Santa Clara, California-based Delfin Systems Inc is shipping version 2.0 of its InfoPower information analysis and reporting tool kit based on Object Design Inc’s ObjectStore object-oriented database. InfoPower is a collection of tools supporting complex information gathering, analysis, assessment and reporting and can be used to track markets or products including risk assessment and investment evaluation, Delfin said. Originally developed for the US defence industry, InfoPower can access Oracle and Sybase relational databases and create an analysis environment for its own and third party application tools, including Frame Technology Corp’s Frameviewer and Informix Corp’s Wingz spreadsheet. It uses a Motif/X Window graphical user interface and runs on Sun Microsystems Inc and IBM Corp workstations, accessing information stored in ObjectStore through an InfoPower application programming interface. Relevant subsets of information can be automatically accessed, either by using InfoPower’s common query manager, or pasted from other application tools. Information is then entered into the database via the application programming interface. The publicly-specified interface consists of function calls for selecting and getting observations, entities and definitions in and out of the database. Version 2.0 has link analysis for graphically illustrated relationships between objects and events in a hierarchical or network environment, timeline perspective for plotting events versus time supporting multiple views, variable scales, click and drag adjustment, and hypothetical events, tabular data viewer with an automated connection to the numerical charting tool and numerical charting. A base licence starts at $10,000. InfoPower is distributed by ICL Plc spin-off DESC Ltd in Europe. Version 3.0 of the software is currently in beta test and will ship by the end of the year. The new release features enhanced performance and entity/event link descriptions.
