Sunrise Software International Inc may have kept its ezX Motif graphical user interface builder very quiet till now, but the Middletown, Rhode Island-based firm has not been resting on its laurels. ezX is a tool enabling developers to create Motif front-ends for their C, C++ and Ada applications – C and C++ versions cost $3,500, Ada versions $5,500. Written in C, it runs under all major Unix operating systems, including IBM’s AIX, Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s OpenDesktop, and Hewlett-Packard Co’s HP-UX. Digital Equipment Corp’s Alpha AXP machines running OSF/1 will also be added to the list this week because, Sunrise says, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. The product will support Fortran and Cobol, as will a new version of ezX for other Unix environments set for release next month.
Industry-shocker
The company has worked with DEC since about 1990 when it first released ezX – VMS was one of the first supported environments and still generates between 20% and 25% of total group revenues – the rest comes from Unix. But, says Sunrise, this relationship will deepen around April, when the two will come out with an industry-shocker of an announcement. The next major product in the pipeline, however, is ezXOOP, which is in beta test and should be out next month. Sunrise jointly developed ezXOOP with Rochester, New Hampshire-based Cabletron Systems Inc – the two integrated Cabletron’s Spectrum enterprise network management system with ezX, using the Python object-oriented control scripting language as the glue, to create a tool for Spectrum customers wanting to build custom applications for monitoring SNMP networks. Python was developed by Guido van Rossum at the Stichting Mathematische Centrum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is described as an English-like language, similar to C++, that enables users to define data types on the fly and to build heterogeneous data types. Although a good prototyping language thanks to its low overhead, Sunrise, says Python, can be used for only a limited number of applications due to its limited data integrity features – however, the firm claims, it is easy to recompile Python-based applications into C++ if more data protection is needed. ezXOOP will cost from $5,000 to $10,000, and will be sold by both companies, although Sunrise also intends to provide consultancy, training, installation and support services. The company was actually set up in 1983 to offer consultancy services to the defence industry, primarily in the fields of submarine weapons and combat control. ezX grew from the need to develop applications for a Unix-based sub-tracking system hooked up to X terminals – and as Sunrise couldn’t find any suitable tools on the market, it decided to develop its own. Existing customers include Citicorp, the UpJohn Inc pharmaceutical company, and DEC.
