APL-SV(ID:8250/)

APL with IO 

Internal IBM version of APL with experimental FIle-centred IO, produced by the Falkoff group at IBM Philadelphia. Only ever used internally, despites it utility because of the one product rule at IBM, and the favour shown to VSAPL
References:
  • Saigusa, Kyosuke "Use of APL in Japan" International Conference on APL Antwerp, Belgium 1994 pp172-178 view details Abstract: This is a historical account of the use of APL, in Japan from the personal observation of the author. This is not intended to be scientific nor objective or based on studies or surveys of any sort. The description is mostly about IBM APL, because the author was employed by IBM for a significant part of his active years with APL. But the author also believes himself to be amongst the most informed persons in the area of the use of APL in Japan regardless of interpreter's manufacturers by being an open and independent APL consultant for 10 years now with wide contacts with various individuals in the world of APL.

    External link: Online copy Extract: APL-SV
    In 1972, someone told me that an advanced version of APL, which featured file 1/0, was being developed at the IBM Philadelphia Scientific Center. By that time APL had proven to be a very useful tool in our office.
    Immediately it was arranged with IBM Japan to look into the possibility of bringing an early version of this advanced APL to make it the basis for the acceleration of the mechanization of IBM Japan?s planning process. This IBM internal version of APL, which was called APL-SV, really opened up a new horizon for us. At this stage we received very competent technical assistance from people like Joy Tuttle and Alex Morrow in Adin Falkoff?s group at Philadelphia.
    Prior to joining the IBM APHQ staff, I was a planner of management information systems for the Data Processing Department of IBM Japan. There,  I studied in depth the internal logic of the MIS/360 and its boolean indexing mechanism in search of a good information systems.
    In my new office, where I had strong management support, I decided to apply this experience to the new APL environment and eventually came up with a compact collection of functions, which made it possible for large corporate data files, such aa Order-Entry and Inventory, to be accessed interactively by multiple users at the same time and data retrieved selectively, sorted or merged between files without physically moving records in the files, using the boolean index data prepared monthly when these files are dowrdoaded to designated random access storage.
    The concept was somewhat similar to the inverted file mechanism employed by APLDI released from IBM later. In comparison to APLDP, this package could handle extremely large files in their original forms with the help of boolean index files created a relatively short period of time on selected key fields depending on the requirements of different user groups.
    As this 400 line compact utility package gained unexpected popularity in IBM Japan over GIS, MIS/360 etc., it was officially adopted as a standard end-user data retrieval tool by IBM Japan Information Systems. A group of users formulated automatically to assist each other in their problem solving. The package enjoyed the status of one of the indispensable tools to be used in the planning process at IBM Japan even long after I left IBM in 1983.
    This tool was intended to encourage the use of APL primitives, rather than to cover them. I also made it educational for those who wished to write useful tools, or applications, not only in the economy of coding but in workspace design with the use of function libraries, naming conventions, portability, extendibility etc.
    [...]
    In 1975 I was back at Systems marketing, IBM Japan, where my new mission was to market APL in Japan, based on our internal experience. The above-mentioned data retrieval system was made into a commercial package as CIP by IBM Japan and was named APL Data Retrieval And Report Generation System in February, 1976.
    The first 17 APL customer sites were thus established within a relatively short period of time. Amongst them were Okamura Mfg. (Office furniture manufacturer), Mitsui Ship Building, NKK, Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Kubota Iron Works, etc.
    We often collided with or resisted against the IBM marketing directions, such as VSPC as the only IBM program product oifering the APL environment but announced initially without TSIO, which could have been the only external file access interface from APL.
    At that time what I thought was the ideal APL environment was APL-SV. But APL-SV was not made into an IBM program product. I had to choose TSO as an alternative APL environment to promote APL because it was the only one that allowed an APLSV like operation under VSAPL. We relied very heavily on technical advice from Dick Dunbar and invited him to Japan twice to help in our marketing activities.


    		•