PowerHouse (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:56, 3 January 2010

Revision as of 08:05, 3 January 2010

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PowerHouse was introduced in 1982 and bundled together in a single product Quiz and Quick/QDesign, both of which had been previously available separately, with a new batch processor QTP. In 1983, Quasar changed its name to ''[[Cognos]] Corporation'' and began porting their application development tools to other platforms, notably [[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s ''[[VAX]]'', [[Data General]]'s ''[[Eclipse MV]]'', and [[IBM]]'s ''[[AS/400]]'', along with the [[UNIX]] platforms from these vendors. Cognos also began extending their product line with add-ons to PowerHouse (for example, ''Architect'') and end-user applications written in PowerHouse (for example, ''MultiView''). {{Fact|date=February 2007}} Subsequent development of the product added support for platform-specific relational databases, such as HP's ''Allbase/SQL'', DEC's ''[[Oracle_Rdb | Rdb]]'', and [[Microsoft]]'s ''[[ Microsoft_SQL_Server | SQL Server]]'', as well as cross-platform relational databases such as [[Oracle_Database | Oracle]], [[Sybase_SQL_Server | Sybase]], and [[IBM]]'s [[IBM_DB2 | DB2]].

The PowerHouse language represented a considerable achievement. Compared with languages like ''[[CobolCOBOL]]'', [[Pascal programming language|''Pascal'']] and ''[[PL/1]]'', ''PowerHouse'' substantially cut the amount of labour required to produce useful applications on its chosen platforms. It achieved this through the use of a central data-dictionary, a compiled file that extended the attributes of data fields natively available in the DBMS with frequently used programming idioms such as:

* display masks

* help and message strings