Interview with Charles W

An interview with Charles W. Bachman1 OH XXX Conducted by Thomas Haigh On 25-26 September, 2004 Tucson, Arizona Interview conducted for the Special Interest Group on the Management of Data (SIGMOD) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Transcript and original tapes donated to the Charles Babbage Institute. Charles Babbage Institute Center for the History of Information Processing University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Copyright 2004, Charles Babbage Institute 1 The transcript has been edited by Thomas Haigh, and subsequently edited and clarified by Charlie Bachman, his wife, Connie Bachman, and Russ McGee, who was a major player in the following story. Charles W. Bachman, Oral History with Thomas Haigh 2 ABSTRACT Charles W. Bachman reviews his career. Born during 1924 in Kansas, Bachman attended high school in East Lansing, Michigan before joining the Army Anti Aircraft Artillery Corp, with which he spent two years in the Southwest Pacific Theater, during World War II. After his discharge from the military, Bachman earned a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 1948, followed immediately by an M.Sc. in the same discipline, from the University of Pennsylvania. On graduation, he went to work for Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan. Bachman discusses his experiences as an engineer there, focusing on engineering economics issues, including his work on the development of methods for return-on-investment calculations, using punched card machines. In 1957, he was appointed the first head of Dow’s Central Data Processing department, where he was responsible for preparing the way for the arrival of its first big digital computer. Bachman organized a feasibility study to select a new machine and hired a staff of programmers and analysts. Through the IBM SHARE user group and its 9PAC project, he became involved with Harry Tellier, and Russ McGee in the design of programs to simply the file maintenance and report generation process. This was based on the earlier GE Hanford 702 File Maintenance and Report Generator System, which Bachman discusses in some detail. He also worked on the “theory of information” with Bill Orchard-Hays and Tom Steel. However, Dow canceled its IBM 709 order before the machine arrived, ending Bachman’s association with SHARE and, shortly afterwards, with Dow Chemical. In 1961, Bachman went to work for General Electric in New York City. He worked for a corporate staff group providing internal consulting services, and was assigned to an “integrated systems project” to produce a generic manufacturing control system for GE departments, using the firm’s new GE 225 computer. Here he worked with Stan Williams and Bill Helgeson. This system, MIACS, an early transaction processing system, was built around Bachman’s new creation: the IDS (Integrated Data Store). IDS is called the first database management system, and Bachman explains its origin, development, capabilities, design and relationship to MIACS in detail. IDS used a virtual memory database, with a DDL and DML, and introduced the network data model. Bachman created the first data structure diagrams to illustrate the complex data structures required to picture the adaptive manufacturing control logic of MIACS. In 1964, Bachman transferred to GE’s Computer Department in Arizona, where he worked on a number of other database related projects including the GE 400 IDS, GE 600 IDS, DataBASIC, a personal data storage system, and WEYCOS 1 and 2, both built for Weyerhaeuser Lumber. The latter two were an attempt to build a complex online management information system around a database. Bachman believes WEYCOS 2 produced the first database management system able to support multiple application programs executing simultaneously against the same database. Bachman also describes his work with Warren Simmons, Bill Olle and others on the CODASYL Data Base Task Group during the late 1960s. The database standards produced by this group were heavily influenced by IDS and by Bachman’s ideas. Bachman also discusses the links between IDS and Cullinane’s IDMS, a successful commercial system, built to run on the IBM 360 series of computers, which was based on IDS. Page 2 of 166. Printed 6/19/2006. Charles W. Bachman, Oral History with Thomas Haigh 3 When Honeywell acquired GE’s computer business in 1970, Bachman worked for the merged operation in Honeywell’s advanced research group, in Boston. He continued to work on database topics, investigating what he called the “role data model” and serving on an ANSI-SPARC committee intended to standardize database systems. While failing in this objective, this committee made a highly influential distinction between external, conceptual, and internal (database) schemata. In 1973, Bachman received the ACM Turing award. He recalls his reactions to this, and his subsequent service on committee to select future winners. Bachman was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1977. Bachman also discusses his thoughts on the relational data model and its creator Ted Codd, including a well known 1974 meeting in which he debated Codd on the merits of the two approaches. Bachman also chaired the ISO committee working on Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), well known for its elaboration of a seven layer model for computer communication. In 1981, Bachman went to work for Cullinane Database Systems, a major software company built around IDMS. While at Cullinane, he supported marketing, and continued the ISO/OSI committee work, while working on tools to model high level schemata for enterprise database design and translate them into data definitions. He also worked on the “partnership set data model,” which was granted a US patent, and used as the basis for a enhanced network data model and conceptual schema modeling. In 1983, he left to pursue this work at his own firm, Bachman Information Systems. He describes the rise and fall of this company, which obtained venture capital funding, grew rapidly and made a successful IPO. Despite enjoying success with its Data Analyst product with its reverse and forward engineering capabilities, the firm struggled financial and managerially, including an initially successful, but ill-fated, spell as an IBM Business Partner. It eventually merged with Cadre Systems to create Cayenne Software, which was acquired by Sterling Software in 1998, which was subsequently acquired by Computer Associates. Since then Bachman has worked as a database consultant to Constellar Systems and in 2006 was still working with Cbr Systems. Page 3 of 166. Printed 6/19/2006. Charles W. Bachman, Oral History with Thomas Haigh 4 HAIGH: Thank you very much for agreeing to take part in this interview. BACHMAN: Thank you. Good morning. HAIGH: I wonder if you could begin by talking a little bit about your early life and family background. BACHMAN: I was born in Manhattan, Kansas2. I moved shortly to Gainesville, Florida. And then, by the second grade, I had moved to East Lansing, Michigan. Now, this is what happens when your father is a football coach. Charley Bachman3 was the head coach at Kansas Agriculture College4, when I was born. Then, he went to be the head coach job at The University of Florida, and then on to Michigan State College, now Michigan State University. He was a very successful football coach, so part of my life comes from that background. I’m always interested in sports. He was a graduate from Notre Dame, and I happen to have a ring for years that he was given as being the best scholar on the football team, although we don’t think of scholars and football teams going together. My mother5 was a college graduate from the University of Oklahoma, before World War I. She had gone back to graduate school at Kansas State where she met my father. He was the football coach. They got married, and by and by I came along, number two in the family. I came from an academic background, although if you talk to people from academic backgrounds, they say, well, there’s the academics on one side, and then there’s the athletic department and the military department (ROTC) on a different side, and they’re different communities. They do not mix very well. That’s true. But certainly I grew up knowing college backgrounds and was interested in things out there, although I was never a good athlete myself. I had fun in high school. I played football and basketball and hurtled and high jumped for the track team, but I was never a star athlete, as my younger brothers were. Cary was terribly interested in sports and built his life and career on it. I went to lots of football games when I was young, maybe too many. HAIGH: When you were in school, what kind of topics were you interested in? What kinds of subjects did you do better in? BACHMAN: In East Lansing (Michigan) High School, at least when I was in high school in the 1940, ’41, ’42, and ’43 time frame, everybody took much the same courses, with a few options for extra study. I enjoyed all of my courses. I was a good student. Things seemed to come easily. I enjoyed the math part, I enjoyed the science part, but then I enjoyed English and other things. I was not the best student in my high school class, but always in the top 10%. But, I don’t think anyone-- Well, I got an e-mail from someone the other day saying, “Well, Charlie, you’re the brain!” Well, I never thought of myself as that much of a brain, but I did well. At the end of my high school career—I was scheduled to graduate in June, 1943, but we were in the middle of World War II—I left high school early and started college at 2 December 11, 1924.

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