The approach to compatibility of the Cambridge Project Consistent System
ACM SIGSOC Bulletin · 1973
The Cambridge Project Consistent System grew, in part, out of several of the problems of compatibility between systems and data and its design was shaped by those problems. The system recognizes, as most important, the needs of researchers to attack problems in unanticipated ways, to make novel combinations of programs with each other, and to apply programs to types of data which the program designers did not anticipate. We have also been concerned about, and have tried to anticipate, transfer of the system between computers. Viewing the system from a compatibility standpoint, it addresses: compatibility of programs so they can be operated in the same environment; compatibility of data formats, so data can be used with a variety of computational tools without need to resort to programming; and compatibility across computer systems, so the system may survive the obsolescence of a particular computer.