As expected, Unify Corp has now launched the Accell/TP toolkit it has developed in league with ICL Plc. At the same time, the Sacramento, California-based company has announced a Windows version of its core Accell/SQL application development and 4GL toolset. An extension of Accell/SQL 2.2, Accell/TP runs with the Informix, Ingres, Oracle and Sybase databases, as well as Unify Corp’s own Unify 2000 database, integrates with Unix System Laboratories Inc’s Tuxedo transaction processing monitor, and conforms to X/Open two-phase commit and XA database standards. Unify president and founder Nicolas Nierenberg says that Accell/TP is now being demonstrated to customers, will go into beta-testing within the next few months, and will be generally available during the first quarter of next year. ICL – which also wants a Sun Microsystems Inc version for its own purposes will initially have the product to itself, but other versions will follow, and other transaction processing monitors, such as Top End and Encina, are also being considered although we pretty much have our hands full at the moment, says Nierenberg. The product is needed because Tuxedo is so hard to program, and interfaces have previously had to be written using C. Accell/TP enables you to get to the functionality of Tuxedo using procedure calls. Both client and server portions can be written, and can be integrated with non-Accell clients and servers, with debugging tools provided. The whole application can be developed locally and split into client and server bits afterwards.
Dbits
Unify claims that its competitors in transaction processing software tools – such as Informix Software Inc – have products designed to run only within their own environments. Unify’s buzzword of the moment is Dbits – database-independent tools and Nierenberg claims that it means that you don’t have to buy any part of the related database product to run the tools, not even the data dictionary. That rules out competitors such as Empress, Focus and Progress, he says. Dbits must also support standard SQL, and at the same time take advantage of the features of the chosen database, not impose their own virtual database, thereby negating the purpose in running a particular type of database at all. Although primarily Unix-focused, Unify has now come round to the view that the success of Windows and probable success of NT cannot be ignored. Accell/SQL for Windows is the first Windows-based product from Unify that enables the application to run in Microsoft Windows on the client. Before Windows 3.1, Windows was not considered a solid enough environment to enable that to happen, and all the information processing was limited to the server. Accell/SQL enables both Unix and Windows clients to share the same database, with Unix clients supporting graphical Motif or Open Look, or just plain character interfaces, and the Windows version supports Microsoft Corp’s Dynamic Data Exchange mechanism for applications integration. On the database side, Unify is currently waiting to see how object-oriented technology develops before it makes a move, but is already hard at work on object-oriented extensions to its tools, the first of which are expected to emerge sometime next year.
