News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 25

Mercia Software Ltd¶

We have now completed two major development projects which extend the capabilities of STATGRAPHICS. A major U.K. oil company commissioned us to develop extensions to the Quality Control routine in STATGRAPHICS in order that the Q.C. methods conform with the new standards that the Ford Motor Company have issued to their suppliers. One of the world's largest chemical companies have for some time used a highly sophisticated CUSUM time series technique. This has now been fully integrated into STATGRAPHICS as a custom modification.

LOGOL, which is our new finished goods control system, has now been installed on a trial basis in two well-known companies. R.G. Brown, the author of the system, will be paying a visit to the U.K. shortly to hold a week's course on Materials Management, and also for discussions with Mercia about future developments to the system.

APL People Ltd¶

Following the successful completion of a very large financial system for one of the major banks, we now plan to focus more on developing banking and treasury systems for clients, whilst still maintaining our existing consultancy services.

The APL Group's headquarters down in Bath is getting ready for another move - the present offices having become too cramped for all of us following the addition of Chris Cunnane, who has taken over from Jill Moss as Office Manager in Bath. Jill will now be concentrating on the employment agency side of the business, which is still expanding at an encouraging rate.

The new Sheffield office is now up and running, and with two very experienced salesmen working from it, sales of our engineering software packages in the Midlands have really taken off.

The work that APL Tran-Plan is carrying out on the now legendary Canary Wharf development in London's Docklands continues apace. There was one nasty moment when we thought the whole thing had been wound up when the original developer failed to get commitment on the funding of the project. However, literally at the eleventh hour, a new developer was found - who happens to be the biggest single real-estate owner in New York - and now it's all systems go!

Dyadic¶

Dyadic has announced further details of its new version of Dyalog APL for Intel 80386-based computers.

Dyalog APL/386 is designed to run on a wide range of 80386-based PC AT-compatible personal computers, including those manufactured by Compaq, Wyse, Zenith, Olivetti, ITT and Texas Instruments. It will also run on IBM PC AT-compatible machines which have been 'turbocharged' with a 386 accelerator card.

Dyalog APL/386 is a full implementation of Dyalog APL, but one that is specially configured for personal computers; and it includes support for standard PC keyboards, monitors and printers.

Not only is it a full second-generation APL with nested arrays, but Dyalog APL/386 supports very large objects and workspaces, up to a theoretical limit of 4 gigabytes!

Dyalog APL/386 uses 32-bit native 80386 code, and therefore takes full advantage of the 386 processor. This means that performance of a 386-based PC running Dyalog APL/386 is comparable to far more expensive Motorola 68020-based APL systems. In some cases it is actually faster! Detailed benchmarks are available from Dyadic on request.

Dyalog APL/386 runs under SCO XENIX 386 System V Operating System which is available direct from Dyadic. In addition to supporting Dyalog APL, XENIX 386 provides a full 32-bit multi-user, multitasking environment; and unlike DOS, XENIX 386 releases the full potential of the Intel 80386 processor.

Dyalog APL/386 includes an interface to SCO CGI, a powerful device-independent graphics development system, which is packaged with Xenix. It also includes a workspace containing business graphics functions for producing graphs, histograms, pie-charts, titles and legends. The system supports standard PC displays, dot matrix printers, and other popular graphics devices.

Two important system extensions, SCO Multiview and SCO VP/ix, will soon be available and will be supported by Dyalog APL/386. Multiview is a combined multitasking windowing environment and user-friendly interface to Xenix. SCO VP/ix permits multiple DOS and XENIX applications to be run concurrently from the system console and on attached ASCII terminals. This means that all the benefits of speed, size and functionality of Dyalog APL/386 can be obtained without sacrificing the ability to run DOS applications.

In addition to Dyalog APL/386 and Xenix, Dyadic can also supply a 386 'Turbo' card. Final pricing had not been established at the time of going to press, but can now be obtained from Dyadic on request.

Dyalog APL/386 is the first of a new range of Dyalog APL implementations for personal computers. Other implementations for the IBM Personal System/2 under Xenix, AIX and OS/2 are also planned.

MicroAPL Ltd¶

MicroAPL is heavily committed to making the APL language more popular. As part of this drive, MicroAPL is making DRAMATIC PRICE REDUCTIONS on APL.68000 for the Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga, with effect from 23rd September 1987. The price for all three implementations has been slashed to just £99.95 including VAT. This move, timed to coincide with the PCW Show, where MicroAPL had two stands, has been made in response to market research, which showed that many home computer users who do not know APL might be tempted to try the language if the price was around £100. The price reduction is part of an overall campaign aimed at non-APL users and involving press reviews, advertisements and exhibition appearances in Europe and the USA, and it follows MicroAPL's announcement in May of free run-time licences for APL.68000 on small machines.

Following Atari's launch of the new Mega ST, the price of high-performance APL has dropped dramatically. A full Mega ST system with a massive 4 Megabytes of RAM, 20 Megabytes of hard disc, a high-quality monochrome monitor, and APL.68000, costs well under £2000, and can even run the Mirage multi-user, multi-tasking operating system. This is the ideal APL machine for education, teaching, research, and even commercial use where IBM compatibility is not essential. Workspace size is nearly 4MB, and there are no object-size restrictions!

For its existing corporate APL customers, MicroAPL is pleased to announce an upgrade to APL.68000 for the IBM PC family, running under 68000 and 68020 coprocessors.

The new release includes very much improved full-screen function and variable editing, faster floating-point operations, an interface to the Halo graphics library, and improved STSC emulation. The 68020 version with 4 MB of memory is proving particularly popular for running VSAPL applications which are too big for APL*PLUS/PC.

For Spectrum and Aurora users, MicroAPL now has available a wide range of extra general-purpose software, including the Omnis database software, LISP, Prolog, and specialised vertical applications.

APL Impetus Ltd¶

Although APL Impetus Ltd was formed only in July this year, when it was decided that 'Impetus' no longer fitted into Boeing's product strategy, the product has been used by customers for 18 months and the concept goes back to 1976 when TABAPL, its mainframe timesharing predecessor, was first marketed.

When the Impetus development was started in 1984, the challenge was to provide all the functionality of the mainframe product in a machine with only 640K memory. The successful result is based on APL*PLUS/PC, enhanced by 30 or so assembler routines for such crucial activities as formatting, scrolling and panning, and displaying without snow on colour and shaded monitors.

Demonstration diskettes are available for consultants and users who would like to know more about this alternative, APL-based, approach to solving those complex modelling problems which are beyond the scope of spreadsheets.

Cocking and Drury Ltd¶

Quality control is an important part of software product development, and Cocking and Drury are pleased to be heavily involved in the Beta-testing of new releases of APL*PLUS PC and Statgraphics. As STSC's sole UK distributor, Cocking and Drury have agreed new terms for Academic Site Licences, from which their academic customers will soon benefit. The recent upsurge in APL*PLUS PC sales is seen by the company as an encouraging sign for the future of APL.

On the mainframe side, Cocking and Drury is currently developing two major new Auxiliary Processors for use with their APL*PLUS mainframe product; one is an interface to DB/2 and the other is for access to Oracle.

The course business continues to expand; the company's System Design course has been on offer for some years, and although very favourably received it has not enjoyed great popularity until recently. In the last five months Cocking and Drury have given five in-house System Design courses. Overseas courses are becoming more frequent, and the availability of portable lightweight hardware makes courses outside the London area very attractive.

Although Cocking and Drury are happy to work on short projects, most of their consultancy revenue now comes from large projects; in 1978 about 70% of the revenue came from jobs between £2,000 and £5,000 in size, whereas in 1986 over 30% came from projects exceeding the £100,000 mark. In the same year only 3% came from the £2-5,000 range.

Cocking and Drury's recent hirings include Kevin Ryall and Sylvia Kahl, both of whom have a couple of years APL experience; Kevin on mainframes and micros, and Sylvia mainly on PCs. Christian Jensen also joins as a graduate trainee. Christian has moved from Denmark to continue his APL career here in the UK. Harry Casely-Hayford has come to Cocking and Drury for his technical training year, from North Staffordshire Polytechnic.