INSIDE! NORTHGATE INFORMATION SOLUTIONS ROLLS OUT REALITY V9.0 IN THE U.S. $7.00 U.S. INTERNATIONAL
® SPECTRUMSPECTRUMTHE BUSINESS COMPUTER MAGAZINE JULY/AUGUST 2001 • AN IDBMA, INC. PUBLICATION
FACTFACTOR MultiValueShrinking? FICTIONIs theReally Industry on t gh Deadlines he Web? ng Tou Faci Let WebWizard Get You Out of a Bind
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INTERNATIONAL
COVER STORY ® DEBATE ON THE FRONT SPECTRUMJULY/AUGUST 2001 32 LINES: THE STATE OF THE MULTIVALUE MARKET FEATURES After all the transformations that have FEATURES occurred in this industry, does a distinct SPECTRUM SPOTLIGHT: NORTHGATE INFORMATION MultiValue world still exist? The cover 40 SOLUTIONS - REALITY RETURNS TO THE U.S. story probes the viability of MultiValue MARKET in today's computer market as a whole. Word on the street is that the Reality DBMS is on the comeback trail after BY STEVEN BACKMAN being absent from the U.S. scene. Northgate unveils its global strategy to roll out the flagship Reality V9.0 DBMS and how it has continued over the years to keep Reality on the technical cutting edge.
PALM PROGRAMMING TOOLS 20 Creating a Palm program is not as hard as you may think. Learn about the many different programming languages that can be used to create a Palm application. BY NATHAN RECTOR
GETTING STARTED WITH INCORPORATING 26 C CODE INTO YOUR UNIBASIC DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT As a programming language, UniData's UniBasic has a lot to recommend it; however, some tasks are hard to accomplish without third-party tools and add- ins. The C programming language is very good at filling in some of those gaps. Here are three steps that allow a C function to be called from within a UniBasic program. BY OWEN MARKS
6 From the Inside WEBONOMICS 101: POST-MODERN PLASTIC 36 Many Web sites, especially from traditional, offline brick and mortar shops, do 16 Newsmakers well enough without credit card payments. But expectations are changing, and you may need to address the online credit card payment issue to attract new 34 New Products customers to your e-business. BY MELVIN SORIANO
46 Marketplace DIARY OF A WEB SITE - ENCRYPTION 22 Continuing the discussion of Web site security, this installment of the diary takes a look at how to keep data from the prying eyes of people we don't want to see our data. BY BRUCE JOHNSON
DEPARTMENTS FIELD-BY-FIELD WEB APPLICATION 10 DEVELOPMENT Since the early days of Web experiments, the challenge has been on to make INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM is a browsers act more like terminals so they can support an "evolution not revolu- registered trademark and MultiValue tion" approach to Web-enabling existing applications. See how Pixieware Soft- ware accomplished its mission. BY JOHN CALDER is a trademark of IDBMA Inc. All other registered trademarks and 8 PERSPECTIVE: SERVICING THE WEB trademarks are the property of the The idea behind Microsoft's Web Services is not a new one. It's a recycling of the component reuse philosophy of the early 1990s. But this time around, will respective trademark holders. the idea take off and gain acceptance? BY BRUCE JOHNSON
4 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001
INTERNATIONAL
SPECTRUM® [ FROM THE INSIDE] JULY/AUGUST 2001
GUS GIOBBI Chairman
MONICA GIOBBI President
NICHELLE JOHNSON Editorial Manager OR TECHNICAL ADVISORY BOARD FACT Jackie Burhans, Informix Software
Henry Eggers, Independent Consultant Tim Holland, Raining Data FICTIONFICTIONIs the MultiValue Bruce Johnson, Tag Consulting Really Ronald H. Jones, Ron Jones Consulting Industry Shrinking?
Sherwood King, Raining Data Nathan Rector, Natec Systems Do you think the MultiValue market is Here’s what I found out. Since January 1, Bryan Shumsky, VIA Systems growing, staying the same, or shrinking? 2001, 367 new companies had request- Melvin M. Soriano, Eagle Rock Information Systems That was a key subject of panel discus- ed a subscription; 172 used UniVerse, sions we conducted in Chicago and 106 used UniData, 63 used D3, 21 used
MISSION STATEMENT International Spectrum Boston last month at the Spectrum Re- jBASE and 5 used UniVision. Eighteen of magazine’s editorial mission is to be the premier independent source of useful information for users, developers, and resellers of MultiValue gional MultiValue Conferences (See also the companies had recognizable names database management systems, open systems business database solu- Steven Backman's article on page 32 in including Marriott, USA Sprint, Unisys, tions, and related hardware, software, and peripherals. Published bi- monthly, International Spectrum provides comprehensive coverage of the this issue). Serta, CBS, Cigna and Blue Cross. products, companies, and trends that shape the MultiValue marketplace as well as the computer industry at large — helping its readers get the As moderators in both cities indicated If you want my opinion (you know I’ll most out of their business computer systems. that the market was shrinking at an give it to you anyway), here’s what I alarming rate, other panel members and think those panel discussions suggest members of the audience anxiously might be going on. The VARs with quali- shifted in their chairs and raised their ty vertical market software and Internet hands like townspeople at a city council MV.ENTERPRISE Mentor Pro savvy are penetrating fewer but more Reality meeting discussing whether a sewer substantial new customers. To them, the MO/E MULTIVerse Native PICK processing plant should be built on market is growing. VARs with strictly Main Street! legacy applications see a shrinking mar- PCVerse PICK OA How could the perception be so different? ket. The MultiValue consultants are so tm Power95 There were as many opinions as there busy they don’t care. Older legacy end users who were used to getting every- REALITY were people in attendance, but here's one R91 impression that stood out. Representa- thing in the past for a nickel over cost AP/PRO tives in attendance from Informix, Raining are being ignored, and the newer, more Revelation Data, jBASE and VIA Systems were incred- substantial customers are not always ulous at the suggestion that there were aware (nor do they care) that what they MV•BASE RPL “no new customers” coming into the are buying has a MultiValue engine. All of this lends to the perception that IDBMA’s International Spectrum is published six (6) times per year at the MultiValue market. subscription price of $40.00 U.S. in the U.S.A.; $45.00 U.S. in Cana- the market is shrinking when in fact I had a similar positive impression da and Mexico; $50.00 U.S. for other countries. Single copy rates are it is growing. $7.00 U.S. in the U.S.A. and Canada, and $9.00 U.S. in all other in that it felt like there were countries. International Spectrum is published by IDBMA, Inc., 7596 Eads Avenue, Suite 140, La Jolla, CA 92037; 1-800-767-7469; E- more than normal new peo- We’re going to continue this de- Mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.intl-spec- bate at the Spectrum Regional trum.com. Copyright 2001 International Database Management Associa- ple requesting subscrip- tion, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without tions to this magazine in MultiValue Conferences in written permission, is prohibited. recent months, so when I Seattle and Cincinnati in PRINTED IN USA • ART AND DESIGN: CP Design, San Diego, CA returned home, I took a September, and in New Jersey NEWS RELEASES/UNSOLICITED ARTICLES look at our database to in November. Come join us and International Spectrum is eager to print your submissions of up-to-the- minute news and feature stories complementary to the MultiValue market- see if the facts backed add your perception to the place. Black and white or color photographs are welcome. Although knowledge base. there is no guarantee a submitted article will be published, every article up the feeling. will be considered. International Spectrum retains all reprint rights.
International Spectrum is a registered trademark and MultiValue is a — GUS GIOBBI, CHAIRMAN, IDBMA, INC. — trademark of IDBMA Inc. All other registered trademarks and trademarks are the property of the respective trademark holders. [email protected] 6 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 (it’s the latest in a long line) Reality The database to believe in
Specifically designed for optimum mission critical performance Many new capabilities are available as part of Reality V9.0, including: in today’s 24x7 organizations, the Reality V9.0 database also • RealWeb - permitting Microsoft Internet Explorer and enables you to make the most of existing legacy technologies Netscape browsers to have dynamic read and write access while ensuring you meet your customers’ needs. to Reality database information. In 1983 when we were known as Microdata, we released Reality 4.3. • Reality Explorer - a graphical front end to the Reality database Since then both the Reality product and our company have evolved enabling ‘Windows Explorer’ file management. and grown. We are now known as Northgate and are pleased to announce that our brand new multivalue database, Reality V9.0, will • SQL Enhancements - this now includes support for be released in Fall 2001. Open-Ended Lists, Exploding Indexes, Additional User options and expansion of SQL controls. With a pedigree of extensive and continuous product innovations and enhancements stretching over two decades, and continued • SQL/ODBC/JDBC Read and Update - allows appropriately reliability, Reality V9.0 matches this credible track record with an compliant industry wide commercial and third party software impressive array of powerful new tools and features. to read and write data to a Reality database.
To find out more about Reality, register your interest now on www.northgate-is.com/reality
Toll Free: 866 473 2588 Tel: 1144 (0)1422 273758 email: [email protected] [ PERSPECTIVE]
the overcome. The trick then is to arrange for in- Servicing formation about the Web Services to be readi- ly available. In comes the UDDI (for Univer- ithin the sal Description, Discovery and Integration) next few standard. By creating a description of your Web Service in UDDI, other people can find W months, it automatically, determine the functionality that is provided, the methods required to ac- you will start to see cess those functions and the parameters that are passed. And since UDDI is based on the the newest genera-WebBY BRUCE JOHNSON Web open standards of XML, SOAP (Simple Open tion of Microsoft’s Access Protocol) and HTTP, it will probably Unless things have be supported by more Web service tool software technology. changed in the past 10 providers than Microsoft. years, the same mentality If you’ve managed to that made reusable com- So, will Web Services be a hit or not? In my ponents a passing fad is opinion, not immediately. There are certainly avoid the pre-release still in place. In itself, this areas in which a Web service might be useful. hype, I’m talking would seem to indicate One of the first to cross my mind would be that Web Services are des- some kind of address standardization/valida- about Web Services tined to the same fate. At least for most of tion service. You know, a service takes address corporate America. But I believe that there are information that is provided by your cus- in general and the a number of other currents running through tomers either over the phone or through your today’s Internet-driven business stream that introduction of .Net Web site. The service would then massage the might change the ultimate outcome. The first data, correcting misspellings and erroneous specifically. is that major forces (read Microsoft, Sun and IBM) are aligning themselves behind the con- zip codes and ensuring that all abbreviations The concept behind Web Services is not new. cept, if not the technology (like we expect are consistent. In this kind of niche, the ser- In fact, it is a recycling of the component these three to agree on anything without coer- vice is not mission critical. When the Internet reuse philosophy of the early 1990s. You cion). The second is the development of mi- is not available, its absence is not too much of know. the olden days. If you can remember cropayments—the ability to collect small (less a problem. Yet its utility is enough that most back that far, the idea behind reuse was to than $1) payments from people for using a build libraries of useful routines and objects. companies would be willing to pay a couple of service. The result will be a slowly growing These components could then be put togeth- pennies per transaction. Beyond that limited tide of companies that provide Web Services er, like the bricks of a house, to create a more kind of situation, I believe that there are sig- for others to use. Similar to complicated application. The idea itself is nificant enhancements to the the arrival of developers sound. It depends on the laziness of program- underpinnings of the Inter- who created ActiveX con- Bruce Johnson can mers to not want to recreate the wheel every trols for Visual Basic, net that need to take place time they start a new project. Put your hand be reached at many companies will start before widespread accep- up all who are in that group. to deploy Web Services in [email protected] tance of Web Services will The problem with component reuse then was their place. occur. I give it three to five that it required considerable additional effort What has a better chance of being a problem years before the idea takes a firm to put the concepts into practice. In all phas- for the deployment of Web Services is their de- hold. After that, watch out. The growth will es of the development, as it turns out. What a pendence on the Internet. Without an active rival that of ActiveX controls in its speed. bonus. In design, you need to consider all of connection, the service is unreachable. As yet, the different ways in which the component On a more personal note, this will be my final there are few meaningful Quality of Service might be used instead of the limited number Perspective column. It has been, if memory clauses in most ISP agreements. So why would of ways the current application will use it. serves, a little over seven years since I penned a company choose a Web Service to be de- Are different properties required? Are as- ployed as part of a mission critical application? my first one and I feel it’s time to hang up the sumptions made about the data that will be It wouldn’t, of course. In fact, the mentality of quill. Over the past few years, my focus on available? In other words, the design of a most IS departments is such that there would working as the CTO for a number of compa- reusable component takes time and foresight. have to be a significant advantage to utilizing nies and Web architect for others has left me The coding and testing phases see the same Web Services for them to be included in any with too little time to do the writing that is level of increased effort. Even with the bene- application. Not a small hurdle to jump, but fits that are gained, eventually, most compa- deserved. Thank you for your readership and one that will be surmounted in time. nies couldn’t see their way clear to take the support through the years. Regardless of additional time and cost to build libraries of OK. Let’s assume for a moment that this where my travels take me, I will continue to reusable components. small psychological stumbling block can be be an advocate for MultiValue. Good luck. is
8 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 IBM, the e-business logo, DB2 and Informix are registered trademarks of International Business International of trademarks IBM,registered logo,are Informix e-business the and DB2 countries. other and/or ©States United the reserved. 2001Corp.rights in IBM All Corporation Machines
THE DAY THE DATABASE WORLD DIDN’T STAND STILL. WELCOME INFORMIX. GOOD NEWS FOR CUSTOMERS, PARTNERS AND BUSINESS.
DB2® and the rest of the IBM software family welcome Informix®: The combined result will redefine data management for e-business. As a distributed database, DB2 already provides industry-leading performance and low total cost of ownership. Add the new technologies from Informix and everybody wins. Employees, customers and business partners. Informix customers can remain confident that their investments are secure and that they will continue to receive the industry’s best service and support. Power to the people indeed. Refer to ibm.com/db2/informix or call 1-800-331-1763.
IT’S A DIFFERENT KIND OF WORLD. business software YOU NEED A DIFFERENT KIND OF SOFTWARE. All Applications. Field-by-Field All Documents. Web Application Development
WHEN USERS “surf the Web” most of actively connected at any one time, and All Together. any Web event that pulls a big crowd also causes devices like “caching proxy them are not aware that they are always mak- servers” to kick in all through the com- munication channels and help out with ing and breaking contact with Web sites. Web feeding local copies of repeating trans- All Applications. missions like pictures. sites stay connected for only as long as it takes Our PICK programmers were not pleased with our early Web experiments, to feed us the requested documents, pictures and with the way the Web “makes and All Documents. breaks” along with its deeply embedded media and then we look at the detached copies standard that the “browserAll document Applications. window” completely clears on any ex- of this material now parked temporarily in our change of data with the Server. There- All Together. fore the common Web application pro- machine's local memory. Moving from one page gramming model is based on expecting All Documents. the user to complete a screen full of data entry, then send the lot in for processing to another page of a Web site is a completely in one form-submit batch. This was common practice with IBM mainframes new re-connection, and navigation within a Web All Together. and terminals in the '70s and '80s, and our PICK colleagues did not like it then site gives you very little speed advantage over and they don’t like it now! The objection is the lack of validation-as-you-go. It is someone else linking to the page as new, from a too easy to make an error in data entry that ruins a screen load or more of typ- All Applications. quite different Web site. ing and not know about it until after a lot of time is wasted. Other objections include: All Documents. Web batch input/output practice is A highly incompatibleIf you with the valuable can see it, we can manage it. resource of existing terminal applications Such a protocol has its advantages for based on field-by-field validation. simple actions such as passively reading All Together. There is a high programming work- BY JOHN CALDER documents and it conserves bandwidth load of tracking and managing the well. Figures like 1,000 plus visitors B state of the user within an application. JOHN CALDER is chief “hitting” a Web site at once or “a mil- designer and developer of the lion hits in one day!” are not as dramat- There are security issues around the PixieWeb software from Pixieware ic as they look. Most visitors will only C Web’s freedom of navigation from Software (NZ), developers of be working the system for a few seconds page to page. legacy system rejuvenation to get pages which may keep them oc- The challenge was on to make browsers act software. You can find out more cupied for minutes of reading time. more like terminals so they can support an by visiting www.pixieware.com. That million hits in one day could “evolution not revolution” approach to translate to between 10 and 500 users Web-enabling existing applications. Continues on page 12 10 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 If you can see it, we can manage it. All Applications. All Documents. All Together.
Outpacing the competition in the emerging Linux, Unix, NTAll Applications.global economy requires more than a snazzy website. You need to arm your team with the tools to provide top-notch customer service. Conduct B2B e-commerce with your suppliers. All Applications.Modular, scalable CreateAll efficiency. Documents. Turn your organization into a lean, mean business machine. Fortunately, there’s a 21stAll Century Together. solution to All Documents.the age-old problem of storing, organizing, Program-level managing, and retrieving every document critical to your operation. Document imaging integration Alland management Together. technology eliminates the mountain of paper burying your enterprise. It deals with the explosion of digital documents driving the Information Age.
AllROI inApplications. months, Give your customers instant access to the knowledge they need. Empower your not years employees. Join the growing list of over 800 Allorganizations Documents. that have image-enabled their If you can see it, we can manageexisting line ofit. business systems withAll 1mage. Together.
www.1mage.com 800.844.1468 If you can see it, we can manage it. FIELD-BY-FIELD supporting IE4, the IFRAME object is faster than XML equivalents going Continued from page 10 now available in Netscape 6, so at the through an XML parser. Now that we Our work up until early 2001 was based time of this writing, we have successfully have translated the routine into on Microsoft’s “remote scripting” tech- translated our client-side BASIC VB- JavaScript, it has a more universal reach nology. Quoting from http://msdn.mi- script template page into JAVASCRIPT than the variety of XML-parsing objects, crosoft.com/scripting: to support Netscape 6 as well. and it has no dependence on browser proprietary optional extras like Java Ap- “With remote scripting, developers can plets or ActiveX objects. now create seamless, interactive Web ap- plications in which the browser can call PROTOCOL scripts on the server without reloading Compared to Microsoft SOAP, our FBF A transmission method needs something the Web page. Prior to remote scripting, protocol is: meaningful to transmit. Our protocol in developers would have to require the user 2-WAY: server-calling-browser-func- brief: to reload the calling page, often several tions as well as browser-calling-server- SERVERS can control and rewrite the times, to interact with the server. This functions. To this writer’s best knowl- supplied template Web page with delim- created a slower, disjointed, user experi- edge, SOAP only offers 1-way browser- ited string commands. ence and inefficient use of the server.” calling-server-functions and with less INPUT FIELDS have ids of “fx1”, flexibility. “Remote scripting” worked well for us, “fx2”, “fx3”, etc. Other active objects use but required additional installations on UNIVERSAL: simplest, freely available other prefixes, e.g., “gx8” is a grid, it has the Web server and the use of some programming toolkits, e.g., Java Script, rows “gx8x1”, “gx8x2”, etc., and input complicating additions to the user ses- to implement it. fields within rows have ids like “gx8x2x4”. sion (e.g., the loading of an IDENTICAL on IE and Netscape. “RSPROXY” Java applet). “RSPROXY” supports IE4 and above. Netscape 4 can be handled with considerable difficulty. Example Server transmissions: But Netscape 6 is a no-go. Internet Explorer 5 and above have a GROWINS|gx8x3 - insert a new row into grid number 8 above row number 3 suitable transmission method built-in, the “XML Download Behavior.” This is VALID|fx3=John - colour field fx3 green to show validation and display “John” in it fast, and makes for much simpler appli- cation installation on the Web server. VALUE|fx3=John^FOCUS|fx6 - display “John” in fx3 and focus on fx6 The application only depends on the basic features of IE without any issues around Java or any other installation op- Example Client transmission: tional extras. The “XML Download Behavior” has be- fx3|Andrew - user has entered “Andrew” in field fx3 come our preferred method, but we do have another slightly slower but more flexible one. Our Web application tem- plates are easily changed to the “Array of The similarity of purpose to Microsoft FASTER, because FBF is not carrying IFRAMEs” method. The use of separate SOAP and the use of something called unnecessary baggage in order to appear invisible windows (“frames”) to take the “XML Download Behavior” as a trans- to be fashionable. port mechanism naturally inspires the hit of being erased at each conversation FREE,with open source code provided, step is an old idea. We have been experi- question “Why isn’t this protocol simple principle familiar to any PICKie menting with it since late 1998. Its main XML-based?” and easily customizable. problem is that it fails to manage re- The purpose of XML is bulk data trans- FRIENDLYto PICK/BASIC and simi- quests in queues, as in a user working fer with definition of the meaning of lar routines inside PICK, etc., because of fast from field-to-field can cause new each item and sub-item. This situation commands and data moving to/from the transmissions to destroy earlier ones in of thin-client screen-interface is a differ- browser in a dynamic-variable format. progress. We have recently solved that ent need. At each step only small quanti- problem by using 3 IFRAMEs which ro- ties of data are transferred in a simple Microsoft’s “XML Download Behavior” tate in turn at being the transmission de- format, therefore an approach based on is probably named to support Microsoft’s vice. In theory, the array of IFRAMEs Richard Pick’s principle of single-charac- current “get XML mentioned with every- demands more processing power from ter delimiters is appropriate. Our parsing thing” policy. It serves as an object for the client. In practice, most recent ma- routine is openly published as source chines can run it almost as fast as the code. It is small, clear and fast; our ex- the browser to receive any text, which XML Download Behavior. Apart from periments show it to be at least 10 times could include XML tags.
12 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 BROWSER AS We use a browser pop-up window DHTML, dynamic creation on the fly SUPER-TERMINAL, workspace of 720 pixels x 500 pixels, so of page elements. OTHER multiplying existing x values by 9 and ex- With our Web application page able to isting y-values by 22 nicely translates CONSIDERATIONS have an ongoing conversation with the character-based coordinates to Web. The protocol is a big step towards server, it is possible for that page to be a turning the browser into a super-termi- standard blank slate, like a terminal, with nal which we can quickly bring into the the server able to PICK fold. To complete the picture Excerpt of PICK/BASIC code from WEBDU ... rewrite part or all of and make this “evolution not revolu- Translate positioning from character co-ords it (FBF keywords tion” easier and more economical, some “IREPLACE”, other recent browser advances work to x = (xraw * 9):’px’ “INSERT”). The our advantage. y = (yraw * 22):’px’ issues around con- CSS POSITIONING. HTML ver- trol of user free- sion 4 supports absolute x-y positioning dom of naviga- of labels (
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 13 FIELD-BY-FIELD Continued from page 13 the sweetener of saving on licensed ports ble but untested PixieWeb software emu- because you only need them for the mo- lator may be Raining Data’s FlashCon- PICK-TO-WEB SERVER ment the user finishes and submits an nect product using its “W3Input” METHODS, PERSISTENCE, entire form. method. Providers who are non-persis- tent only could support a hybrid of Web NON-PERSISTENCE Field-by-Field is probably most needed server and PICK/BASIC coding. A Web page talking to a PICK applica- for expert data-entry by in-house em- ployees, or an elite group of trusted out- tion requires a Web server in between act- FBF Offered as an Open Standard ing as a relay station. This article has side-world associates, for whom enough We regard the Field-by-Field protocol, been about the Web server-to-Page step licensed ports would already exist anyway of a two-step transmission. The question for their current terminal work. scripting source code and Web server arises, what about that other PICK-to- templates as supporting examples and So could the advantages of Field-by-Field documentation for PixieWeb. That is, Web server step? Of course we use our and licensed-port-savings be combined? It own product “PixieWeb” software for we sell PixieWeb software; we make is possible but the coding for Field-by- this. It is a “socket-with-attitude,” small “FBF” freely available on an open source Field validation and field-navigation and light enough to be persisted in the model, requiring only that our copyright needs to move to the Web server, e.g., as Session Object of the IIS Webserver. notice remain in the resources so we get VBSCRIPT which is a little like PICK/ When run this way it can maintain a ter- the promotional benefit. BASIC and could be adapted from exist- minal-like, “persistent” ongoing conversa- Working example Web applications, and ing PICK/BASIC Input/Output code. tion with conventional PICK/BASIC more details are available at: http:// The PICK/BASIC programs would play a programs. These programs converse with 203.109.148.138:7301/pixieinfo/rsde- back-server role of data READ/WRITE the Web page with the familiar PRINT mointro.htm and INPUT statements. This makes the at the start/end of a form in a similar way The FBF protocol is published online at: Web server role quite minimal with only to the batch approach. http://www.pixieware.com/PixieWeb/P three or four template scripts required Could Field-by-Field be used with con- WDocu7.htm and the entire Web application being run nectivity providers other than “Pix- with PICK/BASIC. Such a configuration ieWeb” software? Naturally we have not If any non-PICK enthusiasts read this ar- does mean that each connected Web ap- been motivated to try! To fully support ticle, FBF and PixieWeb software has plication user requires a licensed port for PICK/BASIC Field-by-Field, providers been tried and tested on another the entire user session. The classic “Web- need to offer a persistent connection op- database environment, filePro, where a app batch-submission non-persistent” ap- tion and be friendly to existing B2B Web site is being successfully devel- proach for all its complexity does offer PICK/BASIC code. For example, a possi- oped with this technology. is DISASTER STRIKES! There’s a power failure in the computer room. Critical data is Works With lost in the blink of an eye unless POWER WITNESS safely shuts Any UPS! down your systems... Power Witness is auto shutdown software for Now Supports D3/UNIX/LINUX-based systems. D3/Linux When disaster strikes, Power Witness works with your U.P.S. It saves active data and automates system shutdown. Don’t wait for the lights to go out. Avoid the hidden cost of downtime. Call Atkin/Jones for information today.
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14 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 MAKE SURE YOUR BUSINESS LOGIC COMES ALONG FOR THE RIDE!
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Web applications. And, it can be
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VARMARK The Ashwood Computer Company Announces New Receives ISO 9001 Registration SmartStart-II The Ashwood Computer Company Inc., a leading VAR and systems integrator for the MultiVal- Service for ue/Multidimensional database arena, announced that it has successfully implemented a state-of-the-art Windows ISO quality management program and received official ISO 9001 registration. With its successful regis- NT/2000 Servers tration, the Ashwood Computer Company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, joins the elite group of VARs in the VARMARK has announced the world that have achieved ISO 9001 registration. availability of on-site installation “As a world-class Value Added Reseller of MultiValue database information systems and services, Ash- and phone support of IBM Win- wood’s having achieved our registration as an ISO 9001 company is just one aspect of many in an on- dows NT and Windows 2000 going project of company-wide improvement that we began in 1998,” said company president Rod servers. The new SmartStart service Owens. “Our goal is continuous improvement in the quality products and services we provide for our ex- is designed specifically to enhance isting customer base and our new clients, and we are taking great strides in that direction.” the timely and successful installation Owens wishes to thank his entire “A” Team for the extra efforts extended by all of them during the reg- of IBM Xseries systems running Win- istration process. The entire Ashwood Computer Company “A” Team also wishes to extend a heartfelt dows NT, Windows 2000, and “thank you” to Ingrid Fabian of LBG Consulting of Cincinnati, Ohio, for her guidance and professional RedHat Linux. Since August 2000, assistance during the registration process, and to Terry Dipple, Ron Byrge, and Jeff Byrge, of CWC Inter- VARMARK has been installing IBM national Inc., also of Cincinnati, Ohio, for their assistance in the actual ISO pre-assessment and ISO au- RS/6000 and now pSeries RISC dits prerequisite to Ashwood’s registration. systems for its reseller clients. The The Ashwood Computer Company, founded in 1989 by former McDonnell Douglas Computer Group company said the process has employees, is a VAR to the MultiValue database industry offering products and services to their clients, been very successful with over 15 nationwide. Ashwood specializes in assisting legacy “MultiValue” computer systems users in their migra- systems installed. tions to open systems environments, in opti- Continues on page 18 mizing those systems’ performance, and in offering a complete “end-to- end” services solution thereafter. Focus- New Sales & Marketing Manager ing on “MultiValue” systems users as a Joins Modular Information Systems “horizontal” market, the Ashwood Patrick L. Shabram has joined Modular Information Systems as its new Computer Company services a wide manager of Sales and Marketing. He has vast experience in all aspects of market- variety of vertical markets including; ing and sales including market research, product development, sales forecasting manufacturing, distribution, education, and customer relations. Shabram also has a strong background as a business con- banking, financial, printing, medical, sultant in a variety of industries, including the wine industry. He most recently government, and eCommerce. worked for Rewards2K.com as its director of Operations where he oversaw the Capitalizing on the savings realized Patrick launching of several e-Commerce Web sites. by maintaining and updating a com- Shabram joins “His extensive knowledge of sales, marketing, consulting and the wine industry pany’s existing application software, Modular Infor- mation Sys- makes Patrick a perfect fit for Modular,” said Lisa Corbett, president of Modular. “We maximizing ROI in that existing appli- tems as man- look forward to his fresh ideas for marketing our winery management software, TSM cation software, minimizing end-user ager of Sales Vintage, as well as our professional IT services.” retraining, and stressing the efficient and Marketing. Modular Information Systems offers a complete range of professional services and utilization of existing resources rather products for businesses using Microsoft- and UNIX-based computing solutions. They are a Microsoft Certi- than proposing unnecessary expendi- fied Partner, an Informix partner and are authorized resellers of many quality hardware and software solu- tures, Ashwood has built and main- tions, including IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett Packard. Among Modular’s many offerings are Informix’s tains a continually growing and loyal DataStage, the most comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) infrastructure solution available today, and customer base. TSM Vintage, a winery management software suite.
16 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 WHO’S OLDER? YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR YOUR GREAT AUNT ETHEL?
Ethel Pick System Main Memory: Not so good Main Memory: 16K Weight: 97 pounds Weight: 1⁄2 Ton Mean Time Between Fail- Mean Time Between ure: Any Day Now Failure: 35,000 hours Maintenance: Maintenance: Donuts & Social Security $5000/month
If your Pick system is more than two-years-old, it’s time to call Zu- masys for an upgrade. Zumasys specializes in providing “zero downtime” migrations to new state-of-the-art servers and industry-standard databases such as Raining Data’s D3. Zumasys offers custom-built Terian, Compaq & RISC- based servers all backed by high-quality national on- site service. And regardless of whether you want to upgrade to Linux, Windows NT/2000, Citrix, AIX, SCO or UnixWare, Zumasys will provide you with a “single source” for all of your ongoing technical support.
One call to Zumasys is all you ever have to make.
So stop running your business on last decade’s technology. Call Zumasys today for your free quotation at 949-369-8015 x104.
Special Offer: Call today for a quotation from Zumasys and receive a free “Custom Built Server” T-Shirt.
Zumasys, Inc. 940 Calle Amanecer #E | San Clemente, CA 92673 Phone: 949-369-8015 | Fax: 949-369-8020 [email protected] NEWS MAKERS
Continued from page 16
SmartStart is basically an on-site installation service for new IBM Brown-Strauss Steel Selects systems that allows the integration 1mage Software to Replace Imaging System of the IBM system into the existing data processing environment. This Brown-Strauss Steel, headquartered in Denver, Colo., has chosen 1mage Software to install an includes all existing terminals, PCs electronic document imaging and management solution to replace its existing imaging system. Brown- and printer equipment, as well as Strauss Steel is the largest distributor of structural steel in the Western United States, including wide flange local and wide area communica- beams and structural tubing. As part of a company-wide upgrade of computer and networking equipment, tion equipment. It is a turnkey ser- Brown-Strauss Steel will be installing 1mage Software’s 1MAGE, 1SUITE, 1API and 1SCAN products. vice that allows the reseller to fol- “1MAGE will be a big improvement over our current system,” stated William Singer, director of Systems low VARMARK into the site and at Brown-Strauss Steel. “Due to a lack of customer support, we have not been able to expand imaging be- simply install their software onto a yond its initial purpose of digitizing mill test reports. We will now be able to move imaging into other running system that is ready to go areas of the company, in particular in our warehouse operations, where it will help keep track of docu- operational. ments like signed bills of lading.” In addition, VARMARK provides David R. DeYoung, president and CEO of 1mage Software, said: “The scalability of our products and our basic administration and opera- solid customer service have long been strengths for 1mage. We are pleased to be able to help Brown-Strauss tional training on the system along Steel achieve their document-imaging goals.” with a disaster recovery tape for each installation. VARMARK said that it has dramatically reduced pric- products and support services. added, “We are very excited ODBC installations on many different ing for the new Windows and Linux This agreement makes Better Re- about the addition of Better Results MultiValue databases. This level of version of the SmartStart service. sults Software the exclusive distrib- to our team of software distribution technical experience, coupled with VARMARK also now provides on- utor of WinLink ODBC in North experts. Each company brings the top-of-class WinLink ODBC prod- call technical support for the Win- America for all MultiValue plat- years of MultiValue programming uct, allows Better Results to stand dows-based products. All Windows forms except for Ultimate Plus. experience to our network of value alone as the premier North American added distributors. These changes support requires the installation of ODBC technology has become ODBC solution provider to the Multi- increasingly important to the Multi- will result in a broader and deeper Systrol Management software on Value community, the company said. Value database market recently as knowledge base from which to sup- the supported server (For more infor- Better Results Software Services, the primary tool for users to move port our WinLink customers, mation on Systrol, see New Prod- headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif., whether it be for technical issues or application data into open has sales offices in Marina del Rey, ucts in this issue.). systems. According to Brian application development.” Calif.; San Diego, Calif.; and Point Riedlinger, Better Results vice pres- This relationship with Via Sys- Pleasant, N.J. The company has spe- ident of Technical Services, tems includes the transfer of all ex- Via Systems cialized in providing software solu- “Once our ODBC technology is isting support arrangements for Appoints Better tions to the MultiValue database com- installed at a customer site, all lev- ODBC to Better Results Software. Results Software as munity (including orphaned users) els of employees can access Mul- Jeff Jakus, vice president of Sales Exclusive North since 1991. Expertise includes, but tiValue data and easily present it and Marketing for Better Results, American WinLink is not limited to, UniVerse, UniData, ODBC Distributor in meaningful reports using indus- stated: “In addition to taking over try standard tools such as Excel, the support functions, Better Results Prime Information, mvBASE, mvEN- Better Results Software is Crystal Reports, Word, Access will aggressively pursue new TERPRISE, D3, jBASE, System Builder now one of the exclusive sources and Visual Basic.” ODBC sales, support and installa- and SB+, pcVerse, PI/PC, UNIX, for Via Systems’ WinLink ODBC Recently appointed president of tion opportunities throughout the AIX, HP/UX, DG/UX, Solaris, Linux, (Open DataBase Connectivity) Via Systems Robert Catalano entire North American MultiValue Windows NT, Windows 2000, database market.” ODBC, OLE/DB, HTML, XML, Visu- Better Results Software personnel al Basic, Microsoft Query, VB Script have been involved with hundreds of and JAVA.
18 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 Application Hosting Group Fills Void in MultiValue Market
WHO IS APPLICATION valid alternative to maintaining such as running out of disk space accessing the client’s dedicated HOSTING GROUP? your own in-house data center.” and runaway processes. server at AHG’s data center as Application Hosting Group Founded by Dodds, Jon Kristof- AHG follows the SAS-70 and opposed to a server at the Inc. (AHG), of Naperville, Ill., is ferson, and Harry Reiter, AHG’s ISO-9000 quality standards to in- client’s office. If the client a newly formed company created roots are in service. They each sure the safety and security of the doesn’t have a network, AHG by “old-time” consultants pursuing have more than 20 years of expe- customer’s data. The company provides one, with “some amaz- a new business paradigm—appli- rience in the industry with a wide also can provide additional sys- ing benefits by using Internet ap- cation hosting, says one of its variety of exposure to applications tems for disaster recovery, appli- pliances,” according to Dodds. founders, Tom Dodds. AHG’s mis- from nearly every business aspect. cation testing and software devel- “We can accommodate dumb sion is to fill a vacuum for UniVerse Kristofferson has spent years with opment. Its staff offers 7 to 6 CST terminals and printers by using in- and UniData (U2) database users Prime Computer, VMark Software, telephone support, with 24/7 telligent terminal and printer and developers, providing a vari- Ardent, and most recently, Informix support available, and can han- servers,” he says. “We can also ety of support services that the Professional Services, as well as dle network, operating system provide local phone access to your three principals have identified as independent consulting firms. and U2 support calls. server through our networking ser- lacking in the MultiValue community. Dodds has 23 years invested as “Our consulting staff can han- vices anywhere in the United “The Application Hosting an independent consultant, while dle any U2 technical task includ- Group delivers reliable and effi- Reiter has years of experience ing application development, ap- States. If you are using a PC with a cient application hosting services working for Devcom Mid-America plication testing, application terminal emulator or an Internet ap- through state-of-the-art Internet/In- and holding a management role maintenance, data warehousing, pliance, you already have the tools tranet technology, concentrating at a leading insurance firm. performance tuning and Web in- necessary to access a remote host. on data cleansing, system tuning tegration,” Dodds says. “The costs “Finally, we will convert your WHAT IS APPLICATION and operating system auditing,” application to run under Windows HOSTING? for our services are surprisingly Dodds explains. “Part of our mis- low, often less than the salary of a 2000 and the latest version of Uni- According to AHG, application sion is to provide an economical, systems administrator.” hosting represents the latest trend Verse or UniData. Windows 2000 secure data center for our clients. in information technology. Put sim- provides for a very high level of To accomplish that, we have se- HOW APPLICATION ply, application hosting is out- HOSTING WORKS performance and reliability. U2 lected a Windows 2000 Ad- sourcing your U2 application. What’s involved in application has many special features avail- vanced Server operating system. AHG provides a staff of U2 pro- able while on Windows 2000.” That selection was made because hosting? The first step is to provide fessionals that will maintain your Once the conversion is com- it provides a secure, reliable, scal- a network connection from the U2 application on its hardware in pleted, the client can access the able, and cost-effective platform client’s office to AHG’s data cen- its facility. application running on a dedicat- for U2 applications. Our years of ter. This can be accomplished AHG’s hosting service includes ed server at AHG’s data center. experience has shown that there through the Internet via the client’s configuring the operating system are economies of scale in operat- ISP (Internet Service Provider) or by “Our staff of highly trained U2 and U2 for optimum performance. ing a data center. By sharing the means of a dedicated communica- professionals will insure that you A full backup is performed each considerable costs involved in cre- tions line. There are a multitude of have the highest available uptime day with restores made upon re- ating a state-of-the-art data center, networking alternatives — ”we possible,” Dodds states. “With quest. Regular application file main- our clients can realize the advan- can provide wide area networking constant system monitoring and tenance is performed monthly on tages and share the cost. to 66 countries around the world,” monthly file sizing, your applica- the client’s application files. AHG “With the prevalence of Internet Dodds comments. tion will run better with fewer prob- also performs system administration technologies today, the idea of lems than it has ever before.” tasks such as adding and deleting If the client already has a net- outsourcing your data center oper- users and printers. AHG monitors work in place, the only difference ation to take advantage of these the system for possible problems application hosting would make is shared cost savings provides a
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 19 BY NATHAN RECTOR
PALProgramming M Tools
CREATING A PALM program is not as hard as you may
think. The hard part of any Palm programming is actually the conduit, which
I’ve discussed in previous articles. There are many different programming
languages you can use to create a Palm application that I’ll discuss here.
The Palm development tools are broken down into three general categories:
Low level, high level, and data capture. Each has its own advantage and dis-
advantage. Let’s talk about them for a bit.
Low-level programming tools are the Palm Assembly, C and C++ tools. Historically, Palm applications have been developed using C and C++. There are several C and C++ programming tools. The most mature is CodeWarrior, but like every other OS that C and C++ work on, there is a free tool kit that you can use with a GNU license. This is PRC-Tools. CodeWarrior is a commercial package from Metrowerks, with versions for Macintosh and Windows. It’s a typical commercial development environment, similar to Microsoft’s and Borland’s C++ environments. Most of the books that talk about Palm programming use CodeWarrior exclusively. PRC-Tools, or sometimes called GCC, is free and can be downloaded from the Internet. PRC-Tools runs on Win- dows and Linux/Unix. Contrary to CodeWarrior that provides a nice GUI IDE, PRC-Tools does not come with one. It is designed as a command line compiler, so you feed it the names of the files that contain the C code and the definition of the Palm screen. Although PRC-Tools does not come with an IDE, there are several people that have made them. That last set of C programs are actual C compilers that run on the Palm itself, as opposed to compiling the pro- gram on a PC and uploading the compiled code to the Palm. They allow you to write programs in the Palm Memo Pad and then compile them directly into Palm applications. They are PocketC and OnBoardC. The next set of programming tools is the high level. These consist of Java, Basic, Pascal, and a few other languages. These programming languages are much easier to work with than C and C++, but they usually require a utility program, or a runtime module, to be loaded on the Palm in addition to the program you write. Continues on page 45 20 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001
BY BRUCE JOHNSON Diary of a Web Site ENCRYPTION
IN OUR LAST INSTALLMENT, we discussed some of the is-
sues, limitations and solutions regarding the security of our Web site. In this iteration,
we'll look at a slightly different take on security. Namely, how to keep data from the
prying eyes of, well, people we don't want to see our data.
There are two points at which we are concerned about our data. The first is while the
data is moving from the client browser to the server (Data Transmission). The second
occurs once the data is on the server (Data Storage). Although some of the concepts are
similar, the details of the implementation are not.
Data Transmission the selection of two very large prime For most data transmission security, Se- numbers. By large, we are talking about cure Sockets Layer (SSL) is sufficient. 60-digit numbers or more. These two However, understanding SSL is useful, if numbers are multiplied together to get only to be able to judge its appropriate- an even larger number representing the ness for your own situation. In an SSL product. This number (the product) is connection, the data is encrypted by the published as the public portion of the en- browser. The encryption key is retrieved cryption. It is this value that is returned by making a request of a certificate serv- by the certificate server when the key is er. Typically, although not necessarily, requested. this server will be hosted by a trusted In order to decode the message, a func- third party. Verisign is the most popular tion utilizing the two large prime num- provider of this service. The encryption bers is used. For those of you who might key is used to encode the data before it be mathematically challenged (or just is being sent to the server. At that point, never gave it a first thought, much less a it is decoded and processed as an ordi- second), the process of identifying the nary request. prime factors of a number is labor inten- When discussing SSL, you will frequent- sive. What this means is that, even ly hear the terms 40-bit and 128-bit. though that large number is publicly These phrases refer to the number of bits available, it would take a long time and a in the encryption key. SSL utilizes a tech- lot of computing power to determine its nique from a family of algorithms called factors. The time involved increases with public key encryption (PKE). The math- the size of the number. This is the reason ematics behind the algorithm involves that more bits equals more security.
22 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 But make no mistake. It is possible to (www.tagconsulting.com). It is too com- fore more secure) the encryption key is, break an SSL encrypted message. It is just plex to include in this article. One look at the slower the process. a question of how much time and effort the code and you will see why I made this Now I don’t want you to get the idea that the hackers are willing to exert. At the choice. This algorithm is typically used to each field will take a second or more to moment, you can break (assuming that create digital signatures. you have a powerful enough computer— decode. It won’t. But if you do a query one that checks a billion possibilities a Password Hacking that returns 10,000 records, the delay will be noticeable. As well, you won’t be able second) a 40-bit code in 18 minutes. The A very common method of password val- DES-breaking machine (called Deep to view the results of a query in a standard idation is to take the incoming user id tool. You will need to create a special Crack, a distributed network of comput- and password and construct a query ers connected through the Internet) was browser that decrypts the data before dis- string along the lines of the first state- play. Not difficult, just extra work. processing 250 billion keys per second at ment shown in Figure 1. If this is execut- its peak. If you had a machine a billion times more powerful than Deep Crack, it would take 10 to 15 years to break a 128- STATEMENT 1 bit code. Secure enough for SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Userld= ‘
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 23 Web-ify
“Clearly, the Web was the way to go. Today, our completely Web-enabled application has streamlined work processes and reduced errors. Thanks to our using jBASE, OBjEX and Active Server pages, which all interface nicely with BASIC subroutines, we now have a state-of-the-art application.”
C, and OBjEX eb Builder, Java OBjEX, JDB Use jBASE W pplets, Browsers, etc. with Active Server Pages, Java A
e’re Desktop and Development ASE help-
“Around here, the process nevere’re pleased stops. toW have jB hy w e’re fully confident that continually enhancinghich is w the application and bringing on new functions, w ove the processell along. into Wthe future.” ing us m ith us w ill be w jBASE w
Use jDP (including OLE DB,ord, ODBC,Crystal ADO, Reports, and etc.JDBC) or OBjEX with Excel, W
Use Java OBjEX, JDBC with development tools like Cold Fusion, jBuilder, etc., as well as with jBASE OBjEX with Visual Basic or Delphi etc.
Database Interoperability jBASE SOFTWARE INC. 205 NEWBURY STREET •
FRAMINGHAM • MA 01701 • USA “Interoperability is critical because everything must interact with PHONE: +1 508-598-4100 everything else. jBASE has been key to allowing us to move from E-MAIL: [email protected]
a MultiValue database to a normalized RDBMS system — like WEB: www.jBASE.com Sybase or Oracle — without having to rewrite our application. jBASE SOFTWARE INC. For us, nothing else was as flexible as jBASE, especially when you 10260 SW GREENBURG ROAD • SUITE consider that we need to access and store data in other database 700 • PORTLAND • OR 97223 USA environments.” PHONE: +1 503-290-1200 E-MAIL: [email protected]
WEB: www.jBASE.com jBASE SOFTWARE LTD. 599 MAXTED ROAD, HEMEL
HEMPSTEAD • HERTS HP2 7DX Use the jEDI with Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server or virtually PHONE: +44 1442 235 515 any data source. jBASE even supports embedded SQL. E-MAIL: [email protected]
WEB: www.jBASE.com THE SECRET IS OUT. It seems that more and more developers are exposing jBASE for what it Latest sighting is: an Ultra Flexible Option that is truly a Jack-of-all-trades and Master JAVA OBjEX of them all! Java OBjEX is a recent addition to the jBASE product set. It defines BASIC and other important jBASE ele- WEB-IFY APPLICATIONS WITH EASE. ments to the Java environment, and allows the interac- tion of jBASE with any Java technology. Java OBjEX’s Face it, developers love exploring the limitless possibilities of the versatility allows it to be used with any Java integrated Web. Why not? Web-enabled applications are more competitive. And development environment such as Visual Age and Web- Sphere. Or use it to create Enterprise Java Beans. Plus, they take advantage of the newest technology. So don’t let other when it’s used with a Java Application Server, Java development products ground you, reach new heights with jBASE. OBjEX yields a robust scalable implementation of an ap- We provide you with an array of products and tools that make plication for the Web or any Distributed Environment. Web-ifying applications a blast. They include jBASE Web Builder, Java OBjEX, JDBC, and OBjEX. Each is designed to work hand-in- hand with many of today’s leading industry Web tools such as Ac- tive Server Pages, Java Applets, Browsers, and lots more. Now that the truth has been uncovered, put jBASE to work creating Web- enabled applications that are worlds apart. DEVELOP USING STATE-OF-THE-ART TOOLS. jBASE is the launch point for connecting standard tools such as Excel, Word and Crystal Reports to the database. Latest sighting Once the connection is made, just access data or execute code EB BUILDER directly from that industry-standard desktop application. jBASE jBASE W OBjEX integrates seamlessly with Visual Basic for Applications jBASE Web Builder, the newest component of the jBASE product set, empowers developers to create in- (VBA). Plus, jBASE provides an OLE DB and an ODBC interface. Remem- dustrial-strength business applications using Internet ber, to develop out-of-this-world applications, start with an out-of- technology and their existing jBASE expertise. By pro- this-world product: jBASE. viding a browser-based integrated development environment, jBASE Web Builder breaks new ground in the Web application builder arena. Sim- THE FREEDOM TO INTEGRATE WITH ALIEN DATABASES. ply put, it is the ‘glue’ that links widely available, open Another innovation worth investigating is the jEDI. The jBASE External Device and standard technologies, ensuring that jBASE Web Builder applications can be deployed on all major Interface provides a common set of rules and syntax to access any database or technology platforms. file system. With it, you can make the move from a MultiValue database to a nor- malized RDBMS system like Sybase, Oracle or SQL Server without re-writing your applications. Its flexibility even extends to its support of databases using em- bedded SQL. So, if your environment demands a mixture of different applica- tions and databases, jBASE provides you with a common access method to them. This means that, even when coexisting with other data environments, the invest- ment in knowledge is maintained because the code will be completely compatible. THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN POINTS. Now that the truth has been exposed about jBASE, doesn’t it make sense to investigate further? To begin your mission to the exciting new world that awaits you with jBASE, call us in North America at +1 508 598-4100; in Europe +44 1442 235 515; in Australia +61 (2) 9955 2644; email [email protected] or visit us at www.jbase.com. Once you make contact with us, you’ll be well on your way to where you want to be today. And tomorrow. BY OWEN MARKS Getting Started with Incorporating Code into your UniBasic Development
C Environment AS A PROGRAMMING language, UniBasic has a lot to recommend
it. It’s an excellent high-level
“ language, similar enough to
“standard” Basic that the Darn it, I forgot right folks can pick it up fairly easily, it’s rich in text to use two equal manipulation functions, and, of course, it is tightly signs again! integrated with the UniData database itself. On the other
hand, it can be cumbersome to ” write serial communications pro- tocols (although it surely can be
done — we’ve done it!), and it is diffi-
cult or impossible to write socket-level net-
work or Web-aware applications without resort-
ing to third-party tools and add-ins.
The C programming language happens to be very good at filling UniBasic’s gaps in the sense that it can readily perform system calls and otherwise work at a very low system Special Projects and Services Group, The Systems House, Des Plaines, Ill. level. Once a module of C code has been debugged, calling it from within UniBasic al- lows it to function as a black box; UniBasic programmers are able to use it without ever having to deal with the C code itself. In this article, I’m going to cover the three steps re- quired to allow a C function to be called from within a UniBasic program, specifically: 1. Write and compile the C program 2. Edit the appropriate UniData configuration files and run some “magic” programs 3. Rebuild the actual UniData executable (sounds dangerous, but it’s not!) For our example, we’re going to write a C function which accepts two integer argu- ments and returns their product. We’ll then write a UniBasic program which passes two integers to our C function and prints the product.
26 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 Step 1: Write and compile a C function called “multiplier()” copy the object code from our C function into our work direc- tory as well:
/* accepts two arguments and returns the product */ int multiplier(int x, int y) $ cd /home/oam { $ pwd return x * y; /home/oam } $ mkdir work $ cd work $ pwd /home/oam/work We now compile our C function; remember to specify the op- $ cp -p /unidata/home/work/* . tion which prevents sending object files to the linkage editor, $ cp -p /home/oam/C/multiplier.o . since the lack of main() will cause the compiler to produce all $ kinds of interesting error messages. (These screen shots happen to be from an AIX box, on which that option is “-c”; check your compiler documentation for the correct option on your Step 2 - Edit the appropriate UniData configuration files platform.) and run some “magic” programs $ pwd In UniData’s default work directory (probably /unidata/home/ /home/oam/C work), there’s a file called “cfuncdef”; it needs to be copied to a file called “cfuncdef_user” in your own work directory: $ cc -c multiplier.c $ $ pwd /home/oam/work Next, we need to create a work directory for ourselves any- $ cp -p /unidata/home/work/cfuncdef . where; in this example, I’m putting it under my own home di- $ cp -p cfuncdef cfuncdef_user rectory (/home/oam). We’ll then copy some needed files from the “real” UniData work directory into ours, and finally, we’ll $ Continues on page 28
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 27 Getting Started with C Code UniData supplies their standard makefile (called base.mk). Copy base.mk to new.mk: Continued from page 27
The file “cfuncdef_user” then needs to be edited as shown here: $ pwd /home/oam/work Before editing cfuncdef_user $ cp -p base.mk new.mk /* test for adding C function to the RUN Machine */ $ /* comment lines come here. */
/* C function declaration format: Next, modify new.mk as follows (only the relevant portion of the file is shown). As indicated below, you’ll need to insert function-name:return-type:number-of- your object file name in the appropriate place. I also strongly argument:arg1,arg2,...,argn recommend that you change the name of the executable to be made from “udt” to something safer, e.g., “test_udt”: */ Before editing new.mk $$FUN /* beginning of C function */ OBJS = funchead.o interfunc.o callcf.o efs_init.o $$OBJ /* *.o come here */ udt: $(OBJS) $$LIB /* library comes here */ $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJS) $(NEWOBJS) $(NEWLIBS) \
After editing cfuncdef_user (changes highlighted) $(libpath) -lapidummy $(libs_clt) \
/* test for adding C function to the RUN Machine */ $(addlibpath) $(addlib) \
/* comment lines come here. */ -o $@ /* C function declaration format: function-name:return-type:number-of- After editing new.mk (changes highlighted) argument:arg1,arg2,...,argn OBJS = funchead.o interfunc.o callcf.o efs_init.o */ MYOBJS = multiplier.o $$FUN /* beginning of C function */ udt_test: $(OBJS) multiplier:int:2:int,int $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJS) $(NEWOBJS) $$OBJ /* *.o come here */ $(NEWLIBS) \
/home/oam/work/multiplier.o $(MYOBJS) \
$$LIB /* library comes here */ $(libpath) -lapidummy $(libs_clt) \
$(addlibpath) $(addlib) \ Once the files have been edited, run these three “magic” -o $@ UniData processes:
$ pwd /home/oam/work Continues on page 30 $ $UDTBIN/genefs $ $UDTBIN/gencdef $ $UDTBIN/genfunc $
28 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 “People tell us that If you are a user or vendor of the greatest thing UniVerse, UniData, D3, UniVision, jBASE, mv*BASE, mv*Enterprise, about International RealityX or native MultiValue Spectrum’s regional databases, your neighbors conferences is would like to meet you! that since they are small and informal, “The Best of the opportunity to Spectrum” meet and have is coming your way! one-on-one
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REGISTER BEFORE AUGUST 15TH AND SAVE $ 50.00! Getting Started with C Code this case, I’m just making triple sure that the production version of “udt” doesn’t somehow get overwritten. Continued from page 28 At this point, I could test my new executable by simply chang- Step 3 - Build the new UniData executable ing my current directory to the appropriate account and exe- cuting “/unidata/home/work/bin/udt_test”; there is no prob- It’s finally time to create the new UniData executable. This is lem running different versions of UniData in this way. Here at simply a matter of establishing an environmental variable called The Systems House, however, we’ve written a number of com- WORKPATH and running the “make” command. Once that’s mands and scripts which make assumptions about the UniData done, we’ll create a “bin” directory for our new executable, and, executable, namely that it’s called “udt” and that it resides in as the last step, we need to copy a few key UniData files into our $UDTBIN. In our case, I would need to finish up by renam- new “bin” directory: ing “test_udt” to “udt”, changing $UDTBIN to my test bin directo- $ pwd ry, and putting it first in my /home/oam/work PATH so that the old “udt” never gets executed: $ WORKPATH="/home/oam/work" $ export WORKPATH $ make -f new.mk udt_test cc -qnoro -qarch=com -DNLS -DNULL_OK -DSQLTP -DNEW_INTER - DUDMS -O -c funchead.c cc -qnoro -qarch=com -DNLS -DNULL_OK -DSQLTP -DNEW_INTER - DUDMS -O -c interfunc.c cc -qnoro -qarch=com -DNLS -DNULL_OK -DSQLTP -DNEW_INTER - DUDMS -O -c callcf.c cc -qnoro -qarch=com -DNLS -DNULL_OK -DSQLTP -DNEW_INTER - DUDMS -O -c efs_init.c cc -K funchead.o interfunc.o callcf.o efs_init.o multiplier.o -L/unidata/home/lib -lapidummy -lshare -ludsql -ludmach -lbasic -lretl -lperf -lides -lpipe -lfunc -lndx -lshm -lmglm -lulc -lcmn -llicn -ludus -lnfaclnt -lud -lm -lcurses -lbsd -o udt_test $mkdir bin
$cd bin $ pwd $ pwd $ /unidata/home/work/bin /home/oam/work/bin $ mv udt_test udt $ cp -p ../udt_test udt $ UDTBIN="/home/oam/work/bin" $ cp -p $UDTBIN/mchinfo . $ export UDTBIN $ cp -p $UDTBIN/product.info . $ cp -p $UDTBIN/udtsort . $ PATH=$UDTBIN:$PATH $ $ export PATH $ echo $PATH If you are familiar with the syntax of makefiles, then you may be /home/oam/work/bin:/usr/bin:/etc:/usr/sbin:/usr/ wondering why, in the “make” command itself, I specified the ucb:/usr/bin/X11:/sbin:/unidata/bin/ud:/unidata/ executable name, since you probably know that thanks to the reference to “udt_test” in the makefile, the new executable will bin/tsh:/usr/sbin:. automatically be named correctly. My excuse is simple paranoia; $ cd /unidata/home/TEST_ACCOUNT nothing more, nothing less. Like you, I’ve spent too many nights and weekends recovering from rogue development techniques, $ udt so I tend to use the suspenders-and-belt approach at all times; in
30 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 Since our C function accepts two integer arguments and returns their product, we’re finally ready to write a UniBasic program that sends two integers off to the C function and then assumes that it’s getting back the product:
ARG1 = 4 ARG2 = 3 PROD = CALLC multiplier(ARG1,ARG2) PRINT ARG1 : "x" : ARG2 : "=" : PROD
If you’ve followed all the steps carefully, running this program should result in the following:
:RUN BP.OAM CALLC_DEMO 4x3=12 :
As you can see by the preceding example, writing a C function which is callable by a UniBasic program is not particularly diffi- cult. There are, to be sure, a number of steps involved, but, as we here at The Systems House have done, you’ll be able to auto- mate some of them with a few relatively simple scripts. To sum- marize, here’s a checklist of the steps: 1. Write and compile the C program WEAVER CONSULTING 2. Create a work directory (e.g., /unidata/home/work_oam) Your Source for:
3. Copy the contents of /unidata/home/work into the new ¥ 200+MultiValue UTILITIES! work directory 4. Put your C object file(s) into the new work directory ¥ HARDWARE & REHOSTING
5. Put a copy of cfuncdef, called cfuncdef_user, into the new ¥ SOFTWARE & PROGRAMMING work directory 6. Edit cfuncdef_user to include your function definition ¥ ANALYSIS, DESIGN, TRAINING 7. From within the new work directory, run: $UDTBIN/genefs Authorized Dealer/Partner for: $UDTBIN/gencdef Raining Data Monolith Corporation $UDTBIN/genfunc Accusoft Enterprises 8. Copy base.mk to new.mk and: Zumasys Insert your object file names JBSi And Others Change "udt:" to something appropriate (e.g., "test_udt:") 9. After setting WORKPATH, run “make -f new.mk test_udt” See our catalog, tips, hints & more: www.weaver-consulting.com 10. Put the newly built executable into its own bin directory or write/call for free catalog and rename it “udt” Email: [email protected] 11. Copy mchinfo, product.info, and udtsort into the new bin directory WEAVER CONSULTING 4553 Calumet Court I’D ENJOY HEARING about your efforts; feel Shingle Springs, CA 95682-9378 free to drop me a line at [email protected]. 530/676-6052 ¥ Fax 530/676-5675
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 31 BY STEVEN BACKMAN
on the DebateFront Lines State of the MultiValue Market
SPECTRUM RETURNED TO THE Boston The panel afforded a brief interlude to hon- estly probe the place and viability of Multi- area for the first time in several years. A modest Value in meeting the needs of software users and developers alike. This author got but energetic crowd spent an intense two days snared into moderating the session, which learning Web-oriented and other new program- featured Dave Bryant, president of jBASE, and Jay Adams, Raining Data East Coast ming, pumping the hardy crew of vendors for de- technical marketing director, followed by comments from his Gus-ness, and other in- tails with old user group friends. And of course, dustry notables from Via Systems, Informix as traditional in these affairs, the conference pro- and end-users. After years of lead vendors competing with vided plenty of time throughout for speculating each other to avoid the Pick or MultiValue and pontificating about the future of MultiValue moniker, the sense of the gathering reaffirmed the continued existence of a distinct Multi- and our various places in it. To facilitate this soul- Value world. Moreover, the discussion took this as a good thing. Adams captured the gen- searching process, conference-meister Gus Giobbi eral sense that “there certainly is a MultiValue world driven by our reseller solutions, our generously provided a luncheon panel discussion lower cost of ownership and our ability to on the future of the MultiValue marketplace. change. MultiValue offers savvy business folks that understand specific industry space, the package of a natural database, simple pro- MultiValue folks have done this for years. gramming language and ad hoc reporting.” This conference may have worried the same issues, but certainly in a new context. We To make sense out of this virtue, we need to have gone from early chatter about “good step back and consider the emerging indus- database, poor communications” to a con- try context. ference dominated by Web-enabling, Win- From the late ’80s through early ’90s or so, as dows, XML, palm and wireless tools. And the relational database sector forged ahead to we have gone from “great product, but not make itself the standard and the mainstream, mainstream” to publicly traded colossi, its lead vendors competed with each other and from IBM-Informix on down. with other database sectors in terms that said: Well, kinda, sorta. “The database matters!” “Standards matter!”
32 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 “Non-relational means legacy, and legacy Third, the relational database vendors ar- of perhaps one VAR or consultant providing means end of the road!” This all worked to our mored their databases with a whole array of support for almost everything has ended. collective disadvantage as a VAR- and solu- Web- and desktop development languages Corporate mergers bringing multiple sys- tions-based enterprise. The MultiValue sector and tools, aiming to rope in long-term cus- tems, integration of customers and clients rushed to embrace SQL and other so-called tomers more with development products with their own software into internal sys- standards, and the user community beseeched than with the database engines themselves. tems, the networking complexities of eCom- vendors to meet the relational ti- The consolidation of Multi- merce, wireless and VPNs, all favor having to tans on the marketing and ad- After 20 years of Value database engine devel- deal with more of a consulting army than in vertising field of battle. opers with tool developers, the past. And the windy path upward into such as what has happened Interestingly, we have now en- pseudo-academic these realms may also upset years of steady, this year in the formation of tered a new phase, where the re- modest maintenance budgets for infrastruc- jargon, the Raining Data, but also in the lational database vendors have ture and development. Systems administra- evolution of Via Systems and gotten a little bit sheepish about tors and database administrators long-accus- relational others, parallels what has hap- tomed to emphasizing how lean and mean how much the database itself pened with the big three rela- MultiValue ran have to adjust their sights or matters. First, the RDBMS database theorists tional database vendors. see their still-excellent line of business opera- world underwent a serious con- tions swept aside. solidation, with Sybase, In- gradually Hanging over all of this has formix and lesser lights steadily admitted that SQL been the return to a focus on For software developers and VARs, there’s an getting absorbed into the big software packages offering equivalent reference point in the industry at three of IBM, Microsoft and had no particular complete business and organi- large. Out there, software application devel- Oracle. The terms of this battle zational solutions. If you read opers, such as in the accounting and finan- had more and more to do with sanctity in the industry press in recent cial management arenas, as well as relational- proprietary extensions of the modeling the real years, we have re-entered an database hosted solution providers are SQL model rather than its suc- era where competent VARS, consolidating into big companies, while the cessful implementation. business and systems integrators and consul- industry leaders continue to shift more and tants customizing proven solu- more to system integration services and not After 20 years of pseudo-aca- organizational tions have a stronger appeal just software sales. Trusted, experienced demic jargon, the relational than the chance to create MultiValue VARs and consultants will need database theorists gradually ad- world. whole new applications from to find their way into teams and extended mitted that SQL had no partic- scratch. Hello? Here we are. families with more of an array of systems in- ular sanctity in modeling the real business tegration skills. This would seem to matter and organizational world. First, vendors com- Taken together, we passed into and out of a as much or more today, in 2001, than how peted more on their proprietary, non-relation- phase of competing over databases themselves quickly the applications themselves rid al, procedural programming languages than and back to a battlefield over tools and solu- themselves of their “green screen” character- on SQL itself. You didn’t know relational tions. This should favor the MultiValue sector based roots. databases used procedural languages? They and Adams, Bryant and others all stressed the may get called fancy terms like stored proce- mainstream-like power, capabilities and famil- Yet despite these concerns, from the sensibili- dures and triggers, but those things are as iarity of our sector’s new desktop and server- ties and sensitivities of the Boston crowd who procedural as a block of PICK/BASIC code side development tools. are always on the leading edge, of course, it written 20 years ago to establish credit-wor- would seem that the MultiValue community JBASE’s Bryant commented: “As our database thiness for a particular customer. SQL still knows what it is up against, that it has ven- technology gains strength with new function- matters, but after years of trying to have it, dor support readier than ever to meet the ality, and as we add platforms, jBASE enables we find that the rest of the industry now fo- challenge, and that we experienced profes- the MultiValue resellers not only to do new cuses on it less and less in its pure form. If sionals are enthusiastic to play. is development but also to sell into markets that you can run a function from a Web page or have in the past been out of reach. Basically, compiled business object, it matters less and we are committed to growth by bringing the less whether it speaks to the data in SQL or MultiValue marketplace to the mainstream.” STEVE BACKMAN’S company, some other language. And Adams added, “To steal a Clintonism— Database Designs Associates, provides Major vendors also busied themselves figuring It’s the VARs, stupid!” out such things as how to allow multi-dimen- consulting services and software develop- sional access to flat table data for analysis and Yet if it’s a bit of back to the future, nothing warehousing; how to shoehorn in spatial oper- happens the same way twice. To succeed in ment support for MultiValue and rela- ations to permit mapping and geographic-ori- the new era, the MultiValue community has tional database clients. You can reach ented analysis; how to store and move text on to adapt to some key changes. the Internet and other such things. So sudden- User sites long comfortable dealing with, and Steve with your comments at sback- ly, MultiValue, nested relations, multi-dimen- often insistent on dealing with, single lines of sions and so on all have a certain charm. support face a big change. For most, the era [email protected].
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 33 NEW PRODUCTS
LIVEWIRE Messaging Makes Telecommuting More Efficient
EVEN AS THE RANKS of ecutiveWorks’ popular OfficePilot all employees are not working in teleworkers swell to all-time highs, and allows a company’s on-site em- the same location,” explained Son- many companies remain hesitant to ployees to work face-to-face with re- dra Stewart, ExecutiveWorks presi- jump on the bandwagon for fear of mote workers in real time via a se- dent and director of R&D. decreased productivity and ac- cure, wireless-enabled intelligent “LIVEWIRE Messaging and Offi- countability. Now ExecutiveWorks messaging portal. cePilot enable managers, on-site
(www. executiveworks.com), a “Typically, a major obstacle to im- teams and remote workers to con- leader in the telework solutions in- plementing a telework arrangement nect in real time, using a variety of dustry, has introduced a tool to is management’s feeling that they methods.” solve common telecommuting diffi- can’t effectively manage employees Recent reports of companies’ and culties. The product, LIVEWIRE Mes- they don’t see on a daily basis or employees’ dissatisfaction with saging, is the newest module to Ex- that teamwork will be diminished if telecommuting cite teamwork is- sues, security risks, and telework- ers’ fear of diminished chances for Sunergos Software Releases HyperEDIT 7 career advancement as common reasons for not implementing tele- LESS THAN NINE MONTHS after the release of HyperEDIT 6, Sunergos Software has officially work arrangements or for discontin- released HyperEDIT 7. HyperEDIT is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the UniVerse and uing existing telework programs. UniData databases and takes advantage of the UniObjects API now common to both environments. “We agree that these issues need to be resolved for teams to tele- When asked about the quick turnaround on versions, Sunergos CIO Bryan Thorell commented, “It all work successfully,” Stewart said. seemed to start when we added record locking to HyperEDIT 6. The response was phenomenal. So we “OfficePilot and LIVEWIRE Messag- decided to refocus and narrow our efforts and create the best programming environment for U2, and I ing affordably address each of think we’ve accomplished that.” those concerns.” New features in the development tool include a Multiple Document Interface with support for simultane- ous connections to different hosts and accounts, as well as an intriguing feature that lets events such as LIVEWIRE Messaging was devel- OnOpen and OnSave interact dynamically with host-based subroutines. “We added the dynamic events oped to help teleworkers save time primarily to enable simple integration with all of the version control applications out there,” Thorell said. and increase efficiency. “Many managers identify with having to With the creation of a subroutine, developers can receive messages and prompts from their version con- sort through dozens of e-mail and trol software without leaving the HyperEDIT environment. “We’re already working on bundling routines for several packages including SCCS and Susan Joslyn’s PRC,” Thorell added. voice messages each day,” Stew- art said. “A day or two away from Thorell attributes most of the improvements in HyperEDIT to user requests. “I don’t think you have to be psy- the office can mean hundreds of chic to be successful in this business, just responsive,” Thorell said. “We encourage developers to down- messages to deal with upon their load our products and tell us how we can improve them. Some of the requests we have received are bril- return. But e-mail and telephones liant ideas.” assemble all data in one place, re- HyperEDIT is for UniVerse and UniData developers who are dissatisfied with programming with line and quiring the recipient to manually text based editors. Sunergos has posted evaluation versions of HyperEDIT on its Web site, www.Sunergos- sort and prioritize the incoming Software.com. data, which is a daily and time- consuming process.”
34 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 “We believe RAID Alert will prove to be a very valuable tool to the Prevent the ’Blue Screen of Death’ IT community,” said Robert Loda- with System Mechanic to, marketing director for Rauch Medien. “It will enable system ad- SYSTEM MECHANIC keeps PCs in check with 15 tools for speed, reliability and security. With recent ad- ministrators to know precisely vances in communication and connectivity, more and more people are starting businesses out of their homes. which drive failed on which serv- Similarly, large companies are becoming less skeptical about hiring consultants, which often sends them scram- er, as soon as it happens.” bling for the technology to keep things running smoothly. The RAID Alert system continuously Whether you’re a home-based professional or corporate technology officer, this wave of change has created an monitors your RAID array and increased need for PC utilities. System Mechanic is comprised of 15 different utilities designed to enhance the alerts you when any problem has stability, performance, and overall reliability of the PC. “System Mechanic can speed up your Internet connection been detected. The RAID Alert sys- by up to 300 percent, clean up your system registry, remove unnecessary files, fix and remove broken Windows tem can be configured to respond shortcuts, and streamline your overall system maintenance. Plus, we’ve made it easy for anyone to use,”says with detailed technical information Francis Johnson of iolo technologies. on your system. This includes sys- “For someone who’s trying to be productive, either in the office or from their home, there’s nothing worse than a tem status, identification informa- PC that’s slow, unstable, and full of useless junk files,” Johnson says. “System Mechanic is an essential tool for in- tion (IP address, host name, and dividual employees in the field, as well as the home-based professional. However, it’s not meant exclusively for alert alias), error information, these individuals. System Mechanic has been very popular with corporations of all sizes and in all industries, hardware configuration informa- keeping headquarters and satellite offices alike running smoothly.” tion (such as hard drive specs), and RAID status code. The alert Perhaps most important is the System Mechanic Mobile Tool Kit, which is the enterprise version of System Me- can then be received via email or chanic, made to run directly from CD-ROM. This will especially appeal to IT administrators who maintain a large email-enabled device like a pager number of machines. or cellular phone. Because it runs directly from a CD, the power of System Mechanic Mobile Tool Kit can be easily transported and The RAID Alert system is perfect used on any number of computers, simply by inserting the CD into each machine, performing the maintenance for call centers, data centers, and required, and then removing the CD afterward. “It’s a computer-independent license, so one CD can be used to corporate networks where large IT portably maintain any number of machines,” Johnson says. managerial tasks exist. The RAID System Mechanic’s unique blend of usability and cutting-edge tools led the software to beat out Symantec’s Nor- Alert system streamlines these ton SystemWorks for Home Office Computing’s 100 Gold Award for the top utility software in 2000. In order to tasks by automating the monitor- maintain and increase the value of System Mechanic, iolo has recently added even more capability, including ing of your network’s storage and consolidation of critical system maintenance and automatic updating, with its self-repairing WebUpdate feature. keeping your IT staff informed on current network events. This addi- IOLO can be visited on the Internet at http://www.iolo.com. tion to Rauch Medien’s email alert system that comes standard on all servers, provides peace of mind In contrast, LIVEWIRE Messaging al- system and ExecutiveWorks’ flag- Rauch Medien and Arco not available with any other serv- lows communication by task-specif- ship product. Launched late last Technology er on the market, the company Present World’s First said. ic or project-specific e-mail, instant year, OfficePilot acts as a desktop Remote RAID messaging, voicemail, white for remote workers and their teams, Monitoring System Rauch Medien has based RAID board, voice-over IP, and Web-en- centralizing all strategic and tactical Alert on Arco’s proven RAID tech- abled person-to-person or multi-user activities and providing daily and RAUCH MEDIEN (rauchme- nology. “Arco’s RAID technology video. Information is organized by weekly wireless-enabled action dien.com) has decided to base RAID is a very mature product that has task or project as it is sent and re- plans and productivity reports. “Ev- Alert, its upcoming remote RAID mon- proven its reliability in the field, ceived, eliminating the inefficiency eryone says teleworkers are more itoring system, on Arco RAID technol- which is what counts,” said Cory typically caused by congested productive,” Stewart said, “but Offi- ogy (arcoide.com). The RAID Alert R. Rauch, director of Technology system is a combination of hardware voicemail and e-mail. cePilot’s scheduling and reporting for Rauch Medien. “This, coupled and software that continuously moni- with excellent technical support, is The interface is Web-based, secure features give proof.” tors your RAID system and, in the why we chose to go with Arco.” and password-protected, and inte- event of a problem, alerts you with grates seamlessly into OfficePilot, a important information via email or Continues on page 44 Web-based activities management email-enabled device like a pager or cell phone.
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 35 [WEBONOMICS 101]
Post-Modern PlasticPlastic
Online PaymentsBY at MELVIN Your SORIANO Site
fortable and acceptable” online. So with that reality, I think it’s time that we force the issue and assume that even some tra- Some times you ditional businesses will either face de- mands for some online retail payment have to raise the bar. solution, or must impress their prospec- Just can’t keep jump- tive customers with so-called mainstream computing features on their Web sites. ing the same hurdles Let’s assume that your company accepts Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover month after month, cards, just to name a few. You might even click after click. allow customers to enter the credit card information in a form and just forward MELVIN M. SORIANO orders from that form to an email ac- works at Eagle Rock Many Web sites, especially from tradi- Information Systems tional offline brick and mortar shops, do count. If so, you may have already begun (ERIS), an Internet well enough without credit card pay- tackling the most fundamental credit Application Service ments. In fact, many don’t need them card payment issue, namely credit card Provider and MultiValue number validation. Developer. ERIS has whatsoever, as they handle payments deployed enterprise-wide through credit accounts, purchase orders, Without a live connection to a bank or a solutions on most and monthly statements. These B2B card validation service, however, there’s MultiValue platforms and operating systems. (Business to Business) sites are more ex- precious little you can do up front with Mel can be contacted at tensive than most people realize. But ex- the card information. You are thus either [email protected] pectations are changing, and although delaying the order process until the card and visited at such setups might work for your existing can in fact be validated, or you are taking www.eriscorp.com/. You can always call customers, they might not attract new a preposterous risk and processing the him directly at ERIS’s customers to your e-business. Last order with the assumption that the card Pasadena offices: month, I suggested that “for most, credit is valid, was entered correctly, and be- (626) 535-9658. card payments have become more com- longs to the person who used it.
36 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 Your programmer can count the number salesperson could enter the wrong infor- The customer, thinking her credit card of digits in the card, making sure that mation or correlate the card payment was encrypted from the secure pages, the format is approved for the specified with the wrong order. And of course, does not realize that the card number card. You can run the card through a any mistake that causes delays merely was transmitted within such a lax envi- checksum subroutine to see if the num- confuses the customer further; the cus- ronment. If this reality does not match bers are valid. (Contact me at mel@ea- tomer, as far as she is concerned, any promises of security, or may cause glerock-is.com if you need access to that thought the card was valid, as the order the customer to feel misled, then you algorithm.) You even can make sure that was accepted beforehand. might have a privacy and security issue the date of expiration has not already The mistakes and delays may not even be blowing up in your face. passed. But at some point, all you will the primary concern for some. Security Automatic payments not only ease the have is a number that still needs to be might be a larger puzzle to solve in these possibility of error, therefore, but also passed manually through a point-of-sales implementations. Orders transmitted to a help keep your customers’ information terminal, called in to the bank, or (gasp) clerk or salesperson by way of e-mail usu- confidential. The different ways of ac- to be written physically onto a carbon- ally are sent unencrypted and therefore cepting credit card payments may differ, copied receipt. are unsecure. You may have sent your but they at least offer you these benefits So, if you are not doing electronic vali- customer through a complex set of secure in addition to the increased ease-of-use dation, your procedures may be more Web pages, but the final transmission, the and marketability of your e-business site. susceptible to cause an error than if you one that actually gets to the salesperson, One method of managing credit card performed the acts automatically. Any was completely transparent, visible, and payments is through MultiValue soft- intervention by someone’s hands opens accessible on the World Wide Web, along ware. You could write your own software the doors to mistakes. A human clerk or with that credit card number. Continues on page 38
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 37 Webonomics 101 Continued from page 37
that will take hold of your server’s modem and connect to your bank. The details of such transmissions are therefore com- pletely under your control and can be manipulated to your company’s needs. Likewise you can just purchase existing credit card verification software packages that are written in MultiValue Basic. Ex- isting software packages allow you to enjoy the benefits of shared development costs as well as bundled features and edit checks that you may not have considered. Both these choices can integrate easily with most every MultiValue database platform out there. They usually are writ- ten as called routines that can be called from any of your software packages. Depending on your e-business site, you may already be accepting orders directly within your MultiValue system. If you use Web integration tools, such as Web- Wizard, FlashConnect or RedBack, you merely need to connect the order com- mitment and the credit card validation software. These credit card validation software packages are blind to online ver- sus traditional input mechanisms. This input-independence not only makes your programmers’ lives easier; it might be cheaper for your company on a trans- action basis. Many banks that offer mer- chant accounts demand higher percent- ages from pure Web merchants. Because these software packages are mixed use, and do not distinguish Web-based trans- actions from off-line transactions, there is no markup associated with Internet- based commercial activity. Outside the realm of MultiValue valida- tion software, some merchant banks and application service providers make it easy for you to use their validation software. Two options seem to be available for this approach.
38 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 In the first, you install a software pro- RE Systems Group, Inc. Chicagoland gram on a server in your network. More Consulting Services for the Pick Users likely than not, the software will reside Pick/Multi Value Marketplace Get the benefits of over 25 years on your database server. For better secu- Pick/D3 Programming of Pick & Pick-Style experience rity configurations, however, you may and an integrated approach to choose to place it outside the innermost Consulting and modern information technology. secure areas in which your database serv- Software Development Legacy System Support er resides. You shell out of your Multi- for the Pick D3 Multivalue Market Integration with non-Pick since 1988 Custom Programming Value database and pass the credit card System Design Full I.T. Support information to the software program. Visual Basic Programming Data Conversion The software program opens up a low- Interfacing D3 to Oracle Database/Systems Design Full -Time Staff level network communication to its Downtown Office Conversion Services main servers back at the bank or opera- Upgrade Services 312-578-0377 tional facility, validate the credit card, Project Management J. Glaser & Co., Inc. then returns a signal with some success Outsourcing Services or failure code. Your programmers then STAFF LOS take the success/fail code and process the Courteous Experienced USN transaction accordingly. Professional TIO User Friendly Another option is to use a service provider. You are essentially doing the REASONABLE RATES Software Solutions same thing as the first option, except the [email protected] www.jglaser.com data is passed not to a software program running on your network. Instead, the data is passed via a URL to a remote Web site. The Web site takes the credit card information over secure communi- IBM and cations then returns a success or failure IBM and Informix? Web page that you determine. Informix? With this approach, the MultiValue pro- We Knew It All Along! grammer does not technically call the We Knew It All Along! program. Instead the information is just New England ’s redirected to the service provider to pro- experienced UniVerse cess. The reply will call up a Web page and UniData specialists that presumably uses your MultiValue We’ve been IBM and Informix Business Partners connection software. for the past twelve years! UniVerse, UniData, and SB+ Software With these different ways of validating Contract Programming & Technical Support credit card information, then, your site IBM Netfinity (high end NT servers) doesn’t have to get by with less than valid IBM/RISC System 6000 Systems credit card validation. Respond quickly Custom Application Software Development Application Software Rehosting and automatically to give your customer a solid sense of security and comfort. In Call us today at 800-nec-necs (632-6327) and compare. a virtuous circle, they’ll return with more New England Computer Solutions business and your site provides top- 7 Sylvan Street, Peabody, MA 01960 notch service that Web surfers are begin- TEL: (978) 573-3293 • FAX: (978) 573-3207 ning to expect as standard. is www.necsi.com
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 39 [ SPECTRUM SPOTLIGHT]
Word on the street is that the Re- ality MultiValue DBMS is on the comeback trail. However, according to its owner and de- Reality Returns to the veloper since 1974, U.K.-based Northgate In- formation Solutions, that perception is not Northgate Plans “Previously, Northgate pursued indirect strate- quite accurate. The reality is that Reality never Reality V9.0 gies to distribute Reality, using distributors to really left. Northgate, a company with deep ties Rollout in U.S. represent us,” Letham said. “We think we can Located in the heart- to the MultiValue marketplace, has ensured that do a better job ourselves. Our intention is to let land of the MultiValue customers know how good and capable Reality Reality has annually kept up with current tech- industry in the presti- is, and what they can get out of Reality.” nology so that it remains on the cutting edge, gious University of Cal- Plans call for the release of Reality V9.0 in the ifornia at Irvine Re- said John Letham, CEO of NIS Inc., North- September/October timeframe, complemented search Park, NIS Inc. gate’s new headquarters in the U.S. It’s just that, by an all-out effort, including a direct mail will be instrumental in campaign, to reconnect with the U.S. Reality because of distribution issues, users in the Unit- raising the profile of customer base and to make them aware of the ed States didn’t have access to the new releases Reality and the launch ease of migration to V9.0, according to of Reality V9.0 and all of Reality. But now all that is about to change. Letham. NIS is also offering a simplified, “easy of its bundled utilities to deal with” licensing model to customers. The company is marshalling its resources to in the U.S. market. launch a global strategy for the latest release of CEO John Letham “Customers can go from V5 to V9.0 with no application change and no recompilation,” he its flagship product, Reality V9.0. spoke to International Spectrum magazine asserted. “There are no changes to the data set about the latest version that clients have had to undergo with other of Reality, V9.0, and MultiValue database management systems. the company’s global That’s a big plus. Customers are pressurized to strategy to market it. provide access to the Internet and secure busi- ness-to-business transactions. This is the Letham said that the launch pad to answer customers’ needs.” perception that Reality had disappeared is part- The fact that Northgate owns all of its technol- ly due to the fact that ogy—Reality and its bundled utilities—makes Reality users in the for a “winning proposition,” Letham said. “We
John Letham, CEO of NIS Inc., poses in front of North- United States are using own all our own technology, which means that gate’s new U.S. headquarters located in the presti- a much earlier version we are completely in control of how our prod- gious University of California at Irvine Research Park. of the database manage- uct is developed and moves forward.” ment system (mostly V5) than their counter- parts in Europe and other countries. NIS is Technical Innovations remedying that problem, taking the reins into On the technical side, Reality can more than its own hands and assuming control of the dis- hold its own with other MultiValue database tribution and servicing of its own technology. offerings. “We are delighted with Reality’s ca-
40 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 data entry systems. The business was acquired in 1979 by McDonnell Douglas Corp. (MDC), a U.S.-based aerospace company, to be part of its international information systems Letham, in the server business. MDC expanded its information sys- room at NIS, tems business during the 1970s and 1980s so says the company that by 1986, it had sales of U.S. $1.2 billion. plans to In 1989, MDC began to withdraw from the launch Reali- ty V9.0 in the IT industry by disposing of its information sys- U.S. in the tems businesses including what was then called September/O ctober time- McDonnell Douglas Information Systems frame. (MDIS), also known as Microdata.
MDIS’s management, supported by institu- customers to order items over the Web, up- tional investors, completed a buyout of the dating their back-end systems in realtime. U.S. Market information solutions company in 1993. “Reality Explorer” is a graphical front-end to MDIS built a significant physical presence in the Reality database enabling Windows Ex- the U.K., but by 1999, was experiencing de- pabilities today; we’ve kept up with technolo- plorer file management. Users benefit from clining revenues and a general lack of direc- gy more than anyone expected us to,” Letham an improved Windows look and feel, and the tion caused by warring business units. said. Reality V9.0 has many “special ingredi- ability to use “Windows Explorer—with its ents” that businesses today require—SQL, Northgate Information Solutions emerged ease of navigation and speed—to get down to JDBC, ODBC read and update, powerful and from a major reorganization that spanned a the lowest level of data item detail within efficient indexing capabilities, transaction log- six-month period in late 1999 and early 2000. files,” Letham commented. ging, transaction handling, a remote tape util- “We began restructuring 18 months ago,” ity, among other features—and simplified One of Reality’s strengths is its indexing capa- Letham said. “We carefully looked at the suc- Web extensions that allow Reality users to call bilities. Letham gave an example that demon- cessful components of our business and the objects within Java applications and make a strates the power of Reality. “Users can have a unsuccessful components. We streamlined direct call right to the Web. data store of hundreds of gigabytes of data,” and downsized 20 percent of our workforce he said. “One customer, a member of the se- Stressing the ease of interfacing with the Web, and closed some areas of our business.” curity services, has a 256Gb database record- Letham further explained that the “Java ex- ing stock movements throughout the world. In the process of streamlining, the company de- tensions within Reality V9.0 allow customers Within this database, one file alone contains cided to focus on its areas of strength, one of the opportunity to implement Java applica- in excess of 29 million stock transaction which is the Reality database, he said. “We chose tions which call DataBASIC subroutines, records, and with the implementation of in- to invest in our technology, focusing on the whether a Java client application or Web ex- dexing, they are able to very quickly inquire on things that we are good at and make money at. tension. This means that the many man-years the contents of this database using an ODBC- We are leaner and meaner than before.” of development of business logic can be compliant Business Intelligence application. reused without the need for extensive Front Office Solutions Come Reality can stop transaction movement with to the Forefront rewrites.” In addition, these elements are ad- subsecond response with 29 million records. dressable via standard URLs under an extend- Besides adopting a new name, a new focus “These are integral parts of Reality, and they ed security model. crystallized for the company: “Front Office allow our customers to move forward without Solutions.” Front Office Solutions address If, however, you are looking for a quick way expensive rewrites of core parts of the busi- “how organizations react and interact with of presenting your applications on the Web, ness applications.” then “RealWeb” provides that mechanism. customers,” Letham said. “The interaction RealWeb provides DataBASIC programmers Where Did Northgate could take place over the phone, the Internet, with a significant number of APIs that allow Enter the Picture? or face-to-face, but from a computing point them to present existing applications directly If you’re a longtime affiliate of the MultiValue of view, Front Office Solutions allows a per- to the Web. Via RealWeb, Microsoft Internet industry, you may be familiar with the Reality son to have a single view of the person they’re Explorer and Netscape browsers have dynamic DBMS, but not the relatively new Northgate interacting with or talking about. In the read and write access to Reality database in- Information Solutions name. Northgate In- healthcare sector, it’s dealing with the patient; formation. In the U.K., Northgate already has formation Solutions’ business dates back to in the government sector, it’s dealing with the customers who use this method to allow their 1969 when it was established as a provider of Continues on page 42 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 41 Fax this form to (858) 551-7866 Northgate Information Solutions Continued from page 41 and keep citizen; and in business, it’s dealing with the Spectrum magazines customer.” coming FREE for 1 year!! In Information Technology over the last 20 years, great gains have been made in automat- ing the back office, yet an interaction in the
NAME TITLE front office can require various people to han- dle it because one person doesn’t have access
COMPANY to all the data needed from the computer sys- tem. This is because all the computer systems
ADDRESS aren’t linked together, Letham explained. In some cases, like in healthcare, not having ac-
CITY STATE ZIP cess to all information can be life threatening. For instance, a doctor or nurse needs to have
PHONE FAX all information at the same time in order to effectively treat a patient, especially in an
E-MAIL WEB SITE emergency. This is where Front Office Solu- tions comes in.
SIGNATURE DATE “Front Office Solutions is the glue between back-office systems and front-office con- (All questions must be answered. Incomplete forms will not be processed. Complimentary subscriptions are limited to U.S. addresses.) tact,” he commented. “The solutions allow anybody in an organization to have a single 1. What is your job function/title? view of the patient, citizen, or customer in Principal/Owner Sales/Marketing the computing system; streamline processes; President/GM/CEO Programmer/Analyst and make better decisions and better use of MIS/DP Manager Purchasing resources.” Controller/Financial Consultant VP/Department Head Other ______Mission-Critical Solutions in Many Settings
2. Is your company a (check one): Northgate uses the same technological exper- Computer System Supplier Dealer/OEM/VAR Software House tise to provide different solutions that are de- Consultant End User Other ______ployed in many settings including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), E-com-
3. What MultiValue Databases does your company use? (check all that apply) merce, electronic patient records, and elec- D3 Native MultiValue Reality Other ______tronic government one-stop shop. The solu- tions are written in Reality, which provides jBASE uniData uniVerse uniVision the mission criticality needed, and are backed by Northgate’s nearly 30 years of experience 5. What major business/industry most clearly describes your company? and expertise, he said. Accounting Medical Direct Marketing Legal Banking/Finance Dental Construction Retail Currently, about half of Northgate’s business Education Insurance Other ______is in the public sector—police, government, and healthcare, according to Letham. The 6. What are your firm’s approximate gross annual sales? company provides mission-critical solutions Under $500,000 $500,000 - $1 million to over half of the U.K.’s local governments, 95 percent of its police forces and 20 percent Over $1 million - $5 million Over $5 million - $10 million of the population’s healthcare providers. The Over $10 million - $25 million Over $25 million - $100 million other half of the business is the private sector. Over $100 million - $500 million Over $500 million
FREE SUBSCRIPTION Mission-critical applications that require real- IS 7/01 time updates is one of Reality’s areas of excel-
42 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 lence. Whether the application is for the pri- more than 15 percent growth in core business ness sector; we believe that MultiValue vate or public sector, mission criticality has revenues, an operating profit, and a strong database management systems have a role to become a crucial aspect of running the organi- cash position. Northgate sees the financial play in the 21st century. We want a voice in zation, a perfect match for Reality’s capabili- turnaround as tangible proof of the success of the MultiValue market, and we want to be an ties in this area. “Over the last 20 years, its new strategy. active participant. We believe in the Multi- Northgate has really grown in mission-critical And now with a clear strategy to target the Value database model.” business applications,” Letham said. “As more U.S. market, and Australasia later in the year, If you’re wondering what’s next in Northgate’s businesses become increasingly dependent on Northgate is continuing its momentum. In global strategy, you won’t have to wait very computing, mission criticality becomes far fact, NIS is already handling Reality customers long for an answer. NIS will be revealing more important. For some organizations, if the in the U.S. that were previously under other more of its plans over the next several computer system is down, the entire company distribution agreements. Letham acknowl- months, and Letham said NIS will be going is down. We have built a tremendous reputa- edges the assistance that NIS has received public at the International Spectrum show in tion for providing systems that don’t break from GA Services, “a strong maintenance or- February in San Diego. Although Northgate down; they work. Based on Reality, these ap- ganization. They’ve helped us get delivery of never really left the MultiValue fold, you can plications are rock-solid and do the job.” maintenance service right, assisting with pro- bet it’ll feel like a homecoming—especially to is Reversal of Fortunes viding 24X7 support, upgrading hardware and Reality users. Reality, and with extended service contracts.” Judging from Northgate’s announcement of preliminary results for the 12 months ended In addition to reconnecting with Reality users, April 30, 2001, the restructuring has turned NIS is also targeting other MultiValue cus- To find out more about Northgate Informa- around the company fortunes with a return to tomers in the U.S. “There are lots of opportu- tion Solutions, visit Reality@northgate- profitability. In its first full year as Northgate nities for us in North America,” Letham said. Information Solutions, the company reported “We are serious about the growth of this busi- is.com and www.northgate-is.com.
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 43 Continued from page 35 NEW PRODUCTS “Arco is pleased that our DupliDisk II technology has been selected by Rauch Medien,” said Joel Rieger, marketing manager for Arco Com- Systrol Makes Windows Server Management Simple puter Products Inc. “DupliDisk II technology remains the proven so- A RESELLER CAN now manage an unlimited number of servers from a single host console using Sys- lution leader for IDE RAID in the trol, available from VARMARK. No more scrambling from screen to screen, no more confusion over complex Linux marketplace.” KVM configurations. And unlike the prohibitively expensive and over-complex network management solutions To learn more about what RAID from IBM, Computer Associates, and Hewlett-Packard, Systrol is easy to install, easy to use, and inexpensive Alert, visit www.rauchmedien to implement, according to VARMARK. .com/raidalert/. In order to perform the most basic of server operational tasks, Level 1 monitoring of system health, network Rauch Medien, headquartered in availability, CPU usage, memory usage, and event logs, the reseller needs to only access their server’s con- New York, develops, manufac- sole. VARMARK’s support staff is also available to support resellers. tures, and markets Linux and Open On one screen, Systrol gives the reseller the following information about each server that they are managing: Source based hardware and soft- system DNS name, IP addresses, operating system name and version, CPU count, current CPU utilization, cur- ware. Rauch Medien also main- rent memory utilization, and paging activity. Event logs (system and application) are displayed in real-time and tains the operating system and updated as events occur. Details of events can be viewed by double clicking on the event summary. Along computer tech site OSFAQ with its extensive information display, Systrol lets the reseller interact with the operating system of the targeted (osfaq.com). Since conception, server. The interaction encompasses virtually all functions required to manage a server and its attendant ser- Rauch Medien has focused on pro- vices and processes. Interactive functionality is provided by Systrol for: remote command/shell prompt, ser- viding Linux and Open Source vices administration and operation, processes administration and management, domain user administration, based solutions for real world ap- domain server administration, remote explorer and remote shutdown with optional server restart. plications. Its comprehensive prod- uct line includes workstations, servers, clusters, and storage.
44 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM MAY/JUNE 2001 Palm Programming Tools to buy a copy of HotPaw. NS/Basic and App- Continued from page 20 Forge allow you to freely distribute the run- time module for them. Java is a very popular programming language The last group of programming tools is the data in use these days, so someone decided to try capture tools. These tools are by far the easiest and write a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for to work with since they are not really program- the Palm. It has met with mixed success. ming languages—even though you can create Since a true JVM requires memory and CPU, some complex applications with them. and Palm devices do not have these resources, there have been two approaches. One is to try Most of these tools are very much like 4GLs. to write a JVM and require the use of a more You define what you want on the screen and expensive PalmPilot with extra memory and where, and then a program on the Palm cre- such, or to convert the Java ates the data capture form. code into the native Palm pro- They also generally have a gramming language like a C conduit included that will and C++ compiler does. There are transfer data from the Palm VisualAge Micro Edition is a application to another Java environment for the Palm database. based on IBM’s VisualAge for Pendragon Forms is a com- Java product, and requires a several mercial database system that JVM to run the program cre- allows you to define a Mi- ated using this tool. crosoft Access database and a As for a version of Java that shareware Palm program that work to- doesn’t require a JVM, a com- gether to allow users to col- piler called “Jump” has been lect data on the Palm that is developed to convert Java and automatically synchronized .class files that follow certain with the PC database. All guidelines to native Palm exe- the data that is collected on cutables. It is in active devel- the Palm magically appears opment and is an open source freeware in the Access database, and product, which translates to any changes made to the free under the GNU license. data on the Palm or on the PC are automatically syn- Now, there are several differ- database chronized. The last tool to tell you about is still in test- ent BASIC programming ing stages as of the time that this article was tools: HotPaw, NS/Basic and Satellite Forms is a commer- written. It is called “MobileMV,” and allows AppForge. All of these tools products for cial database/forms designer you to define the data capture screen using require a runtime module to with enough functionality dictionary items and a few other pieces of in- be loaded into the Palm in ad- to be a direct replacement formation like locations and type of input dition to your application. the Palm. to full-blown C develop- the field will be. You can then sync the data AppForge is a Visual Basic ment for database applica- between the Palm and the database like D3, add-on that allows you to tions. When you synch the UniVerse, UniData, or almost all other Mul- convert a Visual Basic pro- Palm device, it puts the tiValue databases. data into a dBase table, then other products gram to Palm applications, or to create Palm Well, for those who asked, I hope this gives a like Microsoft Access can import the infor- applications using the Visual Basic IDE. This good starting point to start creating Palm ap- mation. program is very nice, and people that already plications for your databases. is work in Visual Basic do not have to learn There are several shareware and freeware anything new. database products for the Palm. Most of these NS/Basic is very much like Visual Basic, but are flat-file table managers that convert the has its own IDE and does not convert or use data into Comma Separated Value files on the NATHAN RECTOR is presi- any existing Visual Basic modules that you PC. The biggest names are, in no particular may already have, but it does not cost as order, JFile, MobileDB, DB and ThinkDB. dent of Natec Systems, a firm specializing much as AppForge and does not require a One of the last data capture tools is from in custom programming and system ad- version of Visual Basic 6, either. Raining Data. Called Omduit, it works with HotPaw looks more like GW Basic found on their Omnis products and allows you to dis- ministration for D3/AP/R83 environ- DOS platforms, and does not have as much play an Omnis screen on the Palm, and sync functionality as NS/Basic and AppForge. But the data back and forth between the D3 ments. He can be reached at (707) 443- it is much less expensive, and in order to dis- databases. Since it’s an add-on to Omnis, you 6716; e-mail [email protected]; tribute an application written in HotPaw, have to be running Omnis before you get the each person you send the application to has full advantage. http://www.natecsystems.com.
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46 INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM JULY/AUGUST 2001 MITS IS A PRODUCT OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TOOLS, INC., SEATTLE, WA 206-789-8313 The the And MITS It can be MITS is fast, simple your MultiValue Now it’s easy. Now it’s It can be customized used without additional hardware because it’s designed to run on computer system. for any user or summarized for management. If information most is the valuable asset a company has, why is it so hard data to get the when you need it and how you need it? MITS Interactive Reporting System uses OLAP Business Intelligence technology to provide you with access to information hidden in your company’s existing MultiValue database. and flexible enough for in your company everyone to use. is affordable. and within seconds, and NEED IT NEED OST. M MITS putting data into your computer system and now spend days getting the data out? data the getting days spend now and system computer your into data putting more information, go to Use hands of those whohands of
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©2001 Raining Data Corporation. 17500 Cartwright Rd., Irvine, CA 92614. Raining Data, and mvDesigner are trademarks of Raining Data Corporation. All other products or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.