First fruits of an agreement between Digital Equipment Corp and Apple Computer Inc which we originally revealed back in January 1988, (CI No 847), are due to come to market this autumn, with the release of DEC LanWorks for Macintosh. The client-server software is built upon networking protocols which integrate AppleTalk with the DECnet networking environment, and bring the Apple Macintosh into DEC’s Network Application Support – NAS distributed computing environment, which already supports Ultrix, MS-DOS and OS/2. The main impetus of the project to develop interfaces between the Macintosh and DEC’s VAX computers is the fact that up to 40% of VAX sites include Macintosh users – a relationship which has remained fairly constant over the last couple of years (the figure was 36% when the agreement was originally announced). With DEC LanWorks, Macintosh systems will essentially use VAX systems as servers. LanWorks comprises VMS server software, Macintosh client applications and networking technology, enabling Macintosh users to share printers and other networked resources, exchange files and electronic mail, and access common applications and databases with Unix, MS-DOS, OS/2 and VMS users over local and wide area networks. The software also supports MacX, Apple’s X Window server implementation, enabling MacX users to access DECwindows applications, including the ones that run under the Open Software Foundation’s Motif graphical user interface. Mail facilities included in LanWorks are PCmail and All-In-1-Mail for Macintosh, and also announced is DEC’s SQL/Services for Macintosh, enabling Mac applications to access DEC’s Rdb and IBM’s DB2 databases. The software also includes a Digital Document Interchange Format converter for MacWrite with PICT, which enables Mac users to exchange compound documents with other NAS environment users. DEC LanWorks costs UKP290 per Macintosh, documentation is UKP375 per site. According to the firms, DEC LanWorks is only the first in a range of Mac-to-VAX services being developed under the agreement – they hope that third party software developers will soon begin converting applications to run across it.
