IDMS - History

History

The roots of IDMS go back to Dr. Charles Bachman's IDS (Integrated Data Store), an early database engine developed at General Electric.

In the early 1960s IDS was taken from its original form, by the Computer Group of the B.F. Goodrich Chemical Division, and re-written in a language called ISL (Intermediate System Language). ISL was designed as a portable system programming language able to produce code for a variety of target machines. Since ISL was actually written in its own language (ISL) it was able to be ported to other machine architectures with relative ease, and then to produce code that would execute on them.

The Chemical Division computer group had given some thought to selling copies of IDMS to other companies, but was told by management that they were not in the software products business. Eventually a deal was struck with John Cullinane to buy the rights and market the product.

Because Cullinane was required to remit royalties back to B.F. Goodrich, all add-on products were listed and billed as separate products - even if they were mandatory for the core IDMS product to work. This sometimes confused customers.

The original platforms were the GE 235 computer and GE Datanet 30 message switching computer: later the product was ported to IBM mainframes and to DEC and ICL hardware.

The IBM-ported version runs on IBM mainframe systems (System/360, System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z9). In the mid-1980s, it was claimed that some 2,500 IDMS licenses had been sold. Users included the Strategic Air Command, Ford of Canada, Ford of Europe, Jaguar Cars, Clarks Shoes UK, AXA/PPP, MAPFRE, Royal Insurance, Manulife, Hudson's Bay Company, Cleveland Clinic, Bank of Canada and BT in the UK.

A version for use on the DECSYSTEM series of computers was sold to DEC and was marketed as DBMS10 and later DBMS20.

In 1976 the source code was licensed to ICL, who ported the software to run on their 2900 series mainframes, and subsequently also on the older 1900 range. ICL continued development of the software independently of Cullinane, selling the original ported product under the original name IDMS and an enhanced version as IDMSX. In this form it was used by many large UK users, an example being the Pay-As-You-Earn system operated by Inland Revenue. Many of these systems are still running in 2005.

In the early to mid 1980s, relational database management systems started to become more popular, encouraged by increasing hardware power and the move to minicomputers and client–server architecture. Relational databases offered improved development productivity over CODASYL systems, and the traditional objections based on poor performance were steadily diminishing.

Cullinet attempted to compete against IBM's DB2 and other relational databases by developing a relational front-end and a range of productivity tools. These included Automatic System Facility (ASF), which made use of a pre-existing IDMS feature called LRF (Logical Record Facility). ASF was a fill-in-the-blanks database generator that would also develop a mini-application to maintain the tables.

It is difficult to judge whether such features may have been successful in extending the selling life of the product, but they made little impact in the long term. Those users who stayed with IDMS were primarily interested in its high performance, not in its relational capabilities. It was widely recognized (helped by a high-profile campaign by E. F. Codd, the father of the relational model) that there was a significant difference between a relational database and a network database with a relational veneer.

In 1989 Computer Associates continued after Cullinet acquisition with the development and released Release 12.0 with full SQL in 1992-93.

Nowadays, CA Technologies actively markets and supports the CA IDMS and enhanced IDMS in subsequent releases by TCP/IP support, Two-Phase commit support, XML publishing, zIIP specialty processor support, Web-enabled access in combination with CA IDMS Server and GUI database administration via CA IDMS Visual DBA tool.

IDMS legacy systems are still being run today. Few customers have migrated to Cullinet's other database offering IDMS/R.