On a day for news from the Antipodes, Denver-based Pick-under-Unix software developer Unidata Inc has agreement in principle to acquire System Builder Pty Ltd, Sydney provider of proprietary language and application development tools for business; terms were not disclosed. Australia is one of the biggest markets in the world for the Pick database. System Builder will be subsumed into Unidata, which will grow its employee base to 335, and nearly double its roster of Unidata Value Added Resellers to more than 700 worldwide. Last month, it announced a joint product development agreement with O2 Technology SA, Versailles, France under which the two will combine existing technologies to produce an object-relational database management system (CI No 2,657), and System Builder is also active in the object world, having already developed the first object-oriented development environment for helping Basic-style, host-centric applications to be migrated incrementally to client-server working. It also adds a Windows and Windows NT dimension to Unidata’s largely Unix focus.
