SYSTAT is a statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 and statistical graphics software package, developed by Leland Wilkinson

Leland Wilkinson

Leland Wilkinson is a statistician and computer scientist at SYSTAT Software Inc. Dr. Wilkinson developed SYSTAT in the early 1980s, sold it to SPSS in 1995, and now serves as Executive VP of SYSTAT Software Inc. in Chicago. His research focuses on scientific visualization and statistical...

 in the late 1970s, who was at the time an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago

University of Illinois at Chicago

The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...

. Systat was incorporated in 1983 and grew to over 50 employees.

In 1995 SYSTAT was sold to SPSS Inc.

SPSS Inc.

SPSS Inc. was a software house headquartered in Chicago and incorporated in Delaware, most noted for the proprietary software of the same name SPSS. The use of this trademarked name has been the subject of ongoing legal action against the company for many years.In addition to the software which...

, who marketed the product to a scientific audience under the SPSS Science division. By 2002, SPSS had changed its focus to business analytics

Analytics

Analytics is the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry. Analytics is carried out within an information system: while, in the past, statistics and mathematics could be studied without computers and software, analytics has...

 and decided to sell SYSTAT to Cranes Software

Cranes Software

Cranes Software is a Bangalore based organization which deals with engineering and scientific software tools and products. Asif Khader is the company's promoter and its CEO. Cranes Software offers training in Embedded Systems & RTOs ....

 in Bangalore

Bangalore

Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Cranes formed Systat Software, Inc. to market and distribute SYSTAT in the US, and a number of other divisions for global distribution. The headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois.

By 2005, SYSTAT was in its eleventh version having a revamped codebase completely changed from Fortran

Fortran

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...

 into C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

. Version 12 came out in early 2007, with improvements in the user interface and several new features.

Other meanings

SYSTAT was also a command on the DEC

Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

 TOPS-10

TOPS-10

The TOPS-10 System was a computer operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-10 mainframe computer launched in 1967...

 and RSTS/E

RSTS/E

RSTS is a multi-user time-sharing operating system, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers. The first version of RSTS was implemented in 1970 by DEC software engineers that developed the TSS-8 time-sharing operating system for the PDP-8...

 computer operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s by which one obtained the current general status of the running operating system. The commands showed the logged-on users, processes, I/O

Input/output

In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...

, and other interesting system management information. This command was parodied

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 by the Firesign Theatre in their album I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus

I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus

I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus is the fourth comedy recording made by The Firesign Theatre for Columbia Records. It was released in 1971 and is the last of a tetralogy, comprising their first four albums...

.

systat (system statistics) is a command-line tool

Computer software

Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 that displays active processes and users. It is available on Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 and Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 operating systems.

systat or Active Users is a simple Internet

Internet protocol suite

The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP from its most important protocols: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol , which were the first networking protocols defined in this...

 protocol ostensibly useful for "debugging and measurement". A connection to port 11, by either TCP or UDP, elicits a list of users currently logged into the system. Though it remains an official Internet protocol, its use is considered a security vulnerability.

External links

• SYSTAT
• The story of SYSTAT as told by Wilkinson
  Leland Wilkinson
  Leland Wilkinson is a statistician and computer scientist at SYSTAT Software Inc. Dr. Wilkinson developed SYSTAT in the early 1980s, sold it to SPSS in 1995, and now serves as Executive VP of SYSTAT Software Inc. in Chicago. His research focuses on scientific visualization and statistical...
  
  
• OpenBSD systat(1) man page