PA3(ID:4621/pa:001)

Problem Analysis Language 

for Problem Analysis

General-purpose, time-shared Problem Analysis language

from Ebelling and Hirst 1969
"The third and current version has added greater flexibility in its sampling options, printing options, change options, and so forth, and has grown to approximately 35 tlme-shared files linked together by a master executive routine."
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Related languages
PA2 => PA3   Extension of
References:
  • Ebeling, D. G. and E. G. Hurst, Jr. "PA3 a general-purpose, time-shared Problem Analysis language" view details Abstract: A general-purpose, time-shared language for modeling and solving problems which exhibit uncertainty in the input variables is presented. The language is described in terms of some comparative measures of simulation systems. A simple example is worked to demonstrate the major features of the language. Examples of actual problems which have been solved are described to illustrate the breadth of possible applications.
    Extract: Introduction
    PA3 is written in the BASIC language. In spirit, PA3 resembles the GASP language in that it uses a well-known, general-purpose language  and supple- ments it with a number of special functions. The user is required to know only enough BASIC to adequately represent his problem as a series of statements in that language. BASIC was chosen as the user's language because it was felt that most potential users would be acquainted with either BASIC or FORTRAN, and that the FORTRAN users could easily learn enough BASIC to state their problems. The use of BASIC has required some restrictions on the local variable names avail- able to the user because of the global requirements for names, particularly array names, but this does not seem to have caused undue hardship on any user to date. The system is currently implemented only on the GE Mark II time-sharlng system, hut could likely be implemented on any time-sharing system having the BASIC language with string variable, chaining, and permanent file capability. Because of the nature of the language and its intended use, its implementation in a batch computation mode is not contemplated.
          in Proceedings of the Conference on Applications of Continuous System Simulation San Franclsco Calif June 1969. New York: ACM 1969 view details
  • Ebeling, D.G. "A General Purpose, Conversational Time-Sharing Program for Probabilistic Analysis (PA3 - 1969 version of PA1)" (August 1969). view details
          in Proceedings of the Conference on Applications of Continuous System Simulation San Franclsco Calif June 1969. New York: ACM 1969 view details