SystemBuilder/SB+

Last updated
SB/XA
Developer(s) Rocket Software
Initial release1985? as SystemBuilder
Stable release
SB/XA 6.5.5 / December 30, 2019;21 months ago (2019-12-30)
Written in Data/Basic, UniBasic, C, XAML
Operating system Linux, Microsoft Windows, Unix
Platform U2, D3
Available inEnglish
Type 4GL
License Proprietary software
Website www.rocketsoftware.com/u2/products/sbxa

SB/XA is a 4GL development and runtime environment originally written for the Pick family of computer databases/environments and now part of the Rocket U2 software suite.

Contents

The SystemBuilder environment comprises SB+ Server, often running on a Rocket U2 database, SBClient which runs as a Microsoft Windows desktop client and the SB/XA Communications server for browser clients. The product can be run in either developer or runtime mode. The development environment enables rapid prototyping, development and deployment of applications and supports a variety of user interface environments.

History

System Builder originally owned by Computermatic PL was started in a garden shed in South Africa by first cousins Neill and Derek Miller in 1982. The popularity of the Pick database system, combined with a lack of a good development framework led them to develop a tool to build standard menus and screens.[ citation needed ]

The product was very successful and after expanding into international markets and after a few versions they began to re-develop the product from the ground up. This was to become SB+ and was released in early 1990.

Traditionally, up to this time, Pick systems were accessed using green-screen terminals like the Wyse60 or VT100 but with the rise of the PC a new paradigm presented itself and so around the end of 1991 the product was enhanced with the addition of a specialised terminal emulation client called Termulator! This was able to tightly integrate the server and the PC to allow for facilities like downloads direct from the server into Lotus 1-2-3 or the new kid on the block, Microsoft Excel.

Shortly after, the client program was renamed SBClient and the ability to develop and render screens in either character or GUI mode.

Having been bought by Unidata Corporation in 1996, and following Unidata's merger with VMark Software Inc to form Ardent Software in 1998, the SystemBuilder product set came under the ownership of Informix in 2000 following their purchase of Ardent Software for its Datastage product. Subsequently, in 2001 Informix themselves were bought by IBM, and the U2 and SystemBuilder products eventually found their way to become part of IBM's Data Management portfolio.

Development of the SystemBuilder and RedBack products continued in Sydney until 2005, when they were merged with the U2 development team located in Denver, United States. On 1 October 2009, Rocket Software announced [1] the purchase of the entire U2 suite, which includes SystemBuilder, from IBM.

The SystemBuilder Development Environment

The System Builder/SB+ server environment is based around a set of key tools and utilities. These leverage out to provide a powerful[ citation needed ] and comprehensive[ citation needed ] development environment which is, itself, built mainly from these tools. SB+ includes an application menuing system, screen generator, a 3GL programming language, an expression language, the GUI components and report writer tool.

Evolution

In August 2008, System Builder released SB/XA v6.0.0 SB/XA which includes many enhancements to the System Builder suite including a new user interface based on Web/XAML protocols. The most recent iteration of SB/XA may be found here in the Rocket Software Product Matrix

Related Research Articles

A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is any computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile. While the definition of 4GL has changed over time, it can be typified by operating more with large collections of information at once rather than focusing on just bits and bytes. Languages claimed to be 4GL may include support for database management, report generation, mathematical optimization, GUI development, or web development. Some researchers state that 4GLs are a subset of domain-specific languages.

History of the graphical user interface Aspect of history

The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.

GNUstep

GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.

HCL Notes and HCL Domino are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HCL Technologies.

Computer-aided software engineering

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is the domain of software tools used to design and implement applications. CASE tools are similar to and were partly inspired by computer-aided design (CAD) tools used for designing hardware products. CASE tools are used for developing high-quality, defect-free, and maintainable software. CASE software is often associated with methods for the development of information systems together with automated tools that can be used in the software development process.

Oracle Forms is a software product for creating screens that interact with an Oracle database. It has an IDE including an object navigator, property sheet and code editor that uses PL/SQL. It was originally developed to run server-side in character mode terminal sessions. It was ported to other platforms, including Windows, to function in a client–server environment. Later versions were ported to Java where it runs in a Java EE container and can integrate with Java and web services.

Dataphor is an open-source truly-relational database management system (RDBMS) and its accompanying user interface technologies, which together are designed to provide highly declarative software application development. The Dataphor Server has its own storage engine or it can be a virtual, or federated, DBMS, meaning that it can utilize other database engines for storage.

A user interface markup language is a markup language that renders and describes graphical user interfaces and controls. Many of these markup languages are dialects of XML and are dependent upon a pre-existing scripting language engine, usually a JavaScript engine, for rendering of controls and extra scriptability.

Uniface (programming language) Low-code development platform

Uniface is a low-code development and deployment platform for enterprise applications that can run in a large range of runtime environments, including mobile, mainframe, web, Service-oriented architecture (SOA), Windows, Java EE and .NET. Uniface is used to create mission-critical applications.

IBM InfoSphere DataStage is an ETL tool and part of the IBM Information Platforms Solutions suite and IBM InfoSphere. It uses a graphical notation to construct data integration solutions and is available in various versions such as the Server Edition, the Enterprise Edition, and the MVS Edition. It uses a client-server architecture. The servers can be deployed in both Unix as well as Windows.

OpenROAD stands for "Open Rapid Object Application Development". It is a software product of Actian Corporation.

Forté 4GL was a proprietary application server that was developed by Forté Software and used for developing scalable, highly available, enterprise applications.

LINC is a fourth-generation programming language, used mostly on Unisys computer systems.

IBM Informix C-ISAM is an X/Open standards-compliant Application programming interface (API) to an Indexed Sequential Access Method or ISAM.

Servoy is a development and deployment platform for enterprise applications, written itself in Java, and which uses JavaScript as its development language. It can adopt the native look and feel of any platform or the web, using HTML and CSS code. Servoy was created from the start to make business application development easy. It has introduced many innovations for that purpose: the use of JavaScript instead of Java, a comprehensive development framework with building blocks that are added through drag and drop, a web client, etc.

IBM's Cross System Product (CSP) was an application generator intended to create online systems on IBM's mainframe platforms. Introduced in 1981, CSP consisted of a set of source code generators that allowed developers to interactively define, test, generate, and execute application programs. CSP was composed of two products:

Informix Corporation was a software company located in Menlo Park, California. It was a developer of relational database software for computers using the Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh operating systems.

Rocket U2 is a suite of database management (DBMS) and supporting software now owned by Rocket Software. It includes two MultiValue database platforms: UniData and UniVerse. Both of these products are operating environments which run on current Unix, Linux and Windows operating systems. They are both derivatives of the Pick operating system. The family also includes developer and web-enabling technologies including SystemBuilder/SB+, SB/XA, U2 Web Development Environment (WebDE), UniObjects and wIntegrate.

Forté is a proprietary application server that was developed by Forté Software and used for developing scalable, highly available, enterprise applications.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.