Microsoft BASIC PDS

The Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System (BASIC PDS) is a development environment consisting of a BASIC compiler and associated editor, debugger and linker.

In 1989 the company released the much enhanced Basic PDS as a "professional" version of the Microsoft BASIC Compiler that came with tools sourced from or developed out of other Microsoft development tools, at the time such a Microsoft C. It includes an optimising compiler that supported moving strings out of the 64k heaps into upper memory, Programmer's Workbench (a development environment), Microsoft Editor (M), Codeview debugger, a linker that supported overlays and therefore allowed the use of memory above the 640k in DOS. An extended set of libraries was added vis a vis a version of Microsoft's QuickBASIC.

Versions

 * 1989: 7.0 - Added ISAM support (Rudimentary database functions), OS/2 development capabilities were not shipped with the original release but added as an "application note" that could be downloaded from Microsoft's BBS.
 * Oct 1990: 7.1A - Has full OS/2 support and is the first version to support expanded memory (EMS) under DOS and adds a number of new keywords

As with other Microsoft tools that support both OS/2 and DOS environments you may run into problems if you try to use those tools on Microsoft Windows systems that support the running of OS/2 1.x programs (Windows NT and 2000), as the system tries to run the DOS executable as an OS/2 program and fails. Either make sure that only the DOS executables are installed or if they are already installed or you migrated the install by hand, precede every command with the FORCEDOS command.
 * Known issues

Publications

 * Peter G. Aitken: Microsoft Basic 7.1: A Programmer's Reference, Wiley 1991, ISBN 0-47-152901-X


 * Articles
 * Jeff Angus: Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System v. 7.0 - Computer Language (Mar 1990)
 * Ethan Winer: Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System, Version 7.1 - PC Magazine (Jan 1991)
 * Tom Campbell: Using PDS 7.1 - Compute! (Nov 1992)