Data Based Advisor articles from December 1992

Data Based Advisor archives from December 1992

Dataline. (database industry news items)
December 1, 1992... Now for this update! The NSTL retraction has officially been retracted! On June 1, at its developer conference in Palm Desert, Borland passed out Volume 9, Number 2 of the Software Digest Ratings Report on multi-user database programs....

Surveys, standards, stocks, and safe landings. (reader response to a survey on object-oriented programming) (Editor on the Go) (Editorial)
December 1, 1992... We appreciate your strong response to each month's Fax Feedback. Your answers to our questions help us give you a better magazine. As promised, here's some of what you had to say about a recent topic, object-oriented programming--OOP....

Master Paradox 4.0 dialog boxes with PaintPAL. (Target Software Inc.'s PaintPAL Paradox Application Language add-on program) (Software Review) (Test Drives) (Evaluation)
December 1, 1992... PainPAL Target Software, Inc. P.O. Box 1687 Allentown, PA 18105 215-820-9918 You've probably had Paradox 4.0 out of the shrink wrap for about a month and you're starting to get a handle on its windows and pull-down menus--and you...

W marks the spot - MapInfo 2.0 for Windows. (MapInfo Corp.'s geographic information system) (Software Review) (Test Drives) (Evaluation)
December 1, 1992... * MapInfo, MapBasic MapInfo Corp. 200 Broadway Troy, NY 12180 Troy, NY 12180 800-327-8627, 518-274-6000 UPDATE Mapping is a special kind of database activity that has a lot in common with CAD, multimedia, and databases...

Other mapping software. (desktop mapping programs other than MapInfo Corp.'s MapInfo) (Test Drives) (Brief Article)
December 1, 1992... MapInfo isn't the only game in town. Here are some other desktop mapping programs you should know about. PC Globe, $59.95; PC USA, $49.95 Broderbund Software 800-521-6263, 415-382-4725 DOS-based, consumer-oriented...

Say no to hard coding, yes to Genifer. (Bytel Corp.'s template-based code generator for creating Xbase programs) (Software Review) (Test Drives) (Evaluation)
December 1, 1992... UPDATE There's no avoiding hard-coding an application. However, you don't have to hard-code everything. Code generators, like Bytel Corp.'s Genifer, can help. Genifer is a template-based code generator that allows you to create...

Matesys announces more support. (Matesys Corp.'s ObjectView 2.0 graphical front-end development tool supports Sybase's new database gateways and interoperability products) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... Matesys Corp. announced that ObjectView 2.0 will support several newly announced Sybase database gateways and interoperability products: Open Gateway for DB2 Release 2.0, and Net-Gateway and Open Server for OS/2. ObjectView 2.0 is a...

SQL on-the-fly. (Cognos Inc.'s Impromptu SQL query tool supports Oracle via SQL*Net) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... Cognos, Inc.'s Impromptu SQL query tool now supports Oracle via SQL*Net. According to Cognos, Impromptu enables users to perform complex queries of SQL tables without knowing SQL, relational database structure, or network navigation. Through...

OSR makes contact. (OSR Systems' CALLTRAK contact management systems can be integrated with Revelation applications) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... OSR Systems released CALL-TRAK, a contact management systems that can be integrated with Revelation applications. CALLTRAK can view and execute activities in daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly schedules. Other features include...

Notes from Lotus Land. (Lotus Development Corp.'s Lotus Notes:Document Imaging image processing extension to Lotus Notes) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... Lotus Development Corp. shipped Lotus Notes:Document Imaging (LN:DI), an image processing extension to Lotus Notes. LN:DI, one in a series of Lotus Notes Companion Products, allows users to incorporate paper-based information into electronic...

Softwatch. (software packages now being developed) (Illustration)
December 1, 1992... [TABLUAR DATA OMITTED]

Clarion Software's 2nd annual developers conference. (Test Drives)
December 1, 1992... Ft. Lauderdale, Florida--More than 250 Clarion developers gathered September 22-25 eager to hear about Clarion Database Developer Version 3.0, which was announced at last year's conference and originally slated for release earlier this year....

Smarter tool from IQ. (IQ Software Corp.'s Intelligent Query version 3.0 program for UNIX SQL relational database management systems) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... IQ Software Corp. shipped Intelligent Query (IQ) 3.0 for four major UNIX SQL RDBMs). Version 3.0 now works with ORACLE, Sybase, Ingres, and Informix RDBMSs, as well as with nearly 60 other databases and ISAM file systems on DOS, VAX/VAMS,...

Saving a tree. (SCT Associates Inc.'s TreeSaver, a Clipper 5 library that lets laser printer users print four 80-column-by-66-line pages on one sheet of paper) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... SCT Associates, Inc. released TreeSaver, The Laser Printer Paper Reducer. TreeSaver is a Clipper 5 library that allows you to print four 80 column by 66 line pages of information on one sheet using both sides of the paper. TreeSaver links...

FoxPro AccSysory. (Copia International Ltd.'s AccSys for dBASE supports FoxPro files) (Test Drives: News)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
December 1, 1992... Copia International announces that AccSys for dBASE now supports FoxPro files. With AccSys for dBASE, programs written in C, Visual Basic, and QuickBASIC can create, read, write, modify, and update FoxPro files. AccSys for dBASE can also...

Bridging the MIS-desktop gap. (removing barriers between PCs and MIS) (Memo to Management)
December 1, 1992... There's a natural segregation between "Mainframe Snobs" and "PC Jokeys." People tend to belong to one camp or the other exclusively--they fail to appreciate what the other side has to offer. This is one of the reasons it's taken so long...

And the winner is.... (1992 Readers Choice Awards) (Cover Story)
December 1, 1992... You hear it all the time: "What product is best...?" The answer is never as simple as the question. Products can be recognized for many achievements. They can ship the most, or sell the fastest, or have the most resellers, or excel in...

Client/server helps one management company keep tabs on its contents. (Stanford Business Systems Inc. develops a client/server application for a large company in the career and financial management industry) (Case Study)
December 1, 1992... A large organization in the career and financial management industry contracted Stanford Business Systems, Inc. (SBS) to develop the first of several client/server applications that will eventually make up an integrated information management...

New views: how to look at your data. (Power Paradox 4.0) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Paradox 4.0 has a whole new look, and the way that users look at data has changed as well. Things like mouse support and windows can be used to enhance the functionality of Paradox, and make data easier to acces and manipulate. Tables can...

Crank up network performance. (Power Paradox 4.0) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... In Paradox 4.0, just about everything is faster than in earlier versions: queries, reports, PAL commands--everything. They're faster not only on a single-user PC, but also on a network. Optimizing performance on a network is quite a...

Event-driven programming in PAL. (the Paradox Application Language) (Power Paradox 4.0) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Paradox version 4.0 includes lots of enhancements to the interactive environment and the Paradox Application Language (PAL). Some of these enhancements are designed to improve performance of Paradox applications, and others are intended to...

Master Paradox 4.0 memo fields. (Power Paradox 4.0) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... One of the most significant new features of Paradox 4.0 is its ability to store memo fields in a table. This feature has been available in the Xbase world for many years, and has been at or near the top of most Paradox users' and developers'...

The ins and outs of memory management. (Power Paradox 4.0) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Paradox, like every database management product, requires a sophisticated memory management scheme. Since the size of many data tables exceeds the available RAM on your PC, Paradox needs to read and write files in small pieces. Ideally,...

New standards promise open database access. (Microsoft Corp.'s Open Database Connectivity and the Open Database Application Programming Interface)(includes related articles on questions about ODBC and on ODBC SQL conformance levels) (Database Report)
December 1, 1992... Your company has a half dozen database products in-house, and your task is to write code to get to all of that data. What are you going to do? You could add tons of conditional code to your applications to access each database, or you could...

The OOP primer for Xbase programmers. (includes a related article on object-oriented programming terminology) (Object-Oriented Programming)
December 1, 1992... To understand object-oriented programming (OOP), Xbase programmers need to experience a "paradigm-shift." Until now, you've concentrated on developing "semi-structured" code--"semi-structured" because Xbase is so flexible, it's possible to...

OOP: What's the 'next' step? (Object-Oriented Programming)
December 1, 1992... Now that you've been enlightened about object-oriented development and its three divine mysteries--encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism--you might be ready to wage the crusade to have it adopted in your workplace. Between you and...

Microsoft Access finally makes its entrance! (Microsoft Corp.'s database management system) (Software Review) (First Look) (Evaluation)
December 1, 1992... The long-awaited arrival of Microsoft's entry into the database arena, Access, is almost here. No longer going by the beta name, Cirrus, and having gone through many levels of enhancements in its five years of development, it should be on...

ASCII to DBF: you can get there from here. (a program is listed for converting ASCII files into a DBF format) (Database Downsizing) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Your clients' business is growing by leaps and bounds, and they're beginning to import mainframe data, hundreds of megabytes at a time. Every time you receive one of those 300M ASCII files, you've got to do an APPEND FROM SDF, which means...

FoxPro devcon offers preview of new releases. (Microsoft Corp.'s FoxPro developer conference)(includes related articles on user reaction to FoxPro 2.5 and Microsoft Access, and on FoxPro 2.5's features) (Field Report)
December 1, 1992... PHOENIX, AZ -- If you've been waiting to hear that Fox Software people and their customers are unhappy now that they're fully ensconced in Microsoft's clutches, sorry to disappoint you. September's developer conference, held in downtown...

Developing context-sensitive help in dBASE IV. (dBASE Developer)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... We started working on our context-sensitive help development program last month. We evaluated the available alternatives, and decided that none of them really satisfied our needs. By determining the information we can get from dBASE IV that...

Increase productivity with FoxPro 2.0's Screen Builder. (The Fox Files)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... When FoxPro 2.0 was officially introduced, it came with some very powerful application development tools, like the Menu Builder and Project Manager. However, it's the Screen Builder that I can attribute significant changes to my productivity....

Jumping from subset to subset in TBrowse. (Hands-On Clipper)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... I've often been asked this question at my seminars: If you have a controlling index, is there any way to make TBrowse jump quickly to the next or previous index key? As with most Clipper 5.0 questions, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"...

Leveraging DDE in client/server applications. (Microsoft Windows' Dynamic Data Exchange) (Client/Server Developer)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Microsoft Windows has a number of features that let applications have "conversations" with each other. Through these conversations, applications may exchange data or update information in one application that has changed in the other...

How OLE and DDE work (and what it means for your applications). (Object Linking and Embedding and Dynamic Data Exchange in Microsoft Windows)(includes a related article on Microsoft's Cairo development efforts) (Windows Developer)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... Don't look now, but your PC running Microsoft Windows is deep in conversation. No, Big Brother didn't dial in by modem, and your sound board didn't become sentient. The message traffic between objects in Windows accounts for the talk, and...

Color images made easy. (Genus Microprogramming Inc.'s PCX Toolkit for Windows and Data Techniques Inc.'s ImageMan/VB incorporate color images in Windows applications) (BASIC for Windows) (Column)
December 1, 1992... Genus Microprogramming, Inc. Houston, Texas Phone: 800-227-0918 Fax: 713-870-0288 PCX Toolkit for Windows, $249 Data Techniques, Inc. Savannah, Georgia Phone: 800-868-8003 Fax: 912-651-8021 ImageMan/VB, $249 More and more...

Flexible complexity: FoxPro's printer drivers, part 1. (FoxPro Basics)(Column) (Tutorial)
December 1, 1992... The printer driver system is the most jarring innovation in FoxPro 2. Unlike the configurable system menu or the new variety of GET objects, it carries no heritage from the FoxPro interactive environment to make it seem familiar. Unlike...

Vendors and users offer tech support in DBA Forum. (the Data Based Advisor Forum) (DB Connections) (Column)
December 1, 1992... Do you use a software or hardware product which offers support on-line? You can avoid learning tough first-hand lessons from "the school of experience" by monitoring the forums in which discussions about your favorite tools take place. ...

Calendar of events.
December 1, 1992... Paradox Satellite Video Conference--Broadcast live nationwide. Co-sponsored by Data Based Advisor, featuring DBA's John Hawkins, Brian Smith, Kevin Smith, Alan Zenreich, and key Borland executives. Will air December 3. Contact Pyramid Studios...

Database Confidential. (Column)
December 1, 1992... Would you walk away from a deal with Microsoft? Well, if you do, you're in darn decent company. According to people inside Gatesland, the Big M made overtures to acquire two different database management companies--both still in action...