News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 8

Cocking & Drury¶

Cocking & Drury are delighted to welcome Manugistics as Sustaining Members of the British APL Association. Now news of the latest developments in the world of APL*PLUS will come directly from the horse’s mouth — and won’t depend on our rather vague attempts to meet the Editor’s generous and often, but vainly, extended deadlines!

We at Cocking & Drury continue to be busy assisting with migrations from APL mainframe (mostly APL2) to APL*PLUS II for the 386/486. In one classic encounter a consultant managed to out-run the mainframe with one migrated workspace.

In the course of such work we have developed several tools to ease the work involved in migrating mainframe APL2 to APL*PLUS II for the 386/486. Anyone considering a similar move should call to enquire about features and prices. On October 9th Chris Burke, a UK qualified actuary working with Manugistics’ Canadian dealer Strand Software, will be giving a talk on the use of APL in actuarial work. The event is free and attendees will be given copies of the Strand APL utility library which contains several standard actuarial utilities.

Later in October, Chris Lee of Manugistics will be presenting a preview session on Version 5 of APL*PLUS II for the 386/486. This event is also free. For more details and for reservations on either of these, call Beverley Satterley on 071-436 9481.

APL People Limited¶

Things are still pretty slow on the recruitment front, although we have noticed a slight increase in demand for contract staff. July and August are traditionally quiet months, so we hope that the Autumn will see an increase in the number of vacancies. Companies which are recruiting are taking their time in selecting the right candidate and there is a tendency for interview procedures to become more rigorous.

On the manufacturing side, APL People’s sister company, APL Manufacturing, has at long last received an order from British Steel (it’s only taken them two and a half years from their initial inquiry!). Orders are imminent from British Dental Floss and British Nuclear Fuels among others. Plans are afoot to re-locate from our present offices in Hounslow to something a bit more prestigious, to take advantage of the excellent value for money of commercial property at the moment.

Reuters APL Software Division¶

SHARP APL UNIX Version 4 is announced for delivery in the 4th quarter 1992. Supported hardware platforms include the IBM RS/6000 and Sun SPARCstation. This new SHARP APL UNIX version provides extensive facilities for UNIX-UNIX and UNIX-MVS communication. The SHARP APL Network Shared Variable Processor (NSVP) supports LU 6.2 based shared variable communication in between SHARP APL UNIX and SHARP APL MVS, and TCP/IP based shared variable communication for LAN-connected SHARP APL UNIX systems.

The SHARP APL Network Shared Variable Processor can be used for communication between SHARP APL applications and remote SHARP APL auxiliary processors. New stand-alone versions of SHARP APL MVS auxiliary processors are announced for use with SHARP APL UNIX Version 4. These stand-alone auxiliary processors can be installed on an MVS system without SHARP APL MVS, and accessed via NSVP from SHARP APL UNIX. Auxiliary processors available or planned in stand-alone versions include SSQL (for access to DB2), TSIO (for access to MVS QSAM data sets) and FCAP (for calling MVS software written in other languages than APL).

Using NSVP and stand-alone MVS auxiliary processors, SHARP APL UNIX can extract data from non-APL mainframe databases and transfer it to UNIX for processing. The Function Call Auxiliary Processor (FCAP) can be used from SHARP APL UNIX to access any MVS application with a well-defined Application Programming Interface.

Current SHARP APL MVS development activity is centred on performance improvement and connectivity. During 1992, a Performance Upgrade for SHARP APL MVS Version 20 increased performance significantly at large SHARP APL MVS sites, the largest of which support in excess of 1000 simultaneous users of SHARP APL applications.

Within Reuters, a major new SHARP APL MVS service, with world-wide network access, has been established in Frankfurt to support global risk management and trading applications.

For information about Reuters SHARP APL products, please contact Laurie Howard, Reuter Nederland BV, Amsterdam, Tel. +31 20 570 8733, fax +31 20 570 8758; or Larry Moore, Reuter Information Services (Canada) Limited, Toronto, Tel. 416 364 5361, fax 416 364 2910.

Dyadic Systems Ltd¶

As usual, Dyadic took a stand at the annual APL conference which was held this year in St Petersburg. Getting PCs in and out of Russia proved to be an “interesting” experience that our intrepid representatives will probably not wish to repeat. Nevertheless, everything was operational when the conference opened and the company was delighted by the enthusiastic response to the new version of Dyalog APL for Windows. This product actually began shipping during the conference and the reactions of early users has been equally gratifying. The DDE interface (which allows APL to talk to other Windows applications) has proved to be a two-edged sword, as we now get support calls from users wanting help with Excel!

Back at base, there was no respite for the developers and work on the next release started immediately. This will include full colour support, object-oriented graphics, Dynamic Link Library (DLL) interface and a host of other improvements. This release will be supplied free of charge to existing customers, and is scheduled for November/December shipment. An interim “maintenance release” was distributed free of charge during September. Any customer who failed to receive this update is urged to return his/her registration card immediately.

Although the production of Dyalog APL/W has been top priority for several months, work has continued on the Unix version of the product. There are two new implementations available, one for SCO Unix (replacing the Xenix version), and one for Digital’s RISC DECstations under Ultrix.

Dyadic takes this opportunity to remind VECTOR readers that it is a fully authorised IBM Business Associate (IBM-speak for Dealer) for the RISC System/6000. This now represents a wide range of computers from desktop workstations to large multi-user machines. In Dyadic’s opinion, the RS/6000 represents the “best-buy” in the Unix market and is undoubtedly a superb machine for running Dyalog APL. Companies who are still running APL applications on their mainframe would do well to examine the possibilities of “downsizing” onto RS/6000. Not only will you save money, but your applications may actually run faster!. Contact Pauline Brand at Dyadic for further details.

Manugistics¶

Manugistics, Inc. is very pleased to join the other Sustaining Members of the British APL Association in supporting its many valuable contributions to APL. Among these we particularly value the publication of Vector, which many of us regard as the best, and certainly the most punctually published, journal of APL.

A great deal of activity has been occurring in our company in recent months, not least of which is our name change from STSC to Manugistics. Our new name reflects our application products for manufacturing, logistics and statistics, all of which have found gratifying commercial success. The name change is only that — we remain exactly the same employee-owned company as before, with the same people, the same products, and the same plans for the future.

There likewise need be no concern that our name change signals a change in our commitment to the APL*PLUS product line. Our APL business is growing and solidly profitable. Our last fiscal year produced record high sales throughout the company, and 75% of those revenues came from APL and APL-based application products. We have increased the size of our APL development department, and are looking forward to announcing major innovations in APL on these pages in the months to come.

February 1992 saw the appearance of version 4 of our flagship product, APL*PLUS II for the 386/486, and sales have far surpassed all prior releases in Europe and North America. As our warehouse staff struggled to fill the flood of orders, the development team scarcely paused for breath before setting to work on version 5, which we plan to ship before the end of 1992.

Version 5 will include major improvements to the Microsoft Windows interface introduced with version 4. Most notable of these is the introduction of APLGUI, a high-level object-oriented toolkit that makes Windows programming easy. In keeping with our philosophy of Open APL, APLGUI does not block access from the rest of the Windows software world. One can use a resource editor such as Borland’s or Microsoft’s to design APL dialog boxes, or build them entirely within APL. APLGUI is built as a layer on top of the APL-Windows interface, so applications that need to can directly access any of the 600+ Windows system calls as well as other vendors’ products that are packaged as Dynamic Link Libraries. Those who have no desire to plumb the depths of Windows programming will be able to develop complete applications using only the easy high-level utilities.

Version 5 also will include utilities that simplify the use of Dynamic Data Exchange from APL and a rewrite of the APL-Windows communication facility that lets the DOS-hosted APL*PLUS II interpreter respond to Windows as briskly as if it were itself a Windows program.

Also coming in version 5 is a true debugger that is woven into the fabric of the interpreter itself. The APL*PLUS II debugger permits visual tracing of program code line by line, statement, or individual primitive. Breakpoints can be set on individual statements, and watchpoints can be set on variables with optional APL test expressions. The full capabilities are too numerous to mention, so we recommend that UK readers ring Cocking & Drury (071-436-9481) for details, plus a list of the other delights coming in the new release.

On other fronts, version 11 of APL*PLUS/PC is coming soon, featuring the Screen Interface Toolkit and a facility for converting workspaces into .EXE files, with no runtime interpreter or royalties involved. The UNIX version of APL*PLUS II is now available on Hewlett-Packard’s breathtakingly-fast 700 and 800 series workstations and minicomputers. Details on any APL*PLUS product are available from Cocking & Drury. Outside the UK, please contact our International Sales department (Tel: +1-301-984-5412; Fax: +1-301-984-5094).

MicroAPL Ltd¶

We usually feature news on our various APL interpreter products in Vector; as a change we will be discussing some of the consultancy work we are doing at the moment. We provide consultancy services in three broad areas, strategic management consultancy, applications consultancy for windows-based projects and APL applications consultancy. Overall, our consultancy services account for over half our revenue.

As a company, MicroAPL has now built up some 8 years experience in programming graphical user environments starting with our early work on the Apple Macintosh and coming right up to date with X-Windows and Windows 3. At present the computer industry is experiencing a period of exceptional change with new alliances emerging and difficult choices to be faced over the choice of future hardware and software. Over the last few months we have conducted a number of studies advising clients on their strategic options for IT, focussing particularly on the choice of development tools for new software projects. We have also undertaken an extensive review of the ever growing number of packaged Executive Information Systems.

On the applications consultancy front our non-APL work is becoming progressively more important and we have undertaken work recently using a range of development tools starting with Visual Basic for prototyping and for some simple applications and then moving on to products such as Gupta’s SQLWindows or PowerBuilder from Admiral Software, both driving a variety of database servers.

Our APL consultancy work divides between support services for a number of well-established APL systems and a variety of new APL applications. As one would expect the sort of application being written in APL varies widely — we have recently completed work on communications software for the Apple Macintosh; an interpreter to convert Hewlett Packard HPGL instructions into PostScript; and software to format and forward data for an electronic parts ordering system.

I have not included our systems programmers in this analysis since they are primarily involved in development of our software products such as APL.68000. In recent months work here has been focussed on MicroAPL’s ‘Portable Assembler’ product which is now being sold to developers who are moving applications onto the new range of RISC-based Macintoshes which are under development.