Little known Norwegian-based software tools development house Sysdeco Group ASA claims its Systemator systems development environment is the first to combine computer-aided software engineering, fourth generation language and graphical interface tools in the same package. Systemator 6.0 comes with support for data, process and dialog modeling, application generators, database generators, its own 4GL programming language – including dedicated editors and debuggers, test tools – all integrated with CASE modules via Systemator’s repository system. Systemator is divided into several modules internally communicating with each other via a repository system – data models, process definitions, dialogs and complete applications – with variables in the program code or in the dialogs, you only need make references to variables already described in the data model. It means maintenance is kept simple, claims the company. The repository system stores different models, defined via the graphical model editors in the model designer. The database designer reads the defined models from the repository, generates the appropriate database files for the selected database management system, and stores the result and the mapping information in the repository. The dialog designer reads the model from the repository, generates different dialogs, which are interpreted and tested by the users. After having edited the dialogs, they are stored in the same repository, from which they can be compiled for the likes of Windows, Presentation Manager, Motif and Macintosh. Systemator runs on around 30 environments, including most Unix implementations, Macintosh, IBM Corp’s OS/2 and MVS, and Microsoft NT and Windows.
