Coda-IAS, an integrated accounting package for IBM’s new AS/400 was unveiled last week by Leeds-based accounting software spe cialist Coda Ltd. Coda already offers a package for System/38 and has been upgrading it since 1986, and the company hopes to get maximum exposure for the new release by tying it in to the AS/400 launch. The company’s approach is to build an integrated rather than a modular system, dispensing with separate bought and sales ledger modules, and instead building the system around the central System 38 database – which we shall now have to start thinking of as the AS/400 database. And by building an integrat ed rather than a modular system, the company is able to take advantage of the fact that the database is relational to update information throughout the system when alterations are made to a given piece of data. Coda-IAS has a multidimensional coding structure, which the company claims is especially useful for large multinationals with complex structures using multiple currencies – but the product runs on the smallest – B10 or P10 model of the AS/400 line, where it licenses for a one-time UKP5,000. At the other end of the scale, it costs UKP70,000 on the top-end B60. Coda, which has just opened a US office and made its first sale there, opened for business in 1980, and has ver sions of IAS for DEC VAX and Hewlett-Packard HP3000 machines as well as for IBM System 38, with over 400 installations in the UK all told.
