Wang Laboratories - Early Computer Models - Wang OIS

Wang OIS

The Wang OIS (Office Information System) was heavily WP oriented and featured Wang's "Glossary" function. A Glossary was a word processing document that was "attached" to a workstation, which contained shortcuts to frequently typed phrases. For example, an operator in a law firm could insert the phrase "United States Constitution" into a Glossary document, and then recall the phrase into a word processing document by pressing the GL key and the letter "U", thus saving numerous repetitive keystrokes. A superset of Glossary, called Decision Processing, was a system of programming that fitted into the WP model and was designed to be easy to master. A simple IF/THEN program (with subroutines) could be constructed to perform tedious editing routines, and then "run" on a word processing document while the operator performed other tasks. The design goal of Glossary and Decision Processing was that secretaries would be able to use them to extend the functionality of the document management and manipulation provided by the OIS.

Like the Wang 2200, the OIS was characterized by evolution into a 24-user system. The OIS and the VS overlapped. Features such as dual-coax connections to workstations and printers were common to both system families. Buried deep in the VS microcode are entire pieces of OIS code, probably because WP did not figure into the original design of the VS, but was added later.

Wang also had a line called Alliance, which was based on the high end OIS (140/145) hardware architecture. It had more powerful software compared to the OIS word processing and list processing packages. The system was Tempest certified, leading to global deployment in American embassies after the Iran hostage crisis. The most significant enhancement was in the indexing capabilities of the Alliance system; documents could be indexed by every word contained in them. The database product, Visual Memory, permitted every word in each field to be indexed. In addition to the advanced indexing features, the Alliance word processor was also substantially enhanced, even though the Z80 platform on which it ran forced it to remain as an 8-bit application in a 64KB workstation.