Informix Software Inc introduced New Era – 4GL++ renamed – an object-oriented point and click application development tool, at its worldwide user conference in Tampa, Florida a few weeks ago. Informix chief executive and president Phil White outlined New Era and Informix’s related tools strategy for the coming year. These include providing developers with a distributed computing environment, application partitioning, systems management and support for new third party products. The product, which Menlo Park, California-based Informix touts as a system-independent programming environment, is pitched against rival front end tools from PowerSoft Inc, Atlanta, Georgia, Gupta Corp of Menlo Park, California, Oakland, California-based Forte Software Inc and new US-based Dynasty Inc. It is priced between these rival offerings at $500 a user and $4,500 for a software developers kit. New Era is up under Windows now and support for HP-UX, AIX and Solaris running Motif will be ready next quarter.

Multi-layered

There are three central components to New Era’s multi-layered architecture. At the heart of the tool is New Era Language, a high-level object-oriented programming language that provides both structured and object-oriented programming constructs. Although the language has been designed for object-oriented application development to support such things as code re-use, business modelling and class libraries, it can also support traditional procedural programming techniques for those developers in transition from proprietary language, C or Cobol. The language also enables developers to embed C routines in parts of applications for such things as highly specialised device drivers. Informix’s approach with New Era is to partition the language and to move away from traditional scripting methods of programming towards automatic and component-based code generation, White says. But what about existing users familiar with third and fourth generation methods? Informix says New Era will enable users to migrate to object-oriented application development at their own speed, claiming the tool can move at least 75% of procedural code to New Era without too much difficulty. Another attribute of the language layer is the compiler technology. There are two options. The first is the pseudo-code option, which compiles New Era Language source code to a graphical runner at execution. According to Informix, this provides improved rapid development and prototyping capabilities. The other is a C compile option, which produces native executable files. It does so by compiling New Era into C code, which boosts application performance and also generates dynamic link libraries for Windows development.

By Alison Hawkings

Surrounding this is a layer of class libraries, which will provide a plug and play application environment. These are modular, re-useable application components that enable users to define business rules and to integrate application-specific functionality, such as graphical user interfaces, multimedia, document imaging and Electronic Document or Data Interchange. Class libraries can either be developer-defined by Informix or provided by third parties, and be created using New Era or by integrating existing C or C++ libraries. Era will come with a set of Windows visual class libraries for graphical objects; Motif ones will follow later. There will be two communications libraries; one for Informix’s OnLine and Standard Engine databases; the other, using Open Database Connectivity, for Sybase and Oracle. Third party class libraries will also be on offer. Initial New Era library partners include, Lotus Development Corp, Excalibur Technologies Inc of San Diego, California, Parisian Ilog SA, Irix Inc of Belmont, California, Coravallis, Oregon-based Rogue Wave Software Inc, Transarc Corp in Pittsburg, Pennsylvannia, San Mateo, California-based Visigenic Software Inc and Soft-tek Inc of Wichita, Kansas. The last layer, the one that surrounds the entire architecture, provides a suite of five programming tools. The Windows painter, developed usi

ng the Pro Kappa application development technology from Informix’s IntelliCorp investment, is one of the most important features of New Era. It provides a point and click, drag and drop, visual palette of graphical user interface controls and objects, which enables developers to define menu systems, graphical controls and establish database bindings, defining the Structured Query Language links to database tables and columns, via Super Tables. There are two options: the free-form SuperTable, which places Structured Query Language columns within the window being built; and the grid, which provides an array of Structured Query Language rows for browsing. The two SuperTables each enable data to be browsed, deleted, updated and inserted from the database of choice. The windows painter also supports a windows intermediate format, which enables third party painters, code generators and Computer Aided Software Engineering tools to work within the New Era environment. The Application Builder is essentially an application component management tool, which enables users to create and/or monitor modules such as source code, applications programming interfaces and class libraries stored in the repository. Sitting along side this is ViewPoint Pro, a graphical database administration and SuperView repository tool. It can also be used to generate graphical reports.

Graphical debugger

A graphical debugger is also part of this layer. It enables users to execute programs within a multi-windows environment. Debugger capabilities include setting break points, controlling the execution of running programs; and views contents and definitions of variables. At a lower level, New Era will also support application partitioning – the ability to split an application’s processing between client and server. Partitioning, it seems, is becoming an essential technology for distributed computing, and rivals Forte and Dynasty already have products on the market using this technology. Informix, although labelling New Era as a next generation distributed client-server tool, will not deliver any of these capabilities until mid-1995. The problem is the messaging mechanisms are very complex. The issue is complicated further by the division between the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment and the Object Management Group’s CORBA standards. Informix says it will wait for the market to judge a winner before supporting either. Informix also announced alliances with third party systems management software suppliers. Initially, New Era will link to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Intersolv Inc’s Q+E version control software and to software from Information Builders Inc, New York. Support for Tivoli’s Management Environment is also planned.