News from Sustaining Members
Vector 8:3, page 12
Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 12
Cocking & Drury¶
There has been a small change in ownership at Cocking & Drury. Peter Day has purchased a majority stake in the subsidiary Cocking & Drury (Software) Ltd. He is now responsible for all aspects of the business to do with software sales (for STSC - APL*PLUS and Statgraphics; and Digitalk - the Smalltalk/V range).
Romilly remains Managing Director of Cocking & Drury Ltd and responsible for consultancy and training work - again both APL*PLUS and Smalltalk/V.
The two companies continue to operate from the same premises, with the same telephone numbers etc. Romilly will be assisting Peter in his field, and vice-versa. Cocking & Drury Ltd still holds a substantial minority stake in the Software company.
This change has brought about a considerable injection of capital into Cocking & Drury, helping to keep the wolf well away from the door during the current recession. Customers can, therefore, continue to rely on the high quality of service and support they have been used to in the past, and we at Cocking & Drury will be continuing to invest in our future in both APL*PLUS and Smalltalk.
Free copies of the upgrade to APL*PLUS II for the 386 Version 3.5 were sent to all customers on maintenance during November. This upgrade gives the ability to run as a non Windows application under Windows. Version 4 is currently in Beta test and will include an interface to the Paradox engine and other major additions. Release is expected late February.
STSC are concentrating their development efforts on the APL*PLUS II systems for 386/486 PC's and for Unix. We expect to see full Windows support for the PC product in the not too distant future and, with the inclusion of a Dynamic Link Library, the ability to use APL*PLUS as the co-ordinator of a suite of software or as a calculating engine with other products, like Smalltalk/V, as the front-end.
It is rewarding to see more and more customers moving their applications from the APL*PLUS PC environment to the II system and reaping the rewards of the greater speed and the large workspaces without significant recoding.
STSC have also applied the 32-bit technology to their Statistical graphics package Statgraphics. The launch of Statgraphics Plus removes the limits on data-set sizes that existed in the original product and make an already popular package an outright winner for data analysis.
The next issue of our magazine 'Upgrade' will be distributed in January, if you don't think you are on our distribution list - drop us a line. We are also holding a Showcase event in our offices on Thursday February 13th. If you would like to come along to see the latest developments in the APL*PLUS (and Smalltalk/V) worlds - and demonstrations of applications using both technologies; give us a ring.
MicroAPL Ltd¶
MicroAPL is pleased to announce that we have been appointed by IBM (UK) as the 'Software Sales Representative' for IBM's APL2 mainframe and PC software. MicroAPL are one of the first of a new type of sales representative to be appointed by IBM to help to promote specialist software products such as APL and we will be acting in cooperation with IBM's regular sales force and as part of that sales force.
Starting through eight pilot branches, we shall be visiting major APL accounts and discussing the ways in which APL is used and to promote awareness of IBM's range of APL software. IBM (in its recent APL2 Version 2 announcement) has reaffirmed its support and enthusiasm for APL2 - '... Customers should continue to choose APL2 as a language when it is appropriate, and should not plan to convert existing programs from APL2 to another language solely because APL2 is not a designated SAA language....'. Here at MicroAPL we shall be vigorously supporting this approach and at the same time seeking to find and highlight new areas of suitability for APL in partnership with other software tools. We shall also be making sure that APL2 users are given access to a full range of support, training and consultancy services.
Our appointment coincides with the announcement of Version 2 of APL2 (mainframe) which brings important new features for users of APL2. These include the ability to process files as variables without bringing the file into the workspace (AP12); improved workspace storage management and page release performance; the return of AP124!; major new additions to facilitate cooperative processing including cross-system shared variables, support for TCP/IP (AP119) and a remote session manager; and a range of enhancements and additions to existing facilities. The full details are too numerous to include here, but if readers have not seen the APL2 Version 2 announcements, please contact us for full details. APL2 Version 2 has a planned availability date of March 1992.
David Eastwood is currently managing MicroAPL's relationship with IBM, but other members of staff will be involved as the project picks up momentum.
Turning now to our own products, APL.68000/X is now nearing the end of its beta test program and represents our most advanced version of APL.68000. We have added a wide range of significant new features for the RISC System/6000, many of which will move onto other versions of APL.68000 (such as the Macintosh version). The bulk of our activities with APL.68000/X have been to produce an application which is genuinely compliant with the user interface standards prevalent on the RISC System/6000. At the APL level, we have included on-line Help for the first time (by default this is the full APL.68000/X manual but users can add their own Help files) and introduced new facilities to allow users to edit, save and load their APL.68000/X session details. We have also added a full set of high level tools to permit APL programmers to produce sophisticated windowing applications using a range of APL facilities rather than low level C routines. We have at last formalised our interface to native files by implementing a series of native file system functions (⎕NREAD etc.) which are compatible with other implementations of these system functions.
Impetus Limited¶
We are now reaching the end of an extensive development of Impetus which is a Corporate Modelling and Reporting Product. This has taken nearly two years and has involved the production of an additional 600,000 bytes of APL (Impetus is now about 1.4 megabytes of code) and the writing and production of over 800 pages of documentation. We have also produced nearly half a megabyte of on-line help screens.
The development has been in three main areas. Firstly, we have built extensive business graphics which is tightly integrated into the rest of Impetus. Secondly we have added menu facilities to enable the user to browse around the data in the project and to browse around the facilities in Impetus. Thirdly, we have removed any need for the user to understand APL.
This last change was especially important as a user sits in APL Command Mode and invokes Impetus functions. The user is not encapsulated in code which limits the facilities. In a sense Impetus is an open architecture system and the user can add new functions written in APL. In the past this was necessary for successful operation but this is no longer the case. The Impetus language is now rich enough to make the use of APL unnecessary, but it does not preclude the APL speaker from using APL if that is the user's desire.
We have also changed our trading style and have dropped APL from our company name and are just Impetus Limited.
APL People Limited¶
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a Happy (and prosperous) New Year! 1991 wasn't an easy year for anybody, companies and individuals alike, and the APL Community has not been immune to the effects of the recession (APLers can be made redundant like anybody else). I was pleased that I was able to help a number of people to find employment in difficult times. Don't give up hope, those of you who are still looking, - things are bound to improve this year. I am convinced that the worst is over and that demand for people with APL skills will increase this year. Anyone wishing to discuss the current state of the employment market and what his or her prospects might be in 1992, is welcome to call me (see our advertisement for the telephone numbers).
Dyadic Systems Limited¶
Dyadic is pleased to confirm a hitherto unproven feature of Dyalog APL; namely its ability to access DB2 databases held on an IBM mainframe using the Dyalog APL interface to Oracle. This facility was proved in the course of installing Dyalog APL for a large French bank during December. The configuration for the test was in itself rather unusual. Dyalog APL/X was installed on an IBM RS/6000 in Paris together with a copy of Oracle. The RS/6000 was networked to a DEC VAX located elsewhere in France. The French VAX was connected by satellite to a second VAX in California, which was itself networked to an IBM mainframe running DB2. Finally, just to make things interesting, the Dyalog APL user was sitting, not on the RS/6000, but on a Sun workstation connected to it by ethernet. As Dyalog APL/X can be operated from anything that runs X, this was not in itself a problem. Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that our user first typed :
... but lo and behold the correct result appeared. Becoming bolder, the team tried database "joins" between DB2 tables on ther remote mainframe, and local Oracle tables on the RS/6000. Again, everything worked just as the Oracle salesman said it would. So if you want to access DB2 databases from your Unix workstation, all you need is Dyalog APL, a copy of Oracle, and a bit of wire!
Progress with the development of Dyalog APL/W is good, although somewhat slower than planned. Dyadic is one of the first companies anywhere in the world to develop a 32-bit Windows 3 application, and there have been many new technical problems to resolve. The product is nearing completion and the company now expects to ship a test release at the end of January. Dyadic is especially pleased with the interface to the Windows 3.0 GUI which has been designed not just for Windows, but also for OSF/Motif, Open Look, etc. Dyadic's intention is to provide the same APL->GUI programmer interface on all "windows" environments, thus ensuring true portability of Dyalog APL applications.