DBMS Client/Server Connection

April 1996

By Theresa Rigney

Borland Bounces Back
Visigenic ODBC-Net
Platinum Picks Prodea

Borland Updates Delphi; Targets Net

Borland International Inc. held a briefing at its Scotts Valley campus in February to update press and analysts on its progress during the past year. Nearly escaping financial ruin at the end of 1994, Borland -- under the guidance of President and CEO Ga ry Wetsel, who took the reins from Philippe Kahn --has experienced three consecutive quarters of profitability. Since its restructuring, Borland has reduced its operating expenses from $66 million to $40 million, reduced its workforce from 1700 to 900 em ployees, increased its gross margin from 66 percent to 85 percent, and increased its operating profit from a deficit of $34 million to $3 million in the black. Much of this success can be attributed to the success of Delphi, Borland's object-oriented dev elopment environment. In fact, in 1994, 70 percent of Borland's revenue came from databases (Interbase, Paradox, and dBASE), but now, languages and tools account for 66 percent of revenue.

According to Wetsel, Borland has learned from its mistakes. He insists that the company will "not bite off more than it can chew" in the coming months. Borland will work to maintain its position in the PC and PC-LAN markets, and invest and partner in the "decentralized IT" marketplace, as well as in the Internet.

In the PC and PC-LAN marketplace, Borland intends to reposition Paradox as an OLAP engine for front-end decision-support queries, and integrate it with Delphi. Plus, it will increase its share of the Xbase market with visual dBASE, and increase its C++ m arketshare with Microsoft Foundation Class support.

In the decentralized IT market, Borland will continue to focus on Delphi, extending its client/server feature set, integrating it with Interbase, and "enabling" it for the Internet. Late this year, Borland will release the Nexus application server, which will provide logic and database access for client/server and Internet applications. Borland also announced Visual dBASE 5.5, which lets developers dynamically create Web pages via database connections or via Charlotte, its forthcoming rapid application development environment that will let developers create Web pages with forms using live data.

Borland will target the Internet marketplace in phases. In phase 1 (which extends through 1996), Borland intends to integrate browsing capabilities and OCX support into all of its applications, support Web server-side extensions with CGI, and generate dy namic HTML for database publishing. The company will also release AppAccelerator, which is a "just-in-time" compiler for Java applications. In phase 2 (which will extend from late 1996 through early 1997), Borland will target the corporate workgroup Intr anet developer with Latte, a cross-platform Delphi-like development environment for Java; InterClient, which is Java-enabled Interbase (this will be accomplished via JDBC, SQL Access Group's forthcoming standard on connecting Java to databases); Nexus, a repository and application server for Java and database access; and through aggressive partnering.

DBMS will keep an eye on Borland's progress in the upcoming months. Stay tuned for more news and reviews on Paradox, dBASE, Interbase, Delphi, and Borland's not-yet-released products. Borland International Inc., 408-431-1000.

Visigenic Moves To Serverville

Visigenic Software Inc. (San Mateo, Calif.) announced in February that it has developed a new product code-named ODBC-Net (the actual product name was not finalized at press time), which will move database and network drivers from client machines to a ce ntralized server. According to the company, the product addresses the problem of deploying and maintaining correct versions of DLL files on large numbers of client computers, especially when clients must access multiple heterogeneous DBMS servers. An ODB C-Net client needs only the ODBC Driver manager and an ODBC-Net driver.

The new ODBC-Net server software consists of a Visigenic ODBC-Net Server layer plus the ODBC drivers for any number of ODBC data sources. The ODBC-Net Server works with existing ODBC drivers, and the ODBC-Net client driver will work with existing ODBC-ba sed applications.

The ODBC-Net client will also access data sources over the Internet, and you can download the ODBC-Net client from Visigenic's Web site (http://www.visigenic.com) at no charge. Officials also discussed future plans to develop a Java applet that uses ODBC to access data sources.

ODBC-Net 1.0 will be generally available in March. The initial version will support ODBC clients on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT, as well as ODBC servers on Windows NT. Version 1.1, due out in the third quarter of 1996, will add support for Su n Solaris, IBM AIX, and HP-UX servers, as well as Power Macintosh and OS/2 clients. It will also include RSA "data privacy" security features. Version 1.2, due in the fourth quarter of 1996, will add SNMP-based systems management and license management f unctions.

(To find out everything you ever needed to know about ODBC, check out DBMS's ODBC Supplement, in the middle of this issue.) Visigenic Software Inc., 415-286-1900 or fax 415-312-7195.

Platinum Gets Another One

In January, Platinum Technology Inc. (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.) announced that it will be adding OLAP technology to its business intelligence product line by acquiring Prodea Software Corp. (Eden Prairie, Minn.) Platinum will acquire the outstanding shares of Prodea stock at a cost of approximately $36 million in Platinum common stock. Prodea will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Platinum, following the likes of Trinzic Software, Softool, Reltech, and a slew of others.

Prodea's flagship product, ProdeaBeacon, lets users take a multidimensional view of the information stored in their databases. Platinum Technology Inc., 800-442-6861, 708-620-5000, or fax 708-691-0417.

Please send questions or comments to dbms@mfi.com
Updated Monday, November 4, 1996.