Applied Data Research (ADR) was a large

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

vendor from the 1960s until the mid-1980s. ADR is often described as "the first

independent software vendor An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house software, ...

Founded in 1959, ADR was originally a contract development company. ADR eventually built a series of its own products. ADR's widely used major packages included: Autoflow for automatic flowcharting, Roscoe, MetaCOBOL, an extensible macro processor for the

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

language, and Librarian for source-code management. ADR later purchased the

Datacom/DB Datacom/DB is a relational database management system for mainframe computers. It was developed in the early 1970s by Computer Information Management Company and was subsequently owned by Insyte, Applied Data Research, Ameritech, and Computer ...

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

from Insyte Datacom and developed the companion product, IDEAL (Interactive Development Environment for an Application’s Life), a

fourth-generation programming language A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is any computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations ai ...

. Another popular ADR product was ''The Librarian'', a

version control system In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

for IBM mainframe operating systems, now known as CA Librarian. In 1978, it was reported that ''The Librarian'' was in use at over 3,000 sites; by a decade later that number had doubled.

First software patent

ADR received the first

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

issued for a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

, a sorting system, on April 23, 1968. The program was developed by Martin A. Goetz.

ADR IBM lawsuit

ADR instigated litigation in Federal Court against IBM''The Washington Post'', April 23, 1969, Dow Jones News Service, "Suit Against IBM Charges Violations", p. D9 with accusations that IBM was "retarding the growth of the independent software industry" and "monopolizing the software industry", leading to IBM's famous unbundling of software and services in 1969. In 1970, ADR and Programmatics, a

wholly owned subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company (law), company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company ...

of ADR, received an out-of-court settlement of $1.4 million from IBM. IBM also agreed to serve as a supplier of Autoflow, which meant another potential $600,000 in revenues for ADR.

Dispute with Nixdorf

ADR licensed DATACOM/DB to TCSC, a firm which sold modified versions of IBM's DOS/360 and

DOS/VS Disk Operating System/360, also DOS/360, or simply DOS, is the discontinued first member of a sequence of operating systems for IBM System/360, System/370 and later mainframes. It was announced by IBM on the last day of 1964, and it was first d ...

operating systems, known as

Edos Edos is a discontinued operating system based upon IBM's original mainframe DOS (not to be confused with the unrelated and better known MS-DOS for the IBM PC). The name stood for extended (or enhanced) disk operating system. It was later purchase ...

. When, in 1980,

Nixdorf Computer Nixdorf Computer AG was a West German computer company founded by Heinz Nixdorf in 1952. Headquartered in Paderborn, Germany, it became the fourth largest computer company in Europe, and a worldwide specialist in banking and point-of-sale syst ...

bought TCSC, Nixdorf sought to continue the licensing arrangement; ADR and NCSC went to court in a dispute over whether the licensing arrangement was terminated by the acquisition. ADR and Nixdorf settled out of court in 1981, with an agreement that Nixdorf could continue to resell ADR's products.

Corporate history

ADR bought

Massachusetts Computer Associates Massachusetts Computer Associates (originally just Computer Associates), also known as COMPASS, was a software company founded by Thomas Edward Cheatham Jr. and based in Wakefield, Massachusetts from approximately 1961 to 1991, focusing primarily o ...

, also known as Compass, in the late 1960s. ADR was sold to

Ameritech AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the se ...

in 1986 and was kept intact as a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

. In 1988 Ameritech sold ADR to

Computer Associates CA Technologies, formerly known as CA, Inc. and Computer Associates International, Inc., is an American multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is primarily known for its business-to-business (B2B) software with a product po ...

(unrelated to Massachusetts Computer Associates; subsequently rename CA Technologies ). Computer Associates integrated the company into its Systems Products Division and new Information Products Division.Applied Data Research, Software Products Division Records, 1959-1987

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota.

Roscoe

Roscoe (Remote OS Conversational Operating Environment, originally marketed as ''ROSCOE'', last marketed as CA-Roscoe) was a software product for IBM Mainframes. It is a

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

and also provides some operating system functionality such as the ability to submit batch jobs similar to

ISPF In computing, Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) is a software product for many historic IBM mainframe operating systems and currently the z/OS and z/VM operating systems that run on IBM mainframes. It includes a screen editor, the us ...

XEDIT XEDIT is a visual editor for VM/CMS using block mode IBM 3270 terminals. (Line-mode terminals are also supported.) XEDIT is much more line-oriented than modern PC and Unix editors. For example, XEDIT supports automatic line numbers, and ma ...

Overview

The ability to support 200+ concurrent active users and still have low overhead is based on a Single address space architecture.

RPF

The RPF (Roscoe Programming Facility) is a

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...

with string processing capability.

References

{{reflist

External links

www.softwarehistory.org – Martin A. Goetz, "How ADR Got Into the Software Products Business and Found Itself Competing Against IBM" (1998)

Oral history interview with Martin Goetz

, University of Minnesota.
''Software Memories''
– Some basic facts about ADR

(ADR held the first USA software patent) Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1959 Electronics companies established in 1959 CA Technologies Command shells Text editors