Data General Business Basic

Last updated
Data General Business Basic
Data General logo.svg
Family BASIC
Developer Data General
Platform Nova
License Commercial proprietary software
Influenced by
MAI Basic Four
Influenced
Atari BASIC [1]

Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter (based on a version from MAI Basic Four) marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most business applications for the Nova were developed in Business Basic.

Contents

Business Basic was an integer-only language inspired by COBOL, and contained powerful string-handling functions and the ability to manipulate indexed files very quickly. It also provided full control over the display screen, with cursor positioning, attribute setting, and region-blanking commands. Business Basic could interface to Data General's INFOS II database, and make calls directly to the operating system. A lock server gave multiple concurrent users efficient access to database records.

Small business programs could be developed and debugged rapidly with Business Basic because of the interactive nature of the interpreter, but the language did not provide many structured programming features, and as programs grew larger, maintenance became a problem. There was limited memory space for Business Basic programs on the Nova, and programmers often resorted to tricks such as self-modifying programs, which was easy to program in Business Basic, but complicated to debug.

The original version of the language was "double precision", i.e. 32-bit (and so each integer used two 16-bit Nova words). When Data General ported the language to the MV line, they included two copies of the language, one "double precision", and one "triple precision". The two were incompatible with each other in subtle ways. Although Data General improved the language in some ways, such as adding multiple-line IF THEN ELSE END IF statements, they failed to lift many of the constraints of the language on the MV machines, such as a 9,999 line maximum, 384 variable limit, and maximum of 16 open files.

Competing BASICs

An early competitor to Data General's Business Basic was Bluebird Business Basic, a compiled language running on its proprietary SuperDOS (Bluebird) platform. Bluebird's Basic was not fully compatible with Data General's.

B32 Business Basic was a highly compatible interpreter which ran on the Eclipse MV line. It lifted many of the Data General Business Basic constraints, and ran significantly faster by using the full power of the 32-bit processor. B32 stored all variables internally as 64-bit, and emulated double and triple precision as required. It also provided new language features. B32 was ported to Unix and later to DOS, allowing Data General's customers to readily move to other hardware vendors. B32 also had substantial compatibility with Bluebird Business Basic.

Transoft produced another competitor to Data General's Business Basic, Universal Business Basic. UBB ran on Unix and DOS, and was substantially compatible with Data General's Business Basic. Transoft purchased B32 in 1992.

Data General ported Business Basic to the AViiON, but B32 and UBB were already available on that platform. Data General's programmers did have one major success on the AViiON when they unveiled a new version of Business Basic at a "shootout" between themselves, B32 and UBB. Data General had added a caching mechanism to speed up their Business Basic's disk access, and it outperformed the other companies' products. Within a month, B32 and UBB had added their own caching mechanisms, and drawn ahead of Data General again.

Transoft's UBB is now sold as the Universal Business Language.

See also

Related Research Articles

Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC because of the Apple DOS command used to invoke it, instead of INT for Integer BASIC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GW-BASIC</span> Dialect of the BASIC programming language

GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the original IBM PC. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shell script</span> Script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system

A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup or logging, is called a wrapper.

The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays releasing the second-generation MC88110, the m88k achieved very limited success outside of the MVME platform and embedded controller environments. When Motorola joined the AIM alliance in 1991 to develop the PowerPC, further development of the 88000 ended.

ScriptBasic is a scripting language variant of BASIC. The source of the interpreter is available as a C program under the LGPL license.

Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first version of BASIC published by Microsoft as well as the first high-level programming language available for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data General</span> Minicomputer manufacturer, 1968–1999

Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

In computer programming, a magic number is any of the following:

B32 Business Basic was a competitor to Data General Business Basic written by Murray Haszard in 1986. It ran on the Data General Eclipse MV line of computers initially, and was ported to Unix in 1989 and to DOS in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Haszard</span>

Murray Hayden Haszard is a New Zealand entrepreneur and businessman who founded the companies B32 Software and Binary Research and is the chairman of Ilion Technology.

Business Basic is a category of variants of the BASIC computer programming language which were specialised for business use on minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s. To the underlying BASIC language, these dialects added record handling instructions similar to those in COBOL, allowing programmers to build complex file-handling applications using what was at that time a much more modern programming language. MAI Systems released the first example as MAI Basic Four in 1972, and several similar versions emerged through the 1970s.

MBASIC is the Microsoft BASIC implementation of BASIC for the CP/M operating system. MBASIC is a descendant of the original Altair BASIC interpreters that were among Microsoft's first products. MBASIC was one of the two versions of BASIC bundled with the Osborne 1 computer. The name "MBASIC" is derived from the disk file name MBASIC.COM of the BASIC interpreter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turbo-BASIC XL</span>

Turbo-BASIC XL is an advanced version of the BASIC programming language for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It is a compatible superset of the Atari BASIC that shipped with the Atari 8-bit systems. Turbo-Basic XL was developed by Frank Ostrowski and published in the December 1985 issue of German computer magazine Happy Computer. A version for the 400/800 models was released shortly after as Frost Basic 1.4. Several modified versions working with different DOS systems have been released by other authors.

THEOS, which translates from Greek as "God", is an operating system which started out as OASIS, a microcomputer operating system for small computers that use the Z80 processor. When the operating system was launched for the IBM Personal Computer/AT in 1982, the decision was taken to change the name from OASIS to THEOS, short for THE Operating System.

Optimized Systems Software (OSS) was a company that produced disk operating systems, programming languages with integrated development environments, and applications primarily for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. OSS was best known for their enhanced versions of Atari DOS, Atari BASIC, and the Atari Assembler Editor, all of which were substantially improved over Atari's products, as well as the Action! programming language. OSS also sold some software for the Apple II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Command-line interface</span> Computer interface that uses text

A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with a device or computer program with commands from a user or client, and responses from the device or program, in the form of lines of text. Such access was first provided by computer terminals starting in the mid-1960s. This provided an interactive environment not available with punched cards or other input methods.

DG/L is a programming language developed by Data General Corp for the Nova, Eclipse, and Eclipse/MV families of minicomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BASIC interpreter</span> Interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language

A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage.

References

  1. Lorenzo, Mark (2017). Endless Loop: The History of the BASIC Programming Language. Philadelphia: SE Books. p. 106. ISBN   978-1974-27707-0.