MUMPS

language (Or "M") Massachusetts General Hospital Utility

Multi-Programming System.

A programming language with extensive tools for the support of

database management systems. MUMPS was originally used for

medical records and is now widely used where multiple users

access the same databases simultaneously, e.g. banks, stock

exchanges, travel agencies, hospitals.

Early MUMPS implementations for PDP-11 and IBM PC were

complete operating systems, as well as programming

languages, but current-day implementations usually run under a

normal host operating system.

A MUMPS program hardly ever explicitly performs low-level

operations such as opening a file - there are programming

constructs in the language that will do so implicitly, and

most MUMPS programmers are not even aware of the operatingsystem activity that MUMPS performs.

Syntactically MUMPS has only one data-type: strings.

Semantically, the language has many data-types: text strings,

binary strings, floating point values, integer values,

Boolean values. Interpretation of strings is done inside

functions, or implicitly while applying mathematical

operators. Since many operations involve only moving data

from one location to another, it is faster to just move

uninterpreted strings. Of course, when a value is used

multiple times in the context of arithmetical operations,

optimised implementations will typically save the numerical

value of the string.

MUMPS was designed for portability. Currently, it is possible

to share the same MUMPS database between radically different

architectures, because all values are stored as text strings.

The worst an implementation may have to do is swap pairs of

bytes. Such multi-CPU databases are actually in use, some

offices share databases between VAX, DEC Alpha, SUN,

IBM PC and HP workstations.

Versions of MUMPS are available on practically all hardware,

from the smallest (IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, Acorn

Archimedes), to the largest mainframe. MSM (MicroneticsStandard MUMPS) runs on IBM PC RT and R6000; DSM (Digital

Standard Mumps) on the PDP-11, VAX, DEC Alpha, and

Windows-NT; Datatree MUMPS from InterSystems runs on

IBM PC; and MGlobal MUMPS on the Macintosh.

Multi-platform versions include M/SQL, available from

InterSystems, PFCS [email protected] and MSM.

Greystone Technologies' GT/M runs on VAX and DEC Alpha.

This is a compiler whereas the others are interpreters.

GT/SQL is their SQL pre-processor.

ISO standard 11756 (1991). ANSI standard: "MUMPS Language

Standard", X11.1 (1977, 1984, 1990, 1995?).

The MUMPS User's Group was the M Technology Association.

Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.lang.mumps.

(2003-06-04)