The promised agreement between Apple Computer Inc and Microsoft Corp calls for the two to work together on future technologies to help ensure a smooth and long-term evolution for customers of Microsoft applications for the Apple Macintosh – Microsoft has committed to doing versions of its Macintosh applications for the PowerPC RISC. Apple will support Microsoft’s Open Database Connectivity applications programming interface implementation of the SQL Access Group call-level interface specification as a standard facility of the Macintosh Data Access Manager, giving compliant applications access to server databases through one set of calls. Microsoft and Apple have also endorsed the combination of Open Database and Apple Data Access Language, via Apple’s Data Access Manager: Apple intends to build, distribute and support a Macintosh ODBC/DAL client that will translate Open Database calls and information into Data Access Language functions and requests and enable Open Database applications to access DAL servers, and will develop an ODBC/DAL client for Windows, which Microsoft is to distribute and support. Microsoft will support QuickDraw GX in future versions of its Mac applications and will offer Foxbase+ for the Macintosh. There are also new releases of Microsoft Works, 3.0; Project 3.0; and Mail 3.1.
