The majority of Ingres users still work with character-based front-ends, so Ingres owner, Computer Associates International Inc has struck a deal with one of its partners, CACI Information Systems Inc, for some new technology to help them make the move from Ingres Application by Forms over to Windows. The new tool, UpFront, will be launched at the DB/Expo show in San Francisco at the beginning of May, and requires no changes to the underlying applications. Emphatically not a screen scraper, UpFront sits on a personal computer and interprets the Application by Forms code as used on DEC VT terminals and brings it into the Windows world. Standard screens are automatically generated, which can then be edited for preferences. The underlying technology was acquired by CACI from Alex Technologies Inc, which went into receivership last year after a number of years of pushing its languages, at one stage used by Lotus Development Corp for the Unix version of Lotus 1-2-3 (CI No 1,798). Minimum configuration is a 25MHz 80386 personal computer with 4Mb memory. Some users – namely those doing high-volume data entry – should stick with Application by Forms, say Computer Associates and CACI, and others looking for the longer-term benefits of object programming should re-develop their applications using Open Road, previously Windows 4GL, although the development cycles are obviously a lot longer. CACI International, the $180m-a-year computer products and services company based in Arlington, Virginia, has majored on the Ingres-based Prophecy financial management package in Europe, and back in February acquired UK Prophecy distributor Maindec Open Software Ltd, part of the Maindec Group. It took six weeks to convert 1,400 Application by Forms screens in Prophecy using UpFront, at a rate of between five and 10 screens per hour. CACI is doing the same with three more packages, and says it will offer an in-house conversion service to customers and developers. Computer Associates will sell the product through its direct sales force. In the UK, prices are set at ú200 per user for 200 copies, and fall to ú100 for 500 copies.
