APL2

The first APL workspace was saved on November 27, 1966. The IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory celebrated the 40th anniversary of APL with a wine and cheese party for former APL developers and all the lab employees. You can see pictures of the party here. To help celebrate, the members of the APL Products and Services group have also put together this overview of how APL2 is being used today. Following the overview are links to a variety of stories about how people are making a difference with APL2.

APL2 Version 2, with its sophisticated array processing capabilities and powerful development environment, offers so many built-in features (such as graphics, GUI, file access, and network communication tools) and so many interfaces (to other programming languages, database systems, and even remote APL2 systems), that one may be tempted to call it the universal programming tool. APL2 enables developers to economically build very complex, computationally intensive, and even distributed applications that can be put directly into production with excellent performance on multiple platforms.

APL2 applications continue to be developed and maintained on mainframe systems. However, they are now often downloaded and deployed on workstations where users can have the advantages of local computing. Even more interesting, many applications are now developed, tested and maintained on Windows using Workstation APL2 as the programmer's workbench. The applications are deployed to APL2 running either on workstations or mainframes. APL2 applications are also distributed on multiple platforms. APL2's wealth of flexible platform independent features enable developers to distribute application components among mainframe, UNIX, and Windows systems.

Developers leverage APL2's facilities for fast and low cost development of complex algorithms and seamlessly integrate new or existing APL2 components in sophisticated multi-user applications. These browser applications often use systems like IBM MQS, IMS/DC, or WebSphere Application Server to provide users with access to calculation and logic engines written in APL2.

Use the following links to learn more about how people are exploiting the power and elegance of APL2.

We have increased productivity by 30% - Sandvik AB

• Advanced products that earlier took weeks to produce now require only a couple of hours.

  
  Industry: Mining
  Received date: September 15, 2006

A strategic investment returning immediate pay-back - Landstinget Vastmanland

• I am still totally convinced that the unique design of APL is the best implementation of a developer-friendly computer language we have ever seen.

  
  Industry: Medical services
  Received date: September 19, 2006

APL2 has proven major capabilities - DaimlerChrysler

• APL2 V2 is used very successfully on turbo-charger test benches to support the testing of a large variety of turbo-chargers, and to process and analyze the results in quasi-real-time using sophisticated thermodynamic and graphical methods.

  
  Industry: Automotive
  Received date: September 23, 2006

Economical Information and Analysis System - Rheinischer Sparkassen- + Giroverband

• RSGV is managing its statistical and economical data in a Client-Server application with a modern Windows conform user interface using IBM Workstation APL2.

  
  Industry: Banking
  Received date: September 23, 2006

40 Years of APL and More than Half of This at Thomas Cook

• APL2 has the prerequisites to participate in the future at Thomas Cook's IT systems for Tourism.

  
  Industry: Travel
  Received date: October 25, 2006

Real Time Processing at the Missile Defense Agency - Northrop Grumman

• Our prediction algorithms were first prototyped in recent years in APL2. Also, many of the low-level algorithms in the Tracking portion were first prototyped in APL2 in the 1980's. Therefore, our prototyping work using APL2 is largely responsible for our ability to direct the interceptor toward where the target will be at the time of interception.

  
  Industry: Aerospace
  Received date: September 23, 2006

Software that "Feels Right" to IBM researcher

• One of the most important aspects of APL2 is its multi-platform nature. This enables me to write industry-grade applications for use in a mainframe or multi-processor Unix environment by using my preferred Windows development environment, where I can use APL2 in conjunction with so many "goodies" provided by Microsoft and its followers.

  
  Industry: Semiconductors
  Received date: August 23, 2006

Colleagues express awe when I share my results - University of Puerto Rico

• The gearing industry is a "hands-on" community that demands proof of concept to warrant serious consideration of an alternative technology. The many mathematical relations developed are computationally intensive and need to be translated into computer code and tested. APL2 was selected over Fortran, C, MathCad, and Matlab to develop and demonstrate the functionality of these mathematical relations.

  
  Industry: Education, engineering
  Received date: August 28, 2006

APL2 can be a true gestalt - Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

• When practicing APL2, discovery of algorithms frequently occurs serendipitously after data are first organized into arrays.

  
  Industry: Engineering, research and development
  Received date: September 14, 2006