Abstract The facilities of the PS‐algol programming language are described in this paper to show how they may be used to provide an integrated programming support environment. The persistent store mechanism and the secure transaction facilities provide the basic environment in which an integrated system may be implemented. In particular the paper makes use of the data type picture of PS‐algol to show how such an environment may be built for a graphics system ideal for use with a medium range computer workstation. An implementation of a picture editor on the ICL PERQ workstation is described to show the utility of the system.

Abstract This is a description of the integrated Persistent Object Management System (POMS) for the language PS‐algol. The objective of POMS is to provide an implementation of the PS‐algol persistent heap1 entirely by means of procedures written in PS‐algol.

An extension of the language S-algol4called Triplex5which facilitates the use of interval arithmetic and which is similar to triplex algol 603is described. Experience in the use of Triplex is reported. In particular, a Triplex program corresponding to a triplex algol 60 program of Nickel19is given, together with numerical results.

This paper presents the identification of a new programming language concept and reports our initial investigations of its utility. The concept is to identify persistence as an orthogonal property of data, independent of data type and the way in which data is manipulated. This is expressed by the principle that all data objects, independent of their data type, should have the same rights to persistence or transience. We expect to achieve persistent independent programming, so that the same code is applicable to data of any persistence. We have designed a language PS-algol by using these ideas and constructed a number of implementations. The experience gained is reported here, as a step in the task of achieving languages with proper accommodation for persistent programming.