IBM Office/36

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Office/36 was a suite of applications marketed by IBM from 1983 to 2000 for the IBM System/36 family of midrange computers. IBM announced its System/36 Office Automation (OA) strategy in 1985. [1]

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Office/36 could be purchased in its entirety, or piecemeal. Components of Office/36 include: [2] [3] [4]

Query/36 was not quite the same as SQL, but it had some similarities, especially the ability to very rapidly create a displayed recordset from a disk file. Note that SQL, also an IBM development, had not been standardized prior to 1986.

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DisplayWrite/36, in the same category as Microsoft Word, had online dictionaries and definition capabilities, and spell-check, and unlike the standard S/36 products, it would straighten spillover text and scroll in real time.

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Considerable changes were required to S/36 design to support Office/36 functionality, not the least of which was the capability to manage new container objects called "folders" and produce multiple extents to them on demand. Q/36 and DW/36 typically exceeded the 64K program limit of the S/36, both in editing and printing, so using Office products could heavily impact other applications. DW/36 allowed use of bold, underline, and other display formatting characteristics in real time.

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References

  1. ↑ Wohl, Amy (17 June 1985). "IBM whets OA mart appetites, but when will it deliver?". Computerworld . Vol. 19 no. 24. IDG. p. 41. ISSN   0010-4841.
  2. ↑ "System/36 Integrated office applications" (PDF). IBM Corporation. G580-0454-5.
  3. ↑ "BellSouth Advanced Systems announces marketing agreement with IBM". The Southern Herald. 120 (6). Liberty, Mississippi. May 23, 1985. p. 3. Business applications for IBM's System/36 integrated office applications include: word processing, electronic mail, messaging and information distribution; merging of text and data; communications and distributed data processing; and business graphics
  4. ↑ Durr, Michael; Walker, Dwayne (1985). Micro to mainframe: creating an integrated environment. Addison-Wesley Longman. p. 166. ISBN   0201111551. PS/36 is part of a total System 36 integrated office support plan. In conjunction with PS/36, DisplayWrite/36 is offered for word processing and Query/36 is provided for datafile manipulation. Much as PS/370 does, PS/36 offers advanced office solutions such as electronic document distribution, calendar management, directory support, and group processing.
  5. 1 2 "IBM's ad hoc strategy". Network World. Vol. 3 no. 12. IDG. 26 May 1986. p. 34. ISSN   0887-7661.
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