Products
NCSS was best known for two products: the VP/CSS operating system, and the NOMAD database system.
- VP/CSS was derived from a copy of CP/CMS, but these systems diverged considerably over the following 10–15 years. VP/CSS initially ran on the IBM System/360-67; it was ported to the System/370 series after IBM added virtual memory to these machines in 1972. Through extensive in-house software development, VP/CSS enabled NCSS's profitable resale of interactive computer time, which began in December 1968. Robust performance, and a suite of interactive development tools, attracted the interest of clients previously shackled by traditional in-house punched card/batch operations and unsupportive technicians. VP/CSS earned a reputation for capacity and efficiency.
- NOMAD was another project led by Feinlieb and was built to exploit the NCSS market position. The young company delivered an interactive database management environment based on relational database theory, a new concept of the day. NOMAD was primarily sold to meet end-user and ad hoc needs, such as sales analysis and financial modeling – needs that were often unmet by the corporate ADP/MIS groups of the time period.
When NCSS began selling remote access to its computers, it was selling to an industry where in-house programmers did their development via batch processing on punched cards. Feinleib describes their early appeal:
In those days, COBOL programmers could get one or possibly two turnarounds a day because their in-house machines were used for production work most of the time. They worked with punched cards, so any slight error would waste a run and a whole day. On our system, which used the same IBM COBOL compiler, they could get dozens of turnarounds a day. They would use an IBM Selectric Typewriter terminal to edit and enter their program, and then they could run and debug it. We enabled them to put in test data and even added a symbolic debugger so they could debug their programs interactively. This program development service sold like hot-cakes
Later, as time-sharing became available in more development shops, the NCSS customer base gradually shifted to a larger proportion of end-users who were trying to solve information problems without using their in-house MIS departments. By the late 1970s, the main source of NCSS business growth was its NOMAD product, well-suited for such users.
At the time of the D&B acquisition, a follow-on technology was under development that would merge advanced operating system and database concepts. The project was abandoned as unsuccessful. Instead, NOMAD was ported to IBM's VM/370 operating system, and soon VP/CSS was also abandoned.
Read more about this topic: National CSS
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