London W1-based Information Dimensions Ltd is to market the enhanced version of its Basis text information management system in Europe. Basisplus, released late last year in the US, is designed to add greater text, graph and image facilities to the 20-year-old Basis system, and is aimed particularly at distributed environments. A new data manager using relational techniques has been added, and support for the International Standards Organisation norms for document architecture and the Standard Generalised Mark-up Language means that the contents of the database are handled in their natural form, retaining text attributes such as the original fonts, spacing, size and colour; tables and pictures relevant to the word or concept located are displayed on screen next to the text, while database record structures emulate formats such as newspaper articles and manuals. Improved search features include topic and proximity searching, document relevance ranking and sounds like features. A number of user interfaces are available as optional modules, and Basisplus supports platforms including DEC VAX/VMS and Ultrix, IBM VM and MVS, Unisys and a number of Unix systems. The licence for a four-user DEC VAX-based system costs UKP6,000, with larger systems rising to around UKP100,000. Basisplus is being offered as a free upgrade to existing Basis users.
