Revised and Improved, 2014. An introduction to the Mumps Language. Mumps is a simple, easily learned, powerful database and string manipulation language which is ideal for both desktop and server applications. Mumps began life in the mid 60's as a general purpose programming language designed for medical applications. It stood apart from other languages of the time by supporting an easily manipulated hierarchical database, flexible string handling support, pattern matching, and a simple, easily learned syntax similar to Basic. The unique Mumps global array database effectively sparse, string indexed, multi-dimensional arrays.