Pick Operating System - Derivative and Related Products

Derivative and Related Products

What most characterizes Pick is the design and features of the database and the associated retrieval language. The Pick database was licensed to roughly three dozen licensees between 1978 and 1984, some of which are included in this list. Application-compatible implementations evolved into derivatives and also inspired similar systems, of which a few examples are:

Reality

The first implementation of the Pick database was on a Microdata platform and called Reality. The first commercial release was in 1973. Microdata acquired CMC Ltd. in the early 80's and were based in Hemel Hempstead, England. The Microdata implementations ran in firmware, so each upgrade had to be accompanied by a new configuration chip. Microdata itself was eventually bought by McDonnell-Douglas Information Systems. Pick and Microdata sued each other for the right to market the database, the final judgment being that they both had the right. In addition to the RealitySequoia and Pegasus] series of computers, Microdata and CMC Ltd. sold the Sequel(Sequoia) series which was a much larger class able to handle over 1000 simultaneous users. The earlier Reality minicomputers were known to handle well over 200 simultaneous users, although things got pretty slow and it was above the official limit. Pegasus systems superseded Sequoia and could handle even more simultaneous users than its predecessors. The modern version of this original Pick implementation is owned and distributed by Northgate Information Solutions Reality.

Ultimate

The second implementation of the Pick database was developed in about 1978 by a New Jersey company called The Ultimate Corp, run by Ted Sabarese. Like the earlier Microdata port, this was a firmware implementation, with the Pick instruction set in firmware and the monitor in assembly code on a Honeywell Level 6 machine. The system had dual personalities in that the monitor/kernel functions (mostly hardware I/O and scheduling) were executed by the native Honeywell Level 6 instruction set. When the monitor "select next user" for activation control was passed to the Honeywell WCS (writable control store) to execute Pick assembler code (implemented in microcode) for the selected process. When the users time slice expired control was passed back to the kernel running the native Level 6 instruction set.

Ultimate took this concept further with the DEC LSI/11 family of products by implementing a co-processor in hardware (bit-slice, firmware driven). Instead of a single processor with a WCS microcode enhanced instruction set this configuration used two independent but cooperating CPU's. The LSI11 CPU executed the monitor functions and the co-processor executed the Pick assembler instruction set. The efficiencies of this approach resulted in a 2X performance improvement.

The co-processor concept was used again to create a 5X, 7x and dual-7x versions for Honeywell Level 6 systems. Dual ported memory with private busses to the co-processors were used to increase performance of the LSI11 and Level 6 systems.

Another version used a DEC LSI-11 for the IOP and a 7X board. Ultimate enjoyed moderate success during the 1980s, and even included an implementation running as a layer on top of DEC VAX systems, the 750, 780, 785 and later the MicroVAX. Ultimate also had versions of the Ultimate Operating System running on IBM 370 series systems (under VM and native) and also the 9370 series computers. Ultimate was renamed Allerion, Inc., before liquidation of its assets. Most assets were acquired by Groupe Bull, and consisted of mostly maintaining extant hardware. Bull had its own problems and in approximately 1994 the US maintenance operation was sold to Wang.

Prime INFORMATION

Devcom, a Microdata reseller, wrote a Pick-style database system called INFORMATION in FORTRAN and assembler in 1979 to run on Prime Computer 50-series systems. It was then sold to Prime Computer and renamed Prime INFORMATION. It was subsequently sold to Vmark Software. INFO/BASIC, a variant of Dartmouth BASIC, was used for database applications.

PI/open

Prime Computer rewrote Prime INFORMATION in C for the Unix-based systems it was selling, calling it PI+. It was then ported to other Unix systems offered by other hardware vendors and renamed PI/open.

ADDS

(Applied Digital Data Systems) This was the first implementation to be done in software only, so upgrades were accomplished by a tape load, rather than a new chip. The "Mentor" line was initially based on the Zilog Z-8000 chipset and this port set off a flurry of other "software implementations" across a wide array of processors with a large emphasis on the Motorola 68000.

Fujitsu

Another software implementation, existing in the 1980s

Pyramid

Another software implementation, existing in the 1980s

General Automation "Zebra"

Another software implementation, existing in the 1980s

WICAT/Pick

Another software implementation, existing in the 1980s

Sequoia

Another software implementation, existing from 1984. Sequoia was most well known for its fault-tolerant multi-processor model, which could be dialed into with the users permission and his switching terminal zero to remote with the key on the system consol. He could watch what was done by the support person who had dialed on his terminal 0, a printer with a keyboard. Pegasus came out in 1987. The Enterprise Systems business unit (which was the unit that sold Pick), was sold to General Automation in 1996/1997.

UniVerse

Another implementation of the system called UniVerse was by VMark Software. This was the first one to incorporate the ability to emulate other implementations of the system, such as Microdata's Reality Operating System, and Prime INFORMATION. Originally running on Unix, it was later also made available for Windows. It now is owned by Rocket Software. (The systems developed by Prime Computer and VMark are now owned by Rocket Software and referred to as "U2".)

UniData

Very similar to UniVerse. UniData is a multivalued Pick-style database. It is also owned and distributed by Rocket Software.

Revelation

In 1984, Cosmos released a Pick-style database called Revelation, later Advanced Revelation, for DOS on the IBM PC. Advanced Revelation is now owned by Revelation Technologies, which publishes a GUI-enabled version called OpenInsight.

jBASE

jBASE was released in 1991 by a small company of the same name located in Hemel Hempstead. Written by former Microdata engineers, jBASE emulates all implementations of the system to some degree. jBASE is unique in that it compiles applications to native machine code form, rather than to an intermediate byte code.

UniVision

UniVision was a Pick-style database, designed as a replacement for the Mentor version but with extended features, released in 1992 by EDP located in Sheffield.

OpenQM

OpenQM is the only multi-value database product available both as a fully supported non-open source commercial product and in open source form under the General Public Licence (OpenQM Community Project). It is available from OpenQM and from OpenQM in French.

Caché

In 2005 InterSystems, the maker of Caché database, announced support for a broad set of multi-value extensions in Caché. Caché for MultiValue.

Onware

ONware ends isolation of MultiValue applications. ONware equips these applications with the ability to use the common databases, such as Oracle and SQL Server. Using ONware you can integrate MultiValue applications with Relational, Object and Object-Relational applications.

Through the implementations above, and others, Pick-like systems became available as database/programming/emulation environments running under many variants of Unix and Microsoft Windows.

Over the years, many important and widely used applications have been written using Pick or one of the derivative implementations. In general, the end users of these applications are unaware of the underlying Pick implementation.

The Pick OS invites comparison with MUMPS, which evolved into Caché. Similarities include:

• Both systems are built on the efficient implementation of large, sparse, string-indexed arrays;
• Both comingle the language and the OS;
• Both have a similar domain of applicability.