Software AG, of Darmstadt, Germany, plans to build object-oriented products and to incorporate object technologies into its existing products. In the second half of 1995 it will offer object versions of its Natural 4GL proprietary language and Engineering WorkBench development environment. Object-oriented Natural will be a hybrid language combining existing features and new object functionality. With help from methodology guru Ed Yourdon, Software AG says it has also developed a methodology for using objects in business computing following a two-year research and development project. The results – now being applied in OO Natural – will be described in Yourdon’s Prentice-Hall title Mainstream Objects: A Practical Approach for Business, due next quarter. Software AG has added full event-driven graphical user interface capabilities to its development environment as Natural New Dimension, for the creation of re-usable graphical user interface application code. It has enhanced support for Open Database Connectivity, remote database access, Remote Procedure Calls and messaging. It includes MDI Windows support now with VBX to be added next quarter. The company says New Dimensions can use components of existing non-event driven applications. Windows and OS/2 versions ship next month with Unix implementations set for the first quarter of next year. Natural 4GL, including New Dimensions, is from $1,250 for one Windows licence.
