Happy 40th Birthday to Vista!

October 10, 2017

Happy 40th Birthday to Vista!

It seems quite remarkable that way back in 1977 the VISTA language was born.

To put that year in context, the World’s first ever all in one home computer was demonstrated in Chicago (Commodore PET). Apple Computer becomes an incorporated company (and the Apple II computer goes on sale) and Oracle Corporation becomes an Incorporated company.

The VISTA language mimicked aspects of other computer languages that were around at that time, such as COBOL, but with the inclusion of generators to perform specific functions, such as Input, Maintenance, Report, Update, Process and so on. The aim was to sell it to the Book Publishing Industry. The clever design of the layers around the Vista Kernel meant it could adapt to various (GUI) user interfaces that were to appear over the years, along with different types of server (PDP-11, Vax, Alpha, Itanium, Unix, Windows), and different file structures (RMS, D-ISAM, Oracle Database).

VISTA was immensely successful, and some publishers are still using it today for major functions within their organisations.

Of course, much has changed over the last 40 years, and we see many of the biggest changes in technology. Whilst some of the VISTA team still hard at work, supporting the base of VISTA users, many have moved on to work on the next generation of this established tool: Ingenta Commercial. That 40 years of experience working with some of the biggest global publishers has been distilled into creating a tool for publishers, media and information providers that integrates data and processes across the whole organisation. (If you’re interested in finding out more about the Ingenta Commercial suite of products, you can talk to one of our team.)

The Vista Division should be very proud of what they have achieved over the last 40 years (with over 1000 years of knowledge and experience in total from the current and past members below):

Current Vista Team

Lesley Gibson, Jay Teitelbaum, Dave Rose, Martin Guest, Mark Itzcovitz, Fintan Fitzpatrick, Gerald Mountain, Peter Morley, Dave Cole, Trevor Jones, Brian Ledbetter, Noel Beard, Tommy Noble V, Ad Panes, John Keston-Hole, Melissa Jinargyros, Joshua Klein, Judd Atkinson, Barry Cave, Sharon Chaudhuri, Ian Freybourger, Maria Eife, Mark Hyde, Frank Roldan, Alistair Bone, Nigel Little, Jo Spicer

Past Members (still with Ingenta, but no longer in the Vista Division)

Ken Burch, Jacki Hall, Gary Bowman, Richard Baker, Chris Mooney, Sue Jones, Carl Sherlock, Sue Burch, Elaine Ballard, Karen Taylor, Paul Roglic, James Wright, Jim Brandt, Andrew Rees, Dan Oram, Paul Narwid, Fawzia Nazir, Daniella Coppa, Kristen Natelson, Mark Mazurets, Nick Weir-Williams, Mandy Collings, Lionel Clement, Brooke Kelman

In Memory of:

Brian Gibson, Brian Paine, Don Billinghurst, Rob Newmarch, Nicole Cox, DavePearson, Kevin Bregartner, Ken Knox