Just when the battle for the flat-file user base seemed a clear cut contest between the relational database vendors and the next generation object database vendors, Access Technology Ltd has walked into the field with the message that flat-file users don’t need a database at all – what they need is a bi-directional report writer offering multiple views of data held in flat-files or in databases. What they need in fact is a User Data Management System. The product was developed by the US company Interactive System Software Inc and Access is ids exclusive UK distributor. It enables users to report, query, export and update data in the VAX/VMS environment from a variety of sources including System 1032, Rdb, RMS, VAX/DBMS, Ingres, Oracle, Sybase and RS/1. Using the product data can be exported from a file structure to the Access 20/20 spreadsheet or to other user applications. The enquiry goes in native to the file or table it is accessing – for example to access Oracle it will use Oracle SQL. Access is pitching the product at corporates with more than one database. Early converts include Reuters, Corning, British Steel and Harcros. The selling point of the product is that it protects the investment that a user may have in a flat-file structure or in two database systems, but provides her with relational properties enabling up to 32 files or tables to be joined in relational data view with inner and outer joins transparent to the windows-based VT-terminal interface. Priced at UKP4,000 on a VAXstation to approximately UKP18,000 on mid-range, UDMS is cost-justified, Access general manager David Cotterell believes, because it means that consultants do not have to be brought in to write bespoke software to perform the same information retrieval tasks. Cotterell expects to get the UDMS product into half of the UK’s RMS sites, thereby queering the sales pitch for the likes of Oracle and DEC.
