New Stuff

Classic v9.70 

INFO database upgrade over v9.65 with a host of extensions and improvements and enhancements.  Aimed initially at the at the PC market, INFO Classic v9.70 will be made available on the other supported platforms during the Q4 2002. For the first time you will be able to port your Unix, Primos, Open/VMS, IBM VM/CMS, Honeywell/Bull DPS/6 applications in full to the Windows Platform.  INFO Classic v9.70 supports Native and Cross-Platform (big endian) formats so that data and applications can be available without any further data transformations. 

Character Interface

While the PC version is still character based, the user interface incorporates Windows CUI methods and therefore does not rely upon ANSI.SYS or terminal emulation.  The user can setup their own preferences for color and background, plus several data presentation and update modes.  Possible the most unusual is INFO9.70's ability to read characters back from the screen if a data entry field is positioned over characters that have already been displayed.  These characters can then be written back into INFO's input buffer without any programming effort.

Printing

All other versions of INFO relied upon Printing being carried out by the spooler, and so all INFO needed to do way to queue a print file to it.  Windows printing is much more complex, and the primary method of printing is via a graphical method.  This means that the output format can only be determined at run-time as different printers have different capabilities.  These capabilities include the ability  set the print orientation, the font, the scale, the number of characters per line, or lines per page

Internal variables

The long overdue upgrade in the number of internal variables has now been provided.  These are up to 1024 from 40, and the variables can also be named.

Additional Data Types

Text types and Blobs (Binary Large Objects) have now been introduced into INFO together with several utilities for the management of text fields and Blobs

Top of Page
 

Graphical User Interface version of INFO

a highly unusual development studio hybrid of a Windows GUI incorporating a visual editor, grids for data and schema presentation, query wizard, interactive console giving access to all INFO facilities, and a Browser for implementing Internet style user interfaces incorporating HTML, DHTML, XML, JavaScript, VB Script, Plug-Ins etc all without the requirement for to run a Web Server.

-Server  a server version of INFO 9.70 with specific extensions to optimise its use for thread safe database applications implemented through the  CGI interface of a web server. (Under Development)

  Possibly many of you are unaware that we supply ODBC drivers to INFO applications.  We have several implementations of ODBC, but in essence ODBC adds a SQL capability to INFO, and also allows it to connect to the many ODBC enabled applications such as ACCESS, Excel, and Crystal Reports.  We supply drivers for the PC and Unix versions of INFO

Top of Page

Older Versions of INFO and Structure/4

Primos and Open VMS VAX and Alpha
INFO , , and are fully supported on your platform. But your applications  can also be easily moved to a wide range of Unix/PC supported platforms ,using our porting services and software.  There are no current plans to port our Open/VMS products to the Itanium, but we will do so if there is sufficient demand.

 

Unsupported Versions

Platforms

  • Honeywell/Bull DPS/6 This version is no longer supported, but they can be ported to PC and Unix.  Our application converter INFOCVT will convert applications and data as required.  No software needs to be installed under DPS/6, as INFOCVT can read the native formats directly on on a PC or under Unix

  • IBM VM/CMS, TSO  These versions are no longer supported, but they can be ported to PC and Unix.  Our application converter INFOCVT will convert applications and data as required. No software needs to be installed under DPS/6, as INFOCVT can read the native formats directly on on a PC or under Unix

  • PC INFO 4.3 This DOS version is no longer fully supported and has been replaced by INFO 9.70.  While there are a few compatibility issues, the majority of applications will be able to run un-modified.  The main issue regards the use of ISAM files.  Briefly, the ISAM system used in 9.43 is not compatible with that used in 9.70, and so the files need to be saved out and new ones populated under 9.70.  This is a very straightforward process, but it does need to carried out manually.

Supported compatible releases

INFO 9.70, INFO-32, INFO-Server, INFO-ODBC

Limited Support

  • Structure/4 DOS LAN  This version of Structure/4 has limited support.  Current PC development is being delayed until we can evaluate the .NET platform is fully released by Microsoft 

Top