Implementation of Micro began in 1970 at the University of Michigan's Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations (ILIR) and ran under the [[Michigan Terminal System]], the time-sharing system developed at U-M. It was first used for the study and analysis of micro-statistics contained in the United States Census data base; hence the name of the system.
The underlying data model and retrieval algorithms were deeply influenced by David ChildChilds's Set Theoretic Data Model. Although the underlying model was based on set theory, the user interface utilized a query language subsequently used in relational database management systems. It became the first-large scale set theoretic/relational database management system to be used in production. Organizations such as the [[United States Department of Labor|US Department of Labor]], the [[United States Environmental Protection Agency|US Environmental Protection Agency]] and researchers from [[University of Alberta]], the [[University of Michigan]], [[Wayne State University]], the [[University of Newcastle upon Tyne]], and [[Durham University]] used it to manage very large scale databases. Micro continued to run in production until 1998.
