GDDM (Graphical Data Display Manager) is a

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

system for the IBM

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the IBM System/360, System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migrati ...

which was developed in

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's Hursley lab, and first released in 1979. GDDM was originally designed to provide programming support for the

IBM 3279 The IBM 3270 is a family of block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971 and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text c ...

colour display terminal and the associated 3287 colour printer. The 3279 was a colour graphics terminal designed to be used in a general business environment. GDDM was extended in the early 1980s to provide graphics support for all of IBM's display terminals and printers, and ran on all of IBM's mainframe operating systems. GDDM also provided support for the (then current) international standards for interactive computer graphics: GKS and

PHIGS PHIGS (Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System) is an application programming interface (API) standard for rendering 3D computer graphics, considered to be the 3D graphics standard for the 1980s through the early 1990s. Subsequently, ...

. Both GKS and PHIGS were designed around the requirements of

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

systems. GDDM is also available on the IBM i midrange operating system, as well as its predecessor, the AS/400. GDDM comprises a number of components: * Graphics primitives - lines, circles, boxes etc. * Graphing - through the Presentation Graphics Feature (PGF) * Language support -

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...

REXX Rexx (restructured extended executor) is a high-level programming language developed at IBM by Mike Cowlishaw. Both proprietary and open-source software, open source Rexx interpreter (computing), interpreters exist for a wide range of comput ...

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 ...

etc. * Conversion capabilities - for example to GIF format. * Interactive Chart Utility (ICU). GDDM remains in widespread use today, embedded in many

z/OS z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest: ...

applications, as well as in system programs.

GDDM and OS/2 Presentation Manager

IBM and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

began collaborating on the design of

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

in 1986. The Graphics Presentation Interface (GPI), the graphics

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

in the OS/2

Presentation Manager Presentation Manager (PM) is the graphical user interface (GUI) that International Business Machines, IBM and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in late 1988. History Microsoft began developing a graphic user inter ...

, was based on IBM's GDDM and the Graphics Control Program (GCP). GCP was originally developed in Hursley for the 3270/PC-G and 3270/PC-GX terminals. The GPI was the primary graphics

for the

operating system. At the time (1980s), the

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) was still in its early stages of popularity, but already it was clear that the foundation of a good GUI was a graphics API with strong ''real-time interactive'' capabilities. Unfortunately, the design of GDDM was closer to (at the time) traditional graphics APIs like GKS, which made it unsuited for more than the simplest interactive uses. Microsoft and IBM went their separate ways in 1991. Microsoft continued development of its

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 ...

operating environment with

Graphics Device Interface The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is a legacy component of Microsoft Windows responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. It was superseded by DirectDraw API and later ...

(GDI) graphics API. IBM continued with OS/2 for several more years.

References

* Charles Petzold, '' Programming the OS/2 Presentation Manager'', Microsoft Press, 1989. {{ISBN, 1-55615-170-5.

External links

announcement of 3279 and 3287.

GDDM Programming Guide
Graphics software OS/2

Graphical Data Display Manager GDDM (Graphical Data Display Manager) is a computer graphics system for the IBM System/370 which was developed in IBM's Hursley lab, and first released in 1979. GDDM was originally designed to provide programming support for the IBM 3279 colour di ...

IBM mainframe software