🚀 go-pugleaf

MUMPS stands for Massachusetts General Hospital Universal Multiphasic
Programming System.

It was originally implemented as a stand-alone integrated system
on the DEC PDP-15 -- subsequently on the PDP-11.  The database
was orgainized as a tree.  At any point in the tree, you can
continue searching on the current level, or search on a subsidiary
level.  Since MUMPS runs stand-alone, it can do a number of
optimizations that are difficult -- if not impossible -- when
MUMPS is layered on a standard o.s.  For example, the PDP-15
and PDP-11 systems used rotational latency optimization.  The
"search the block for a key and descend to the first block on
the next level" code was in the device driver interrupt service.
Thus, PDP-15 MUMPS could search a 15-level database in two
rotations of the disk.

MUMPS is currently avaiable as a layered product on VAX/VMS.
It uses the standard RMS-32 file system and thus can be used
together with other VMS languages.  For example, you can write
the database stuff in MUMPS, the report generator in COBOL, etc.

Martin Minow
decvax!minow