DPCX (Distributed Processing Control eXecutive) was an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

for the

IBM 8100 The IBM 8100 Information System, announced Oct. 3, 1978, was at one time IBM’s principal distributed processing engine, providing local processing capability under two incompatible operating systems ( DPPX and DPCX) and was a follow-on to the ...

small computer system. IBM hoped it would help their installed base of

IBM 3790 The IBM 3790 Communications System was one of the first distributed computing platforms. The 3790 was developed by IBM's Data Processing Division (DPD) and announced in 1974. It preceded the IBM 8100, announced in 1979. It was designed to be insta ...

customers migrate to the 8100 and the DPPX operating system. It was mainly deployed to support a

word processing A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

system, ''Distributed Office Support Facility'' (DOSF) which was derived from the earlier IBM 3730 word processing system. Like DPPX, it was written in the

PL/S PL/S, short for Programming Language/Systems, is a "machine-oriented" programming language based on PL/I. It was developed by IBM in the late 1960s, under the name Basic Systems Language (BSL), as a replacement for assembly language on internal ...

-like PL/DS language. The applications, including much of DOSF, however, were written an interpreted language that was "compiled" using the

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a model range of IBM mainframe computers announced on June 30, 1970, as the successors to the System/360 family. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path ...

assembler macro facility. The 8100/DPCX/DOSF system was the first type of distributed system to connect to the IBM Distributed Office Support System (DISOSS) running on data host.IBM Red Book DISOSS Later versions of DISOSS relied on SNA Distribution System (

SNADS SNADS or Systems Network Architecture Distribution Services is an "asynchronous distribution service that can store data for delayed delivery." SNADS uses SNA data links to allow messages and objects to be sent from system to system using the AP ...

) and eventually became

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

communication of documents which complied with

Document Interchange Architecture A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...

(DIA) and

Document Content Architecture Document Content Architecture, or DCA for short, is a standard developed by IBM for text documents in the early 1980s. DCA was used on mainframe and IBM i systems, and formed the basis of DisplayWrite's file format. DCA was later extended as MO ...

(DCA) as other types of distributed system gained DISOSS support – Scanmaster,

Displaywriter The IBM 6580 Displaywriter System is a 16-bit microcomputer that was marketed and sold by IBM's Office Products Division primarily as a word processor. Announced in June 1980 and effectively withdrawn from marketing in July 1986, the system was s ...

, and 5520 Office System.

References

8100 DPCX {{Operating-system-stub