Tyrone Hopes -reality

reality in detail

ROS (Reality Operating System) was was developed in the 1960s by an American by the name of Dick Pick. He also invented the Pick operating system, which, not surprisingly, was very closely related to ROS. Reality belonged to the McDonnell Douglas Corporation (MDC), the American aeronautics company. It is said that the very first Reality system was built to handle the stock of spares for the MDC Chinook helicopter, being made at that time for the US and other military forces. At this time the US was heavily committed in Vietnam. The original brief was to build an application that would be easy to learn and simple to understand by a staff that would inevitably be subject to high turnover. The application had beneath it a brand new operating system to support these features, which was built for the new smaller 'midi' size hardware platforms that were being developed at this time. The main components of the ROS were:

Reality OS, complete with variable-length files
Proc - similar to JCL, an interpreted scripting language
English - an ad-hoc enquiry system which used its own "dictionary" to understand file structure
Data-Basic - a programming language that could manage Reality OS files

a computer that could understand English™

Reality's ad-hoc query language, 'English', was one of the operating systems' most celebrated features. It allowed you to write statements like:

LIST STAFF WITH AGE < "20" AND PENSION_PLAN_NAME = "" STAFF_SURNAME STAFF_FORENAME BY STAFF_SURNAME

SORT STOCK WITH STOCK_AMOUNT < "200" BY STOCK_AMOUNT STOCK_ITEM STOCK_NAME STOCK_AMOUNT

Effectively, you wrote LIST or SORT, followed by the file name, followed by the selection criteria, and the column names that you wanted after that. If you wanted it sorted in any particular order, you used the 'BY' clause. The 'dictionary items' could be set up by anyone who had a basic idea about the underlying data, and so it was easy to learn. Apparently, when SQL was first 'invented', it was called SEQL, or Structured English Query Language. They dropped the 'English' from the title as they didn't want to get sued by the highly litigious Dick. Anyone who has seen English realises that SQL wasn't created in vacuum.

Another famous feature of the ROS architecture was that it could use dynamic arrays of data without any special setup. This meant that upto three dimensioned arrays could be set up with little trouble, and reported on. The abilty to build such arrays was part of the basic system of ROS, and it led Dick Pick to claim that his operating system was a 'RDBMS', or Relational Data Base Management System. In effect he was correct at the time, though other events were to soon change this. THe Computer Machinery Company (CMC), of Hemel Hempstead, built Sequioa and Sovereign boxes for McDonnell Douglas Corporation (MDC). MDC would sell them with the Reality Operating System installed. CMC was bought by MDC who then developed the boxes themselves. Unfortunately, it was not able to compete on level terms with other imported Motorola and Fujitsu boxes that were running an odd-ball operating system called Unix. At this time (the mid 1980's) this operating system was still regarded by some as a mere academic folly with hardly any commercial potential.

Unix appears and spoils the fun

However, the new Unix boxes sold well, and ROS was ported onto them. It was a little humiliating for ROS to be running on a tiny Unix box when before it had its' own (massive) boxes made for it. Another humiliating aspect was that the Unix boxes tended to be just as quick, if not quicker. Picks' claim that his operating system was a RDBMS also looked a little lame when genuine relational databases made their appearance in the late 1980's. ROS couldn't talk to Oracle, or any other such database. In fact it was very difficult for ROS, or REALITYX as it ws by then, to talk to much else... Of course, the rot had set in. MDC stopped making its own hardware, and imported Motorolas ran ROS. Then ALL (previously a ROS based 4GL) was rewired to run on Unix, and Pro-IV was born. This became the key language with which McDonnell Douglas built applications. The McDonnell Douglas Personnel and Payroll system (still called 'ISIS' at that point) was on sale by 1991. The writing was on the wall for Reality. Meanwhile, McDonnell Dounglas became McDonnell Douglas Information Services (MDIS). Then it was bought in a management buyout, so it changed its name again to McDonnell Information Services (still known as MDIS). By now, the Pro-IV based products had outnumbered those which had a ROS core.

MDIS later changed its name to Northgate Information Services. Northage was in fact the name of another company they bought around 1990, at the time of its acquisition of ISIS Computer Services, who had developed the original ROS based ISIS. Northgate now markets a variety of Pro-IV based systems, including the Personnel and Payroll package.