IBM's Cross System Product (CSP) was an
application generator
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools an ...
intended to create online systems on IBM's mainframe platforms. Introduced in 1981,
CSP consisted of a set of
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
generators that allowed developers to interactively define, test, generate, and execute application
programs. CSP was composed of two products:
*Cross System Product/Application Development (CSP/AD) - development environment.
*Cross System Product/Application Execution (CSP/AE) - runtime environment.
CSP version 3 was released in 1986 with extended functions:
*
DB2 support in
CICS
IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.
CICS family products ...
/OS/VS and
MVS
Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. IBM developed MVS, along with OS/VS1 and SVS, as a successor to OS/360. It is unrelated ...
/
TSO environment
*
SQL/DS support in
VSE and
VM/SP
VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers.
The following versions ...
environment
*
MVS/XA
Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. IBM developed MVS, along with OS/VS1 and SVS, as a successor to OS/360. It is unrelated ...
(31bit addressing) support
The 1987
SAA announcement cast doubt on IBM's commitment to CSP – it "wasn't silent on CSP; it dismembered it.".
The last version of CSP, version 4.1, went out of support at the end of 2001.
In 1994 IBM released a successor product called VisualGen which incorporated "the ability to develop client/server applications (particularly the addition of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) to applications), the ability to access data from non-IBM vendors’ data stores, and the ability to execute application in operating environments beyond the mainframe." In 1996 this product was again renamed to
VisualAge Generator.
VisualAge Generator was withdrawn from service in 2009 and succeeded by Rational Business Developer.
See also
*
Rational Software
Rational Machines is an enterprise founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development. It changed its ...
References
Fourth-generation programming languages
IBM mainframe software
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