Software

Languages

• Algol
  Bull attended to the definition task of Algol60 standard that was greeted by all European manufacturers, as being independent from the idiosyncrasies of the IBM 704 architecture, engraved in Fortran.
  It developed in 1961-1942 a compiler on the Gamma 60 that offered a large subset of the language. The lack of virtual memory and the scarcity of main memory caused difficulties in the implementation of recursive procedures.
  Bull (with RCA?) delivered an Algol compiler on the Gamma 30.
  When the GE-635 was introduced, BGE sent engineers in Phoenix to help to implement the Algol 60 compiler, considered as necessary for the European scientific market.
• Algol 68
  In 1963-1967, Bull participated in the international (ECMA) team for the specification of Algol 68. A small team under the leadership of Henri Leroy designed the base of a compiler for that language. The effort was discontinued at the end of 1967.
• COBOL
  Bull was introduced to Cobol through the support of the RCA 301 compiler. There was an attempt to define a French version of the language and to build a translator to standard COBOL (1962). For the Gamma 140, the first French-made COBOL compiler (written in COBOL) was designed.
  The implementation of COBOL on GE-400 went smoothly, that of the GE-635 was more painful. COBOL 68 took a significant advantage from the EIS hardware feature. COBOL 74 compiler (handling ASCII data) was inspired of the development made by Honeywell Boston for Level 64 and was extremely powerful.
  The initial development in 1971 of the COBOL compiler for Level 64 was made by Honeywell Waltham software team, that has a good experience of H-200 COBOL. In 1975, the continuation and the evolution of the compiler were transferred to Jean Bourgain's team in Paris. The compiler was written in HPL and produced directly object code .
  
• FORTRAN
  The first Fortran compiler implemented  by Bull in Paris was on the Gamma M-40 in 1964. It was modeled on IBM 7040 compiler.
  General Electric at Schenectady produced the first Fortran compiler for the GE-600 a little earlier
  In the early 1970s, Honeywell-Bull developed the Fortran IV compiler for Level 64.

• BASIC
  BASIC was invented at Dartmouth College on a GE 265. When Bull used internally and market time-sharing services circa 1965, this language became a popular interactive language inside GE and Bull (on 265 and Mark III marketed by GEISD and under GECOS  III TSS).
  
• PL/1
  PL/1 was not considered as very important by Bull's customers and it was the fact that it has been selected as Multics implementation language that it kept the attention of engineering.
  PL/1 was developed by Toshiba for GCOS8 and in the late 1970s a full PL/1 compiler was implemented for GCOS7.
• HPL
  The use of High Level Language for Honeywell New Product Line was decided soon after the GE merger in 1970. The Multics experience on PL/1 lead Paris and Billerica to define a subset of PL/1 as the implementation language with, initially,  a cross-compiler under Multics (cross-compiler written in Multics PL/1)
• MLP
  The limitation of the throughput of the Multics-based software factory  led CHB "hardware department" to develop another software factory on a GE-635 where the implementation language was MLP, a PL/1 syntax like, but compiled by a macro-processor producing NAL assembly language. Mix of MLP and NAL was authorized. A substantial part of initial GCOS 64 products and the GE-100 emulator on Level 64 used MLP. Use of MLP has disappeared progressively in the 1970s.
• GPL
  GPL General Programming Language is the name under which the GCOS7 implementation language HPL (Honeywell Programming Language) has been marketed in the 1980s
• PL/8
  While GCOS III was entirely developed in the assembler GMAP. Toshiba, having access to Honeywell license, took advantage of Billerica's initial work on Level64 HPL to develop an implementation language and a compiler for Level66 NSA architecture. That compiler was reintroduced by Phoenix as a GCOS8 development tool and used for the newest programs.
• Macro generator
  As a tool for the development of GCOS64 (preprocessor of system calls and declarations and JCL processing), Bull developed a general purpose recursive macroprocessor, inspired from MIT's TRAC. It was specified by Nguyen Van Binh and the processor was improved by Jacques Printz
• LIS
  LIS was an experimental implementation language designed by Jean Ichbiah on Siris8. LIS was not used on commercial CII products. LIS was inspired by Pascal and Simula and has contributed to the definition of ADA.
• ADA
  While CII-HB (associated to Honeywell) has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense for its implementation language, Bull did not use ADA nor design any compiler for it. Soon after the selection Jean Ichbiah and his team founded their own company, ALSYS.
• PASCAL
• LISP
• KOOL
  Kool is a processor, written in LISP, of artiifcial intelligence high-level language developed at Groupe Bull's CEDIAG by Jean Rohmer's team. It has momentarily been used for a company wide system configurator circa 1985.
• APL
  Machines Bull discovered APL in the early 1960, when R Pierre-Hughes attempted to use that language for simulating a new processor. As VM/CMS was becoming popular in France in the 1970s, some software house developed packages using APL. So, Honeywell-Bull developed a APL interactive interpreter as part of IOF program. But the performance drawbacks and the revival of BASIC thru the PC ruined the fate of APL.
• SIMULA
  a version of Simula for Siris7 was developed by Jean Ichbiah.
• C
  With the growing popularity of the C language during the 1980s; compilers were developed for the GCOS product lines. For GCOS7,  a  compiler sharing its code generator and syntax parser with other language processor was  developed. But also a GNU compiler was ported from UNIX to be used in Oracle and UNIX ports for GCOS7

Software Engineering

Bull maintained a relatively low profile in software development tools for customers.

Data Base Systems

General Electric pioneered the development of data base systems, and bet on the standardization of Codasyl chained organization in the 1970s. Although the relational systems came into light in that period, it was only in the early 1980s that Bull introduced its products. Multics and GCOS8 introduced their internally developed products while GCOS7 and GCOS6 adopted the port of Oracle system.

• IDS and Codasyl DBTG
  Integrated Data Store was a data base management created by Charles W Bachmann in the early 1960s on GE-225. It use a network organization allowing more complex data organization than hierarchical organization of this time. IDS was later ported to GE-400 and GE-600.
  Charlie Bachman succeeded to made IDS considered by CODASYL Data Base Task Group and some extensions leading in particular to a more flexible mapping between the programmer view (subschema) and the administrator view (schema). Implementation of IDS-II took place in the early 70s for the Honeywell Level 66 (later DPS-8) and Level 64 (later DPS-7000). In those implementation coexistence of IDS-II and more conventional indexed-sequential (named UFAS in Honeywell) was supported.
  IDS-II was conveyed in the IBM world under the form of IDMS by Cullinet.
• Socrate
  Socrate was a data base system designed by JE Abrial, under CII contract.
  The initial development was started for the CII 10070 under Siris7 by Gilles Gautier-Villars and later by Jean Jacques La Claverie for Iris 80 (Siris8). 
  For the Atelier Electronique Inter-Organismes  (Social Security) of Grenoble, an implementation of Socrate was made for Siris3 for CII Iris50/60 by MM Stepanian and Bourgne (ECA Automation)
• Relational Data Base
  Codasyl DBTG suited the need of well-planned management information system, and lacked the flexibility of relational invented par Ed Codd, at IBM in the 1970s.
  The first implementation of Relational in Honeywell occurred on MULTICS system. A Relational Access Method was developed under GCOS-8.
  On GCOS7, it was decided in 1983 not to develop or to port such a system, but to contract with Oracle a port to the GCOS7 code and operating system.The Bull port of Oracle was implemented as a server that evolved into a shared memory separate processor in the late 1990s.

Computer Aided Design

Computer Aided Manufacturing

Payroll

Artificial Intelligence
 <see languages>

Office Automation

Document Retrieval Systems

• Mistral
  Mistral was developed by CII under Siris8. It was coded in Fortran. After 1977, it was ported on GCOS7 and GCOS8.

Document Edition

• COSY 1000
  This application belongs to the RCA heritage  in newspaper publishing. It was developed under BS1000 and ported by CII under Siris3.

ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
ERP is probably one of the most important application program of the 1990s (with SAP R/3 and its competitors). General Electric was a pioneer in such activity since the early 1960s. In the 1990s, Bull concluded an agreement with BAAN to market their ERP on UNIX DPX-systems.

• GEPEX
  Parts Explosion System , an inventory management program on GE-400 (based on IDS-I)
  
• IMS
  GEPEX was followed by GEIMS on the GE-400 and GE-600, renamed just IMS in Honeywell times. To the function Bill of Materials, a Production Scheduling and Control (PSC) module was added to IMS. Honeywell-Bull became responsible of IMS development -on the Series 60- as part of its assignment to Manufacturing Applications.
• IMS-TD
  In 1976, CII-HB ported IMS to a transactional environment on GCOS 62, GCOS6, and GCOS 64 (under TDS). In the early 1980s, the GCOS7 evolved under the name  IMS7.

Systems Administration

• ISM
  ISM, as Integrated System Management was designed as a tool for the administration of heterogeneous distributed systems, in particular, but not exclusively, Bull GCOS and open systems. It was based initially upon HP OpenView and centralized on a UNIX platform.
  ISM has been renamed OpenMaster and is one of asset of Evidian software subsidiary.

Multimedia

Data Warehousing

Index

Revision : 20 février 2003.