P&P Plc, the computer services company based in Rossendale, Lancashire, has signed an exclusive distributor agreement with Alpha Software of Burlington, Massachusetts for Alpha Four, a relational database management and application system for personal computers which is fully compatible with Ashton-Tate Corp’s dBase and designed for novice database users. Information in the database is accessed via a menu-driven interface and a set of up to 10 related databases may be linked: once defined, they enable the user to to perform any database operation using fields from all linked databases. It is capable of storing up to 2,000m records with 128 fields per record and 256 characters per field. It runs under MS-DOS and requires 512Kb of RAM. Users may also access existing information stored in dBase III and IV, and also write to dBase. It is aimed at users, mainly within a business environment, that want to develop the database for their own needs and who know what information they require for a particular business application and a knowledge of the workings of a database but with no programming skills. Alpha expects highly trained programmers within organisations, and consultants, to be able to develop applications more quickly or to reduce the amount of programming that is done for departmental applications by spreading it to others who are less skilled. Beverly Holden, software division manager at P&P, which markets dBase and Alpha Four, believes that the product fills a gap in the market where a business user with no programming skills wants to develop a powerful application, especially as dBase holds 47% of the UK database market. The cost of Alpha Four is UKP400. P&P will distribute to dealers and direct to large corporates. Until recently Alpha Software, founded in 1982, has stuck to the US market with 60,000 users of Alpha Three, the previous product, and Alpha Four. With the advent of 1992 and the increasing use of personal computers by companies, the software company looked to Europe and signed P&P to provide marketing, support and training for Alpha Four. Later this month, Alpha plans to enter the West German market via Rhv Software Systems GmbH of Dusseldorf and eventually it hopes to produce a French release. The next step for the product will be versions for OS/2 and for use on a multiuser network.
