Microrim Inc, Redmond, Washington, yesterday gave more details of its ambitious new Atlas relational database project, which it first mentioned at the end of last year (CI No 1,080). The company claims that it will be the first relational database management system that addresses the needs for all computer users in an organisation to share data. The Atlas programme, started in May 1987 is designed to enable users working on incompatible hardware under incompatible operating systems with diverse database software to share data easily – and is aimed at non technical as well computer professionals. Environments it will embrace include OS/2 and Presentation Manager; Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS; Macintosh MacOS; DEC VAX/VMS with DECwindows; IBM MVS and VM; and the leading versions of Unix. The first version, Atlas for IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager is promised for December, with the other versions following over the following 18 months. Each implementation will include Atlas Surfaces, for both graphical and character user interface environments; Atlas Database Engines to store, retrieve and process local and distributed data; Atlas Data Connections to enable data sharing across the multi-vendor environment; and Atlas Compilers, a developer tool to maximise run-time performance of applications with full ANSI SQL. It will feature a client-server architecture to increase performance when used on local networks and will retrieve and update data of other relational databases such as Oracle, Ingres, DEC Rdb, and IBM DB2, and data from IBM OS/2 Extended Edition’s Data Manager, as well as directly read ing and writing R:Base and dBase data as well as its own Atlas data.
