Capitalising on its Nantucket Corp acquisition, Islandia, New York-based Computer Associates International Inc says it will next month start shipping the beta test release of its CA-Visual Objects, which it claims to be the first fully object-oriented desktop development system designed for mission-critical business applications in distributed environments. It will go out to over 1,000 customers. The system offers a unique mix of object-oriented and visual programming in addition to compiler technology that has been integrated into a repository-based development environment that can accommodate both object-oriented and traditional development. Visual Objects uses visual technology to design and develop commercial graphical interface client-server applications and is claimed to provide language technology that combines the performance of compiled code with the flexibility of object-orientation and high-level languages. It supports Xbase and SQL/Open Data Base Connectivity databases and supports third-party tools. It support an interactive, incremental, iterative style of development, the company says. Form, menu and report painters provide for code-less creation of graphical user interface applications. Each tool’s code generator creates object-oriented source code. The object language is actually a set of extensions to the Xbase language including support for class and method definition, inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism. All components are stored and interrelationships are maintained in an object-oriented repository, and the types of entities supported are fully extensible. No prices.
