Boulder, Colorado-based Clebern Corp has recently burst onto the software scene with its object-oriented Macroscope development environment. President and co-founder of the company Bernadette Reiter says that although the company is five and a half years old, the technology has been kept underground and was only formally launched six months ago in the US. Originally the tool set was used internally to write bespoke software for major corporations. Clebern uses its own language, Macroscope, which it has built up over this time, with the specific purpose of gaining advantages from reusability of code. The environment is a life cycle object infrastructure for writing complex applications and integrates with existing applications written in C or C++ without having to drop down to C. One of the reasons the company has been wary about tagging the label object-oriented to its product is that, as Ms Reiter points out, object-oriented technology does not offer any quicker application development than procedural software engoneering methods, because building objects from scratch is time-consuming. However, because Macroscope has been around for a while Clebern can give its customers an object infrastructure complete with a library of pre-existing objects covering communications with other systems, particularly mainframes, database control and access including full SQL access, business graphics, window management, and colour or monochrome presentation quality output. The Macroscope graphics tool offers users meta level objects so that objects can be drawn on screen and re-used in a lot of applications. Macroscope is more than a language: it also offers object-oriented analysis and design. Analysis is based around a planning model that treats a project as an organisation with developers told to think of objects as individual members of staff with their own functions working within a department or program. The model, called MOSES, is an acronym for Mission, Objective, Structure/Strategy, Envision (proof of concept) and System Build. Within this model, there is a second model for development that looks at each module and object within a project and describes its current state, authority to perform actions, responsibility for performing tasks, accountability for what it does and history of what it has and hasn’t done. Objects within Macroscope have states and operate by passing messages to one another and these models are required to ensure that all the objects interact correctly. Macroscope is available in a stand-alone version for MS-DOS and a client-server version for MS-DOS and Unix workstations. The tool set is available only directly from Clebern and training is provided at Clebern facilities and on site. It comes with the full language, a library of development objects, an automated user interface tool, an automated planning guide, the graphics generator and free training. The cost varies depending on the number of users – prices range from $100 to $2,000 per workstation.
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