Borland Reflex

Last updated
Reflex was very advanced for its time BorlandReflex.png
Reflex was very advanced for its time

Borland Reflex is a flat-file database management system for DOS. It was the first commercial PC database to use the mouse and graphics mode, and drag-and-drop capability in the report formatting module. Reflex was originally developed by Analytica Corporation. [1] [2] [3]

The engineering team of Analytica, managed by Brad Silverberg and including Reflex co-founder Adam Bosworth became the core of Borland's engineering team in the U.S. Brad Silverberg was vice-president of engineering until he left in early 1990 to head up the Personal Systems division at Microsoft. Adam Bosworth initiated and headed up the Quattro project until moving to Microsoft later in 1990 to take over the project which eventually became Access. Another Reflex developer, Ken Day, later moved to Macromedia where he worked on Shockwave, among other projects.

Reflex still runs on any modern Windows-based PC. [4]

Gordon Bell, a senior researcher in Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group, includes a case study on Analytica in his book High-Tech Ventures: The Guide For Entrepreneurial Success .

Notes

  1. Forbes, Jim (September 23, 1985). "Analytica-Borland Talks 'Forced'". InfoWorld. IDG Publications. 7 (38): 18 via Google Books.
  2. Forbes, Jim (October 21, 1985). "Corporate Marriages Offer Clout". InfoWorld. IDG Publications. 7 (42): 24 via Google Books.
  3. Howard, Bill (December 10, 1985). "Borland Ships Database". PC Magazine. Ziff-Davis. 4 (25): 48 via Google Books.
  4. Maybury, Rick (7 October 2003). "Over2U". Archived from the original on 10 June 2006. Retrieved 9 October 2006. under Windows 2000 or XP, the ansi.sys file may have to be added to the CONFIG.NT file in the system32 directory for the characters to display properly on screen. The line to be added is: device=%systemroot%\system32\ansi.sys

Related Research Articles

Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment products. Borland was first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, then in Cupertino, California, and then in Austin, Texas. In 2009, the company became a full subsidiary of the British firm Micro Focus International plc. In 2023, Micro Focus was acquired by Canadian firm OpenText, which later absorbed Borland portfolio into its application delivery management division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows API</span> Microsofts core set of application programming interfaces on Windows

The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running.

dBase was one of the first database management systems for microcomputers and the most successful in its day. The dBase system included the core database engine, a query system, a forms engine, and a programming language that tied all of these components together.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.nfo</span> File format

.nfo is a filename extension for text files that accompany warez scene releases of pirated software or media.

IBM LAN Server is a discontinued network operating system introduced by International Business Machines (IBM) in 1988. LAN Server started as a close cousin of Microsoft's LAN Manager and first shipped in early 1988. It was originally designed to run on top of Operating System/2 (OS/2) Extended Edition. The network client was called IBM LAN Requester and was included with OS/2 EE 1.1 by default. Here the short term LAN Server refers to the IBM OS/2 LAN Server product. There were also LAN Server products for other operating systems, notably AIX—now called Fast Connect—and OS/400.

ANSI.SYS is a device driver in the DOS family of operating systems that provides extra console functions through ANSI escape sequences. It is partially based upon a subset of the text terminal control standard proposed by the ANSI X3L2 Technical Committee on Codes and Character Sets.

Brad Silverberg is an American computer scientist and businessman, most noted for his work at Microsoft in 1990–1999 as Senior VP and product manager for MS-DOS, Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office. He was named PC Magazine's Person of the Year in 1995 for his leadership of Windows 95.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compaq LTE</span> Line of laptop computers

The LTE is a line of laptops manufactured by Compaq Computer Corporation, introduced in 1989 and discontinued in 1997. It was the first notebook-sized laptop sold by Compaq and the first commercially successful notebook computer, helping launch the burgeoning industry.

.sys is a filename extension used in MS-DOS applications and Microsoft Windows operating systems. They are system files that contain device drivers or hardware configurations for the system.

process.h is a C header file which contains function declarations and macros used in working with threads and processes. Most C compilers that target DOS, Windows 3.1x, Win32, OS/2, Novell NetWare or DOS extenders supply this header and the library functions in their C library. Neither the header file nor most of the functions are defined by either the ANSI/ISO C standard or by POSIX.

Computer hardware or software is said to be bug compatible if it exactly replicates an undesirable feature of a previous version. The phrase is found in the Jargon File.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Bosworth</span>

Adam Bosworth is a former Vice President of Product Management at Google Inc. from 2004 to 2007; prior to that, he was senior VP Engineering and Chief Software Architect at BEA Systems responsible for the engineering efforts for BEA's Framework Division. Bosworth had co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm acquired by BEA in 2001. Crossgain's "Cajun" project developed into BEA's WebLogic Workshop product. At BEA, Bosworth also developed the Alchemy intelligent caching framework in a team consisting of Bosworth and his son, Alex. Alchemy was a software layer used by Internet Explorer to communicate with a corresponding software layer on the web server allowing both upload and download data to be cached when the browser was disconnected from the network. Architecturally, this approach is similar to the design of the Google Web Accelerator although that product only performs server-side caching, rather than client-side caching.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MS-DOS</span> Microsofts discontinued operating system

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS". MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DOS</span> Group of closely related IBM PC-compatible operating systems

DOS is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible systems from other manufacturers include DR-DOS (1988), ROM-DOS (1989), PTS-DOS (1993), and FreeDOS (1998). MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995.

In computing on Microsoft platforms, WoW64 is a subsystem of the Windows operating system capable of running 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows. It is included in all 64-bit versions of Windows, except in Windows Server Server Core where it is an optional component, and Windows Nano Server where it is not included. WoW64 aims to take care of many of the differences between 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows, particularly involving structural changes to Windows itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows 8.1</span> 2013 release of Windows NT

Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its predecessor, and succeeded by Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. Windows 8.1 was made available for download via MSDN and Technet and available as a free upgrade for retail copies of Windows 8 and Windows RT users via the Windows Store. A server version, Windows Server 2012 R2, was released on October 18, 2013.

Ovation Technologies was a short-lived software company founded in Canton, Massachusetts, in December 1982 to create business productivity software for the then-emerging IBM PC and compatible market. Briefly named Spectrum Group Inc., the company was founded by Thomas J. Gregory, who also served as the company's president. Mike Walrod served as vice president of marketing.

Windows 10, a proprietary operating system released by Microsoft in July 2015, has been criticized by reviewers and users. Due to issues mostly about privacy, it has been the subject of a number of negative assessments by various groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MS-DOS 7</span> Computer operating system

MS-DOS 7 is a real mode operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Unlike earlier versions of MS-DOS, it was not released separately by Microsoft, but included in the Windows 9x family of operating systems. Windows 95 RTM reports it as MS-DOS 7.0, and Windows 95 OSR 2.x and Windows 98 report as 7.1. The real-mode MS-DOS 7.x is contained in the IO.SYS file.

The Compaq Professional Workstation was a family of workstations produced by Compaq. Introduced in late October 1996, the first entry in the family featured single or dual Pentium Pro processors. Later entries featured Pentium IIs and IIIs; the XP1000 was the only non-x86 based entry, featuring a DEC Alpha processor. Compaq aimed the Professional Workstation at computer-aided design users, software programmers, multimedia designers and financial workers. While workers of those fields primarily ran Unix-based operating systems on workstations at the time, the Compaq Professional Workstation came preinstalled with Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. The line was discontinued in 2002.