Welcome to SIRTX

Welcome to Simple Information Retrieval, Transfer and eXecution or SIRTX.

SIRTX is a research operating system for small devices. Its aim is to provide both real world solutions but also to study how it's unique design interacts with the real world.

SIRTX is made for small embedded devices, however can also be run on a POSIX host system. This flexibility allows for very portable code, fast testing and deployment, reduced requirements for test equipment, and faster training of users.

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FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

General questions

What is SIRTX?: SIRTX is a research operating system for small devices. In contrast to other operating systems it is centred around a central database.
Is SIRTX Free Software or Open Source?: Not yet. It is planed to at least free some of its components and/or reuse them in other projects that are Free Software.
Is there a demo?: Just contact us and we'll provide you with a demo access.
What platforms are supported?: Currently SIRTX runs natively on sufficiently large AVR microcontrollers (such as ATMega32) and as a guest on POSIX systems.
How to pronounce SIRTX?: "sirtex" with no breaks or pauses will do perfectly fine. Feel free to guess where the extra "e" comes from.
Is there a GUI?: Not yet.
Is this a retro system/project?: No. While the look and feel might remind some of a retro computing related project SIRTX is all about modern technologies.
Where is the BASIC?: SIRTX is no retro computing project. There is no BASIC.
Does SIRTX support SQL?: The database in SIRTX is a semantic database. This is a different kind of database than SQL is designed to work with. While possible, we do not include a SQL interface but provide an interface better aligned with semantic data and the constraints of small systems.

What is?

A Tag: A tag is an abstract entity that holds all metadata of a subject. Each tag is associated with exactly one subject.
A Subject: A subject is abstract (e.g. a concept like "reading") or specific (something one can touch) "thing". Each subject is associated with exactly one tag.
An Object: An object is programming interface that allows access to a specific tag-subject pair.
A handle: A handle is a way code (e.g. a function) can access an object (any system resource). It is similar to file descriptor (or file handle) on POSIX systems.
A link: Link is a collective term for relations and metadata.
A relation: A relation is a connection between two tags.
Some Metadata: Metadata is a value connected to a tag. It can be understood as a degenerated relation.
A function: A function is code that can be called to accomplish some task. Other systems call this a command, program, or executable.
A port: Ports are interfaces of functions. They are used to provide input and output to them. Other systems call these arguments, operands, inputs, and outputs.
A logical: A logical is a name associated with a tag for quick access by a user-friendly alias.

Using the system

What commands are there?

See our list of functions.

My terminal looks wrong. How can I change my terminal type?

You can do so with:

control &stdin setvalue TERM="xterm"

(replace xterm with your terminal type)

What are the supported prompt variables?

Currently the following variables are supported in prompts:

Variable	Meaning	Example output
$A	Ampersand	&
$B	Pipe	\|
$C	Opening bracket	(
$E	US-ASCII Escape (0x1B)	N/A
$F	Closing bracket	)
$G	Greater than	>
$H	Backspace	N/A
$L	Less than	<
$Q	Equal	=
$S	Space
$$	Dollar sign	$
$_	New line	N/A
$*	Current tag	538 (* 0) "cat"
$R	Clear (reset) terminal attributes	N/A
$P or $.	Alias for $*	538 (* 0) "cat"
$D	Reserved for current date	N/A
$T	Reserved for current time	N/A
$V	Reserved for version number	N/A
$N	Reserved for DOS compatibility (current drive)	N/A
$+	Reserved for DOS compatibility (pushd-level)	N/A
$M	Reserved for DOS compatibility (remote name of current drive)	N/A
All others	Reserved for future use	N/A

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Imprint

The legal stuff

Author

All content and documentation within this website is accredited to Philipp Schafft.

External hyperlinks

This site doesn't contain any hyperlinks to external resources but that of the author.

Privacy

Access to this site is logged. The logs are used only for administrative purposes such as monitoring.
The logs are periodically deleted by the system administrator. For protection of your privacy no data is passed to third parties.

Copyright

The contents on this page is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. All content is copyrighted and owned by the author Philipp Schafft. The usage (in parts) of any content on this page requires specific permission in writing from the operator.

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