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Summer 1998
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Spectrum '98 was held in Las Vegas, Nevada once again, and MultiValue News' roving reporter was on the scene. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it...
Once again the show lived up to its reputation, surrounded by the glitz of the play city of America. Well, for those who think it was all fun then take it from one who didn't even see the light of day let alone escape from the Riviera Hotel/Convention Centre from Monday to Friday, it was not all play. Still, having cunningly booked to stay until Monday it left the week-end to make up for it...
Now down to the business of the show. It was as packed as ever with MultiValue gurus, with many familiar faces and products boasting all the latest revisions and options. The show format was the usual mixture of educational seminars and the main hall of show exhibitors.
Heavyweight MultiValue vendors were out in force. General Automation, co-sponsors this year, were there with their native, Unix and NT implementations, now given the family identity of mv.xxxxx, following the amalgamation of the businesses of ADDS, GA and Sequoia. The range extends from mv.BASE for Windows NT through to mv.ENTERPRISE for the high-end Seqoia fault-tolerant UNIX option.
Pick Systems was noted for its inclusion at this year's show with an underlying message from their stand that they were committed to taking the Pick model into the future with a raft of goodies from ODBC to object technology all being included in the latest offering of D3. D3 is pitched as the future product on all platforms, with R83, Advanced Pick, and AP Pro all being given a finite life of support and supply. The reason for their presence was as clear as the giant banner on their stand: 'Come Home to Pick'. Their belief is that all other MultiValue stars started from their core ideas, hence their 'come back to us' philosophy.
For the Unidata or Universe fanatics it is safe to say that you would have been surprised not to see any mention of these products with the show emphasis being on the new corporate name following the recent merger: Ardent. According to my dictionary:
ardent adj. eager, zealous; (of persons or feelings) fervent, passionate.
Well, the passionate followers will need to wait and see where their great leader wants to take them.
The UK-influenced operating system players included UniVision with their product being based on tried and tested roots. Offerings incorporate options from their Via Systems connections including WinFrame; it will be an interesting time for this product. MDIS and Reality X were there too, with a strong message of what works shouldn't need fixing, only extending.
Still the most revolutionary approach to the MultiValue arena is jBASE, which also had its roots in the UK. jBASE brings a feeling of not giving away that you are using a MultiValue database/software within the native operating system chosen i.e. Unix or NT. It boasts the ability to be as non-Pick-looking as you like, whilst retaining a wealth of support for legacy Basic code sets, verbs, tape formats, procs, indexing etc that even some of the native vendors would be proud to possess. The only reservation is that most of us 'traditional' Pickies still need some warm, easy set-up-and-go straitjacket, like we have all been used to, rather than being dropped into a sea of freedom too large to comprehend in one hit. Still they tell me they are bringing out a simple load-and-go implementation wizard soon, so this will be one to watch out for.
In years gone by Spectrum has been about 'flavours of Pick' and the attempts to make them all adhere to one common standard - the SMA standards which we liked to call 'vanilla flavour'. It seems that the OS designers have given up this goal and have instead made attempts to reach back and import all the features of all the flavours into their own future whizz-bang version. Personally, I would think carefully before diving into this one: the whizz-bang may turn out to be concrete shoes hard to shake off if you want to swim back to shore.
Speaking of the future, the market now seems to be dividing again over which way to go forward, beyond the GUI market to true integration i.e. objects, ODBC, SQL etc. There are a number of paths emerging from the different vendors, according to their specialisations.
Many old favourites were also present with their latest and greatest offerings, including Piclan, ViaDuct, wIntegrate, RedBack, Hyperstar, Liberty ODBC, Carnation Mac-to-Pic, Visual Pick, Nucleus, Cuebic, SB+, Aviion, ADAPT tools, and Accuterm (with its earth-shattering ‘copy as many times as you like for one site licence’ - this pricing may come to replace the per-seat licencing we have grown so accustomed to grumbling about). Apart from these favourites it seemed that the decision about the next strategy revolved around not so much the GUIising of MultiValue applications but the Object/OLE standards and the integration of the application to a client/server business rules model.
The actual flavour of the operating system seems to be declining in importance compared to the wider issues of making our applications appear to be ‘standard’ in the normalised world of 2D SQL-type databases, yet retain the investment in the business rules and the power of 3D MultiValue database design. This ‘think 3D in a 2D world’ theme was promoted strongly by the UK’s star of the show, SOS, with the TransVerse product family. SOS is a co-operative marketing attempt by a group of established players from the MultiValued, Microsoft and Internet communities, with a simple approach: let the normalised world use industry-standard tools to tap into 3D power without knowing they’re doing it.
The result is a normal-looking product with extraordinary MultiValue muscle hidden underneath. The TransSys 4GL toolkit incorporates import and conversion utilities e.g. SB+ to TransSys. This conversion was demonstrated at the show and took just seconds to complete - this is a very real option for a platform-independent future, as it is economically-priced on all MultiValue variants. The converted product could then be given a GUI look with TransForm, or go fully client/server with TransClient. For the Internet fans the TransWeb tool allows standard HTML pages to access 3D MultiValue files with full read-write and select capabilities. ActiveX links are available for use inside Delphi, Word, Excel etc. For a more integrated approach there is TransVB, which provides add-ins to the VB project environment to access MultiValued dictionaries and data directly, with point-and-click forms and tables, producing a ready-to-run VB project.
A host of other goodies are available in this family which seemed to have few rivals in each area - and none when it came to a single source providing them all! For once a British product seems to be stealing a march on our friends across the pond.
MultiValue News
Were you at Spectrum '98? Was it everything you could have wished for, or are the developers still not addressing the issues which concern you most? MultiValue News can make its voice heard in high places, so write, fax, or e-mail us with your comments.
Last Updated: 31 October 1998