Hands up all those that have a copy of Knowledgeware Inc’s Information Engineering Workbench product knocking about on a shelf somewhere and would like to be able to use it without having to build a library – for the accompanying paper-based navigational help, or another office – for the consultants that take up residence as soon as the phrase information engineering is whispered. Southfield, Michigan-based Computer Engineering Consultants Ltd, better known as CEC, may have what you are looking for in the shape of its new software product Foresight. This offers database and navigation technology embedded within the existing host CASE tool – currently Information Engineering Workbench or Application Development Workbench, but releases for Information Engineering Facility and Bachman/Analyst will follow. CEC’s Graham McAlister describes Foresight as an information engineering method encapsulated within and delivered upon CASE tools. It enables the user to customise the method, making it appropriate to the business. McAlister reckons that in the UK there are up to 200 sites with IEW but that only a handful are really using it – most have one or two copies, which were used for one project and have since stayed on the shelf. Foresight resides in the host CASE tool’s encyclopaedia, which means that the user can be sure that the host consistency checking is in place – in other words, that the method is unbroken. Foresight is appropriate for the component approach to software engineering and is not restricted to integrated product sets. In the UK – available from CEC in Bagshot, Surrey – the product costs UKP12,500 per copy, UKP30,000 for a site licence and UKP45,000 for a fully customised site licence.
