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© Information System News, October 18, 1982
Users Awed (And Ooh) At 1st Public Showing Of ADR's Ideal
By Paul L. Young
The prediction of one Applied Data Research Inc. executive that the debut of his firm's Ideal
applications development system would be greeted with "oohs and ahs" was not far off.
The first public demonstration of the new product was the showstopper of the 3-day ADR Cadre users meeting held
in Dallas last month. And it spotlighted a host of new facilities for ADR's 15 other products for IBM medium- to
large-scale processors.
About 200 of the 400 ADR users who attended the meeting crammed into a hotel meeting room to witness Ideal's performance.
At the conclusion they applauded loudly and long.
Ideal, the Interactive Development Environment for an Application's Life Cycle, integrates data base, communications,
reporting and editing functions. This allows programmers and applications administrators "to be in complete
control of an application from its design through its development and production stages," ADR said.
Aimed primarily at the development of on-line, data base applications, Ideal will be initially compatible with
OS, MVS and VS/1 environments, with a DOS version following. ADR's Datacom/DB data base management system and Datadictionary
indexing system are needed to run Ideal.
Ideal will boost programmer productivity five- to tenfold, ADR said. Pricing is expected to start at $60,000 for
OS and $75,000 for DOS systems.
"In developing Ideal, ADR is really advancing the industry. We think Ideal's going to be another first,"
claimed vice president for planning and development Joseph Farrelly.
Introduced to ADR users in September 1980, Ideal was four years in development. The firm has taken some flak for
delaying its release.
"We could have brought it out 18 months ago," Farrelly said, "but we didn't want to scale it back."
Scheduled for general release in the second quarter of next year, Ideal is "not complete," according
to Richard Kauffman, an ADR vice president and group product manager for the system. But "we're very close,"
he added.
First shown to ADR's top management last month, Ideal is slated for beta testing during the first quarter of next
year.
Ideal generates data, applications, panel and report definitions I a fill-in-the-blanks format. Irs Procedure Definition
Language (PDL), a high-level English-like programming language, is "Data base-transparent," according
to ADR.
Users can perform relational joins, specifying only what information is wanted and not how to obtain it.
PDL does arithmetic, data, and string handling, and can call either Ideal or non-Ideal subroutines, ADR said.
Applications procedures are stored in a library that dynamically updates the Datadictionary. Data entities can
be viewed logically and shared.
ADR's users were generally enthusiastic about Ideal, with a few expressing mild reservations.
"It depends who you're trying to introduce this product to," said Jeff Pike, a senior systems programmer
with Buck Consultants Inc., New York. "I think you can take non-programmers and get some things out of them
without having any programmer expertise."
"It's a good way of putting information quickly into the hands of inexperienced users."
Pike suspected, however, that Ideal might inhibit professional programming staffs. "I think it will cut down
on programmer productivity," he said, "because they'll lose control. I think it's a good product for
an administrator, but it's not good for creative types.
"I think it's an excellent way of replacing programmers."
"An impressive demonstration," said one user with U.S. Army Computer System Command.
Gary Gilbert, an economist with the Federal Deposit Insurance Co., Washington, was skeptical about the ease with
which non-technical support staff could use the system. "The more sophisticated the tools become, the more
sophisticated the user has to be," agreed Laura Kittleman, a computer specialist, also with FDIC.
"I loved it," said Charles Hull, manager of technical services, for Volume Shoe Corp., Topeka, Kan.
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