Pro-Lab Plc is claiming a world first in making its PRO-IV applications generator available on the IBM System 36. It has taken a belt and braces approach to the problem of terminology and describes PRO-IV as a fourth generation language applications generator. Users who write in RPG II or Cobol will see a 10-fold improvement in productivity if they switch to PRO-IV, Pro-Lab claims. They can also transfer applications written in PRO-IV unchanged from mainframe to System 36 to the IBM Personal, as well as to other computers including those of DEC, Honeywell, Prime, Stratus and Unix-based systems. Creating the System 36 implementation of the mainframe application generator was, by all accounts, quite an technical achievement given the ‘considerable limitations’ of the System 36 architecture. However, with 100,000 plus System 36 installations worldwide, all the angst will probably turn out to be worth it.
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