Crossroad Systems Inc, an 18-month-old Boston, Massachusetts-based start-up, has come out with a new development framework for integrating heterogeneous applications into a single environment on Unix networks. The software currently runs under AIX, HP-UX and Solaris 1.0. The Crossroad architecture enables developers to configure connections between existing applications and directly supports the dynamic reconfiguration of connections and flow of data in the network, according to chief executive Alek Mesarovich. The product, targeted at Fortune 500 developers, consists of three components: the Motif-compliant CrossFrame interface builder; the CrossScript scripting language; and the CrossLink network services builder, a programming environment for dynamically establishing peer relationships between applications on a network through a mechanism called agents. The agents transform isolated software applications into modular building blocks for creating a coherent networked system. CrossFrame and CrossScript are tightly integrated, supporting a single high-level programming procedure to develop both the interface and underlying application. CrossScript, which offers lower level programming support and combines features of C, C++ and C-shell, also manages the CrossLink network agents and directly connects them to the user interfaces. The software is immediately available, priced at $7,500 for a development licence, $500 for a run-time licence, and $500 to $5,000 for Crossroad-built turnkey agents. The company, which says it has garnered about 10 customers so far, has turnkey agents available for Sybase, Lotus 1-2-3 and Unix electronic mail. Sun Microsystems Inc distributor ERI is reportedly using Crossroad to create a canned database publishing system using Framemaker and Sybase.
