Nordic Development of Shipping Systems On Symbiosis between System and Organization

Leif Saalbach Andersen Hellerup, Denmark leif.saalbach@email.dk Abstract. The successful development and implementation of global container shipping systems is related to conditions characteristic for the shipping world. One of them concerns the need for proper communication and common understanding at sea and across the different professions and national authorities involved in shipping. This has created a framework of standard concepts and activity patterns, which are reflected in international rules and regulations as formulated at conferences among shipping people. Another concerns the early participation in Nordic IT development, where a group of shipping people became experienced in computer handling and system developments. It included the IT formalization of the above framework and the holistic view of enterprises based on a coherent complex of IT systems. This supported the decision to include terminal handling and landbased logistics into the organization to maintain control of containers all the way and to get full benefit from the technology.

1

The Origin of Shipping Systems

Hazards of the sea attracts insurance and causes classification of ships.

Shipping has since early stages been considered risky business. Already the Justinians Laws of Rome in 530 A.D. considered shipping such a "perilous" affair that marine insurance was exempted from legal restrictions on excessive interest rates. Also the Phoenicians, the Venetians and the Hanseatic merchants are said to have had their insurance systems against the hazards of the sea. That included the installation of guns to prevent attack from hostile enemies.

As ships began crossing oceans regularly and cargoes became of high value, the seaworthiness of the ships became a critical issue for discussion among the three professions involved: ship-owners, shipbuilders and shipping agents. In London in the 18th century shipping people met with marine insurance people at local coffee houses for exchange of information and discussions of the risk involved in contemplated voyages. The owner of a cosy coffee house in Tower Street, Mr. Edward Lloyd, became famous for his ability to collect and publish useful information on ships and their cargoes. They were later to be published as Lloyd's Lists. Among other entertainments he also arranged auctions on the risk insurances. Some of the insurance people (later to be "the Insurance Corporation of Lloyd's) suggested that the shipping people organized a classification of ships by an independent institution to improve the evaluation of a ship's strength and seaworthiness. The classification was to be followed by regularly inspections of a ship's hull and equipment by an independent institution, and the results were to be published in a register book available to everyone for a fee. It was anticipated that such a book would also become popular outside the shipping environment and could finance the whole arrangement.

A commission of prominent persons was established and founded "Lloyd's Register of Shipping" in 1760 with headquarter in London. Like in other cases of standardization Lloyd's Register had a tough time in fighting and negotiating with competitors from other shipping centers specially Liverpool, and it was not until 1834 that the authority of Lloyd's Register was accepted by the Parliament and Board of Trade after endless disputes and many attempts to downgrade the importance of the matter.

It is worth noting that the final acknowledgement of Lloyd's Register was closely connected with the common appraisal of the quality of the surveyor team and the book of rules and recommendations published by Lloyd's Register as standard for classification of ships. The surveyors and the rules have since constituted a common reference on concepts and activity patterns among shipping people and marine insurance people all over the world. The authority of Lloyd's Register spread soon to other seafaring nations, where Lloyd's got a stronghold in some countries like Holland, Sweden and Denmark, and met competitors in others like France, Germany, Norway and US. In this way Lloyd's got an international standing in classification of ships, and the rules were simply adopted as governmental standard in many seafaring countries.

Increased concern on safety of lives at sea results in establishment of IMO, an UN agency, as a permanent body for international regulation of shipping.

Poor conditions of life on merchant ships for ordinary seamen were ignored until a politician, Samuel Plimsoll, in 1876 after heated debates in Parliament got a law against overloading of ships accepted. When Titanic went down in 1912 it was realized that safety on board great passenger vessels needed international regulations on lifesaving and navigational equipment as well as on radio communication practice. They were agreed to in 1914, but did not come in force until 1929.

In the political turmoil after World War II it was difficult to arrange international conferences. But the concern on the increasing risk for collisions of ships and other concerns caused a number of countries to propose the establishment of a permanent body for international regulation of shipping. In 1948 an international conference formally established IMO, the International Maritime Organization as an agency under UN with special responsibility for the safety and security of shipping and for the prevention of marine pollution by ships.

IMO has since been a very active forum for international cooperation on rules, recommendations and conventions to be adopted by governments and shipping companies. But most important for the IT systems development is the contribution to the maintenance of the common framework of reference within shipping. Here IMO has recently developed an ambitious concept of a sustainable transportation system focus-ing on a number of issues from "Safety Culture and Environmental Stewardship" and "Education and training in maritime professions" to "Ocean Governance".

Creation of the Nordic Computing Environment

The story of the successful cooperation among Nordic countries in the pioneering stages of computing has been told often. Emphasis has been placed on the realization that each of the countries was too small to make it alone, but it ought also to be mentioned that the Nordic countries in the late 1950s were well prepared for the coming of the computer technology. The close communication among universities and research institutes and the high level of education in mathematics and electronics promoted the cooperation and created a generous exchange of knowledge. Also the conference activities during 1960s and 1970s in NordDATA and the Nordic participation in IFIP contributed heavily to the creation of Nordic computing as a significant player in the international development.

Danish shipbuilders participated from the very beginning in the exploration of the new perspectives. The initial efforts went two ways, one towards improving the design and proposals for new types of ships, and the other for improving the production process in the shipyards.

In the late 1950s shipowners asked for new types of ships, often bigger and faster. The traditional design procedure in the yards was hampered by the time needed for the many manual calculations involved. That meant restrictions on optimization of the design. And the increasing number of reports on damages due to new design features like very large hatches asked for more calculations. So when the first computers showed up, the shipbuilders were eager to make experiments. In Denmark the initial experiments carried out on DASK with much support from Regnecentralen showed drastic reductions in calculation times, e.g. a standard stability calculation was reduced from 3-4 days to 5-10 minutes. The experiences resulted in establishment of a Danish center for ship-technical calculations based on the GIER computer, which coordinated the development of a complete and renewed design system and serviced Danish shipyards and shipowners for a long period.

Among the experiments were the attempts to define a ships hull mathematically by digitalizing and "fairing" data measured on a drawing. Apart from the advantage of having a more precise definition of the hull in the design calculations it was contemplated as a condition for the use of new technologies in the production of ships. However, the practical problem of producing a double curved hull plating showed the limitations for digitalizing. Research in the workshop showed the use of special tricks to get the plates curbed by the rolling mill. They included for instance the use of common salt, which almost exploded during high pressure of the rolls and made the plate to curb nicely. If it didn't fit perfectly to the frames of the hull afterwards a little heating or sheer clamping could do the rest. Of course these remains of a traditional manual skill were not transferable to new technology, and this is the reason why modern ships are made out of single curbed plating, where ever possible.

The innovation of new shipbuilding technology was pioneered by Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen and is subject to a separate paper on this conference. But it should be noted that similar developments went on in other Nordic countries and were subject to mutual attention within the Nordic computing environment. All told, in the 1960s Nordic use of computer technology within shipping attracted much attention from abroad. So much, that Lloyd's Register of Shipping took part in the Nordic development from their office in Gothenburg.

But the real scoop to be gained from the early stages of Nordic Computing was the explorations into the concept of system as implied in terms like information system and informatics. A more scientific approach was made to the analysis of IT systems. It was much to the comfort of software engineers, but less useful to management responsible for the integration of IT systems into the But here shipowners made their own way by creating entirely new organizations for their IT systems based services.

Development of Container Shipping Systems

Postwar pilferage as the driving force.

The idea of transporting goods in closed boxes from door to door included the avoidance of too clumsy manual handling when loading and unloading ships. After World War II the amount of pilferage in harbours like the one in Copenhagen was a severe problem for shipping people including labour unions and insurance people. Two solutions were discussed heavily. Some argued for standardization and use of cheap wooden pallets with proper wrapping, which could be handled on board by forklifts. Others argued for worldwide standardization of container boxes and tried to justify the high investments in new ships and harbour terminals. Today we know that both parties succeeded in the developments of their ideas. In Copenhagen Unicef has just built a new terminal in Copenhagen with a huge capacity for storing EU pallets, and close by is the headquarter of Maersk Lines handling an enormous number of containers. As for the pilferage, -although the container terminals nowadays are guarded like military fortresses, it happens that whole containers disappear.

ScanDutch as the frontrunner.

Within the Nordic countries EAC, Wilhelmsen and Brostøm organized a cooperation among their Far East services in 1969 (Scanservice). That included ships as well as shipping agencies. However the ships were not well suited for handling an increasing number of containers, and management realized the need for development of a whole new organization dedicated to container shipping. Together with the Dutch shipowner Nedlloyd a new enterprise was created in 1972 named ScanDutch.

The announcement of the ScanDutch I/S enterprise focused very much on the new and advanced ships to be built special for container transportation, and next to nothing on the new and advanced IT system, which was to be the base for the whole busi-ness.

The ScanDutch ships represented an entirely new standard for ships dedicated to container-transport. They could carry 1200 twenty feet standard containers (TEU's) and had excess of engine power to maintain regular schedules, cellular rags in all holds, plenty of remote controlled facilities for container conditioning etc. When finished, the ships were presented with much festivity for the public as the kernel of the container shipping service. As for the IT system, to most people the ships were seen as the system, and only a few imagined the size and complexity of the IT system covering computer tracking, slot allocations and container conditioning on board the ship, scheduling of terminal activities besides streamlining all the paperwork involving shipping agents, customers, harbour, authorities, banks etc. The dedication to container shipping meant revision of concepts and activity patterns in the organization as well as in the design of the ships and the terminals.

The development of the ScanDutch IT system was undertaken by EAC Data, and the project was managed by experienced ScanDutch members to ensure the coordinated development of the organization and the IT system. Irrespective of the IT system being the kernel of the services ScanDutch management should remain in control of the organizational development. The communication between head quarter in Copenhagen, the terminals and the agency offices was based on a private telex network operated by EAC Data under the name of Texcom.

The development of the ScanDutch IT system included many challenges. One of the more exciting was the establishment of a standard message format for the tracking system. It contained a secure identification of a container, its position and condition, and a code related to the operational stage of the transport. The codes were rather compressed and it was expected to take a little while to get them properly introduced to all the agencies, ships and terminals, but it was a pleasant surprise that the tracking messages quickly became of very high quality. Here again the developers benefitted from the common framework of references established within global shipping.

ScanDutch proved successful from the beginning, and two more shipowners joined the corporation, a French in 1973 and a Malaysian in 1977. At the end of the 80's some of the partners came under economical pressure from other shipping activities and the ScanDutch partnership was dissolved at the end of 1991. EAC continued the shipping activities until 1993, when the container shipping activities were sold to Maersk Line. The ScanDutch IT system had then been in successful operation for more than 20 years.

Maersk Line, the powerful system builder.

After some preliminary experiences on container transport with traditional ships, Maersk announced in 1973 its decision to create a new organization, Maersk Container Line, dedicated to container shipping and with a capacity sufficient to offer regular weekly service, not only on the date but also on the hour. The first container ship of a series of 9 departed from the Maersk terminal in Newark, N.J., in 1975. It had a capacity of 1.400 TEU's. The ships were more modest than the EAC ships, but the greater number made the weekly service a standard, which ScanDutch had to copy from 1977.

As in the ScanDutch case the announcement of the Maersk container shipping system focused much on the ships and only little attention was given to the IT system development, apart from the general knowledge on the close connection between Maersk and Maersk Data and the early use of expensive, private data communication lines between Maersk offices, which in the longer term proved useful for the increasing amount of data to be communicated.

During the 1980s Maersk placed much emphasis on supplying data services to the customers at all steps of container transportation incl. preparation of transport documents, warehousing and distribution. In 1995 Maersk Logistic Services was organized as a selfcontained unit for that purpose.

Most important for the turn-around time of the ships was the expedition in unloading and loading of containers in the harbour terminals. Maersk had its own ideas incorporated into their IT systems, and to ensure optimal expedition they established in 2001 the APM Terminals as a central organization to handle the interests of the Maersk Group in more than 50 terminals all over the world.

But it was the expansion through acqusitions and takeovers which proved the strength and capacity of the Maersk organization and its IT systems. Among the most remarkable was the acquisition of Sea-Land Service Ltd. in 1999, which is said to have included 70 ships and 200.000 containers besides terminals and agents all over the world, and the takeover of P&O Nedlloyd N.V. in 2005, which included 156 ships and 13.000 employees in 146 countries. To the shipping world in general and to IT systems people in particular this was a very ambitious and courageous achievements of a management, who obviously trusted the ability of their organization and IT systems to include such "foreign" worlds.

The inclusion of Sea-Land seems to have been rather smooth, and the Maersk organization continued under the new name of "Maersk Line". But the P&O Nedlloyd takeover obviously resulted in problems. Customers leaving to join competitors diminished the expected increase in market share, and the new employees had difficulties in adjusting themselves to Maersk's IT systems. The Nedlloyd people, who originally participated in the development of the ScanDutch systems, had after the merger with the British P&O Containers Ltd. in 1996 joined the development of a much heralded IT system called FOCUS integrating into a single IT system a system of globally standardized business processes.

The P&O acquisition included a freight forwarding company, Damco. It had for some time been associated with Maersk Logistics Services, but both were in 2009 unified in a self-contained unit within the Maersk Group under the name of Damco, which claims to have more than 11.000 employees and to have managed in 2013 a volume of 2.8 million TEU of ocean freight and supply chain management. They are not dedicated to container shipping only and have presumably a wider perspective in their system development.

The turbulence after the P&O Nedlloyd takeover lasted for some years, but Maersk Line continued the scheduled program for newbuildings. In 2006 Lindø shipyard delivered the first of seven sisterships. "Emma" was with room for 11.000 TEU containers once more the largest container ship ever built. In 2011 the first ship of the Triple-E serie was shown to the public as the greatest and most advanced ever with a capacity of 18.000 TEU.

Implementation of IT Systems into Corporate Organizations.

The "bottom-up" approach.

The inclusion of computers into our offices half a centenary ago was an exciting affair in many companies and public service organizations. Computers were expected to be fast and cost effective, but also hypersensitive to order in human thoughts and operational behaviour. So most managements decided to implement IT systems stepwise starting from the bottom with well-known office routines in regular functions like pay roll administration, stock control and general accounting. The IT system was merely seen as an automation or simulation of the manual routine with limited consequences for the overall organization. The expectations were savings in costs and time. Usually the organizational consequences of the implementation were greater than expected, and the savings less than expected, but in most cases followed an implementation of another IT system in another part of the organization, and so on until after years of hard work and much luck the entire organization and its IT systems were interwoven into a casual pattern of its own. The development was usually driven by enthusiastic and skilled local staff together with system oriented consultants, who made the basic analysis of the manual systems. They also supplied the organization with computer oriented, formal system descriptions suitable for programming and testing, but of limited value to management and ordinary staff as an overall view of the coherence between organization and systems. The descriptions were also used for the creation of a common reference frame of concepts and activity patterns to ensure communication and cooperation within the organization.

Coordination or unification of competing "bottom-up" systems within regional or global corporations represents a major challenge to further system developments. "Bottom-up" systems are usually so deeply rooted in the organization and in the perceptions of the staff that a centralized effort to develop and replace the existing system with a new system surmount the capacity and courage of most managements. It is the case specially in the public sector, where a management responsible for specific well-fare systems may be subject to stressed by frequent shifting political influence with regard to on economical and social priorities.

It is evident from the present situation that many managers and politicians still are unaware of IT systems' dependency on the stringency and stability of the specified concepts and activity patterns. They still seem to consider IT systems to be a sort of automation or simulation of manual or otherwise outdated systems where replacement with new systems could promise costs savings and improved welfare. An actual case is the present Danish system for property taxation, which has been declared faulty and possibly illegal by governmental appointed accountants. The final distribution of property tax was originally performed by local evaluations from a number of skilled and experienced surveyors. Now they have been replaced by an IT system with an obscure distribution model, resulting in citizens revolt against casual tax distributions. But so far the system has overruled the governmental organization and the mental welfare of its citizens.

The "top-down" approach.

The idea of modelling a company or public service organization as a self-contained system in its entirety was advocated by Nordic IT pioneers more then 50 years ago. The model was to be based on the perception of the organization as a coherent set of functional subsystems. It would allow management to participate in coordination of internal IT projects concurrently with managing externally oriented business or service developments. Also it would serve as a link between the computer oriented and the people oriented system documentation and support the creation of a common and consistent reference framework for concepts and activity patterns.

Today the modelling is considered a prerequisite for a "top-down" approach, where implementation and maintenance of IT systems is scheduled according to a common activity plan, and where internal exchange of ideas and knowledge is stimulated by creation of the common reference framework on concepts and activity patterns. Managementwise this is in agreement with the present transition from traditional "command and control" hierarchy towards networked distribution of management, where top management is supposed to support efficient communication and local cooperation.

As it should appear from the container shipping cases, creation of a common reference framework plays an important role for computerization of an organization (or a community). It is in line with the extension of computing science to include Domain Engineering, besides hardware and software engineering. Otherwise as a selfcontained discipline it is most often ignored or considered too cumbersome and unstable for practical use. But in reality it should be deducibel from own requirement specifications and public legal documentation. Socially a group of persons working together is expected to develop a common reference framework for mutual understanding and activity coordination. It is important for the productivity of the group as well as for the job satisfaction and system confidence of the individual group member.

In the shipping case it took more than 200 years to develop a global, public reference framework, which was updated to several fundamental changes in technology and social life. In great commercial corporations it often took a management generation or two to create a common standard for communication and behaviour, a called a company spirit. In present times such group frameworks are dissolved by fast developments in technology and frequent shifts in organizational structures. But as the container shipping systems show, if the remainder of the framework for the surrounding world (the domain) is strong enough it is still possible to create a framework suitable for development and worldwide implementation of IT systems in an international group of dedicated people.

As for the future it looks like many managers, civil servants and politicians are unaware of the waste of resources our communities suffer at present from failed or malfunctioning IT projects. The waste includes financial resources as well as human resources, and loss of investments as well as loss in productivity. The ignorance may be due to a general underestimation of the potentials in IT systems. But the importance for our societies should justify an evaluation of IT systems in line with material assets like buildings and bridges, which are to be approved of by governmental institutions, quality certified and insured. That would make the "bottom-up" approach obsolete and support further development of the "top-down" approach.


Anne Grethe
email: grethe@galleripind.dk

Pind Kgs

The Story of DSI-TEKST The first Software Package which Integrated Word Processing, Database and Report Generator -in Denmark and maybe in the Whole World

DSI-TEKST was the first totally integrated program with word processing, a database and a report generator in Denmark -and perhaps the world. It was intuitive, very easy to operate and fast. New users could with minimal instruction figure out how to use it and also to build solutions in it. It was a pioneering effort.

DSI-TEKST --a Success Story

The DSI company, established by me in 1980, still exists, though it has changed its name a few times from Dansk System Industri (DSI) to DSI-DATA and now DSI-NEXT. It is located at the same address in Kokkedal North of Copenhagen and has 45 employees just as we had in 1994. A good business was created with a wide range of jobs.

DSI applications are still running at many places, and even today I often meet people who have been happy users of DSI-TEKST and praise it. DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM helped to make the users of public institutions IT competent early, and thereby helped to decentralize IT routines.

DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM were born with word processing, a database and a report generator. Very soon we integrated telex, a telephone directory, calendar, email, and soon an identity and access control that was approved by the Danish Data Protection Office were added.

When DSI-TEKST was launched in October 1984, there were many other suppliers of word processing programs and databases in the Danish market, but there were none with the integration of features like DSI-TEKST.

─ 1965 Systems developer and consulting engineer in Christian Rovsing A/S. Developed, e.g., an economy system for Medical Laboratory on an IBM 1130. ─ 1971 Systems developer and project manager at PBC A/S (Co-designer and project manager of Payment Service -today "Nets") ─ 1975 Head of the administrative IT-group at DTU, which did payroll and accounting for several Danish universities on a RC4000 computer.

What is DSI?

In 1980 my husband Torben Pind and I founded two DSI companies. One of them manufactured shop fittings for the oil industry in Europe. It had sales office in Copenhagen and manufacturing in Jutland and was run by my husband. Torben Pind MSC Mechanical Engineering. With his business experience from several companies he was an invaluable chairman of our board.

The other DSI was an IT consultancy company run by me. We shared office in the center of Copenhagen. I did jobs introducing IT into companies without previous IT experience. My customers were The Danish Society of Engineers and Technical Publishing.. I selected the required hardware and software applications and was project manager for the implementation.

In my spare time I programmed an economy system for our own DSI shopfitting company. We had an au-pair girl taking care of our children. She noticed, how busy I was in evenings, and proposed that I got help of her boyfriend, who was a programmer. That was Thomas Hejlsberg. I immediately contacted him. Life consists of coincidences. The trick is to see them and have courage to use them!

The idea to DSI-TEKST

Thomas Hejlsberg, 20 years old, was employed as a programmer at Rank Xerox. 1981-84 he worked for me as freelance programmer. He started by developing a data transmission program because he thought the Visi-Term program, which I was using, was not good enough. The program he developed we named DSI-TERM, and I sold it to my contacts at the Danish Technical University.

In 1984 Thomas Hejlsberg asked me if I would finance him to develop a database program he had begun working on, and then sell it through my company. I was immediately interested, because I had seen what a brilliant programmer Thomas Hejlsberg was. He had the ability, just by seeing a program in operation, to make a similar program but in a better version. My condition for the project was, that the program in addition to database should include word processing because I was convinced that this would attract customers.

Decision for DSI-TEKST

My husbond and I decided to let our DSI shopfitting company fund the project, which we called DSI-TEKST. It should integrate word processing, a database, and a report generator.

Thomas Hejlsberg began to develop DSI-TEKST in Pascal under the operating system CP/M on a Compaq PC that was IBM compatible. IBM had just introduced their PC and, during the summer 1984, it became evident to us that DOS would be the next operating system. We therefore decided to reprogram DSI-TEKST for DOS. Thomas Hejlsberg developed the program at night working for Rank Xerox in the daytime and I wrote the user guide in the daytime -also on a Compaq.

First Presentation of DSI-TEKST October 1984

At the Office & Data exhibition in October 1984 in Bella Center, I presented DSI-TEKST for the first time and I sold the first program to a Time Share company in Skagen. They soon made a complete booking system in DSI-TEKST for their time share apartments. That quite complex system was in operation already in December 1984. Thomas Hejlsberg made a couple of quick fixes -but there were NO serious errors.

DSI-TEKST -simple, easy and very fast

The user was guided through the program by an easy navigable menu on the bottom line of the screen. The menus were easily manageable, because they changed depending on the most relevant choices in the current situation in the program. The control key F1 displayed the menu bar and F5 showed relevant help -dependent on where the user was in the program.

Key combinations for auto functions were built-in, and the users could also define their own functions. Database items and standard data could be copied into the text. There was no limit to the length of documents. Processing of up to 10 documents simultaneously was possible as well as easy handling of blocks of text.

The database system had a freely definable directory structure with search keys and each item only used the minimum space.

Already in the first edition one could build solutions such as inventories, order confirmation, invoicing and sales letters and a booking systems. The system was very efficient for direct mail with selection of recipient addresses from the database.

The DSI-TEKST User Guide

After the successful presentation of DSI-TEKST it was important, that I used my time on marketing and sale. We were lucky to take on a friend of mine Andreas Hens, MA in history and English, to write the manual. Andreas Hens was one of the first Masters of Arts, who was employed in the IT sector. It was due to him that the DSI manual in various computer magazine tests was highly praised for its thoroughness and easy legibility. Andreas Hens was highly articulate and provided the manual with its relevant and amusing illustrations.

The first Major Customer

The first major customer was the Danish State Railways (DSB). On New Year's Eve 1984 I introduced DSI-TEKST to my friend, Nils Duval, who was employed in the Railway Department. He became immediately very enthusiastic about DSI-TEKST and could see many possibilities for its use in DSB.

DSB was thus the first customer to develop extensive solutions and paved the way for other state institutions. I sent many potential large government customers to Nils Duval so that he could demonstrate the possibilities of DSI-TEKST. Duval was em-ployed by DSI in 1989 as a sales consultant and from 1991 as Sales Director.

Competition and Market Conditions

DSI was exposed to strong competition from both Danish and foreign word processing and database programs and was regularly subjected to detailed comparisons with other programs in the media, which made great demands on DSI to contain "all" features very quickly. We competed with the Danish programs Dantekst, Aura Text, and IBM Text 3, and with the American WordStar, WordPerfect, DBase, Symphony, Lotus 1-2-3, Paradox, and later Open Access. All of those companies' products were single modules as opposed to DSI-TEKST, which was an integrated product. The competing programs were difficult to get acquainted with, because they started with a blank screen, and one had to learn a lot of key shortcuts.

Despite the fierce competition, only six months after DSI-TEKST came onto the market we achieved a market share of 16% of the Danish word processing market. The Danish financial daily paper Børsen tested the program in May 1985 and wrote "it is the best word processor we've tested."

DSI-TEKST Extensions

DSI-TEKST was especially under great pressure on the word processing side because the computer magazines constantly tested and drew up tables of comparisons showing details of all program features. DSI quickly issued versions with new features such as spell checking, a dictionary, and column totals in the report generator.

Texas Instruments A/S was the first computer supplier in Denmark to deliver their machines with DSI-TEKST as their only word processor, and we were on their stand at the Office & Data trade show in February 85 presenting DSI-TEKST version 2.

In April 1986 we added calculation and columns in the text, and in the database up to 90 fields per item shown on up to 10 display screens. In addition to all that a TELEX module and a MAIL module was created.

In those days a lot of communication was done through the telex system which in most countries was controlled and offered by the postal services. The telex machines were delivered and installed by the postal services, and contained control functions that allowed the sender to get feedback confirming the receipt of the message. A telex was thereby a fully legal documented sending and receiving. When one had sent a telex and received feedback on the receipt, that could be printed on the telex machine, one had proof that the document was delivered. It could be compared to a registered letter.

DSI 's telex module communicated through a box provided by the Postal Service.

This gave the advantage of advanced features to write letters and documents in DSI-TEKST instead of having to write directly on the keyboard of the telex machine where each character was sent as the key was pressed.

With DSI-TEKST documents could be prepared and corrected and then sent and stored, and the received documents could be stored and used in further communications. The module automatically handled sending and receiving with queuing and redial when necessary. Receiving and sending occurred in the background without interfering with other work. By merging with database components identical telexes could be sent to selected groups of customers.

Very early NETWORK facilities were included for communication within a company via local ethernet cables. It had record-locking, so that multiple users could simultaneously update in the same database.

A complete mail system for internal MAIL was developed. Right from the start it had functions allowing users to see and select recipients using the names of recipients from a recipients pool.

We developed interface to PolyDatas economy program Albatros, which made Albatros much more useful. Accounting data from Albatros could now be transferred to the user's DSI-TEKST database and processed in DSI-TEKST powerful report generator.

Departments of Program Development, Support, Sales and Education

The first 3 years we were in the premises of Shop System's office -four persons in the same room. In 1986 our Danish Shop Fitting company bought an additional apartment in the same block of flats, Kronprinsessegade 10 for our DSI-TEKST employees. In 1987 we were 6 persons and had to move to new leased premises in Kokkedal, North Zealand, because we needed to hire even more employees.

As DSI-TEKST became more widely used, demands grew both for training courses and hotline, and we set up large training rooms and a canteen for both staff and customers.

In addition to training courses and a free help desk support, agent-and business seminars were organized. On these occasions we presented new features and obtained feed-back in the form of both requests and constructive criticism.

Distribution of the package and program extensions and refinements was a laborious and very costly affair. There was a need for premises, equipment and staff to handle large volumes of manuals and floppy disks, and it was costly to convert any modification or renewal to the printed manual format.

When DSI-TEKST was launched programs were distributed on 5" floppy disks and with a comprehensive printed manual. The programs had from the start a built-in help, but the manuals were necessary to sell PC applications to a wider audience. Later the disk size changed to 3½" hard floppy disks. The many printer drivers, which had to be developed and installed, was another very resource consuming task. More than 100 different printer drivers were developed and included in the DSI-SYSTEM.

DSI grew quickly after having moved to Kokkedal. Fortunately, as we grew, we were able to rent additional space in the premises we had chosen. In 1990 we were 45 staff, only 3 years after 6 people had moved there. This staff now covered the following functions: program development, sales, marketing, help desk support, printer drivers, consultancy, manual writing, customer training courses, production and distribution. In 1990 we extended with an office in Jutland.

Customer Concept

1. DSI's customers were divided into two main types: agents and major customers. Agents were selling to private customers and were handled by the company PolyData A/S to which DSI had given distribution rights. Major customers were handled by DSI itself and we focused on: The Danish State Railways (DSB), the Military, the Ministry of Justice, including the courts and the police, the Danish State Information Service, The Ministery of Interior, the Refugee Agency, the Construction Mortgage Fund, BRF, the BST (The employees' health service) and other potentially large customers.

At an early stage customer seminars were arranged, and this collaboration evolved later to set up proper design groups to further develop the standard product. In addition to the large customers using the introduction of DSI-TEKST/SYSTEM to standardize all word processing, a need soon emerged for customers to organize the daily work in the systematic case handling routines.

On the database side a similar development was underway. From the start DSI-TEKST had included small filing systems that showed good examples for inventory control in various forms. Later, various large customers developed complex systems for journalizing, planning, comprehensive financial management, error statistics, inventory management, and staff & resource management.

PolyData stopped as distributor in 1990 and subsequently DSI sold through Esselte (150 stores), Damgaard Data (300 agents) and directly to its own distributors and large customers.

The DSI Philosophy

DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM were standard systems and therefore any development had to be directed to all kinds of users. Development in collaboration with major customers followed these guidelines: DSI received many requests, and after a rating, the various requests were given priority to the nearest small or to a later big update. An update was made approximately every six months. To cope with big customers' relevant needs DSI-TEKST/SYSTEM was greatly expanded. Large customers were thrilled to use a standard program, the development of which they could influence, and so they ensured that everyone in the organization used the same program and that their solutions followed the latest updates of the program.

For example:

In cooperation with DSB it was organized such that the Rail Department handled the database and report generator development and the IT department was responsible for the development of facilities in the word processing system -but within the general standard model. The result was that the Rail Department over time developed a wide range of very powerful applications in DSI-SYSTEM which helped to prolong the life of the DSB's mainframe systems.

In cooperation with the DSB's renowned design director Jens Nielsen DSI participated in the preparation of a complete design manual on all written communication in DSB. Until then, they had a forest of "standards." When the DSI-SYSTEM made it possible to print on colour printers, DSB could totally eliminate preprinted letterheads.

If a customers request could not be included in the standard version, the customer was helped to build their own application program. The Police used DSI-TEKST to POLSYS, a complete planning system for all employees and for handling the management of resource allocation. The Courts of law used DSI-TEKST for an extensive journalizing system. The Danish military used DSI-TEKST in all internal procedures and planning tasks.

Børsens News Magazine March 1988 shows a statement from Expansion Marketing Bureau, that PC agents judged DSI to be the best software company in terms of product, service and training, and DSI-TEKST is rated as the second best word processing program -right after Word Perfect.

DSI-TEKST in decentralizing

Departments within DSB could, by using DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM, design requirement specifications for the reports they wanted to get from the database of the mainframe system. For a time the specifications were made this way. Later it was agreed where the dividing line should be drawn between the mainframe system and the PCs. In this way a significant prolongation of the mainframe system was obtained using DSI-TEKST/SYSTEM.

DSI-SYSTEM

DSI-SYSTEM, the successor to DSI-TEKST, was developed by reprogramming from scratch, which was very unusual for standard systems. It made the system very fast and well organized. Normally new systems were developed by adding new features to its predecessor.

In DSI-TEKST one could from the start build quite big applications. But with DSI-SYSTEM, released in February 1989, it was possible to embed real programming, which allowed many additional opportunities and made it possible to build very complex applications.

DSI-SYSTEM included many more new facilities: The possibility of individual menus, generating content pages, indexing a document, head and foot notes as well as margin notes, variable number of lines per screen, date as a system field in the text, column blocks, a large Danish dictionary, print spooling from the system. It also included a real programmable relations database with free design of input screens. A very important new facility was that the user could redefine the database directory structure without losing data.

Prints could be formed completely free, printing of labels was standard. A master password was introduced preventing text from one installation to be read by others, and individual user passwords could be set for documents and files.

DSI-SYSTEM allowed recipients of electronic mails to be at another location using the DSI-SYSTEM. The messages were transmitted automatically via modem and telephone lines. The system examined whether the recipient was local or remote. The system was designed so that at the first contact with a remote location, the names of users at both locations were automatically exchanged, and at each location it could be controlled who could send and receive messages.

The computer magazine "Alt om Data" wrote in 1989 an article about DSI-SYSTEM, where they wrote "DSI-SYSTEM is a Danish winner. -It is sovereign on ease of use, data security and functionality".

Bent Mortensen in the Danish newspaper Politiken in a test in 1990 gave DSI-SYSTEM top marks, and declared that "DSI-SYSTEM is world-class software".

DSI-SYSTEM Extensions

DSI-SYSTEM continued to be based on DOS. In 1990 it was extended with a STATISTICS module, wide-ranging programming capabilities, integration with the spreadsheet program SuperCalc 51, import and export of Word Perfect documents, insertion of pictures and graphs in a document, and support for color printers. The statistics module could work on data from the database and optionally print them in the XY matrix, bar graphs, etc. The magazine All about Data in the September issue 92 wrote "We are now seeing DSI-SYSTEM as a competitor to the database system Open Access."

Dictionaries in English and German could be purchased. A storage structure with Transaction Tracking (TTS2) ensured against data loss in case of power failure or deadlock PC World wrote in July 1992 "DSI-SYSTEM is unique in the market, among other things including printing color graphics ".

Interface to Concorde

On strong requests from the agents of the economy management program Concorde from Damgaard Data A/S, DSI developed an interface to Concorde, which made Concorde much more useful. Accounting data from Concorde could now be transferred to the users DSI-SYSTEM database and processed in DSI-SYSTEMs report generator, which now included statistics. It thereby made the agents work much easier. DSI had earlier made interface to SuperCalc 5. With this strong cooperation of three software packages we had created the world´s strongest system concept for administrative data processing.

In September 1989 The Danish financial daily paper Børsen wrote "The combined software packages of DSI-SYSTEM, Concorde and SuperCalc5 will fulfill most companies IT requirements".

Security Module

As DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM were introduced in many public institutions where security was a major issue, DSI created a module DSI-VAGT that allowed full control of which persons should have permission to access the data on site. The function was fitted with a log facility showing by whom and when data was accessed, so one could keep a check on who had seen and used the information. This was a functionality that only much later was introduced in the Windows operat-ing system. DSI-VAGTs features already at this time fulfilled The Danish Data Protection Agency's requirements for data security!

Application Development

Over time a large number of well-functioning applications in both DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM were developed.

Examples of applications developed by agents :

Real Estate Agent System: Membership Administration, Tenders, Building Maintenance, Booking system, Sales Management, Construction Management , Electronic job placement.

Examples of applications developed by customers :

Journal System for in and outgoing mail in DSB (centrally and locally, in over 25 locations), Inventory of central and decentralized units, Error Statistics Resource Management Journal systems, Construction Management and Rental system including an invoicing system, Time Management system for train drivers inclusive a payroll.

Examples of applications developed by DSI (in close cooperation with the customer :

BST (Employees' Health Service), a system for tracking the lending of appliances for centers for handicapped people, Electronic Medical Record, inventory system for a large public institution dental management system, systems for the administration in Danish with an advanced journal System, a staff scheduling system, including a payroll system for the police.

Translations into other Languages

Soon both the need and desire to distribute the program in other languages arose. This led to the translation of DSI-TEKST into Swedish, Norwegian, German, Spanish and English for export because international companies demanded programs that could be used in all countries. DSI-SYSTEM too was translated into Swedish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, British English and American English.

It cost DSI many resources to translate the programs into foreign languages and we showed great willingness to take risks. We had , e.g., a man stationed in the United States for two years in an attempt to enter the U.S. market. Unfortunately, we obtained no substantial sales in foreign markets in spite of the large investments.

The Turnover

To develop DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM required continually many man-years. In 1988 26 man-years was used to develop DSI-SYSTEM. Windows Edition. When Microsoft launched Windows in competition with Apple, it was quite obvious that there was a fundamental shift away from DOS on the way. Therefore DSI decided to develop a version of the DSI-SYSTEM in an iconbased application, which was launched in two modules in 1994 under the module names of DSI-TEXT and DSI-BASE. In spring 1995 they were combined under the name DSI-OFFICE.

The reason for the icon based windows was that Microsoft Windows at that time was without any security. Safety and traceability (logging) were basic demands of the Ministry of Justice and all other public institutions, and this requirement was not fulfilled by Microsoft Windows.

The Phasing out of DSI-TEKST and DSI SYSTEM

The major competitor for DSI-SYSTEM turned out to be Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Office package.

In the fall of 1994 the Justice Department asked four potential suppliers: Lotus, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and DSI to tender for a new system to replace the existing successful journal system running in DSI-SYSTEM. The solution should consist of a journal database and various structured case management activities in word processing.

DSI was the only company that fulfilled the requirements with its early version of the later standard DSI OFFICE (Icon-based Windows edition). The reason for this choice of DSI as the supplier was that DSI-SYSTEM supported the required security, which Microsoft Windows did not have at all.

The other suppliers did not address the task, but demonstrated their programs through show presentations. Microsoft had so much influence, that they succeeded at ministerial level to persuade the government of Denmark to switch to Microsoft Windows.

As a result the Danish State in 1995 chose Microsoft as the future platform for all government agencies, and the Ministry of Justice notified DSI that any future cooperation would be based on the Microsoft platform.

By this time, DSI had the choice between losing the public institutions or moving to the new platform. As DSI over the years had had a very good position, with corresponding competence, in many public institutions, DSI chose the latter and has continued to develop systems in Oracle and Microsoft to public customers. DSI realized this quite inevitable trend, and continued to employ the company´s skills on the Windows and the Oracle basis.

The many later invitations to tender based on EU procurement rules -rules demanded by public authorities which DSI had to follow -cost subsequently DSI many resources (read: millions of DKK) and the state many more millions for costly systems!

DSI -a Business which created new Jobs

DSI-TEKST and DSI -SYSTEM belonged in the DOS operating system domain, and with Apple's icon-based system and Microsoft's Windows operating system, the DOSbased systems were gradually phased out. This was of course not without problems for us, but such are conditions of all development, for better or for worse.

DSI was greatly successful by launching two powerful integrated packages DSI-TEKST and DSI-SYSTEM. We managed to develop a very user-friendly integrated software package, which introduced electronic data processing as very useful in the daily workload in private companies and public institutions. It challenged the users to develop both simple and more complex applications.

DSI especially got much praise for the report generator, which allowed users to print readable and understandable reports. Many users were accustomed to input "endless amounts of data" -but few users had previously gained something from these data volumes. With DSI-TEKST / DSI-SYSTEM, it was possible to focus on results. DSI-SYSTEM was from 1989 until about 2000 the most used integrated information system with word processor, database, report generator, electronic mail, calendar and security system with logging.

In 1994 I sold the company DSI A/S to FRONT-DATA A/S. They renamed the company first to DSI-DATA, later to DSI-NEXT. DSI-NEXT are still delivering DSI-SYSTEM for applications.

The DSI company has just passed its 30th birthday as a software company, it is still an active player in the IT market, and many IT people have been trained in DSI. DSI still has 45 employees and has the same address as we had right from the start: Kokkedal Industrivej 2, 2980 Kokkedal.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. DSI-TEKST evolved from a small and light system to a large and easy system, DSI-SYSTEM, an extensive development of DSI-TEKST. DSI-SYSTEM had significantly more options and programming facilities. After Microsoft in 1998 captured the market, DSI went on to develop solutions in Microsoft Windows and Oracle.

Table 1 .

 1 The company grew rapidly the first 6-7 years

		Revenue (DKK) Profit (DKK) Numbers sold Employees
	1984				1
	1985			1200	3
	1986			1500	4
	1987	13 mio		4000	6
	1988	13 mio	0,5 mio	7000	24
	1989	26 mio	2,5 mio	8000	45

SuperCalc 5 was a spreadsheet program from Computer Associates A/S.

TTS was used to secure data consistens in multiuser systems. One could lock the database, so no other could update at the same time.


Gitte Christensen
email: gc@dyalog.com

APL in the Nordic Countries

Keywords: APL, History, Nordic Countries

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Fig. 1. Simple APL expressions with output

A group at the Yorktown Heights IBM Research Center decided that this concise and consistent notation could be made executable on a computer. The first batch system written in FORTRAN for the IBM 7090 was quickly replaced by an interactive version for the new IBM/360, and this version served the researchers at Yorktown Heights Center for years. The first cleanspace, a template interactive session, was saved on November 27 th 1966, which is considered the birthdate of APL. Ken Iverson became an IBM Fellow in 1970 and received ACM Turing award in 1979 [START_REF] Smillie | amturing. Copied from[END_REF]:

"For his pioneering effort in programming languages and mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL, for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and practice."

2

Introduction of APL to the Nordic Countries

Denmark

In July 1967 Hans Jørgen Helms, director of the recently established NEUCC, held a two-week summer course on Programming Languages. It was extremely well attended, and all the major programming language research teams were represented. There were presentations and in some cases demonstrations of Snobol, Lisp, Algol98 -and from Yorktown Heights, Ken Iverson with APL. The interactive APL demonstration was performed using a model 2741 typewriter terminal, with a TV camera to make it visible to everyone.

It was still highly unusual to connect terminals to computers, but the University of Bergen had a system/360, and Dick Lathwell, who had worked on the implementation, was dispatched to Bergen together with a young IBM engineer, Henrik E. Nyegaard, to take care of the technical details. Per Gjerløv, also from IBM, who had been the driving force behind the donation of an IBM 7090 to NEUCC, was responsible for the technical set up -so he was naturally required to sit in on every single presentation. After many presentations of complicated programming languages Per felt that APL was a revelation. The simplicity with which programs were written in 2 + 3

Add two numbers 5 1 2 3 × 1 10 100 Multiply two 3-element vectors 1 20 300 mean←{(+/ )÷ } mean is sum (+/ divided by count ( mean 4

Compute mean of the first four positive integers 2.5

APL made an immediate impression, and Per Gjerløv quickly became one of the most enthusiastic ambassadors for APL in Denmark, and he later wrote an excellent book on APL.

At around the same time ØK Data had announced a time-sharing service based on BASIC. IBM did not have a competing product lined up, and when the sales team heard about APL, things moved fast: a System/360 model 40 was installed at Slotsherrensvej in Copenhagen, and IBM was able to offer up to 30 simultaneous users access via regular phone lines -with reasonable response times.

Soon the municipal computing centre (Kommunernes EDB Central) also decided to offer a timesharing service. The director Johs Nielsen was a creative man: in addition to administration tools for the municipalities, he felt that APL should be made available to schools, so that pupils could experiment with mathematics -in the same way that they could do experimental physics or chemistry. ØK data also made a bid with the BASIC service. However, despite a large number of demonstrations and courses for teachers, APL was not adopted by the schools. Whether this was due to costs, or simply because the current thinking was that children should be taught to "program" rather than to solve problems on a computer, was never revealed [START_REF] Gjerløv | Personal Communication[END_REF].

At the Danish University of Technology (DTH, now DTU), professor O. I. Franksen and Peter Falster were very early adopters, and they taught APL to electrical engineering students. Many of these engineers subsequently embarked on careers as software developers and several are programming in APL to this day.

Sweden

In Sweden it was Sten Kallin, also of IBM, who became the big APL ambassador. Sten was a mathematician and had been impressed by one of the earliest uses of APL: a complete description of the architecture of the IBM system/360 using only a few pages of APL. He installed one of the very first versions of APL and was one of the select few who have installed APL from a deck of punch cards. He became extremely enthusiastic and taught many APL courses [START_REF] Orrghen | [END_REF]. Volvo became interested and quickly installed an APL system, which engineers used to design and plan the production of entire cars, transmission units, and other parts. Volvo's Hans Dalqvist was a proponent and taught APL to many engineers.

Staffan Persson at Stockholms Handelshøgskola was an APL enthusiast with an interest in decision tables, and Professor Carl-Erik Fröberg at Lund also became a fan and wrote a textbook on APL.

Finland

In 1969 IBM was also responsible for the introduction of APL to Finland: Erkki Juvonen of IBM became the APL ambassador to Finland in the early 70's -together with his son Arto. However, the most influential person was probably Tauno Ylinen from the ministry of Finance, who was on the board of the Finnish Computing Centre, which provided services to governmental institutions. He was a great advocate of APL, and the computing centre ran a large number of APL courses under his leadership. Several Finnish universities taught APL, including the Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi, where associate professor Lasse Hyvärinen lectured on "APL and its mathematical applications". Although Finland was a slow starter compared to Denmark and Sweden, Finland eventually became the Nordic country with the highest number of APL users per capita [START_REF] Paavola | Personal Communication[END_REF].

Norway

Ironically, despite Iverson's Norwegian roots, APL never really acquired a following in Norway. Possibly, the almost simultaneous creation of Simula by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Center had an impact.

3

How APL was Used

The 1970s -Timesharing

As mentioned above, most of the early uses of APL involved timesharing systems. IBM was naturally the first mover, but others quickly appeared on the scene. In Canada Ken Iverson and Roger Moore, who had worked on the first APL system for IBM, convinced Ian Sharp that APL timesharing was an exciting opportunity. In 1969, Scientific Time Sharing Corporation (STSC) was formed in the USA by other members of the APL implementation team, and an APL timesharing system was launched, hosted on I. P. Sharp Associates (IPSA)'s data centre in Toronto. Under the name APL*PLUS, the system added an "object store" for APL arrays, which allowed users to develop custom databases and other features needed by commercial applications. IPSA marketed the service in Canada and STSC in the USA until 1972, when STSC built a data centre of its own in the USA [START_REF]Scientific_ Time_Sharing_Corporation[END_REF].

In 1973 IPSA started offering timesharing in London, UK. The connection to Toronto used a multiplexed 4800bps channel, which was shared by clients who dialled in with 150 baud modems. Initially, the service was so poor that successful printing of an entire report was a rare occasion! By 1975, mainframes had evolved "frond end processors", and IPSA laid the foundations for IPSANET, one of the worlds' first packet-switched networks. Customers made local calls to one of the IPSA offices, connected to each other via leased lines. IPSANET quickly grew to 20 "nodes", and later peaked at around 300 in the early 90's. In some countries where IPSA was not represented, large clients hosted the nodes [START_REF] _P | _Sharp_Associates[END_REF].

It immediately became apparent that the network provided multi-national companies like Kodak and Xerox with an opportunity to input data to central data repositories, but IPSA also provided a MAILBOX system (written in APL, of course!), which provided clients and customers with global communications.

Clients typically developed their own software, representing their own business logic. There were virtually no software packages available, so not until 1973 did IBM start selling "Program Products". IPSA provided consultants to help clients develop software often heavily subsidised consulting, since application development was a bottleneck preventing the flow of timesharing revenue from new clients. As a result IPSA also accumulated a lot of knowledge about customer requirements, and by 1980 a number of applications were available "off the shelf": MABRA was an early database based on Codd's relational model from 1970. MAGIC was a domain specific language for time-series analysis, with complementary products like MAGICSTORE, a multidimensional time-series database and SUPERPLOT for business graphics.

Timesharing customers were typically large companies involved in manufacturing or other forms of international trade. Only banks and insurers could justify having computers of their own, since computing quickly became the means of production for these companies. APL was particularly useful to insurance companies, since almost all the calculations that they need to perform are based on matrices. Until packages for insurance math became readily available, APL was on the curriculum for many actuaries.

Timesharing was also used by public organisations, using shared data centres. In Denmark, ATP, which was formed in 1964, had a unique challenge: Registering pension contributions from all employees in Denmark was no easy task, using the hardware and operating systems of that age: They solved the problem by implementing their own database system in Assembler and using APL for most other tasks: reporting, analyses, statistics and investment strategy.

3.2

The 1980s -APL "In House"

In terms of market share, APL peaked in the eighties, with many companies using APL to manage their business. A variety of "midframes" became available, and many of them supported APL. Smaller and cheaper machines put pressure on IBM, who responded with the 4300 series, which was both cheap and reliable. Many clients took the opportunity to get off timesharing and run APL on their own computers.

IBM never made APL a Program Product, so it was not actively sold, but you could buy it. IPSA made SHARP APL available on the 4300 series, including all applications and connection to IPSANET so that worldwide subsidiaries could connect to headquarters as before. SHARP APL had extremely high performance and reliability, and the ability to perform backup/restore without taking the system down. STSC sold add-on file systems for IBM's APL, but not the APL system as such. However, STSC was the first company to address the other big development in the market -the first IBM PC. In 1982, APL*PLUS was released and was an immediate success on the new PC's.

In the eighties "shrink-wrapped" products appeared on the market: Accounting systems, word processors, database systems, and so on. Systems that had previously cost a small fortune to develop were now available at low cost for the PC or Unix workstations. However, large corporations were still running large, complex systems that could not immediately be replaced by these budding products, and there was a need to report on data collected from diverse sources. IBM provided Information Center products, to a large extent written in APL, which allowed large organisations to develop so-called User Service Centres.

In the early eighties IBM developed DB2. Oracle had released their RDBMS in 1979 and IBM needed a similar offering. Programming languages needed to evolve to match the new databases, and APL was no exception: Early APL could only support arrays containing either numbers or characters. In 1984, IBM introduced APL2, which supported nested arrays. Nested arrays allowed numbers and characters to be combined in the same array, which made it a good companion language for DB2. STSC, IPSA and many other vendors immediately followed suit.

Major Nordic APL Users in the 1980s

Most of the major banks in the Nordic countries used IBM mainframes for their production, capturing and storing all the various transactions which are the bread and butter for a bank. The databases where the data were kept were most often developed in-house and offered only the most rudimentary reporting facilities. With APL the users could access these data and analyse and report on them. IBM did offer a development tool which allowed the APL developers to make data from different sources available to the end-users who could then produce their own reports and calculations. Many of these applications had a striking similarity to the spreadsheets we all are used to today. The smaller banks organised themselves with joint data centres and developed their own reporting based on the repositories kept on the computers at the data centres.

Also insurance companies used APL to a large extent. Most actuarial calculations are table based and APL was a mandatory course at the actuarial studies and rumours has it that the language was named Actuarial Programming Language in those circles. Outside the financial sector Novo Nordisk used APL for pretty much everything. They had Sharp APL in-house on their 4300 and later on the larger 3090 machines with MVS and VM. They had a staff of a dozen APL programmers and used consultants extensively. They used MABRA (the SQL system from IPSA) for administrative purposes and, when the 3270 screens became available, its successor ViewPoint, which was an end user relational database and reporting tool which is, to this day, the most user friendly implementation of a SQL database the author has ever come across. They developed a clinical trial system, a batch control system, and their statistical libraries were renowned all over the world. They had implemented a sophisticated source code management system, which allowed them to share utility functions and basic functionality across developers and consultants and to version their software.

Under the management of the former airline captain Stig Eriksen, InWear managed planning, production and financial reporting using home-made software written in MIPS APL on PRIME minicomputers -which allowed them to become early adopters of just-in-time production.

B&O developed a management information system with interactive access from the boardroom and modelled the Beologic system in APL. In the transport sector, A. P. Møller used APL for management reporting and created Maersk Data who provided APL consulting. DSB used APL for planning and engineering. During this period a number of consulting companies thrived on APL. In Denmark, SimCorp and IPSA were the leaders, with Datema and Maersk Data also playing a role.

In Sweden Volvo continued their use of APL, and Sandvik built a design and production control system. Main consultancies were Cybex and Novator.

In Finland most governmental organisations based calculations on APL services from the Finnish Datacenter. Large corporations like Wärtsila had projects going on in APL. A Financial Statement Analysis application was created for Postipankki, which was downsized to PC in 1984 and is still in use by Finland's "Financial Times", Kauppalehti. Under Timo Seppäla, another Finnish proponent of APL, TMT-Team was a major consulting force, and also represented IPSA in Finland [START_REF] Paavola | Personal Communication[END_REF].

1990s -The Turn of the Tide

Microsoft Windows 3.1:

The IBM PC was introduced in 1981, but it was the release of Microsoft Windows 3.1 in 1992 that made personal computing outside the mainframe "take off". Windows put word processing, spreadsheets and (as the internet started to spread) e-mail on every desk (and a few homes), and challenged APL on several fronts:

• Spreadsheets immediately provided a cheap, accessible alternative to APL (for simple applications), with built-in presentation capabilities. • The new market encouraged the growth of new businesses which "commoditized" many of the solutions which APL had been used to prototype. • The APL users, who had happily been doing personal computing for a decade or two on the mainframe and had been able to produce state-of-the art applications with unique business content, were suddenly struggling to manage their own hardware and deal with an explosion of technical complexity.

IBM's support for APL faltered:

During the 1980s, APL's ability to deliver large amounts of CPU cycles and memory to analytical users had led to bad system performance on operating systems, which were core components of IBM's long-term plans. Most importantly on the systems designed for high volume transaction processing (CICS) and on early versions of TSO. Large parts of the IT community had decided that standardization on a single programming language for everything from systems programming to application development was a good idea, and C++ was the leading candidate. IT professionals firmly believed that end-users should stay away from application development, and often did what they could to sabotage any such activities. As a result, many APL applications were downsized to PCs or reimplemented. In many cases this resulted in a significant loss of functionality and flexibility, but the users typically had little influence on the decisions.

I. P. Sharp Associates was acquired by Reuters:

Reuters was a major client, and purchased IPSA (vulnerable in the face of crumbling timesharing revenue) for its collection of historical time-series databases with global currency, commodity, and stock market prices, that IPSA had accumulated over the previous decade. During the same period Reuters had broadcast this data but neglected to collect it, and now PCs had created a market for technical analysis based on the data. However, Reuters had no interest in continuing to sell APL language products. The removal of the two biggest corporate supporters of APL on the mainframe spelled the end of that era. Although quite a few systems are still running on mainframes today, most APL systems did move to PCs and workstations: costs were cut significantly, and APL consulting companies found themselves with a declining business. Having recognized the growing trend towards buying rather than developing software, many of these companies turned to software development themselves -and were able to use the experience gathered during the years of consulting to produce a number of excellent products. In the Nordic region, the best known examples of this are SimCorp A/S who developed a Treasury Management system known as SimCorp Dimension, and Adaytum Ltd., who developed Adaytum Planning, a budgeting and planning application, in Denmark in the late 1990s.

In the USA, STSC had managed to develop a successful PC product during the 1980s and continued as a successful, if reduced, APL vendor following the collapse of the timesharing and mainframe markets. In the UK Dyadic Systems Ltd, a consulting company, also saw the writing on the wall and decided to build their own APL for Unix in 1983. Dyadic immediately went bankrupt following the project, but the reconstructed company is now a major player (under the name Dyalog Ltd.). Also in the UK, MicroAPL Ltd produced a version for the Apple Macintosh.

3.5

The 2000s

In the "naughties", the evolution of professional IT infrastructure and professional IT staff continued. However, it was eventually recognized that excluding subject matter experts from the development process leads to many failed, expensive projects. The bulk of the efforts of the IT department had been spent on storing and retrieving data, but the retrieval was only really possible if it had been predicted by the so-called architects. As a result, much of the information about the business -which existed somewhere within the vast amounts of data collected --was left untouched, giving birth to the concept of the "Data Jail House".

It became clear that the software development methodologies adhered to by the so-called professionals were seriously flawed: Treating software development as a branch of engineering led to strictly componentized requirement gathering, analysis, design and implementation -with multiple communications gaps between the knowledgeable user and the programmer, who had to manifest the program logic. Big software projects always failed, were delayed or did not have the required functionality. The Standish Report documented that software projects with a labour cost of $1M had a success rate of 50%, and at $10M the success rate was zero.

In [START_REF] Beck | Extreme Programming Explained[END_REF] Extreme Programming Explained (1999) Kent Beck describes Extreme Programming as a set of rules for agile implementation of software, which puts the user at the centre of the development process in order to ensure, that the programmer is constantly aware of the requirements, and receives continuous feedback. With some exceptions, the use of APL closely follows the rules outlined in the above-mentioned work; APL users would claim to have invented them, although many of them have not demonstrated the discipline that Mr. Beck would demand.

During the 2000s, APL continued to be used in many areas where the ability to combine domain expertise with rapid development provides competitive advantage. Areas like Financial Analysis, Budgeting, Asset Management, Risk Analysis, Business Intelligence, Big Data analysis, Medical applications and big industry business logic. In the middle of the decade Adaytum Planning was sold to Cognos for $160M.

The Evolution of APL

Language

Most modern APL interpreters will run APL written in 1966. However, a number of evolutionary steps have added very significant new language features. The biggest step was the development of APL2 by IBM (1983), which also created a major split in the community: Ken Iverson disagreed so strongly with certain design decisions made by the team headed by Dr. James A. Brown that he left IBM for I. P. Sharp Associates, where he was responsible for an alternative design for nested arrays. This work was the precursor for what was later to become a new language J, which Iverson designed and implemented with Roger Hui after he retired from IPSA in 1987. Other milestones in APL language evolution include: 1995: Control structures (if/then/else) adopted by several vendors. 1996: Optional lexical scope and lambda expressions in APL ("dfns" -Dyalog APL). 2006: Object orientation (Dyalog, MicroAPL, VisualAPL). 2014: Point-free or "tacit" syntax (from J) adopted by first APL vendor (Dyalog). 2014: Futures and isolates for parallel programming (Dyalog).

Environment

APL started on mainframes in an era where every aspect of computing was in its infancy. At that time the system needed to drive a 24x80 monochrome screen, a printer, plus random-access, sequential-access and possibly a keyed index file system. Vendors like STSC and SHARP added commercial report formatting, batch sorting and an "array object store" which allowed any APL array to be written to permanent storage. The environment remained essentially the same on the minicomputers that became important APL platforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were APL systems for DEC, PRIME, Data General, and many more. Colour terminals and plotters with graphics capability and relational databases arrived on the scene, but the picture did not change much until the PC arrived.

As mentioned in section 3.4, the 1990s and early 2000s were a struggle for many APL users, as they were bombarded with a stream of new GUI APIs, security and other demands that made life as a combined domain-expert-and-programmer a challenge, following the serenity of the 70s and 80s. Vendors quickly focused on Microsoft Windows and created fairly usable Win32 GUI toolkits -but the API explosion in this dark period made it difficult to keep up, and APL lost significant market share.

The pace of hardware innovation has increased, with applications migrating to the web and to phones or tablets, and one might suspect that life for the APL user would therefore deteriorate. However, some of the technologies that have become widespread in the 2010s are helpful: through interfaces to Microsoft.NET, Java and HTML5/Javascript, APL vendors can once again provide APL users with usable interfaces for application development. The same interfaces make it straightforward to provide computational components written in APL as web servers or -services. Mod-ern platforms support functional, dynamic languages and array-oriented interfaces based on reflection -so the environment is generally more APL-friendly today.

5

Where is APL Today?

Current APL systems are modern, dynamic, multi-paradigm programming languages with a focus on functional array-oriented programming. They support 64-bit addressing and unlimited array sizes, and thanks to Unicode the special symbols required in APL source files are no longer an issue. Modern APL remains a tool of thought for expressing ideas to a computer -or to other humans. It is most useful when the domain expertise of the user is important for the outcome of the development efforts, and where constant change is a condition. Given the complexity of modern computing environments, successful APL teams usually embed a few software engineering experts to provide assistance with interfacing tasks or other technical issues.

Examples of current uses of APL include: The world's largest Patient Journal system in use is the TakeCare system used in Stockholms Län in Sweden. More than 2.5M patients and 45,000 users -250,000 look-ups every day with sub-second response time.

APL-based research is being done in the emerging Bio Informatics area. In one example, APL's ability to handle large arrays helps researchers analyze genome data with an ultimate goal of creating personalized medicine. Another new APL-based application provides a visual data-mining tool for repositories of clinical data, to help identify correlations previously hidden in the data.

In Finland many governmental institutions still use APL for their analysis and reporting. Statistics Finland has created an end user application which helps organize statistical data for presentation. This application is part of an exchange of software between statistical bureaux worldwide and is used in more than 60 countries.

In South Africa an APL-based smartphone app allows small businesses and individuals to quickly forecast the viability of a business idea and its funding options.

Another Finnish application was the winner of the "Impress" category in the 2013 "apps4finland" competition: The Stormwind simulator is a stunningly realistic boat simulator intended to teach navigation and sailing -written in APL.

Asset Management and Risk Analysis will continue to be a sweet spot for APL, because financial markets are always in a state of flux. The value of being able to react to market changes with software, or model the impact of new legislation before it takes effect, is enormous -so companies like SimCorp will continue to use APL.

Summary

The story of APL is very much a story of end-user computing. The fact that APL was created with the purpose of teaching and communicating ideas, and that this quality was preserved during its implementation as an executable notation without detailing the operations of the computer, means that new ideas can easily be applied on a computer by the inventor.

The recent realisation that successful software implementation depends on close user involvement has been successfully proven by APL users through the last 50 years. Not only have the users been closely involved -they have been implementing their own solutions, and they will continue to spearhead new developments for the next 50 years.

mathematics, and when he left the service, it was with a promise to his counsellors and mates that he would pursue an academic career in Mathematics.

After his Masters degree in Mathematics from Harvard in 1951, he did doctoral work under Howard Aiken and Wassily Leontief -who later received the Nobel Prize in Economics.