INP (pronounced "imp") is a

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 ...

including forms processing data entry. It consists of over fifty utility programs for database access and support, batch updating, and report generation. It was developed by Bob Tidd at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

in 1976, and predated many of the commercial and opensource databases in use today. It is still in use on a wide variety of systems at the University and associated institutions.

Features

An INP database may contain up to 100K records of up to 1024 characters (expandable). Up to ten

database index A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without ...

es are allowed. They are btrees of no more than three levels. Databases must contain fixed length records, but some utilities handle variable length, delimited field records. A newline (RETURN) character at the end of each record makes INP databases accessible to the entire array of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

utilities, including editors, sort, grep, awk, etc. In the data entry and update program, each data field is displayed separately on the screen with a descriptive label. Fields may be skipped during entry or duplicated from the previous record. INP validates each data field as it is entered. Validation types vary from simple alphabetic/numeric through ranges of numbers to tables of all allowable values. If a field is incorrect INP displays the validation criteria, beeps, and returns you to the start of the offending field. A mechanism exists to override validation checks. An optional audit trail of changes is maintained for reference and recovery. The database access program is already compiled. It reads database description files at run time. The record layout and validation criteria are specified in one

schema The word schema comes from the Greek word ('), which means ''shape'', or more generally, ''plan''. The plural is ('). In English, both ''schemas'' and ''schemata'' are used as plural forms. Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA ...

file. The specifications for the screen displays are entered into format files. Both are created by the user with any text editor. A variety of formats may be created to view or update different parts of a database record. INP is implemented on the

DEC VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...

and

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold ...

under BSD Unix or

ULTRIX Ultrix (officially all-caps ULTRIX) is the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) discontinued native Unix operating systems for the PDP-11, VAX, MicroVAX and DECstations. History The initial development of Unix occurred on DEC equi ...

. Versions are available for

SunOS SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 and ...

and

Onyx Onyx primarily refers to the parallel banded variety of chalcedony, a silicate mineral. Agate and onyx are both varieties of layered chalcedony that differ only in the form of the bands: agate has curved bands and onyx has parallel bands. The c ...

. Several operators can simultaneously access or update information in the same database file. Typists and others with little data processing experience find INP easy to use, and they usually become comfortable with the computer related processes rapidly. Like most editors, INP has many command options, but the basic few are easily learned. INP is very forgiving, helpful and bulletproof about data entry and command errors.

Applicability

INP can be used for any small to medium database or data entry task. Basic applications of INP can be designed and implemented by persons familiar with Unix and the text editor, but without programming experience. INP has two powerful sets of options. The elf package allows user supplied coded functions (in the

C programming language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well a ...

) for special validation and arbitrarily complex operations including forked programs to occur when various INP commands are requested by the operator. This opens up "sky's the limit" possibilities for projects implemented using INP. INP comes with an extensive library of functions, including the keyed database access package, which can be incorporated into custom applications.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Introduction to the INP database system

UC Berkeley homepage for Robert Tidd
1976 software Proprietary database management systems