Datapoint-Datashare6-part2

Datashare was the multiuser, transaction-processing version of Datapoint's Databus business programming language (first introduced in 1971 for the Datapoint 2200). This programming language was a big part of Datapoint's formula for success: it supported unusually rich keyboard and screen handling, a very wide variety of sophisticated disk file access methods (including the amazing AIM, Associative Index Method, which still is unmatched by other programming languages 35 years later!), locking to support multiuser and multifile transaction processing, the ability to easily combine access to home office and remote field office files, business-friendly decimal arithmetic, and much more. In this video, part 2 of 2, Datapoint marketing executive Kirby Herron introduces the language and explains part of why it's so very useful. The Datapoint 2200 supported up to eight simultaneous users at CRT workstations, the Datapoint 5500 in 1974 and the Datapoint 6600 in 1977 supported up to 24 simultaneous users. The introduction of The ARC System in 1977 allowed distributing the load across multiple processors, and basically ended the imperative to build ever-faster single processors in order to support more users. Datashare's rich communications features made it possible for programmers to easily create quite sophisticated communications applications. The language's virtual memory techniques allowed users to have even quite large programs, commonly up to more than a hundred pages of program listing for each of the simultaneous users. The ANSI standard version of this language also exists today as PL/B. PCBUS from Infopoint Systems is one of several modern PC implementations.