Customer Reviews

The Complete MUMPS: An Introduction and Reference Manual for the MUMPS Programming Language

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How true it is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! The reader from Tucson is obviously mistaking the MUMPS he 'knows' from the seventies with the completely different language it is today. Sure, it's early incarnations didn't enforce the tidiest code, but only an ignorant person would advise you against a new BMW because he didn't like the Ford Model T! Since Intersystems have taken MUMPS over the language has seriously matured into what is today - now known as CACHÉ. It can fully integrate with Java (which is NOT a database language by the way), and one can develop extremely powerful web-enabled, object-oriented database applications with very little code at all! Moreover, it is easier to maintain than many other languages I know. I suggest he should, like you dear reader, take a look at CACHÉ (the 'Best New Database of 1998' according to Deloitte and Touche) and discover how you can speed up your existing SQL database applications by a factor of 20 without having to change any code at all! Ancient and dusty? Mature, reliable, innovative and still the fastest is more like it.

Speaking from the standpoint of a professional MUMPS programmer, I would like to point out that I originally learned MUMPS using only this book and the source code of the MUMPS-based operating system used at my place of work. I come from a background of C/C++ and ASM programming and found this book to be more concise, more readable, and far easier to understand than almost any other programming guide that I've ever owned or read.

That said, I'll move on to the poorer points of the publication: firstly, this book is not altogether complete in its presentation of aspects of the language. While most of the basic functions and commands are covered in decent detail, the book does not see fit to include some of the more advanced (and useful) ways of utilizing them, although some of these methods are covered in partial detail in the second portion of the book -- which brings me to my second bone of contention.

The book is divided into two logical sections: the definitions of the commands, functions, operators, and base functionalities of the language (extending into about 25%-30% of the pages), and the "everything else" section of the material. This type of structure is fine -- if the second section is logically organized and planned, that is. Instead, the reader finds themselves immersed in descriptions of topics and snippets of source code that seem to fit the heading of the chapter, but only if the reader thinks very hard about it first -- definitely not the sign of a good guide.

The author partly makes up for this with an excellent set of appendices and index, but the final, two-page treatment of "programming style" is exactly the sort of monstrosity that makes people think that MUMPS is an old, disorganized language.

In short, buy this book if you want to learn MUMPS or if you need a decent quick reference guide. But stay away from the back half of the book!

Although it is not the best written book in the world, it does accomplish its task of introducing the reader to the MUMPS language. In addition it is one of the few book available for MUMPS. Despite the previous review, MUMPS is still widely used today (especially in medical and insurance fields). Speaking from personal experience it can also be on of the cleanest and fastest ways to program a large database.

I purchased this book while learning MUMPS doing my ON THE JOB TRAINING AND PASSED THE EXAMs with 90 TO 100% .Great reference book that I go to when needed now I have been programming in Mumps for three years and learned Cache CSP and Cache objects.

An excellent book to have on hand for M(umps) programmers. Even though it doesn't have all the latest commands, it's useful. Used it more back in the day, but still occasionally refer to it.

The book is a good reference of MUMPS as far as it goes, but lets face it MUMPS is a disease that should be vaccinated against. It is a programming language/database/operating system that has worse syntax than BASIC and encourages nothing more than unmaintainable code. Go out and buy yourself a good Java book instead and be part of the future instead of the dusty ancient past.