Informix's 18-Month Plan (OST article)

[The following article appeared in the July 20, 1992, issue of _Open_Systems_Today_. It is posted with permission. WH] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Informix Reveals 18-Month Plan By Dan Richman San Jose -- Informix executives laid out their product direction for the next 18 months for an estimated 1,200 attendees at the company's Worldwide User Conference here earlier this month. Informix said that before year's end, it will release a version of its OnLine relational databases management system for NetWare, a graphical end-user query tool, a development environment and an enhanced version of its Wingz spreadsheet. In 1993, Informix plans to release OnLine 6.0 and 6.1, as well as object-oriented extensions to Informix-4GL. "We're going to distinguish ourselves from Oracle, Ingres and Sybase by turning out more products more quickly then they can -- especially tools, which we intend to specialize in," said Phil White, Informix president and chief executive officer. Informix has already released nine products this year -- more than in any three-year period of Informix's history, he said. Informix-OnLine for NetWare, built on Version 4.10 of the OnLine engine, is intended for use with NetWare 3.11, said Susan Nurse, market development manager for client-server products. At the moment, Informix can be used on Novel networks running under NetWare 2.11, but only in a file-sharing mode that's not optimized for client-server operations, as 3.11 is, Nurse said. OnLine for NetWare is scheduled for general release by October 1, she said. The graphical end-user tool, to be called Storm, lets users create queries and reports without knowing the structure of a database, Informix said. First, a database administrator sets up "superviews," defining terms end users are likely to include in queries, such as customer, Informix said. Superviews may encompass multiple fields on multiple databases. The administrator also can create alias field names the end users can understand more easily than the cryptic names often used in the databases itself. Then the end user generates queries or reports without using any SQL. "This would be extremely helpful to users," said John M. Shoemaker, a St. Louis software consultant attending the conference. "Right now, the only way I know of for a user to get these abilities is to use SQL or a competing product that requires knowing the database's underlying structure." Currently in beta, Storm is scheduled to ship by year end SPARC, HP, RS/6000 and Windows 3.1, in the order, with a version for Macintosh due out by early 1993, said Pete Lord, Storm product manager. The new development environment, HyperScript Tools 1.0, is designed to develop database applications through the use of an English-like syntax, said Stefan Zauchenberger, a product manager. HyperScript Tools is an enhancement of a development language called HyperScript, which made its debut in Wingz 1.1 as a means of automating spreadsheets, Zauchenberger said. It allows screen painting rather than requiring screen coordinate specifications, and it lets developers attach SQL commands to an icon, he said. The product includes all the functionality of Wingz 2.0, he said. Offering an example of the language's capabilities, Zauchenberger said that 80 percent of the user interface of Storm was written with HyperScript. HyperScript Tools 1.0 will be priced to compete with similar products, somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000, he said. General availability on Windows 3.x and RS/6000, HP/UX, and SPARC under Motif is scheduled by year's end. Running applications requires a run-time engine that will sell for 20 percent to 25 percent of the price of product, Zauchenberger said. During the first half of next year, users can expect the release of Informix-4GL++, and object-oriented version of Informix-4GL, Roger Sippl, Informix's chairman, told conference attendees. "The most important use of object orientation is to put it into languages," Sippl said. "That's not to say we won't be involved in object-oriented databases and kernels. But for the next three to four years, the money will flow from object-oriented tools." 4GL++ will ship at the same time as OnLine 6.0, said Chuck House, senior vice president of product development and management. Unlike Informix-4GL, Informix-4GL++ will allow dynamically sized arrays, real-time memory allocation, manipulation of lock lists and trees, recursion support and code reuse through polymorphism, said Bill Hedge, an Informix product marketing manager. Though Informix only began shipping Version 5.0 of its first-line OnLine RDBMS in January, much talk at the conference revolved around Version 6.0, which is due around the first half of 1993. Version 6.0 will offer a threaded architecture, while 5.0 is based on processes, said Tim Shelter, a marketing vice president. Threads generally support more users than do processes, he said Shelter said Version 6.0 also will add parallel index-building capabilities, which will speed the creation of indexes on multiprocessor machines. It will add an archiving and recover scheme that allows recovery of smaller sections of a database than can be restored now. Data replications will store copies of key tables off site as a backup measure. Tape-management facilities will coordinate multivolume tape backups. C2 security is planned. Version 6.0 is being developed on four machines simultaneously -- Sun, Sequent, RS/6000 and HP 9000 -- to hasten porting to other platforms, Shelter said. Version 5.0 was developed on three machines at once. Version 6.1 will add parallel table scans, parallel sorts and parallel joins, Shelter said. [Sidebar] ----------------------------------------------- Coming From Informix Product Availability OnLine for NetWare October 1 Storm graphical query tool Year-end Hyperscript Tools Year-end Object-oriented Informix-4GL++ First-half '93 OnLine 6.0 First-half '93 ----------------------------------------------- (c) Copyright 1992 by CMP Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Walt Hultgren Internet: walt@rmy.emory.edu (IP 128.140.8.1) Emory University UUCP: {...,gatech,rutgers,uunet}!emory!rmy!walt 954 Gatewood Road, NE BITNET: walt@EMORY Atlanta, GA 30329 USA Voice: +1 404 727 0648