IBM Office/36 explained
Office/36 was a suite of applications marketed by IBM from 1983 to 2000 for the IBM System/36 family of midrange computers. IBM announced its System/36 Office Automation (OA) strategy in 1985.[1]
Office/36 could be purchased in its entirety, or piecemeal. Components of Office/36 include:[2] [3] [4]
- IDDU/36, the Interactive Data Definition Utility.
- Query/36, the Query utility.
- DisplayWrite/36,[5] a word processing program.
- Personal Services/36, a calendaring system and an office messaging utility.
Query/36 was not quite the same as SQL, but it had some similarities, especially the ability to very rapidly create a displayed recordset from a disk file. Note that SQL, also an IBM development, had not been standardized prior to 1986.
DisplayWrite/36, in the same category as Microsoft Word, had online dictionaries and definition capabilities, and spell-check, and unlike the standard S/36 products, it would straighten spillover text and scroll in real time.
Considerable changes were required to S/36 design to support Office/36 functionality, not the least of which was the capability to manage new container objects called "folders" and produce multiple extents to them on demand. Q/36 and DW/36 typically exceeded the 64K program limit of the S/36, both in editing and printing, so using Office products could heavily impact other applications. DW/36 allowed use of bold, underline, and other display formatting characteristics in real time.
Notes and References
- Wohl. Amy. IBM whets OA mart appetites, but when will it deliver?. 19. 17 June 1985. IDG. 41. 0010-4841. 24. Computerworld.
- Web site: System/36 Integrated office applications. IBM Corporation. G580-0454-5.
- News: BellSouth Advanced Systems announces marketing agreement with IBM . The Southern Herald . Liberty, Mississippi . May 23, 1985. 120. 6 . 3 . Business applications for IBM's System/36 integrated office applications include: word processing, electronic mail, messaging and information distribution; merging of text and data; communications and distributed data processing; and business graphics .
- Book: Durr . Michael. Walker. Dwayne . Micro to mainframe: creating an integrated environment . Addison-Wesley Longman . 1985 . 166 . 0201111551 . PS/36 is part of a total System 36 integrated office support plan. In conjunction with PS/36, DisplayWrite/36 is offered for word processing and Query/36 is provided for datafile manipulation. Much as PS/370 does, PS/36 offers advanced office solutions such as electronic document distribution, calendar management, directory support, and group processing. .
- IBM's ad hoc strategy. 26 May 1986. IDG. 3. 12. 34. 0887-7661. Network World.