
Bob Craig
DSM Product Group
MRO2-3/E5
DTN 297-6490
|