Charles William Bachman III (December 11, 1924 – July 13, 2017) was an American computer scientist, who spent his entire career as an industrial researcher, developer, and manager rather than in academia. He was particularly known for his work in the early development of database management systems.
His techniques of layered architecture include his namesake Bachman diagrams.
In World War II he joined the United States Army and spent March 1944 through February 1946 in the South West Pacific Theater serving in the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Corps in New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippine Islands. There he was first exposed to and used fire control computers for aiming 90 mm guns.[2]
He then attended the University of Pennsylvania. In 1950, he graduated with a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and had also completed three-quarters of the requirements for an MBA from the university's Wharton School.[2]
Bachman spent his entire career as a practicing software engineer or manager in industry rather than in academia. In 1950, he started working at Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan.
In 1957, he became Dow's first data processing manager. He worked with the IBM user group SHARE on developing a new version of report generator software, which became known as 9PAC. However, the planned IBM 709 order was cancelled before it arrived.[5]
In 1981, he joined a smaller firm, Cullinane Information Systems (later Cullinet), which offered a version of IDS that was called IDMS and supported IBM mainframes.[6]
Bachman Information Systems
In 1983, he founded Bachman Information Systems, which developed a line of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) products. The centerpiece of these products was the BACHMAN/Data Analyst, which provided graphic support to the creation and maintenance of Bachman Diagrams. It was featured in IBM's Reengineering Cycle marketing program,[citation needed] combining:
optimization of physical database designs for performance and DBMS specifics.
In 1991 Bachman Information Systems had their initial public offering, trading on the NASDAQ with the symbol BACH. After reaching a high of $37.75 in February 1992, the price hit $1.75 in 1995.
In 1996, his company merged with Cadre Technology to form Cayenne Software.[7]He served as president of the combined company for a year, and then retired to Tucson, Arizona. He continued to serve as chairman of the board of Cayenne, which was acquired by Sterling Software in 1998.[2][8]
He was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1977 for his pioneering work in database systems.[9]
In 2012, Bachman was awarded a National Medal of Technology and Innovation "for fundamental inventions in database management, transaction processing, and software engineering."[10]
In 2015, he was made a Fellow [12] of the Computer History Museumfor his early work on developing database systems.
Publications
Bachman published dozens of publications and papers.[13] A selection:
1962. "Precedence Diagrams: The Key to Production Planning, Scheduling and Control." In: ProCo Features. Supplement No 24, August 24. .
1965. "Integrated Data Store." in: DPMA Quarterly, January 1965.
1969. "Software for Random Access Processing." in: Datamation April 1965.
1969. "Data Structure Diagrams." in: DataBase: A Quarterly Newsletter of SIGBDP. vol. 1, no. 2, Summer 1969.
1972. "Architecture Definition Technique: Its Objectives, Theory, Process, Facilities, and Practice." co-authored with J. Bouvard. in: Data Description, Access and Control: Proceedings of the 1972 ACM-SIGFIDET Workshop, November 29-December 1, 1972.
1972. "The Evolution of Storage Structures." In: Communications of the ACM vol. 15, no. 7, July 1972.
1972-73. "Set Concept for Data Structure." In: Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 1972–1973.
1973. "The Programmer as Navigator." 1973 ACM Turing Award lecture. In: Communications of the ACM vol. 16, no. 11, November 1973. (pdf)
1974. "Implementation Techniques for Data Structure Sets." In: Data Base Management Systems, 1974.
1977. "Why Restrict the Modeling Capability of Codasyl Data Structure Sets?" In: National Computer Conference vol. 46, 1977.
1978. "Commentary on the CODASYL Systems Committee's Interim Report on Distributed Database Technology." National Computer Conference vol. 47, 1978.
1978. "DDP Will Be Infinitely Affected, So Managers Beware!" in: DM, March 1978.
1980. "The Impact of Structured Data Throughout Computer-Based Information Systems." In: Information Processing 80, 1980.
1980. "The Role Data Model Approach to Data Structures." In; International Conference on Data Bases, March 24, 1980.
1982. "Toward a More Complete Reference Model of Computer-Based Information Systems." Co-authored with Ronald G. Ross. In: Computers and Standards 1, 1982.
1983. "The Structuring Capabilities of the Molecular Data Model." In; Entity-Relationship Approach to Software Engineering. C. G. Davis, S. Jajodia, and R. T. Yeh. eds. June 1983.
1987. "A Case for Adaptable Programming." In: Logic vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1987.
1989. "A Personal Chronicle: Creating Better Information Systems, with Some Guiding Principles." In: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering vol. 1, no. 1, March 1989.
^Jean-Baptiste Waldner (1992). CIM: Principles of Computer Integrated Manufacturing. John Wiley & Sons.
^ a b c"Lectures: Charles W. (Charlie) Bachman". Computer History Museum. Archived from the original on June 4, 2004. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^Thomas Haigh (October 2011). "Charles W. Bachman: Database Software Pioneer" (PDF). Annals of the History of Computing. 23 (4). IEEE: 71–80. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2011.68. S2CID 3062973. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^Harrison Smith (July 16, 2017). "Charles Bachman, engineer who devised a better way to manage data, dies at 92". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
^ a bThomas Haigh (September 25–26, 2004). "Charles W. Bachman interview". ACM Oral History interviews. p. 2. doi:10.1145/1141880.1141882. ISBN 978-1-4503-1771-9.
^ a b cAndrew L. Russell (April 9, 2011). "Oral-History:Charles Bachman". IEEE Oral History Network. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^"Proxy Statement for Bachman Information Systems, Inc". US SEC. March 25, 1996. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^"Sterling software announces agreement to purchase Cayenne Software". Press release. August 31, 1998. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^Tom Haigh. "Charles W. Bachman — A.M. Turing Award Winner". Retrieved September 3, 2013.
^Charles Bachman on his mother (1924-12-11). "National Science and Technology Medals Foundation". Nationalmedals.org. Retrieved 2019-09-13.
^ACM Fellows 2014
^CHM. "Charles W. Bachman — CHM Fellow Award Winner". Archived from the original on July 2, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2015.[1] Archived 2016-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
^ a b"Charles W. Bachman Papers, 1951—". Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Collection contains archival materials detailing database software development. Includes documentation on Dow Chemical (1951–1960), General Electric (1960–1970), Honeywell Information Systems (1970–1981), Cullinane Database Systems/Cullinet (1972–1986), Bachman Information Systems, Inc. (1982–1996), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (1971–1982), American National Standards Institute (ANSI) (1978–1983) as well as several international standard organizations.
^"Assembling the Integrated Data Store (IDS), lecture by Charlie Bachman". Computer History Museum. April 16, 2002. Retrieved September 3, 2013.