MAPPER Systems, now known as Business Information Server, BIS, is a fourth-generation programming language originally from Sperry Univac.
[3][1] Originally available on Sperry's Univac 1108, implementations now also exist for Windows NT, Sun Solaris and Linux.
The concept of MAPPER was conceived by Louis Schlueter in 1967 and presented in a whitepaper in February 1968 entitled 418 Report Processing System to management and accepted for development immediately.
Three developers (Bill Grey, Louis Schlueter and Chuck Hanson) began coding under another budget that was initially approved for a different project.
Under Sperry Corp, a MAPPER System Controlled eight Factories, proving Major Application Design by USERS.
The MAPPER system supported over 1,300 applications, 99 percent of which were designed by non DP (Data Processing Department e.g. the old programming methods) users.
Average MAPPER system response times for the manual functions and RUN executions was ~ 0.4 seconds.
Besides the MAPPER service, background batch COBOL applications and transaction processing were also done on the mainframe system.
MAPPER Systems were translated in 15 languages, including Chinese and Japanese (which was expanded to 23 in total) and installed worldwide in a customer base worth over $3 Billion.
This blocked access to the example of the $3 Billion Installed, International, MAPPER System Customer Base.
Its story is a strong testimony and example to the efficiency and potential of well promoted and coordinated, user-designed computing, Real-Time Report Processing System services.
MAPPER was so easy to learn and use that many users became "RUN" developers who created applications that ran all their data processing requirements.
It is usual to have sets of similar reports with the same column structure that apply to different categories or groupings of items.
Drawer A is typically used for "quick and dirty" temporary datasets, captured data, prototype run code, notes, documentation and so on.
Within an individual drawer, reports all have the same line length, which is padded with spaces or tab characters to move you through the data for record input or modification.
[citation needed] (Even if used on a PC and the CPU is at 100%, due to the skinny code it produces a second response on a search of over 1 million records.
Popular commands are "Search" to make a subset, "Sort" to change the sequence of lines, "Totalize" to generate subtotals by type, category or date.
Two independent reports can be combined with "Match", while very sophisticated commands like "Calculate and Update" include successive steps in one operation.
In the operation of MAPPER, the data is not obtained by a program that "reads" them, but waits for user action, aside from background jobs.
The first of these, mandated by the Santa Fe Railroad, was a repeat command capability, called a "Run", and similar in concept to an Excel macro.
The "Run language" uses scripted forms of normal screen commands on the reports (e.g. the manual SORT and the run-language element @SOR will invoke the same compiled re-entrant code module).
It also has the capacity to perform calculations or base processing logic on any character or data field in the entire database.
MAPPER can run websites with its own .asp front end, has an integrated JavaScript engine, can produce XML for B2B, and is able to manipulate SOAP objects.