STRINGCOMP(ID:2743/str016)String manipulating JOSSTELCOMP with string manipulation developed at BBN, one of the JOSS family Places Structures: Related languages
References: Since the program was written for a time-sharing computer connected to the Bell Telephone System, any physician with access to a general-purpose teletype terminal can call the program and enter data. Efficient use of the program requires neither typing skill nor special training; only a few characters at a time are entered by the user, and each entry is adequately explained by the program. A six-letter confidential code protects the program from unauthorized modification or deletion. In addition, each night the entire computer memory is copied onto magnetic tape and stored remotely; in the event of damage to the memory, the entire system can be reloaded from the previous tape. Except for the time required to copy the memory, for other routine maintenance, and for occasional equipment failures, the system is in operation at all times. If a computer program is to be widely available (even at times of equipment maintenance and failure), it must run on a variety of equipment. In an effort to assess the difficulty of replication, the program was translated into BASIC for a GE-635 computer which serves a wide area in New England from the Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth College. Except for minor differences in format, the two versions appear identical to the user. To translate the program into BASIC required less than two months,' but it should not be assumed that the program can be translated into a form suitable for any time-sharing installation in a similar interval; ease of translation is a function of the properties of the available programming language. Extract: COde A copy of the program, either in STRcomp or in BASIC, may be obtained from the author. A user's manual describing the STRcomp language may be obtained from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, Mass. All application programs in this system are written in a high level interpretive language, a distant ancestor of which is JOSS,17 developed at the Rand Corporation in 1964. It has also been influenced by related languages such as TELCOMP and STRINGCOMP (developed by Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.) and FILECOMP (specified by Medinet Division of General Electric Corp.). The MUMPS language allows the programmer to write a program, debug it, edit it, run it, and modify it concurrently at an interactive session at a console. The interpreter itself is a part of the executive system and is reentrant. The total space taken up by the time-sharing monitor, the input/output monitor, buffers, and reentrant interpreter is currently about 8,000 words of memory. The timesharing and I/O monitors have been specifically tailored to work efficiently with the interpreter. No attempt has been made to accommodate machine language user programs. in Computers and Biomedical Research 2(5) October 1969 view details Introduction The application of computers to the delivery of patient care is more a problem of "data management" than of "data processing." Although calculations and interpretation of data are often required, of much greater concern are the problems involved in the collection, communication, co-ordination, and presentation of information. As the process of delivery of medical care becomes increasingly complex, and involves increasing numbers of professional and non-professional personnel, responsibility for achieving the continuity and comprehensiveness that is essential to medical care seems to rest heavily on the development of appropriate computer-based data management systems. Such systems may further provide the primary feasible means by which quality control, auditing of the medical care process, and research into the diagnosis and treatment of disease can be achieved. These functions now are dependent on the use of the patient medical record, although they are fulfilled only to a minimal extent by it. Despite changing functions and increased demands on it, the medical record has changed little in form over the past century. Medical records possess no organization by diagnostic or therapeutic problem; notes relevant to a particular aspect of a patient's health may be accessed only by leafing through an entire volume. Terminology is not standard, data is not organized in well-defined formats, and notes are often illegible. As a consequence, the objective of using the computer for clinical data management is gaining considerable impetus. This paper will describe a number of criteria which the authors have found to be important in the design of systems for clinical data management, and a novel system which has been implemented to meet these requirements. The system to be described has been in operation for over a year. The extent to which it has proved useful has led the authors to believe that the criteria defined have general applicability for clinical data management. In the discussion to follow, the term "clinical data management system" refers to a timeshared computer system which supports on-line input, inquiry, and retrieval of clinical information from a central data base. Extract: High level programming language High level programming language One of the most time-consuming aspects of the development of information system programs involves the optimal interfacing of the system with its users in a particular application area. This requires much attention to human engineering, and repeated modification and revision of programs. The implementation of clinical data management applications has generally begun on relatively small computers. This has, in many cases, been necessary because development was a gradual process and started with limited objectives. Since high level languages have not typically been available on small machines, most programming has been done in machine language. The expense and inefficiency of writing, debugging, and modifying such programs have been serious obstacles to active research and development. A few clinical data management systems have used large general purpose computers which could provide much increased flexibility. However, the overhead of a large operating system on a major computer has often seemed excessive, because of the rather small amount of processing involved in many of these applications. Furthermore, because of the reliability requirements of a clinical data management system, modularity and duplication of hardware is desirable and often essential. Because of the expense entailed by hardware redundancy, this is typically feasible only with inexpensive, minimal equipment configurations. The MGH Utility Multi-Programming System (MUMPS) is a compact time-sharing system on a medium scale computer, dedicated to clinical data management applications. It is currently implemented on a PDP-9 (Digital Equipment Corporation) with 24,000 words of 18 bit memory and a Burroughs fixed head disk with three million characters of storage capacity. A set of terminal scanners is used to inter" face to remote devices: teletypes, buffered display scopes, line printers, card readers, and A/D converters. Both memory size and peripheral storage capacity can be expanded in the system. In the current version, 16 users may run simultaneously. All application programs in this system are written in a high-level interpretative language, a distant ancestor of which is JOSE, 1 developed at the Rand Corporation in 1964. It has also been influenced by related languages such as STRINGCOMP (developed by Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.), and FILECOMP (specified by Medinet Division of General Electric Corp.). The MUMPS language allows the programmer to write a program, debug it, edit it, run it, and modify it concurrently during an interactive session at a console. The interpreter itself is a part of the executive system and is re-entrant. The total space taken up by the time-sharing monitor, the I/O monitor, buffers, and re-entrant interpreter is currently about 8,000 words of memory. The time-sharing and I/O monitors have been specifically tailored to work efficiently with the interpreter. No attempt has been made to accommodate machine language user programs. All active users are assigned partitions of core memory. in [AFIPS] Proceedings of the 1969 Fall Joint Computer Conference FJCC 35 view details [321 programming languages with indication of the computer manufacturers, on whose machinery the appropriate languages are used to know. Register of the 74 computer companies; Sequence of the programming languages after the number of manufacturing firms, on whose plants the language is implemented; Sequence of the manufacturing firms after the number of used programming languages.] in [AFIPS] Proceedings of the 1969 Fall Joint Computer Conference FJCC 35 view details The exact number of all the programming languages still in use, and those which are no longer used, is unknown. Zemanek calls the abundance of programming languages and their many dialects a "language Babel". When a new programming language is developed, only its name is known at first and it takes a while before publications about it appear. For some languages, the only relevant literature stays inside the individual companies; some are reported on in papers and magazines; and only a few, such as ALGOL, BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, and PL/1, become known to a wider public through various text- and handbooks. The situation surrounding the application of these languages in many computer centers is a similar one. There are differing opinions on the concept "programming languages". What is called a programming language by some may be termed a program, a processor, or a generator by others. Since there are no sharp borderlines in the field of programming languages, works were considered here which deal with machine languages, assemblers, autocoders, syntax and compilers, processors and generators, as well as with general higher programming languages. The bibliography contains some 2,700 titles of books, magazines and essays for around 300 programming languages. However, as shown by the "Overview of Existing Programming Languages", there are more than 300 such languages. The "Overview" lists a total of 676 programming languages, but this is certainly incomplete. One author ' has already announced the "next 700 programming languages"; it is to be hoped the many users may be spared such a great variety for reasons of compatibility. The graphic representations (illustrations 1 & 2) show the development and proportion of the most widely-used programming languages, as measured by the number of publications listed here and by the number of computer manufacturers and software firms who have implemented the language in question. The illustrations show FORTRAN to be in the lead at the present time. PL/1 is advancing rapidly, although PL/1 compilers are not yet seen very often outside of IBM. Some experts believe PL/1 will replace even the widely-used languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and ALGOL.4) If this does occur, it will surely take some time - as shown by the chronological diagram (illustration 2) . It would be desirable from the user's point of view to reduce this language confusion down to the most advantageous languages. Those languages still maintained should incorporate the special facets and advantages of the otherwise superfluous languages. Obviously such demands are not in the interests of computer production firms, especially when one considers that a FORTRAN program can be executed on nearly all third-generation computers. The titles in this bibliography are organized alphabetically according to programming language, and within a language chronologically and again alphabetically within a given year. Preceding the first programming language in the alphabet, literature is listed on several languages, as are general papers on programming languages and on the theory of formal languages (AAA). As far as possible, the most of titles are based on autopsy. However, the bibliographical description of sone titles will not satisfy bibliography-documentation demands, since they are based on inaccurate information in various sources. Translation titles whose original titles could not be found through bibliographical research were not included. ' In view of the fact that nany libraries do not have the quoted papers, all magazine essays should have been listed with the volume, the year, issue number and the complete number of pages (e.g. pp. 721-783), so that interlibrary loans could take place with fast reader service. Unfortunately, these data were not always found. It is hoped that this bibliography will help the electronic data processing expert, and those who wish to select the appropriate programming language from the many available, to find a way through the language Babel. We wish to offer special thanks to Mr. Klaus G. Saur and the staff of Verlag Dokumentation for their publishing work. Graz / Austria, May, 1973 in [AFIPS] Proceedings of the 1969 Fall Joint Computer Conference FJCC 35 view details |