[focus-l] Re: nomad
- From: "Harry Wykes" <harry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <focus-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 14:09:32 +0100
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...
Once upon a time, long, long ago, when the world of IT was young, a group of
software developers built a software tool for building application more
quickly than COBOL. It came with its own relational database and had a
query language not too dissimilar to the language we now call SQL, and maybe
even what we then called SQL - it's so long ago...
Legend has it that some of the team felt constrained by (wrong) commercial
decisions and formed a company of their own, perhaps called Matehematica,
perhaps not. They created another language called RAMIS, whose query
language was less like SQL, but still very English-like in syntax. Query
requests started with the command TABLE FILE and contained familiar elements
like PRINT, BY and ACROSS. This product also had its own relational
database.
It is said that history repeated itself and some of the RAMIS team lead by
Gerry Cohen and Peter Mittleman parted company with Mathematica and formed
their own company, Information Builders, and launched their own product,
FOCUS. All these products were developed in the days of the mainframe. Of
the 3 FOCUS has certainly been the most successful. Both Nomad and Ramis
seem to have suffered from lack of development funds hindered by several
transfers of ownership in their lifetimes.
I hope I've got the essentials right - most of the information above I have
dragged from distant recesses of my memory (why did I never write this down
somewhere at the time?)
Of all the things I have lost, it is my memory I miss most.
Harry Wykes, UK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Hamilton" <airmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <focus-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 10:33 AM
Subject: [focus-l] nomad
What is Nomad; sounds familiar but I can't remember where
or when?
bob h
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