The BBj Editions By Greg Grisham and Mike Young

will be packaged differently than the current BASIS products. Essentially, there will be three different editions of the BBj language: Single-user/Educational, Standard and Enterprise editions. Some individual products in our current line will be consolidated into the BBj package and some additional features will become available. The end result is a more powerful, feature-rich product that is tightly integrated and offers more configuration options in deployment.

Standard Edition
While the buying model is simple, the technology behind the scenes is quite powerful. An existing PRO/5® user would buy the Standard Edition, install it on a single server and continue running just as before.

The core design is a composite of several current products. All of the BBj editions will contain the BBj Data Server™ and Enterprise Manager. These are central to the new design. The data server architecture with centralized user configuration is an industry standard and is now standard to our architecture as well. The BBj Data Server includes ODBC and JDBC drivers for all installations. The interpreter portion of the Standard Edition will mimic the current PRO/5 design in that the interpreter and data server are housed in a single environment. This is synonymous with PRO/5 server-centric design with the addition of the data server for more intelligent file access and ODBC/JDBC for more external data access. In short, this BBj edition is a more industry-standard, more powerful, more scalable product.

Enterprise Edition
There are improvements found across the board with the BBj product line, but the single most defining feature is found in the Enterprise Edition. The Enterprise Edition will utilize the BBj AppServer™ for thin client access. By installing the AppServer in conjunction with a Web server, your clients now have access to your applications with no more than a browser with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.3. Furthermore, because the AppServer can be detached and located elsewhere in the network, it allows for significant configuration options to suit your needs. The BBj Thin Client™ access can be a browser or a local JRE. Where we have gained intelligence with the data server design and how we centrally handle file access, we will have similar extensions in how we can more intelligently handle concurrent application access. The data server knows and coordinates who and what can connect to data and program files. The AppServer knows who, what and how application code can be executed. This delivers significant advantages in design and scalability to expand into an intranet, extranet or Internet configuration.

Single-User/Educational Edition
The Single-User Edition will consist of a Standard Edition with a user constraint of one. With this edition, a developer will have all of the functionality available in the BBj development suite. The key feature of this edition is the ability of the AppServer to communicate with a browser on the immediate machine. This allows for testing of the browser interface without having a Web server.

Starting in 1999, BASIS has been working with a number of educational institutions around the world to incorporate our Business Basic into their business IS curricula. We will further support this endeavor with BBj and freely distribute a development version that is completely functional on a single computer and limited only by the timestamp on the license file.

The overall advantages of the BBj product line are particularly apparent where it counts, at the Customer level. Instead of having to select, purchase and install several products, you can now simply choose what to use for what you need. If you choose to use the Enterprise Edition, you have the thin client code and no longer need to purchase a terminal emulator for your graphical workstations. Every installation will have ODBC/JDBC access built into the data server, which is part of all BBj editions. Overall, BBj will deliver more functionality, more efficiently and more economically.