Computers: Universe: About Universe

UniVerse is one of a family of Database Management Systems descended from a product called PICK.

In the late sixties, the improbably named Dick Pick, founder of Pick Systems Inc., was developing systems for the American armed forces. He designed the remarkably intuitive and practical system which he gave his name. Sadly, Dick died recently.

His achievement became one of the IT industries best kept secrets: widely used by a remarkably loyal user community, but unheard of outside its own customer base. This was despite a number of companies seizing upon PICK's basic design as being suitable for their own databsae products. McDonnel Douglas, the aviation giant with a strong IT arm, produce a version known as 'Reality'. The French IN2 company cleverly called theirs 'IN2'. Prime Computer Inc., now a subsidiary of Computervision, released first 'Prime INFORMATION' and then 'PI/OPEN'. Cosmos developed an excellent DOS based product for PC's called 'Revelation' (and latterly 'Advanced Revelation' for Windows), and of course VMark brought the first Unix implementation to market in the form of UniVerse.

PICK was originally a complete operating system, running the machine it was installed on: and some of its derivatives took the same form. However, this tended to limit the customers in the use of their hardware, and it must be admitted that whatever PICK's strengths as a DBMS, it was a clunky operating system. When Prime released their product, they implemented it under their existing operating system, but as this was the remarkable but still proprietary 'PRIMOS' it was not a huge step forward in open systems. Cosmos and later VMark capitalised on this weakness by providing PICK-like products for the world's two most popular platforms: DOS/Windows based PC's and Unix based servers and mini-computers.

VMark adopted an agressive marketing position, selling UniVerse not only as a candidate for the development of new corporate systems, but also as an escape route to users of other PICK systems previously wedded to particular hardware manufacturers. By allowing them to port their systems, and the investment those systems contained, to a ubiquituous Unix platform, they hoped to win business from the enormous base of existing PICK clients. In this, they achieved considerable success. It is for this reason that when creating UniVerse 'accounts' (see UniVerse and UNIX below), you are offered different 'flavours' of the product, compatible with what is sometimes called 'generic' PICK, Prime INFORMATION, Reality, IN2, and PI/OPEN, as well as VMark's own synthesis of the best elements of each (in their view) which they christened 'IDEAL'.