The Slough-based UK subsidiary of Computer Associates Inc, Garden City, New York, chose its user group conference in Manchester to announce its new graphics reporting option, Masterpiece GRO, for IBM MVS and DEC VAX versions of its Masterpiece General Ledger. The new option enables general ledger users to produce charts and graphs of their data. The product comes out of a joint effort between Computer Associates’ recent acquisitions, Software International Corp, which developed the Masterpiece series of business applications, and Integrated Software Systems Corp, creator of the CA-Tellagraf visual information system. The new product includes GRO Chartbook, a collection of preformatted charts and graphs matched specifically to general-ledger use with tips on chart design and selection as well as samples of the different charts, graphs and tables available. Being based on CA-Tellagraf, it supports hundreds of output devices – terminals, plotters, laser printers and slide makers. CA-Tellagraf’s Layout Intelligence enables masterpiece GRO to adapt automatically the chart format, colour and quality to the output medium of the user’s choice. The IBM MVS version costs between UKP8,000 and UKP20,000, depending on hardware configuration, for a single copy licence. CA has also announced CA-Programmers’ Workcentre for CICS Cobol data centres. It combines a Personalike workstation with programming software to provide automated supervision, project tracking and programming tools for managers and programmers. The management software modules include the application development areas of estimating, project planning, project resource management and financial analysis and budgeting; while the programming modules have a screen generator, report generator, file utilities, a test data generator, a CICS testing and debugging tool, Cobol testing and optimisation facilities and a CICS Cobol application generator. The Workcentre is available with PC-DOS-based tutorials and standardised documentation for IBM DOS/VSE and OS/MVS environments.
