DBMS

Soft Notes

By Clara H. Parkes
DBMS, March 1996

Log-in from the Eiffel Tower??

As more workplaces follow the trend of moving workers off-site, a need arises for a system that can connect these workers with the home office without too much hassle. To address this issue, Sybase Inc. (Emeryville, Calif.) just shipped Sybase SQL Anywhe re 5.0, a full-featured database that is optimized to allow greater access to information from, as the name implies, virtually anywhere. Formerly known as Watcom SQL, this new version is part of the System 11 product family and features enhanced interope rability and compatibility with Sybase SQL Server 11. New in version 5.0 are Transact-SQL compatibility support, Sybase Replication Server and Open Client interoperability, Sybase SQL Remote replication technology for occasionally connected users, and th e new SQL Central GUI administration tool.

Sybase SQL Anywhere is available and priced from $599 for a four-user version to $4999 for an unlimited-user version; per-seat pricing is $299 with server and client software, standalone capabilities, and Sybase SQL Remote. Contact Sybase Inc., 6475 C hristie Ave., Emeryville, CA 94608; 510-922-3500 or fax 510-922-3210; http:// www.sybase.com.

Seeing Parallel

Pyramid Technology, a Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems company (San Jose, Calif.), added a 64-bit C Series to its RM server family: RM400 C, RM300 C, and RM200 C. The C Series supports Unix and Windows NT operating systems and offers a new 64-bit syst em bus with up to 528MB throughput, a high-performance PCI and EISA I/O bus architecture, and increased RAM and hard disk capacities. Also new are clustering capabilities for the RM400 C and RAID storage technology across the entire series.

A successor to the RM400 Tower Series, the RM400 C Series is recommended for large decentralized departmental server applications or as a central server in midsize companies. The RM300 C Series is suited for small decentralized departmental servers and a s a workgroup server. The RM200 C Series is the successor to the RM200 desktop commercial workstation/server. Contact Pyramid Technology, 3860 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95164; 800-289-7973, or fax 408-428-8050; http://www.pyramid.com.

Short Notes

Good news for IT departments that want to perform business modeling with warehouse-size data volumes: Planning Sciences (Westborough, Mass.) announced its GentiumDB, the first OLAP database with terabyte scalability. GentiumDB is the first release in Planning Sciences' multidimensional data warehousing environment strategy, the Millennium Project. (Contact Planning Sciences, 508-898-9510 or fax 508-898-9511.) Unify Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) introduced Unify AppMan for Vision, a new s et of tools and software agents that automate the process of building managed enterprise applications and integrating them with software distribution, event, and performance management systems from vendors such as BMC Software, Hewlett-Packard, and Micro soft. (Contact Unify Corp., 408-467-4500 or fax 408-467-4512; http://www.unify.com.)

In the Internet realm, Neuron Data Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) announced an addition to its Elements Environment: the Web Element. The new tool contains both a portable, custom Web browser and development capabilities for Internet and Intranet de velopers. It also lets developers integrate Web components into their distributed applications by letting them build and integrate ObjectScript applets. (Contact Neuron Data Inc., 800-876-4900, 415-528-3450 or fax 415-943-2752; http://www.neurondata.com.) Empress Software Inc. (Greenbelt, Md.) is shipping Empress HTML Toolkit, a freeware package of software modules designed to help developers link their Web applications to the Empres s RDBMS and other dynamic SQL-compatible databases. (Contact Empress Software Inc., 301-220-1919 or fax 301-220-1997.) Along the same lines, Nomad Development Corp. (Seattle) is shipping WebDBC 2.0, a new version of Nomad's gateway between Web servers and SQL databases. WebDBC 2.0 features improved security, support for more complex database operations, and complete formatting control. (Contact Nomad Development Corp., 206-448-1956 or fax 206- 448-1761; http://www.ndev.com.) NetManage (Cupertino, Calif.) has a new toolkit for developers called the Internet Software Developer's Kit, which lets corporate developers use standard Internet technologies to build customized business applic ations for use within the corporate network and running on Windows NT and Windows 95. (Contact NetManage, 408-973-7171 or fax 408-257-8789; http://www.netmanage.com.)

In other news, Objectivity Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) announced plans to release a Macintosh server for Objectivity/ DB, Objectivity's ODBMS. Scheduled for release in the first quarter of 1996, the Objectivity/DB server for Macintosh incorporates administrative tools with a native Macintosh look and feel. Objectivity/DB server supports both distributed applications and centralized client/server applications, with development language interfaces for C++ and ParcPlace Smalltalk, as well as ANSI-standard SQL with ODBC support. (Contact Objectivity Inc., 415-254-7100 or fax 415-254-7171.) Object Design Inc. (Burlington, Mass.) announced ObjectStore DBconnect, a new connectivity tool that lets object-oriented applications access data stored in relational databases, including Oracle, DB2, and Sybase. It will also support IBM's DataJoiner, a new middleware pro duct that enables applications to access multiple databases and IBM mainframes. (Contact Object Design Inc., 617-674-5000 or fax 617-674-5010.)

Now on the shelves from Borland International Inc. (Scotts Valley, Calif.) is the new Paradox database for Windows 95 operating systems: Paradox 7 for Windows 95 and Windows NT. Enhancements to version 7 include Experts that automate numerous data base tasks, usability enhancements, and database integration with Microsoft Office 95 and Novell's PerfectOffice. (Contact Borland International Inc., 800-331-0877, 408-431-1000 or fax 408-431-4122; http://www.borland.com.)

Platinum Technology Inc. (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.) continues to be the Energizer rabbit of the software world with yet another set of announcements that include the release of AutoSecure for the Enterprise version 2.0, a network-wide security packa ge that implements an active access control mechanism at the operating-system level. Platinum also announced Enterprise DBA, a tool for database administration, alteration, and migration in heterogeneous client/server environments, allowing DBAs to simul taneously manage multiple RDBMSs with point-and-click commands from one console. Enterprise DBA is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 1996. (Contact Platinum Technology Inc., 800-442-6861, 708-620-5000, or fax 708-691-0718; http://www.platinum. com.)

Powersoft Corp.'s (Concord, Mass.) family of scalable client/server development tools keeps expanding with the release of PowerBuilder for Unix and Sun SPARC systems running on Solaris, and, most recently, for Macintosh. (Contact Powersoft Corp ., 508-287-1500 or fax 508-369-3997; http://www.powersoft.com.) Crystal Computer Services Inc., a Seagate Software company (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), is also expanding its offerings with the announcement of Crystal Info for Microso ft BackOffice. This new release will let users take data from Microsoft BackOffice, generate reports from the data with Crystal Reports, and distribute this information to other BackOffice users. (Contact Crystal Computer Services Inc., 604-681-3435 o r fax 604-681-2934.)

In the realm of product upgrades, VMark Software Inc. (Westboro, Mass.) announced version 3.0 of its HyperStar client/server middleware package. Release 3.0 includes support for IBM's DB2 on MVS mainframe operating systems, and expands existing su pport for DB2 on RS/6000 platforms. It also includes an enhanced version of the ODBC client that is compliant with Microsoft's ODBC 2.0 specification. (Contact VMark Software Inc., 508-366-3888 or fax 508-366-3669.) Illustra Information Technol ogies Inc. (Oakland, Calif.) is shipping version 3.2 of its Illustra Server, which offers enhanced support for ODBC and concurrency, as well as optimized performance. (Contact Illustra Information Technologies Inc., 510-652-8000 or fax 510-869-638 8; http://www.illustra.com.)


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