OF INTEREST

Aspect Software has released dbWeb, a tool that provides 32-bit ODBC database connectivity to HTTP Web servers running under Windows NT. The software provides full insert/update/delete capabilities as well as query-by-example record selection for dynamic SQL and stored procedures.

HTTP servers supported by dbWeb include EMWAC HTTPS, Purveyor, Website, and Netscape. Platforms supported are Microsoft SQL Server, Access, Sybase, Oracle, and any ODBC-compliant database. dbWeb 1.0 sells for $695.00.

Aspect Software Engineering

2800 Woodlawn, Suite 100

Honolulu, HI 96822

http://www.aspectse.com

Lever Software has released Mr. Phelps, a tool that provides copy protection for C/C++ applications. In particular, the software provides functions for copy protection, selective disabling, and installation. With Mr. Phelps, you can limit usage for a specific date, number of days, or number of runs. Executables are disabled via deletion or through a password. Support for multiple-file installation is provided. The Windows/DOS tool comes with complete C source code and is priced at $99.00.

Lever Software Systems

19 Clinton Place

Utica, NY 13501

Wintertree Software has announced Version 3.4 of its Sentry Spell-Checker Engine. Version 3.4 adds Delphi support, improved dictionary control and management, and a visual look compatible with other Windows spell checkers. The engine supports four types of dictionaries: ignore-type (words always considered correctly spelled); exclude-type (words always considered incorrect); auto-change (words automatically replaced); and conditional-change (words replaced only after confirmation). It is available as either a Windows DLL, or in ANSI C source for all other platforms. A companion Dialogs DLL can check and correct the contents of standard Windows edit controls, including Windows 95 Rich Text Edit controls. French, Italian, German, and Spanish dictionaries are also available.

Wintertree Software

69 Beddington Avenue

Micro System Designs is making its FixFlop program available at no charge. This small, memory-resident program patches MS-DOS to add support for the 1.68-MB format used to distribute new Microsoft products. This allows users to backup the distribution disks for Windows 95 and other new products. MSD's disk-copy program, DiskDupe, has also been enhanced to support the new format. FixFlop and a shareware version of DiskDupe are available on CompuServe (GO MSDESIGNS, Library 13), on the World Wide Web at http://www.msd1.com/msd1, or via FTP at ftp.msd.com in pub/msd1.

Micro System Designs

10062 Miller Avenue, Suite 104

Cupertino, CA 95014

PC Crisis Line has announced an independent end-user telephone-support service designed to supplant vendor-based technical-support lines. Support costs $3.00 per minute, with a two-minute minimum.

490 San Antonio Road, Suite G

Palo Alto, CA 94306

VB Code Master 1.5 is a Visual Basic add-in which provides an object-oriented browser to VB's design environment, as well as automating coding tasks such as error handling and dialog construction. While VB Code Master Professional sells for $129.00, a "lite" version is available at no charge at http://www.mindspring.com/~fbunn/teletech.html or in CompuServe's MSBASIC library 9 (CDMLITE.EXE).

Teletech Systems

750 Birch Ridge Drive

Roswell, GA 30076

CThrough++ from BISS is an integrated development environment for C/C++ programmers working in the OS/2 Workplace Shell that, among other capabilities, allows you to graphically design class hierarchies and represent inheritance graphs. The compiler-independent toolset also provides class-browsing mechanisms, networking capabilities, activity logging, version control, class archiving and retrieving, and automatic application generation (EXEs and DLLs). CThrough++, available for OS/2 2.1 and IBM's C/Set++, sells for $495.00.

D-26388 Wilhelmshaven, Germany

100031.1733@compuserve.com

The Software Wedge is a program that automatically captures serial data at up to 56 Kbaud, feeding it into any Windows, DOS, NT, or Windows 95 application, either as keystrokes or via DDE. The Wedge can be programmed to apply a variety of transformations to incoming data, and to output commands through the serial port to control attached instruments.

In addition to data parsing, filtering, and formatting, the Software Wedge supports math and string functions, 50 hot keys, and a virtual instrument mode for testing.

The Wedge program comes for both Windows (WinWedge Pro 3.0, $395.00) and DOS (DOSWedge Pro, $295.00).

T.A.L. Technologies Inc.

2027 Wallace Street

Philadelphia, PA 19130

Integrated Data Systems and Portable Graphics have entered into a strategic alliance to codevelop software products that deliver 3-D graphics and VR interfaces to Internet users, content providers, and corporations developing World Wide Web sites.

IDS will use its system-design and networking tools to develop new technology and software tools that can deliver 3-D information to computers through the Internet. Portable Graphics will provide IDS with open Inventor and OpenGL, as well as experience in visualization and multiplatform portability.

The first software apps planned include: VRealm, a WWW browser that incorporates advanced image, video, audio, animation, and VR techniques; VRealm Builder, an authoring package that allows the authoring of 3-D objects and "worlds" to be viewed with the VRealm browser or any other browser compliant with the VRML 3-D graphical standard; and VRML Internet extensions that will be bundled into the Open Inventor SDK. Platforms to be supported include UNIX, Solaris, Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2 Warp, and Macintosh System 7.5.

Integrated Data Systems Inc.

6001 Chatham Center Drive, No. 300

Savannah, GA 31405

Portable Graphics

2201 Donley Drive, No. 365

Austin, TX 78758-4838

Mathematica can now do fuzzy logic, with the help of the Fuzzy Logic Pack. This set of fuzzy-logic design tools is intended to help you quickly design and model fuzzy systems. The toolkit includes a variety of built-in functions that let you define input and output, create fuzzy sets, and represent them in either 2-D or 3-D graphical form, respectively. The Fuzzy Logic Pack, which is written in the Mathematica language, comes with source code. The software requires Mathematica 2.2 and is priced at $695.00.

Wolfram Research

100 Trade Center Drive

Champaign, IL 61820

Todd Enterprises has begun shipping its CDR-XPRESS, an integrated hardware and software system for duplicating recordable CDs. Fully configured, the system can duplicate and verify up to 18 CDs per hour. CDR-XPRESS's bit-for-bit duplication scheme allows you to copy CDs for any operating system--Macintosh, UNIX, DOS, OS/2, and proprietary systems. The minimum PC-based system sells for $19,750.00.

Todd Enterprises

31 Water Mill Lane

Great Neck, NY 11021

Autodesk has begun shipping prerelease versions of its AutoCAD Runtime Extension (ARX), an object-oriented programming environment for AutoCAD Release 13. The ARX SDK, which supports both C++ and COM-based programming interfaces, provides a CAD engine that is the basis for creating software encompassing the entire design-workflow process. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the first component of object-based tools being developed jointly by Autodesk and the Industry Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), and they are being implemented using ARX. The IFC and their Guidelines define, at a basic level, the items most commonly used in buildings, and create descriptions of intelligent, real-world objects that are transferred through software applications from different vendors, from design to estimating, through engineering to construction, and on to facilities management. These real-world objects have relationships to each other that let them react intelligently to changes in the project model.

111 McInnes Parkway

Sausalito, CA 94903

Virtual Genetic Systems has released its Hyperspace Search and Recovery Vehicle (HSRV), a genetic algorithm framework written in C++. HSRV supports a variety of encoding schemes, genetic operators, and population structures. Many common phenotypes are supported using predefined chromosomes and genetic operators (integer and real-valued vectors, text strings, algebraic and regular expressions, and geometric shapes). A definition of the solution domain and a fitness function are all that is required to construct a genetic algorithm. User-defined phenotypes, encoding schemes, genetic operators, population structures, and operator sequences are easily assembled to address user-specific needs. HSRV currently supports Borland C++ 4.x, Watcom C/C++ 10.x, Microsoft Visual C++ 2.x, and GNU C++ 2.5.8.

Virtual Genetic Systems

2981 Highway 66

Ashland, OR 97520

Microtec Research has released a PowerPC version of its developer kit. The Spectra Advanced Developer's Kit includes a C/C++ compiler, source-level debugging capabilities, graphical build tools, and the VRTX real-time operating system. The kit also includes RISC optimization software, which Microtec licensed from Apogee. Additionally, the kit includes an object-oriented run-time library that facilitates working with kernel objects such as tasks, queues, and semaphores. The kit is initially available only for SPARCstation platforms, starting at $14,795.00.

Microtech Research

2350 Mission College Boulevard

Santa Clara, CA 95054

Digigami has announced Weblisher, a publishing tool for the World Wide Web that integrates into word processors and automatically converts standard documents into HTML. The Weblisher Wizard steps you through a conversion process for document styles, embedded pictures, or OLE objects, specifying global page properties such as headers and footers. Once installed, Weblisher adds a "Save As Web Pages" option to your word processor's File menu.

Weblisher supports HTML 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, HTML+, and HTML Netscape. Web pages created with the tool are compatible with most Web browsers, including NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass Enhanced NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, WinWeb, and Cello. Weblisher sells for $495.00, and supports Microsoft Word 6.0 and 2.0, Ami Pro 3.x, Lotus WordPro, and WordPerfect 6.1.

7514 Girard Avenue, Suite 1-440

La Jolla, CA 92037

http://www.digigami.com/weblisher

SQA has announced the availability of SQA LoadTest, a tool for load, stress, and multiuser testing of Windows client/server applications. SQA LoadTest supports client/server applications running on TCP/IP, NETBIOS, or IPX/SPX networks. SQA LoadTest is offered as an add-on product for users of SQA TeamTest, or bundled as part of SQA Suite, SQA's integrated testing tool.

SQA LoadTest can be used to test any server (UNIX, Windows NT, or OS/2) connected to Windows clients. SQA LoadTest allows test scripts from SQA Robot to be immediately distributed to Windows client machines over the network without any changes. Test results are automatically logged in the integrated SQA Test Repository for rapid access and analysis by all members of a testing and development team. Pricing for SQA LoadTest starts at $10,000 for the five-station version.

10 State Street

Woburn, MA 01801

Emultek has announced the release of Rapid Design 3.0, a Windows-based tool for prototyping embedded system UIs. It allows you to quickly create an interactive working prototype that operates exactly as the real-world system.

Rapid Design 3.0 comes with an extensible object library. Objects are the building blocks of any Rapid simulation. These prefabricated, reusable components can be physical items such as switches, dials, displays, pipes, system schemata, or drawings. Objects can also be nonphysical items such as timers, numbers, strings, or data stores. By applying Rapid's visual technique these objects are linked to create fully interactive simulations in a completely code-free environment. Rapid Design 3.0 sells for $6,000.00.

284 Racebrook Road

Orange, CT 06477

75052.2265@compuserve.com.

PowerBasic 3.2 now provides support for Pointer variables. The addition of pointers allows programmers to address target memory locations in any fashion. Version 3.2 also adds underscores in variable names, along with enhanced communications support, including that for the 16550 UART chip.

PowerBasic Inc.

316 Mid Valley Center

Carmel, CA 93923

Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal