| ASHTON TATE CORP. - DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORTATION AGREEMENT
October 24, 1988
Remarks of: Edward M. Esber, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ashton-Tate
It is an extreme honor for me to share the stage with Digital's Ken Olsen
and Henry Ancona to make this joint announcement. During my senior year at
Case Western Reserve University, while completing my bachelors degree in
computer industry. My first professional programming job was writing
assembly language software for a PDP 11/05-base, numerical controlled a
inspection machine. At that point in my life, my idea of nirvana was to
some day have a PDP 11/45 of my own. The year was 1973 - Digital's sales
were $265 million and Ashton-Tate was eighty years away from its founding.
Coincidentally, last year Ashton-Tate posted $267 million in sales.
I feel like I've come full circle. It seems natural to me that the company
I head, Ashton-Tate, will now play a featured role in connecting Digital's
highly successful VAX line of computers -- and Rdb, its strategic
relational database management system -- to the vast installed base of
dBASE, the world's most popular personal computer database applications
development envrionment.
Today Ashton-Tate and Digital Equipment Corporation are proud to announce a
long-term strategic development and marketing agreement where Ashton-Tate
will develop a family of dBASE products which will run across Digital's
complete computing environment.
dBASE is the microcomputer database of choice for millions of users,
thousands of application developers and hundreds of add-on products. It is
a standard that, at just seven and a half years of age, has lasted longer
than any other microcomputer software standard. dBASE IV, which began
shipping today, consists of a back-end which is a multiuser relational
database engine, and a front-end tht includes the QBE interface, the
Applications Generator, the Report Generator, the Forms Generator and the
dBASE/SQL language. These tools and languages combined, form the richest,
most powerful database applications development environment available today
on any computer of any size.
There are more people doing applications development in the dBASE language
that any other development language except COBOL. dBASE/SQL is a language
which combines the user friendly, comprehensive applications development
environment of dBASE, with a full implementation of SAA-compatible
Structured Query Language or SQL, the powerful common data access language.
SQL is the foundation of transparent heterogeneous connectivity between
databases. In addition to SQL, Ashton-Tate has added its own SQL language
extensions and more than 300 new and enhanced dBASE commands and functions
to the dBASE language.
Ashton-Tate/Digital
The agreement between Ashton-Tate and Digital calls for Ashton-Tate to
develop character-based versions of dBASE for VAX users with VT terminals
and graphics-based versions of dBASE for DECwindows/XUI workstations. All
will run under Digital's VAX/VMS and ULTRIX operating systems. In addition, a
PC-to-VAX connectivity link will be developed to allow PC DOS and OS/2
dBASE users, along with VAX and Digital workstation dBASE users, to
remotely access data in Digital's VAX RDB/VMS databases.
And through Digital's SNA gateways, access to IBM's DB2 and Cullinet's
IDMS/R mainframe databases from dBASE will be provided. Digital will
ensure that dBASE/SQL works with the RDB relational database by modifying
their SQL Services layer to accept dBASE commands directly.
Digital will aggressively market and support these dBASE propducts.
This relationship should provide the tightest integration possible between
Digital's RDB relational database management system and dBASE. This gives
the users of RDB access to tremendous amounts of data stored in dBASE files
and gives dBASE users access to the data stored in RDB and RMS databases.
This agreement also validates Ashton-Tate's advanced database strategy that
was first articulated at press conferences in January and February of this
year announcing SQL Server and dBASE IV. We told the world then that the
features and benefits of dBASE IV would extend beyond the PC environment.
We revealed our intention to:
* One) develop dBASE for multiple platforms which minimize our customer's
training and support costs,
* Two) proliferate the rich application development environment embodied
in dBASES's front end, and the dBASE/SQL language across multiple databases
-- giving our users application portability,
* Three) deliver client/server architecture solutions as the cornerstone
of computing for the 1990s, providing our customers with the most efficient
way to leverage software investments,
* Four) provide transparent connectivity across multiple hardware,
database, user interface and operating system platforms -- providing users
with the data they need at the desktop.
Ashton-Tate has clearly stated its intention to proliferate dBASE across
multiple hardware, operating system and user interface platforms. Future
versions of dBASE will be available for the OS/2, Macintosh, UNIX and VMS
operating systems. Versions of dBASE for the DECwindows/XUI environment
are an important first step in proliferating dBase to the Digital
environment.
Ashton-Tate/Digital
Ashton-Tate and Digital's database solutions are based upon the concept
that users want to work from a set of highly integrated, friendly database
tools at the desktop. This could be a PC, a terminal or a graphical
workstation. Our goal is to give VAX users the ability to solve their
applications needs with the powerful front end tools and application
development language provided by dBASE. A character-based versin of dBASE
for VAX users of VT Terminals, gives those users dBASE's powerful
applications development tools and language using RDB as the multiuser
relational database engine.
Users can remain in dBASE's familiar control centerr environment and gain
transparent access and sharing of data regardless of the location,
operating system or database -- be it native dBASE data, RDB data or even
DB2 or IDMS/R data.
The control center is both a window on data and a window on the powerful
dBASE application development environment. Complete applications can be
built -- without any programming -- using the control center's point and
shoot menus, and without any user knowledge of the underlying hardware or
operating system. dBASE doesn't care whether its being run from a
terminal, a workstation or a personal computer.
When we announced out commitment to the client/server architecture with
dBASE IV and SQL Server, the database community was unsure of our strategy.
Since then, however, the client/server model has emerged as THE strategy
for the 1990s and beyond.
Now, in addition to supporting the SQL Server in the OS/2 environment,
dBASE will support RDB under VMS as a server. As I said earlier, our goal
in this strategic relationship with Digital is to build the tightest
possible link between dBASE on thedesktop as the front end and RDB on the
VAX as the back-end server.
Applications which previously required an expensive IBM mainframe can now
be written using dBASE and an RDB Server in the client/server architecture.
Not only will the applications be less expensive but they will offer
significant performance, feature and usability benefits. dBASE and RDB
provide all the performance, integrity, administration and concurrency of
larger systems.
Apart from our tools and development environment, Ashton-Tate's future
success requires transparent access to corporate data. dBASE on the
desktop has the unique ability to serve as a window on the corporate
dataframe. Because organizations have invested tremendous amounts of
money, time and resources in their existing applications, the key to
providing the window onto the dataframe will be linking these multi-vendor
applications to form a comprehensive solution. Our view of the
connectivity evolution over the next decade shows a variety of clients
linked with multiple servers, which in turn tap into a corporate dataframe
be it a minicomputer or a mainframe.
Ashton-Tate/Digital
It was Digital Equipment Corporation which first concentrated on providing
the best connectivity solutions to corporations. Under Digital's
single-system architecture, interconnected dBASE users will enjoy access to
the most powerful business computing system ever devised.
With dBASE sitting on every desktop as the consistent user interface, users
will be linked with Digital's RDB strategic database system and will have
transparent connections to IBM's DB2 and Cullinet's IDMS/R databases.
In summary, we look at this announcement with Digital as our major
introduction to the corporate-wide computing world. Who better than
Digital -- the company that created minicomputers -- to escort us into the
corproate computing world.
The alliance between Digital and Ashton-Tate will produce unparalleled
database solutions for our customers.
# # # #
R Ashton-Tate and dBASE are registered trademarks of Ashton-Tate
Corporation.
TM dBASE III PLUS and dBASE IV are trademarks of Ashton-Tate Corporation.
TM CDA, DDIF, DCEnet/OSI, DECwindows, PCLAN/Server 2000, ULTRIX, VAX
Rdb/VMS, VIDA, VT and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.
TM IDMS/R is a trademark of Cullinet Software, Inc.
TM DB2 and SNA are trademarks of International Business Machines
Corporation.
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