I am planning to make changes to the electronic version of the
MultiValue Family Tree poster in the coming year. The 2002 version of
the pdf is found at

http://www.tincat-group.com/mv/familytree.html

If you have a chance to look it over and spot anything, however minor,
that appears inaccurate or misleading, I would appreciate the
information you have.

Also, there have been some changes in products or companies, including
at least jBASE and OpenQM, since this poster was developed. Any
information about the products and companies since early 2002 that
would help update this poster for today would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any information you can give. You may either
e-mail me at dwolt at tincat-group dot com or respond to this posting,
especially if you want input from others on the accuracy of your input.


Thanks in advance. --dawn

Thanks for the effort Dawn. You'll need to get confirmation of these
notes, my memory is real vague on all this and I never was a Pick
history buff. I did have more notes but scratched them the closer I
looked.

I see you have the hardware associated with a few platforms.
In addition to Honeywell for Ultimate there was the DEC (VAX)
Ultimate, which I believe was a firmware implementation - and
significant in its own right for that.

The three companies currently involved with the jBASE DBMS are jBASE
International, Temenos, and mPower1. This is as of 2002 when Mpower1
acquired rights for support and distribution. Ref:
http://www.jbase.com/about/ and elsewhere. "jBASE" is listed as
"Maintains an MV System in application". Technically that's not
accurate as jBASE does not have an application but Temenos does. I
can't suggest exactly how this should all be displayed but as it is
it's not 100% accurate.

ADP is mentioned in the Reality branch. From recent CDP discussions
and e-mail exchanges, I see they are still a player in the auto
dealership vertical market. I don't know if they just lock-down stock
DBMS releases or if they are still categorized as a licensee. If they
are a licensee, this could make them one of the longest running
licensee/resellers out there.

Noting the MultiValue logo, it's a shame that SMA isn't recognized
somewhere in the mix as having an impact on some of the cross-platform
standards that we still enjoy today.

Might be Pick-ayune, but I doubt whether the distinction between
Advanced Pick and AP Pro is worthy of mention. AP Protected mode was
just one step off from AP Native, which isn't mentioned there, and I
don't think Native is worthy either considering Pick was originally a
native platform in the first place. If AP PRO is in there then so
should be AP DOS (EOL 5.2.5) and AP Native (EOL 5.2.7). If not, and
this is my preference, I'd suggest scratching AP PRO and just leaving
Adv Pick.

Also under "ports", was Data General really a licensee or were MV
products merely ported over DG/UX?

Finally, we often hear Jim Idle say "jBASE is not Pick", and I know
that confuses people. We see in the tree that MDIS had impact on JAC
where jBASE was written, and the license was subsequently transferred
to jBASE International. But to understand that history I found a neat
article which explains that process _and_ really explains well how and
why jBASE was developed. This provides some compelling insight into
jBASE, and may help to explain why jBASE may be better positioned than
some other MV platforms for the open market. Ref:
http://www.ukpua.org/archives/articles/JAC.html

Regards,
T


"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Tony Gravagno wrote:
The Honeywell Level 6 and DPS6 implementations were firmware, as were
the earlier DEC QBus versions (the 1500, 2000 and 3000 series). But I
don't believe the VAX version was.

Luke

I should point out that that article is a very "marketing" oriented
view of the world. In reality there were a lot more beer mats involved
than this.

Luke Webber wrote:
Level 6 "firmware" was contained in Writable Control Store (WCS)
which was a little softer than firm; it was a RAM, not a ROM.

Also, not all the O/S was in the WCS; the equivalent of "monitor code"
was written in assembly language. In some of the earlier releases, a
few of the "Pick" virtual assembly language instructions were executed
in software, as well.

--
frosty

Tony Gravagno wrote:
I put in some that I thought might be of historical significance.
Showing IBM at the start (at the same time Codd was at IBM researching
the relational model, by the way) as well as at the end of the history
seemed significant enough to point out.

Yes, that happened after I published this version, so I will work on
straightening that out. I can only include so much info, so I don't
know if jbase.com is even relevant in this diagram. I should perhaps
take that question to the jbase list.

I thought they were maintaining it themselves, but maybe someone else
knows more about this. I did not get a contact for that implementation
to interview for this diagram and it would be good to have one.

Anyway you look at it, they are one of the longest running MultiValue
implementations, I would think. Datatel, my former employer, was
started in 1968 (making it one of the oldest existing application
software companies, I suspect) and is another long running MV VAR. I
don't know when they started with it, but they went from Microdata IIRC
to Prime Information to UniData.

Good point. I tried to come up with a way to recognize them since they
didn't fit the other categories and decided that using the logo was a
way to do that. I could put a URL to their site or the explanation of
the logo on the next version. I'll check with Gus.

That is helpful to know. I took info from many people and sources. I
never worked on the PICK side of the house, so I appreciate that type
of input.

That is what I'll do.

I had that one on-again, off-again when I was developing it. My
criteria for inclusion on that list was not really tight. My interest
is less on licensing than on whether there was an implementation of the
languages that was separate from other implementations (a "port" to
that platform). But my notes are not clear enough for me to figure out
who gave me DG information so I could ask some follow-up questions.
Hopefully others will know. I think there are other items in this list
that might stand out as being of a different ilk too and would like to
identify those.

Yes, I believe that was one of my sources, although I did talk to Jim
too at some point, if I recall correctly.

Thanks a bunch. --dawn

"Luke Webber" <luke (AT) webber (DOT) com.au> wrote

In the late 80ies Ultimate (France/UK?) developed an Inmos Transputer based
ULT-Pick implementation. I had a chance to play around that board installed
into 286 PC. Technically the solution seemed quite promising those times.

Nick

Jim Idle wrote:
Don't know why I thought of this, Jim ;-) but wouldn't a history of
litigation in the MultiValue community be a fun one to write up too?

Cheers! --dawn

I worked for ADP for several years (albeit 7 years ago).. They ran a
customised version of Reality/X at the time, which they developed to suit
themselves (they updated the compiler to assist in us porting our UK
application from MOE to ADP's Reality)... In addition, they would from
time to time retrofit items from the standard version of Reality/X into
their own..

As far as I am aware, whilst they have tried to replace Reality, I believe
that it is still used today unless somebody else knows better!

Out of interest, they also did some work with jBase several years ago but
decided not to move from Reality at the time, though we did move the UK
application from ADP Reality to jBASE running on an IBM RS/6000 platform.

Not sure if this info helps!

Regards
Simon
"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

"dawn" wrote:

Well, if you're talking "ports" then there was AP and D3 for DG/UX,
HP-UX, SCO, and Siemens-Nixdorf (different than Siemens' own port).
There was a rotten AT&T port which was associated with a spinoff
marketing company from Pick Systems called PickTel. (Is that an
accurate assessment of the relationships?) And I think Henry Vu (Pick
Systems) at some point at least got to a logon prompt over
Apple/Macintosh (!). Other DBMS products were similarly ported but I
don't think this is all truly significant. From a historical
perspective it's probably better to just focus on licensees than
"ports". Some porting, non-licensee, efforts were significant though,
like the SMI 370/4300 port. Tough calls...

As I write this I'm now reminded that there was a Data General system
back in the 80's that looked Pick-ish, but I never coded over it and
never did more than the most basic operations with it. Anyone have a
clue about that one?

I understand the focus and complexity of what's already there, but
it's sort of a shame to not see some of the milestones. Like:
- When did Dick first discuss porting Pick to IBM - and then decide he
didn't want to?
- Who had the first MV/Unix port?
- I believe AP was the first commercial database (MV or otherwise)
ported to Linux. Can someone contest that?

Just going on... Thanks again.
T