The very proficient paper, A Web Based Mumps Virtual Machine,  by Kevin C. O'Kane, and Elizabeth E. McColligan is aimed at the medical sphere. The original papers on M back to the mid 60’s did just that and when, a year ago, I asked Dr. Greenes (who was part of the team that created M) why was M so focused on medical he replied that they while they understood that M was a generic programming language they did not have the luxury of presenting it that way. The paper presented by O’Kane and McColligan applies to medical applications as much as it does to any other application.

Medical applications are amongst the most complex in the data processing arena and if a development tool can handle the awkward needs of medical systems, it can surely be used for simpler (and not so simpler), straight forward (and not so straight forward) applications elsewhere. If a product (such as the Mumps Virtual Machine) can withstand the rigorous needs contemplated in the paper, it can surely make it in general business applications. To this, I must add that M has not one command that is at the very least medically oriented. It’s instruction set is as universal as that of any general purpose language.

In the paper reference is made to the capabilities of Java in that it is platform independent. So is this product. The part about getting data and programs locally, the distribution of workload and aging and automatic deletion of expired records, demonstrate the potential of the product and that, given widespread promotion, can become the Java equivalent of database servers. Someone might think that there is an excess of features in this M Virtual Machine specification (which by the way is not vaporware). Any of the features can be turned off or on and therefore be customized to one’s needs.

"Medical applications are amongst the most complex applications in the data processing arena and if a product can handle the awkward data processing environment of medical systems, it can be used anywhere"