2.1: Performance, Flexibility, New Features, And More

Our BBx® product has changed considerably since the days of its earlier editions as BBxPROGRESSION/3® and BBxPROGRESSION/4®. Our new release as PRO/5® 2.1 and Visual PRO/5® 2.1 presents many reasons for updating that make good business sense. In addition to improvements allowing more flexible and powerful enhancements to your products, there are several new features that add value to your current product offering, including

• Per Seat Licenses--The new FLEXlm license server in nearly all configurations, with the exception of some Telnet configurations, does not count invocations of BBx but counts workstations instead. Thus, the number of users required is often less.

• Multiuser Licenses--The new FLEXlm license server allows a license to be floated across multiple systems.

• Interchangeable Clients--With the FLEXlm license server, multiuser or Windows clients can be installed interchangeably on the same network, allowing seamless migration from character-based terminals to Windows workstations without the inconvenience or cost of platform exchanges.

• Terminal Emulation Capabilities--New FacetWin releases from FacetCorp allow multiple terminal-session invocations from a single seat to be counted as one seat for licensing purposes.

• High Recovery MKEYED Files--With the growth of file sizes, data recovery is more important than ever. The new MKEYED files are structured to provide a high degree of recovery of data when a file has been corrupted. This new set of recovery utilities supplied with the 2.1 release is superior to earlier offerings.

• Larger File Sizes--The 2.1 release supports 4-gigabyte file sizes on those UNIX platforms that support large file sizes. The previous limit was 2 gigabytes. PRO/5 file size is based on industry standards and as 64-byte platforms become available, our supported file sizes will continue to grow.

• Improved File System--This release provides improved performance on string files and additional error checking to mitigate file corruption problems.

• New Ports--The 2.1 release is available on Linux to meet the needs of users for whom Linux is a good solution.

• Client/Server Edition--Client/server capability can be added to any PRO/5 installation by adding the PRO/5 Data Server server.

• Year 2000 Certified Platforms--To help protect our customers from Year 2000 liability, the 2.1 release is only ported to UNIX platforms that have been certified as Year 2000 compliant by their manufacturers.

These new features of the 2.1 release combine to make your current product offering more robust and flexible with little or no change to your existing code. All that, plus Year 2000 compatibility. Update today. Your customers will love it!