Appendix 8: Mumps, A Solution Looking For A Problem, By Chris Richardson
This article on MUMPS appeared in an old issue of a computer newsletter:
Mumps, A Solution Looking For A Problem
By Chris Richardson
(Copyright (c) 1993 Personal Systems, the monthly journal of the San
Diego Computer Society; all rights reserved. Permission to reproduce
this article is granted to other non-profit organizations such as
computer user groups for non-commercial use as long as credit to the
author and group is given and provided a copy of the newsletter is
sent to us at: San Diego Computer Society, ATTN: Editor, Personal
Systems; 5694 Mission Center Road; Suite 602, Box 350; San Diego, CA
92108)
What is MUMPS? Is it a programming language that thinks it is a
database, or is it a database that thinks it is a programming
language? Actually, it is both. And it is an ANSI Standard Language
to boot.
What does that mean to anyone who is knocking out little
applications on a home PC or Apple? Well, the nice thing about an
ANSI Standard language is that the code you write on the Apple in
standard MUMPS transports nicely to the IBM PC without any change.
And if that other system is a mainframe, like a Vax or a large IBM
system, your application will work there also.
Where did MUMPS come from and what does MUMPS stand for? MUMPS was
originally developed in the middle 60's on a National Institute of
Health Grant at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was originally
designed to run on a large machine (at that time...) 4K of memory
(that is 4,000 bytes, not megabytes) and 100 megabyte disk storage.
If it was written by a hospital, does it only do hospital problems?
It was designed to solve the problem of tracking patient data. How
does patient data differ from auto supply inventory or a check book?
A patient can have many attributes that describe each encounter. For
instance, suppose a patient gets admitted to a hospital with a
traditional square record database, and is known to have six
allergies, but there is only room for five allergies in the record.
Which allergy will you elect not to record? If this patient dies
because of that one allergy that you did not record, your hospital may
change ownership in settling his estate. For the majority of
patients, the space reserved for the five allergies will not be used
and is wasted space. That means that your hospital will be buying
more disk space a lot sooner.
In the MUMPS environment, the database disk space is not allocated
until it is needed (run-time). This means that the patient record
expands to fit the amount of data required for that patient. If the
space is not used, it is not allocated. If you have 12 patients in
your database, you have only the space for these 12 records allocated.
In most traditional databases, you must allocate as many records as you
expect before the first record is allocated. With MUMPS, many databases can
be described but they will not take up any space until actual records are
created. There is no theoretic maximum number of records that a specific
database can contain. It is only bound by the actual amount of disk space
that is available to be assigned. Talk about getting 10 pounds in a 5 pound
sack.
Many database environments already exist for the PC, why should you be
interested in another? MUMPS is unlike most other databases in that it is
also a special type of programming language called an interpreter. OK, we
hear the moans from the BASIC programming crowd. And did you think you got
rid of interpreters when BASIC compilers came out. Well, you didn't.
Interpreters don't have to be slow and most database environments actually
do go interpretive when they service user queries. Anyway, even if
the MUMPS interpreter was slow (which it isn't) the levels of run-time
and error-time support is worth the difference.
When a MUMPS application stops for some reason, the symbol table remains
intact at the line of code being executed when the error occurred.
In the event of an error, control may be passed to another routine to capture
the conditions of the failure or even attempt to recover from the error
condition. Traditionally, MUMPS database applications have a short
mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) of just a few minutes and a long up-time record.
Also, in many cases, the application that blew up can be re-started from
where it left off.
What does MUMPS look like?
MUMPS has only a single data type, strings (of characters). This makes the
conversion from one data type to another easier. Most MUMPS commands may be abbreviated to a single character. Or spell them out if you choose. Code generation is quick.
MUMPS commands can be easily combined to form more complex and complicated
structures. Each line of code is a block of code. MUMPS makes little distinction between data and code. Code can be created and executed from a database or the symbol table at run-time. Data can be stored in a routine and accessed at run-time.
MUMPS is a sparse matrix array processor. This means that arrays are allocated at run-time; the arrays may be created in any order. Array
element 1000000 can be created and then element 2 can be created and yet the
array only has 2 elements in it.
Because there are only string data types, the subscripts of a MUMPS array are
strings. What a concept! You can subscript an array by "APPLES" and
"ORANGES", and "AVOCADOS". Now for the good news, when those subscripts are
created, they are sorted alphabetically. MUMPS means never having to say
you're sorting.
The language is still growing. Every ANSI Standard has a built-in sunset of
seven years. That means that if nothing is done with a standard in seven
years, it ceases to be a standard. Well, MUMPS has had an ANSI standard for
1977, 1984, 1990, and the MUMPS Development Committee is attempting to
release a 1993 standard. Additional standards for WINDOWING, Networking,
and Transaction Processing are currently in process.
MUMPS is transportable. It doesn't matter if MUMPS code is running under
MS-DOS, Windows NT, UNIX, VMS, VM, or nearly any operating system you might
mention, the code and database will still run. In fact, in some
implementations MUMPS is also the operating system.
Who uses MUMPS? Probably a lot more than you might think. How about
the Veteran's Administration. Well, the VA did such a good job of
putting a Fourth Generation Language together in MUMPS that the Indian
Health Service decided to use it, then the U. S. Public Health
Service, and finally the Department of Defense for the Army, Navy, and
Air Force hospitals and clinics around the world. By the way, the
VA's 4GL, File Manager is in the public domain. If you can find a
source, you can get it free! Another advantage is that the package is
distributed as source code because MUMPS is an interpreter.
Is it just for hospitals? No, MUMPS is an excellent choice for nearly
any database operation, especially if not every aspect of the
situation is known. MUMPS is being used by banks and credit unions.
Do you travel on airlines? You have probably been scheduled on a
MUMPS system. All of the postage stamp sales for the U.S. Postal
Service are tallied on a MUMPS system each evening. Auto parts houses
keep track of their inventories with MUMPS systems. Language
translators have been implemented in MUMPS and it also works
well with artificial intelligence projects.
If MUMPS was developed here, is it only used in this country? The
national health services of Finland and England, as well as a few
other countries are currently using MUMPS. Ever gamble in the
gambling houses in London? They use MUMPS to track high rollers from
one gambling house to the next. The British Stock Exchange also uses
MUMPS. The largest department store chain in Spain uses MUMPS. The
Russians acquired a copy of MUMPS and modified it to run their
national health services and track containerized freight.
If MUMPS is so good, why haven't I heard of it? This is an
interesting point. The computer industry lives on some very simple
rules, 1) sell products with follow-on (things that need other things
to work properly or better) and 2) sell items that make it difficult
to migrate to another vendor's hardware or software (also known as
product loyalty). MUMPS provides the programming language,
the database, the screen handler, and soon, windows of any platform
that will have a MUMPS interpreter (which is just about any platform).
MUMPS code is extremely transportable. Standard MUMPS code works fine
on whatever platform you run it on.
When a MUMPS implementation is installed to replace an existing
traditional system, usually there are sufficient resources for the
MUMPS environment, with plenty of resources left for future expansion.
Alright, I'm sold. Where can I get MUMPS for my system? Now for some
good news, there is an evaluation version of MUMPS for MS-DOS that is
free, especially if you happen to be a student. The vendor only asks
that you register your use of the product.
By the way, there is extensive documentation available for this
product. There is a MUMPS Users' Group (now called the M Technology
Association) which can be contacted at:
MUMPS Users' Group of North America
1738 Elton Road, Suite 205
Silver Spring, MD 20903
Phone: (301)-431-4070
Fax: (301)-431-0017
(Author Profile: Chris Richardson is a Software Engineer with Science
Applications International Corporation in San Diego and is a member of
the MUMPS Development Committee, the ANSI Standards writing
organization for the MUMPS language. He has worked for NASA, the U.
S. Public Health Service, the U. S. Navy, Army, and the Air Force as
well as Computer Sciences Corporation and Singer-Link in Houston. He
has taught Real-time FORTRAN and MUMPS to professionals in the
