Filetab is a

decision table Decision tables are a concise visual representation for specifying which actions to perform depending on given conditions. Decision table is the term used for a Control table or State-transition table in the field of Business process modeling; ...

-based computer

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

widely used in business in the 1960s and 1970s.

History

Filetab has a long history, originally designed in the late 1960s and descended from the DETAB programming. Filetab was developed by the

National Computing Centre The National Computing Centre (NCC) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation in the United Kingdom. After the original organisation was liquidated in 2010, Redholt Limited changed its name to the National Compu ...

(NCC) and originally used on ICL

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s such as GEORGE 2/3 and VME, but ported to a large number of others. The original architect of Filetab was Tom Barnard, who developed the program (LITA - LIst and TAbulate) for

Morgan Crucible Morgan Advanced Materials plc is a company which manufactures specialist products, using carbon, advanced ceramics and composites. The group is headquartered in Windsor, United Kingdom, and has 60 sites worldwide. It is listed as public limit ...

when employed by them as a programmer on an ICL 1902 from 1965–1968. Its purpose was to produce simple ad hoc reports similar to those created with a

plugboard A plugboard or control panel (the term used depends on the application area) is an array of jack (connector), jacks or sockets (often called hubs) into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are som ...

on a

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

tabulator, bypassing the necessity to write an

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

program in

PLAN A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an Goal, objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a modal logic, temporal set (mathematics), set of intended actions through wh ...

. It required only a few cards to specify the input and output formats, headings, sequencing and totalling. LITA could not be described as a programming language as it only required run-time parameters indicating field types and locations in records and no compilation. In those days there was no concern by Morgan's regarding ownership or copyright when Barnard left to further develop the software as Filetab. In 2009 facing financial difficulty NCC sold the rights to Filetab to a newly formed company "NCC Filetab Limited". The Managing Director of NCC Filetab Limited was also the Managing Director of NCC at this time, although NCC Filetab Limited, despite the similarity of its name, was not owned by NCC. In 2010 NCC was declared insolvent and was liquidated.

Variants

Versions produced include: * TABN for

ICL 1900 series ICT 1900 was a family of mainframe computers released by International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and later International Computers Limited (ICL) during the 1960s and 1970s. The 1900 series was notable for being one of the few non-American ...

mainframes * TAB-360 for

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

(also known as DETAB-360) * UNITAB for

UNIVAC UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...

* HTAB for

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

* TAB-11 for

RSTS/E RSTS () is a multi-user time-sharing operating system developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC, now part of Hewlett-Packard) for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers. The first version of RSTS (RSTS-11, #Versions, Version 1) was implem ...

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

* FTL6 for ICT 1900 series * DTPL for ICT 1900 series – slightly different from FTL6 * RPL-11 for

RT-11 RT-11 (Real-time 11) is a discontinued small, low-end, single-user real-time operating system for the full line of Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 16-bit computers. RT-11 was first implemented in 1970. It was widely used for real-time compu ...

RSX-11 RSX-11 is a discontinued family of multi-user real-time operating systems for PDP-11 computers created by Digital Equipment Corporation. In widespread use through the late 1970s and early 1980s, RSX-11 was influential in the development of later ...

on PDP-11 * RPL-3 for

IBM System/3 The IBM System/3 was an IBM midrange computer introduced in 1969, and marketed until 1985. It was produced by IBM Rochester in Minnesota as a low-end business computer aimed at smaller organizations that still used IBM 1400 series computers or u ...

* Filetab-D for

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

and PDP-11 * FPL - Fast programming Language. Written in 8086 Assembler for IBM PCs and compatibles. (Released in 1986). Written by Kevin Powis. * Rapid-Expert and expertGenius extended syntax for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user 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, a ...

and

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

* RapidGen compiler and FILETAB legacy converters for Windows, Unix and OpenVMS A

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

version was produced in 2001, which although free to use was not Open Source and licensed under the

GPL The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...

, drawing some criticism from the Open Source Software Community.''"Last year the Grand-daddy of report-writing products was ported to Linux..."''
, Michael Gough

References

{{reflist

External links

RapidGen Software
For Windows, Unix and OpenVMS versions of Filetab development tools
Filetab Developers Guide
2001, NCC ICL programming languages