- JPLDIS
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Display Information System (or JPLDIS) is a file management program written in FORTRAN.
JPLDIS is important because it was the inspiration and precursor to
dBASE , arguably one of the most influential DBMS programs for early microcomputers.History
In the mid-1960's, the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of theCalifornia Institute of Technology (CalTech) was using a Tymeshare product named RETRIEVE. For reasons lost to history, in the late 60’s Jeb Long, a programmer at JPL, was assigned the task of writing a program which would support not only the same four basic functions as RETRIEVE, but many advanced features plus a programming language.By 1973 the program had evolved into a file management program called JPLDIS (Jet Propulsion Laboratory Database-management and Information-retrival System) written in FORTRAN, running on a
UNIVAC 1108 mainframe.In 1978, while at JPL,
Wayne Ratliff wrote a database program in assembly language forCP/M based microcomputers to help him win the football pool at the office. He based it on Jeb Long's JPLDIS and called it Vulcan, after Mr. Spock of Star Trek.In late 1980, George Tate, of
Ashton-Tate , entered into a marketing agreement with Wayne Ratliff. Vulcan was renamed to dBase, the price was raised from $50 to $695, and the software quickly became a huge success.According to the http://www.foxprohistory.org/ site, JPLDIS was the reason why Ashton-Tate lost a lawsuit against FoxPro and SCO FoxPro over copyrights used by FoxPro that were claimed to belong to Ashton-Tate and the dBase product. In December 11, 1990, Judge Hatter issued an order invalidating Ashton-Tate's copyrights in its own dBASE products.
That ruling was based on a legal doctrine known as "unclean hands". Judge Hatter explained that Ashton-Tate knew that the dBase program development was based on JPLDIS, and that fact was kept hidden from the Copyright Office. [ [http://www.foxprohistory.org/ashton_sues_fox.htm The History of FoxPro - Ashton-Tate vs Fox Software] ]
ee also
Vulcan (programming language) References
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