Oracle Corp, Redwood Shores, California, has added a Digital Unix run-time client for Digital AXP environments to its Rally application development tool. Rally is one of the products Oracle got when it acquired Digital Equipment Corp’s Rdb database division. It is a high level language application generator closely integrated with Oracle Rdb. It provides common forms and reporting capabilities for working with data from Oracle Rdb and Oracle7. The new issue brings Oracle Rdb and Oracle7 even closer, as it also offers a direct call interface to Oracle7 via SQLNet, whereas a DEC DB Integrator was used in previous versions. When Oracle acquired DEC’s Rdb relational database there was speculation that Oracle and Rdb would eventually become one product, with pieces of Rdb’s technology being subsumed into Oracle7 – indeed Oracle indicated that this would happen. However, Rally product manager Shirley Ann Stern said this probably will not come to pass, as the databases are used in different markets and their respective engines differ technically. She said that the two engines may never merge but that their tools are common, so customers are asking for common system management environments around the tools. Rally’s new run-time system will enable users to deploy applications that were developed on OpenVMS to Digital Unix AXP. The new issue of the run-time client also has added editing, tracing and debugging for Motif, and can use a graphical Motif interface. It also includes the Windows-based Rally Application Visual Environment, which has been dubbed Rave, which displays a graphical picture of Rally’s applications. The company may develop support for other Unix variants in future, depending on customer demand, Ms Stern said. Rally for Digital Unix costs $330 for customers with an installed base.
