IMAGE 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 ...

(DBMS) developed by

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

and included with the

HP 3000 The HP 3000 series is a family of 16-bit and 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard. It was designed to be the first minicomputer with full support for time-sharing in the hardware and the operating system, features that had mostly been limite ...

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

. It was the primary reason for that platform's success in the market. It was also sometimes referred to as IMAGE/3000 in its initial release, and later versions were known as TurboIMAGE, and TurboIMAGE/XL after the

PA-RISC PA-RISC is an instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard. As the name implies, it is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, where the PA stands for Precision Architecture. The design is also referred to as ...

migration. IMAGE is based on the

network database The network model is a database model conceived as a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. Its distinguishing feature is that the schema, viewed as a graph in which object types are nodes and relationship types are arcs, ...

model, in contrast to most modern systems which are based on the

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

model. A SQL (Structured Query Language) front-end processor was later added, offering users the ability to run SQL queries on existing databases. This produced IMAGE/SQL, the current name.

Overview

IMAGE consists of several utilities along with an API (referred to as "intrinsics" by the HP documentation): * DBSCHEMA - Compile a source schema layout. The source layout describes the tables (known as SETS) and columns (known as FIELDS). * DBUTIL - Creates and performs maintenance functions on the database. * QUERY - Generalized query tool for accessing any TurboIMAGE database. The following is a sample list of the

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

calls used for application development. These calls are supported by HP's compilers:

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 ...

, FORTRAN,

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

, SPL,

PASCAL Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

and C. * DBFIND - Locates a record. * DBGET - Retrieves a record. * DBPUT - Adds a record. * DBUPDATE - Updates a record. * DBINFO - Provides information on the structure of the database. * DBOPEN - Opens the database with a specified password to provide access rights to the application.

History

The significant highlights of IMAGE are: * Originally released as IMAGE/3000 around 1972 as a $10,000 option, but later included free as part of the MPE operating system. * Bundled with the HP Precision Architecture Computers as HP ALLBASE for both HP-UX and MPE/XL operating systems. * Several

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 ...

products (Powerhouse, Transact, Speedware, Protos) became available from third party vendors. * New capabilities were added including the increase of storage capacity and increase of several internal limitations such as the number of SETS allowed in a database. IMAGE/3000 was renamed TurboIMAGE due to these new capabilities. * HP provided a Third Party Interface (TPI) to DISC's OMNIDEX and Bradmark's SUPERDEX products. * HP announced the end of life for the HP3000 which included TurboIMAGE. * Marxmeier released Eloquence which is schema and API compatible with TurboIMAGE and allows TurboIMAGE applications to run on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Ser ...

. * Stromasys released an HP3000 emulator allowing TurboIMAGE applications to be run on commodity hardware.

External links

* http://www.robelle.com/library/smugbook/image.html
HP Computer Museum 3000 Series II Documentation
- 1976 Image manual PDF * http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1986-12.pdf - Hewlett-Packard Journal "Data Base Management for HP Precision Architecture Computers" Proprietary database management systems {{Database-software-stub