Protek Ltd is euphoric over its UKP250,000 deal with Hewlett-Packard Co, announced earlier this week (CI No 797) for Tekbase, the scientific relational database which it believes bridges the gap between spreadsheets and mainframe databases. With annual sales of UKP8.3m, Protek is one of only four Hewlett-Packard-appointed advanced technology dealers in the UK: it has been developing the database for use on HP Series 200 and 300 technical computers for five years. Protek says Tekbase is special in that it deals with large arrays of scientific data in real, complex or multi-precision integer form taken from test equipment, other computers or data acquisition devices. It features an automatic testing system which generates data on each silicon wafer. This can be stored, an-alysed and manipulated to produce wafer maps and trend charts to highlight faults at an early stage. The database supports two- and three-dimensional graphics, a maximum file size of two gigabytes and a maximum record size of 256Kb. Protek says it has developed a new language, similar to IBM’s Structured Query Language, but with additional computational capabilities. Its first home-grown product has been written in this Technical Query Language, or TQL, and applications-specific function libraries are provided as optional. In addition a programmatic interface enables the end user to interface to a language he is familiar with, in this case Basic, Fortran or Pascal. In the next couple of weeks, support under Hewlett-Packard’s implementation of Unix System V.2 will also be available. Protek is aiming its database at Hewlett technical workstation users, Unix users, research environments, OEM customers who would consider using it as a basis for their products and across industry in general. Over 200 copies have been sold worldwide since the product was launched at the start of the year. The deal with Hewlett is for 112 copies to be offered as optional with the new Parametric Test System, developed by Test Quality Co for testing semiconductors. Tekbase costs UKP1,750 for models using the Motorola 68020 processor and double-sided 3.5 disk. The programmatic interface is UKP450. Tekbase cannot be used on the HP Model 26.
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