No one in our market has ever said they want to go to client-server because of downsizing or rightsizing. So says Vic Morris, who is about to launch a client-server software development tool. London-based Learmonth & Burchett Management Systems Plc’s director of software products isn’t arguing that users don’t want client-server. In fact, the forthcoming version 5 of Learmonth’s software engineering tool System Engineer adopts this architecture for the first time because the users asked for it. But he says that its adoption is being driven by user’s re-engineering the way their businesses work rather than a horror of the mainframe or desire for cost-cutting per se. Until now, System Engineer has been a tool for building monolithic applications in the traditional integrated-CASE approach, but the new version is targeted straight at client-server applications and also incorporates an amended software engineering methodology. This new approach attempts to combine the control of integrated CASE with with the speed associated with ‘component-CASE’. System Engineer then is a package combining the methodology with design tools, application builders and a repository based on Gupta Corp’s SQLBase database – though the Gupta part is under almost constant review, says Morris. Each component: methodology, design, application builder and repository is available separately, though it is clear that the first two are the real strengths. Rather than adopt a single application builder, Learmonth has chosen to produce three, with separate offerings for client, server and mainframe Cobol generation. SE/Client Builder runs on Windows machines and provides graphical user interface and application building tools that tie in with SE/Server Builder. This runs under OS/2, unspecified versions of Unix and will run under Windows NT. The whole lot will link to tools from other companies via the SE/Open repository. General availability is scheduled for next month with the pricing still to come.
