Microsoft Corp and Pioneer Software Corp came together to announce Q+E version 2.5, a database query and edit tool that links the Microsoft Excel for Windows spreadsheet and other Windows applications to external databases: it supports Microsoft SQL Server, dBase-compatible databases and ASCII text files; Q+E is designed to enable users to extract information from numerous sources and download the data into Excel for analysis and the new release has a modular architecture as opposed to its previous structure, where capabilities were contained in a single executable file, so that it is now composed of two parts – a user interface layer and a driver layer, so that only the few required drivers need be loaded; it costs $150, $10 to new buyers of Microsoft Excel, $50 to usres of earlier releases of Q+E.
