In what looks like to be bad news for Ask Computer Systems Inc’s Ingres Corp, key members of the Windows 4GL development team including Neil Goodman, who was one of the company’s leading database architects – have left the company to join a start-up led by Marty Sprinzen, ex-international vice-president of Ingres. The new company is funded by venture capital, is believed to be based in San Francisco and is expected to develop an applications generator product to rival Ingres. Industry sources have heard that the team left because the members disliked working on a product that was rightly or wrongly perceived as being optimised for just one vertical market manufacturing. However, it looks as if the news could be worse for internal morale than for the Ingres product itself, since as UK managing director Mike Hedger says the Windows 4GL product is already developed, out in the field, supported, and is a stable product. Furthermore, plans for the product’s development over the next two years have been prepared and submitted so that the architec tural side of Windows 4GL appears to have been safeguarded. And a new version of Windows 4GL will be launched shortly as Ingres planned.
