Last week’s UK launch of Borland International Inc’s new release of Paradox and Paradox SQL Link was hardly a lesson in customer relations. Whistled versions of Why are we waiting? were heard as hot and flustered Paradox users were cooped up in the downstairs lobby of the Royalty Theatre in the West End while perspiring Borland representatives rushed stage left and right. It eventually transpired that the delay had been caused by the total failure of the audio-visual equipment hired to give the new software an impressive send-off, which at least meant that when the show finally went on the road it was kept relatively short and sweet with talks from Paradox creator Richard Schwartz and database general manager Rob Dickerson. The new release 3.5 of Paradox incorporates an enhanced version of Borland’s Virtual Run-time Object-Oriented Memory Management system – Dickerson remarked that the designers had dubbed it YATLA, standing for Yet Another Technology Linking Acronym, but the marketing division preferred the name VROOMM with TurboDrive – that enables Paradox 3.5 automatically to recognise which hardware it is running on and to configure itself for maximum performance. Dickerson continued that Paradox 3.5 can run in protected mode and use up to 16Mb of extended memory, performing some sorting and indexing operations three times faster than its predecessor. Other enhancements include more detail tables in forms and added Paradox Application Language – PAL – commands and functions. The Paradox SQL Link software enables data stored on Structured Query Language servers to be accessed and updated by Paradox users as if it were contained in local Paradox tables; in addition, application programs written in PAL can now include native SQL statements. Currently, Paradox SQL Link supports IBM OS/2 Extended Edition Database Manager version 1.2, Microsoft SQL Sybase Server version 1.0, and Oracle Server versions 5.0 and 6.0. Support for DEC’s Rdb database has been promised for this November. Paradox 3.5 and Paradox SQL Link are priced at UKP600 and UKP325 respectively; a run-time version will be available within 30 days for UKP30, and upgrades from Paradox 3.0 to 3.5 will cost UKP80 before November 30. Borland has also released Paradox Multi-Pack as a successor to Paradox LAN Pack. Multi-Pack is priced at UKP900 and contains five user counts; the upgrade from LAN Pack will cost UKP200.
