Texas Instruments Inc’s software division this week is expanding the beta program for its new Performer application development environment, expecting sales from the tools to make up 10% to 15% of its total revenue in 1997. TI is reaching down from its computer aided software engineering (CASE) perch to sell Performer, but says its from-the-ground-up development approach makes the environment superior to light tools from Borland International Inc and Oracle Corp. Specifically, its modelling capability is integrated, whereas other products have bolted-on capability, the firm claims. By leveraging its Composer tool, TI says it enables modelling at a level above the code, as well as incremental generation and compiling. Performer, due to ship in October, costs about $5,000 per developer seat. It includes a shared model repository to allow users in separate locations to develop together. Performer supports Windows NT and Windows 95 on the client side and Windows NT and HP-UX, with Java as the only other platform on the horizon. As far as ActiveX support goes, TI says, We’re probably there now. TI plans to be fully Corba-compliant in the future, when it becomes widely deployed. Its applications can hook into the Internet now using the WebCenter technology it uses with Composer and Arranger CASE tools. Expect more details out of Dallas September 16 when it demonstrates the first VAR-built applications using the Performer beta. As predicted (CI No 2,960), with this announcement TI has revealed itself as the anonymous firm advertising its music-related development environment.
