SURGE(ID:130/sur003)
Report Generator
for Sorter, Updater, Report Generator, Etc. NAA 1957/8
Reporting Language developed by SHARE for the 7090.
Hardware:
- IBM 704 IBM
Related languages
| Hanford Mark II | => | SURGE | Evolution of | |
| SURGE | => | COBOL | Influence | |
| SURGE | => | FACT | Influence | |
| SURGE | => | GIRLS | Influence | |
| SURGE | => | SHARE Information Algebra | Influence |
Samples:
References:
An important decision of the committee was to agree (Asch, 1959) "that the following language systems and programming aids would be reviewed by the committee: AIMACO, Comtran [sic], Flowmatic [sic], Autocoder III, SURGE, Fortran, RCA 501 Assembler, Report Generator (GE Hanford) , APG-I (Dupont)"
in [ACM] CACM 4(01) (Jan 1961) view details
History of SURGE
SURGE: (Sort, Update, Report Generate, Etcetera) was created by a SHARE (the IBM 704, 709 & 7090 users group) subcommittee. The compiler, completed in 1958, is being used in activities such as accounting, inventory control, payroll, etc., on IBM 704 machines. In the second quarter of 1960 the SURGE compiler was modified for the IBM 709-90. While this version (known as QD SURGE) is in use now, work is nearing completion on a newer more powerful edition of the SURGE compiler for the IBM 709-7090. All versions of SURGE are complete BOL languages including within themselves automatic Reporting and Sorting. SURGE is a fixed-format language in the form of a check-off sheet which resolves many of the objections to English- statement-type compilers. Using this system, the programmer merely describes his input and output within fixed-formats and cheeks off the action he desires on another fixed-format sheet. The actions possible are listed at the top of the format sheet.
Personnel are easily and quickly trained in SURGE. A two-week (20 hours) SURGE familiarization course is adequate to train new people. Programs are easily and quickly written. Messrs. A. Todd and M. Hochdorf of the TVA put it this way, "... (SURGE is) for the analyst experienced in tabulation work. It has been a thrilling experience to see how girls who previously had only done board wiring could, after a few days' training in SURGE write programs for the ... (computer)." Special requests for reports dealing with information on a master tape are written in about one hour by people who are familiar with SURGE coding but who have never done any machine language programming. The automatic tabulation of accounting totals and formatting of complete reports are features especially pleasing to people accustomed to EAM operations.
in [ACM] CACM 5(02) February 1962 view details
A problem of continuing concern to the computer programmer is that of file design: Given a collection of data to be processed, how should these data be organized and recorded so that the processing is feasible on a given computer, and so that the processing is as fast or as efficient as required? While it is customary to associate this problem exclusively with business applications of computers, it does in fact arise, under various guises, in a wide variety of applications: data reduction, simulation, language translation, information retrieval, and even to a certain extent in the classical scientific application. Whether the collections of data are called files, or whether they are called tables, arrays, or lists, the problem remains essentially the same.
The development and use of data processing compilers places increased emphasis on the problem of file design. Such compilers as FLOW-MATIC of Sperry Rand , Air Materiel Command's AIMACO, SURGE for the IBM 704, SHARE'S 9PAC for the 709/7090, Minneapolis- Honeywell's FACT, and the various COBOL compilers each contain methods for describing, to the compiler, the structure and format of the data to be processed by compiled programs. These description methods in effect provide a framework within which the programmer must organize his data. Their value, therefore, is closely related to their ability to yield, for a wide variety of applications, a ,data organization which is both feasible and practical.
To achieve the generality required for widespread application, a number of compilers use the concept of the multilevel, multi-record type file. In contrast to the conventional file which contains records of only one type, the multi-level file may contain records of many types, each having a different format. Furthermore, each of these record types may be assigned a hierarchal relationship to the other types, so that a typical file entry may contain records with different levels of "significance." This article describes an approach to the design and processing of multi-level files. This approach, designated the property classification method, is a composite of ideas taken from the data description methods of existing compilers. The purpose in doing this is not so much to propose still another file design method as it is to emphasize the principles underlying the existing methods, so that their potential will be more widely appreciated.
in [ACM] CACM 5(08) August 1962 view details
Historically, the whole area goes back to the General Electric Hanford system of Report and File Maintenance Generators for the IBM 702. This led to the development by SHARE of 9Pac for the IBM 709 and SURGE for the 704. These were nonprocedural languages with implied file maintenance and report generation func- tions. There were neither read nor write commands in these languages; they were completely declarative. The assumption was that if you ran the report generator you would get reports; if you ran the file maintenance generator you expected to maintain the file. The Honeywell FACT compiler successfully extracted many of the file disciplines from SURGE and imbedded them in a procedural language with declarative statements defining record structures.
These ideas, that were used on a one-dimensional scale (for operating on magnetic tapes) in the 702 Report Generator, SURGE, 9PAc and FACT, were expanded to handle an n-dimensional or graph type structure on a random access device in the GE Integrated Data Store. Today's discussion is concerned with a back-fitting of the Integrated Data Store's concepts of data declarations and record processing commands to serially stored files, to create a unified generalized approach for all classes of data devices.
in [ACM] CACM 9(03) March 1966 includes proceedings of the ACM Programming Languages and Pragmatics Conference, San Dimas, California, August 1965 view details
in [ACM] CACM 9(03) March 1966 includes proceedings of the ACM Programming Languages and Pragmatics Conference, San Dimas, California, August 1965 view details
in [ACM] CACM 15(06) (June 1972) view details
in [ACM] ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 8(1) March 1976 view details
in SIGPLAN Notices 14(04) April 1979 including The first ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages (HOPL) Los Angeles, CA, June 1-3, 1978 view details