News from Sustaining members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 14

APL People¶

By the time you read this the summer holidays will have long gone and we will all just be recovering from Christmas – ready for another busy APL year ahead.

APL People’s associated enterprises continue to prosper. APL Tran-Plan is progressing with its work on several transportation studies in North America; H Walton Technical Services are busier than ever with PEFAC – the computerised estimating system; and APL People’s consultancy business is steadily growing. Recently their employment agency has been engaged by clients in the U.S.A. to fill vacancies in New York, and potential business in North America looks most promising.

Since APL86, where APL Software Limited got under way, the company has contracted to market a range of software for both mainframe and PC environments (see Product Guide). Other software is being evaluated and should become available in 1987. Initial interest has been encouraging not only in the current portfolio of software, but also from companies wanting their in-house systems evaluated with a view to marketing them. How much “new” application software might be discovered for the benefit of the APL community.

APL Software Technology (UK) Ltd¶

APL Software Technology’s investment into APL Software Limited (together with APL People) has begun to show a healthy level of interest. The new company will be a powerful arm to the marketing and sales of the products they offer.

The latest release of Powertools has been well received by their client base, the extended facilities giving a boost to the development of application systems. New versions of this release have now been made for the MicroVax, under Unix, and the Wang PC.

The mainframe Relational Database System RDS is now available on the IBM PC and is currently undergoing beta-testing with one of their clients. There has been much interest in RDS, the many enquirers including a US banking organisation.

APL Software Technology looks forward to a busy and interesting 1987.

Cocking and Drury Ltd.¶

Cocking and Drury have recently signed an agreement with Uniware, the leading French APL software house. The deal gives Cocking and Drury an exclusive dealership throughout Great Britain and Ireland for Unitab, The APL Debugger and a Statgraphics add-on module.

Unitab is a PC workspace database manager that lets you manipulate and browse APL data in a spreadsheet-like manner. The system is window-oriented and uses pop-up menus to interact with the user. Although the product has been available to French-speaking users for some time, the latest version includes English translation for all help, prompts and documentation. The software contains hooks to allow programmers to customise the package with their own code.

The APL Debugger is a development and debugging aid for APL*PLUS PC application writers. It lets you easily step through an executing function, producing a scrollable full-screen display of the current expression and its result. Local variables may also be examined and modified.

The Statgraphics add-on module for Correspondence Analysis is the first of a series of third-party add-ons that will be made available for use with Release 2 of Statgraphics. Cocking and Drury welcome approaches from users who have developed software that could be marketed in this way.

Release 2 of Statgraphics was announced in September last year. As well as general speed-ups throughout the system, the new release boasts enhanced data management features, direct dBase, Lotus and Symphony import/export, a variety of new statistical procedures, multiple plot overlaying and a plot ‘zoom’ option. In addition, a mechanism allowing APL developers to customise the package by adding their own menu options is provided.

Release 6 of APL*PLUS PC is selling well. New features include arrays without imposed size limits, support for the exciting HP LaserJet + printer, full graphics character set support (no APL ROM needed), improved file system facilities, and enhancements to the ⎕WIN full-screen system function. The file system improvements permit dynamic access to DOS directories via APL library numbers, and generalised native file access via complete DOS path names. The documentation is ‘all new’ and includes an invaluable spiral-bound pocket reference guide.

Cocking and Drury are proud to announce their first mainframe compiler trial at a UK customer. In a study for another client, their expected savings for using the APL*PLUS Enhancements and Sharefile component filing system (rather than APL2) amounted to £100,000 over a five-year period. Savings are expected to be even larger when the compiler is installed. Cocking and Drury is also now offering compiler training seminars throughout Europe.

Cocking and Drury and STSC have recently signed a dealership agreement for Dataport, the spreadsheet system for mainframe based VS APL users, and Cocking and Drury now support all existing Dataport users in Great Britain and Ireland.

On the education front, bookings are being taken for two new public courses; the four-day APL*PLUS PC Intermediate course (plenty of practical tools and systems design) and a two-day course for Statgraphics users. A new one-day in-house nested arrays course is also newly available anywhere in Europe.

Dyadic Systems Limited¶

Dyadic Systems has completed its transition from a software-only company to a supplier of complete APL systems. In July, Dyadic became one of the first Authorised Dealers for the exciting new IBM 6150 Microcomputer, and has since announced an Altos dealership and an arrangement with Sun Microsystems. As a result, Dyadic is able to offer and support a comprehensive range of APL systems to meet a variety of business needs and budgets.

At the bottom of the range is the Dyalog APL Coprocessor, a plug-in board for the IBM PC. The system has an NS32000 processor, hardware floating-point, up to 4Mb RAM and 16Mb of virtual address space. The Dyalog APL Coprocessor provides a concurrent DOS and multi-user APL/Unix environment in an IBM PC or compatible.

Mid-range systems are based on the IBM 6150 and Altos 3068 computers. The IBM 6150 has a 32-bit CPU based on Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) technology. Its operating system is AIX, an enhanced version of Unix V.2 with an improved user-interface, and it has a PC AT coprocessor for DOS applications. Communications support Ethernet, Token Ring and SNA. The 6150 is seen as a strategic system for IBM, and is expected to double in power and capacity annually. The system includes a special version of Dyalog APL which supports interfaces to IBM 6150 SQL and to the Advanced Graphics Support Library (GSL). A typical configuration includes 4Mb RAM, Floating-point processor, 140Mb disk, a high-function bit-mapped console, several IBM 3163 ASCII terminals and/or high quality Lynwood APL/Graphics VDUs, and an IBM 4201 Proprinter. All devices are supplied complete with APL character support.

The Altos 3068 is a 68020-based alternative. Its special features include a local-area network which supports IBM PCs and compatibles. This provides file transfer, central storage and sharing of DOS files, shared printers and the use of the PCs as Dyalog APL terminals to the Altos 3068 host. A typical configuration includes the network, 4Mb RAM, 170Mb disk, diskette, cartridge tape and several high-quality Lynwood APL/Graphics VDUs.

Dyadic also supplies a range of Sun workstations and multi-user computers which can be configured either as a network or as a traditional time-sharing system. Sun workstations have 19-inch high-resolution screen with advanced windowing features. At the top of the range is the outstanding Sun 3/200. This has a 25MHz 68020 CPU, 68881 floating-point co-processor and cache memory. These features alone make it twice as fast as other 68020-based APL systems on the market. Add Sun’s optional Floating-Point Accelerator, which is 2-3 times faster than a 68881 co-processor, and you have a very powerful APL microcomputer indeed.

Dyalog APL is not restricted to any particular processor. This means that Dyadic can continue to take full advantage of technical developments in the computer industry to offer competitive high-performance systems for the APL user. Watch for a Compaq 386 implementation early in 1987.

Mercia Software Limited¶

Mercia Software are looking forward to continuing growth in the APL-related market in 1987. Interest in APL*PLUS/PC is still strong, with their range of programmer productivity aids, such as UNIWARE’s Debugger, and STSC’s TOOLS and SPREADSHEET MANAGER proving popular amongst the nation’s APLers.

On the application front, APL-based packages are making more and more inroads into the business computing market. STATGRAPHICS, helped by a price reduction and a much improved new version, has been very successful, and EXEC*U*STAT looks like bringing the power of APL to a wide range of users (even if they don’t realise it). At the time of writing, Mercia are about to embark on a major campaign to bring this excellent product to the attention of the PC user world in general.

The future looks even more exciting with the forthcoming lunch in Spring ’87 of a major new APL*PLUS-based system, for which Mercia has been liaising with the Forecasting and Materials Management guru, Professor R.G.Brown. O.R. and logistics practitioners should watch this space for news of LOGOL.