Dun & Bradstreet Corp’s D&B Software is joining the client-server bandwaggon and hyping something called the Enterprise Model as the core to its future development. The company says that proprietary systems are on the way out, and it is ramping up to offer products that will operate in an client-server open systems environment. However, like so many organisations, D&B is merely providing the bones of its future direction, the flesh is to follow over the next few years, with workstation-based products being introduced within the next 12 months. Dave Jordan, D&B’s technical director, says that the new architecture will have to encompass various graphical user interfaces, data interfaces, operating environments, programming languages, communications facilities and processor technology. Will D&B plump for Systems Application Architecture or Unix? Which version of Unix? Which programming languages? Intel Corp, Motorola Inc or Sparc processors? Or can it encompass all of them? It is still a mystery. The company is definite on one thing only. It has rejected computer-aided software engineering – for the present – on several grounds. After evaluating 127 first generation products, Jordan says that current technology does not address object oriented processing or support C++. It does not achieve consistency across systems nor improve the quality of software, neither does it enhance productivity nor reduce the development timeframe. D&B is still considering what it describes as second generation products, which is probably a good thing since many a software engineer would disagree that the technology is as limited as D&B claims. The company is advocating that users focus strongly on relational technologies, claiming that they will reap the benefit when true distributed processing arrives. Phil Edwards, the UK managing director, says that the new client-server architecture will require a $250m investment over a three-year period with the long-term objective of complete hardware-independence.
