DEC World, Boston, MA, 1992

Every year Digital had a exposition of its developments and products called DEC World. In 1992 we took some of what we had learned in the DADS-TIMS project and applied it using a prototype multi-media database that Digital had developed. The result was shown at the first stop in the "Innovation Showcase"  It met many of the requirements of  the TIMS concepts: an open system, networked, using multiple platforms. Included were Unix (Ultrix) , VMS, Win/Dos and Mac OS.

	Critical to a distributed database is networking, along with the ability to use standard transports and protocols. The middle monitor at the top of the booth was a graphic monitor of network activity.
The design of the user interface was given a high priority. Within a windowing environment a query window allowed the user to look for a particular artist, composer, label or composition. The main machines were DEC-5000's running Ultrix (Unix) and the graphic environment was Motif (X-windows)
If the query was successful, the user made a selection and a drop down window opened with additional information. Across the top was a menu bar, which in addition to the expected menu items included play. This started the selection playing.
Well, not always. If the selection was owned, you might have to agree to pay for the usage before you could play it.
There was a menu option that allowed you to view the copyright information of your selection. This was a link to a "legacy database".
While this was going on a VMS machine kept track of the traffic.
If you agreed to pay for a selection a Mac displayed the transaction,
and a PC displayed holdings information for the various networked sites. This work all occurred before the "World Wide Web".  HTTP was in discussion and the source for a "browser", Mosaic had just become available.