Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc’s Cambridge, Massachusetts-based BBN Software Products division has announced BBN/Cornerstone, a data analysis software package designed for client-server based server computing. The system is targeted at scientists and engineers needing to access, manipulate, analyse and present large volumes of information, quickly and easily, being intended as a kind of happy medium between traditional user-hostile statistical software and spreadsheets, which are inadequate for complex technical data analysis. It comprises core data access and graphical analysis tools, together with Workmap, a kind of monitoring feature that plots the various stages of analysis completed by the user as a series of icons. The system can also be extended using BBN’s existing RS/Series of data analysis products and the Cornerstone Extensions Language. Its Data Navigator enables users to access data, across a network, from Ingres, Oracle, Sybase and ASCII tables. This information is then presented, in familiar spreadsheet format, in the data set editor, ready for the user to analyse. By pointing and clicking on various analysis tools, which are backed up by an on-line help system, users can generate a number of graphs, box plots, and contour plots to help isolate particular factors, test theories and build models. Optional modules are also being offered for more complex multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance and principal components analysis with the initial system release. Under these, users can create what if? models to visualise and validate their assumptions. Finally the optional Cornerstone Extension Language, based on C++, is being offered to those wishing to develop customised applications and/or integrate existing applications. Since Cornerstone works with a memory copy of the information it retrieves, there is no danger of it corrupting its source data. It can be used to export material to the originating database however. It also enables multiple users to share data, collaborate and automate tasks without writing any extra code, via Workmap. The system runs under HP-UX and SunOS Unix. A single user, fixed licence costs UKP1,440 and a floating licence is UKP1,920. The Extension Language module is a further UKP800. Future releases will include a Digital Equipment Corp VAX version – DEC server software already exists, and an NT-based personal computer version. BBN’s existing technical data analysis software is currently used by some 78 Fortune 100 companies. Customers include Glaxo, BP, Ford Motor, Caledonian Paper, DEC, the Ministry of Defence, British Gas and Cancer Research.
