john@anasaz.UUCP (John Moore) (05/14/88)
Anasazi creates a lot of applications in which the transactions and responses are in the form of messages, rather than "forms" or screens. These include messages from non-character type terminals (teller terminals) and from other computers (such as airline reservations systems). Recently we have been researching commercially available RDBMS systems with associated software development tools such as 4GL's, forms painters, application generators, and report generators. It seems that most or all of these systems assume (in the 4GL or application generator) that a traditional timesharing model is used: an application consists of a process connected to a terminal via the operating system terminal I/O. However, our application, and probably those of many other folks, don't fit that model. Either we can't afford enough processes, or the terminals are connected by some network that doesn't fit the model, or the messages come from atypical devices. Note that TPF (or ACP for the nostaligic), a high performance and popular IBM system, deals with this well. However, the software technology for developing applications in TPF is stoneage, and there is no portability. Other than embedding SQL in a 3GL, what can we do to get modern in our tools? Are there 4GL's that do not assume this model? How about applications generators? How about Unix based CASE tools that fit this model? Note: we need a lot of portability (386's running UNIX to big UNIX boxes such as IBM mainframes with AIX). We also need a lot of performance. -- John Moore (NJ7E) hao!noao!mcdsun!nud!anasaz!john (602) 870-3330 (day or evening) The opinions expressed here are obviously not mine, so they must be someone else's.