The BBx Generations

George Hight Chief Operating Officer

On May 5, 2005, the 5th day of the 5th month of the 5th year in this millennium, BASIS releases version 5.0 of BBj®, the latest generation of BBx® certified for Java 5.0. The convergence of these five 5's crowns the many product releases in the history of BBx, and appropriately takes place in the 20th anniversary year of BASIS' founding. Additionally, there are two more 5's of special meaning to me.this year I celebrate my 10th anniversary at BASIS as president and CEO. This past decade has truly been exciting and rewarding.

BASIS' product offerings encompass four components; the language/ interpreter, database management system, development tools, and system administration tools. BASIS delivers improvements in each of these areas, and this publication includes articles that highlight several of these enhancements. The highlights include the extended language features such as data input validation, performance and aesthetic improvements resulting from the re-write of the SYSGUI component of the interpreter, and the new FormBuilder tool in the BASIS IDE. If you are not using the BASIS IDE for your BBx development projects, it is time to reevaluate your options. Elsewhere in the magazine, you will find articles from our busy road warriors, including reports of trips to Canada, TechCon2004 in New Orleans, and our recently held European TechCon in Düsseldorf, Germany.

One of the prime reasons for BBx's early success and longevity is the platform independence of the interpreter and database. This cross-platform capability appeals to many application developers who seek to provide their customers with a choice of deployment environments. The BBj version of BBx extends this cross-platform functionality, for applications written for Visual PRO/5® on the Windows platform, to Linux and other versions of UNIX such as Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and SCO. Now, BASIS' 5.0 release of BBj adds the Mac OS X from Apple as a supported platform for BBx-authored application solutions, further extending the choices available for GUI deployment.

The design and format of this edition of the BASIS International Advantage allows you to find articles relevant to each of the four components of our product line and a fifth element of BASIS' business - our partnerships. Perhaps the most important component of our business is our partnership with our developers. While we provide the raw materials, it is you, our partners, who add your vertical market and business process knowledge to fashion a software application that becomes essential to the existence of many enterprises. Looking back over 20 years of these partnerships, we acknowledge your past successes and keenly anticipate your future success at putting BASIS technology to work all over the world!

George Hight Chief Executive Officer