Thanks for the links. It seems that PROMIS's main strength is its ability to integrate disparate Database Systems. Other than that its just another contact Database with good data retrieval/reporting tools. Nothing special. There are a number of data integration systems out there. I've written code for similiar systems (in the oil/gas field).
I guess the key is: The government put a trap door in it and then sold it cheap to foreign governments... so the US could spy on the databases of those entities. Sounds brilliant! Too bad the trap door key got dispersed. Now every hacker in the world can read the same info.
actually it is a fairly primative relational database, not a contact database. It is far inferior to SQL.