Empress Software Inc is planning X Window System support for a future release of its Empress distributed relational database management system, the company revealed this week. Prototype versions of Empress now include an X Window feature interfaced to Empress at the low, X-Lib level. According to president and co-founder John Kornatowski, this avoids the limitations imposed on other relational databases with a graphical user interface at higher levels, and is possible because of the layered architecture of the Empress product. X will bring multiple and interactive screens, continued processing on closed screens, windows from different machines, and clocks and calculators to Empress applications, which have had mouse and touch screen support for two years, according to the company. The new facility was demonstrated at UniForum both at the Empress booth, and on the Hewlett-Packard Co stand as part of the Empress-based Caseware software development application. Empress Software is based in Greenbelt, Maryland, but research and development is carried out in Toronto, Canada.
