DIBOL or Digital's Business Oriented Language is a
general-purpose,
procedural
Procedural may refer to:
* Procedural generation, a term used in computer graphics applications
*Procedural knowledge, the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task
* Procedural law, a legal concept
*Procedural memory, a cognitive scienc ...
,
imperative programming language, designed for use in
Management Information Systems (MIS) software development.
It has a syntax similar to
FORTRAN and
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 ...
, along with
BCD arithmetic. It shares the
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 ...
program structure of separate data and procedure divisions. Unlike Fortran's numeric labels (for GOTO), DIBOL's were alphanumeric;
the language supported a counterpart to computed goto.
History
DIBOL was originally marketed by
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1970.
The original version, DIBOL-8, was produced for
PDP-8 systems running
COS-300. The PDP-8-like
DECmate II, supports the COS-310 Commercial Operating System, featuring DIBOL.
DIBOL-11 was developed for the
PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
running COS-350 operating system. It also ran on RSX-11, RT-11, and from 1978 on
RSTS/E. DIBOL-32 runs on
VMS #REDIRECT VMS
{{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...
systems,
although it can also be used on other systems through
emulators.
ANSI Standards were released in 1983, 1988 and 1992 (ANSI X3.165-1992). The 1992 standard was revised in 2002.
DIBOL compilers were developed by several other companies, including
DBL from DISC (later Synergex), Softbol from Omtool, and Unibol from Software Ireland, Ltd. Development of DIBOL effectively ceased after 1993, when an agreement between DEC and DISC replaced DIBOL with
DBL on
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 Ope ...
,
Digital UNIX, and
SCO Unix.
An alternative
Rather than code either DIBOL or COBOL, an alternative was to use
Business Controls Corporation's SB-5 package, which could generate
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 ...
code for the
PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
,
DECsystem-10/
DECSYSTEM-20.
or
VAX, including an option for COBOL inserts and overrides.
See also
*
Timeline of programming languages
References
External links
Synergex DIBOL site
Reading
*
*
{{Digital Equipment Corporation
Procedural programming languages
OpenVMS software
Programming languages created in 1970
Programming languages
Digital Equipment Corporation