[Info-vax] When was the peak of Layered Products

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Mar 5, 8:23 pm, urbancamo <m... at wickensonline.co.uk> wrote:
> I found this list of retired products from 2002:
>
> http://www.software.ufl.edu/cslg/portfolio/VMS-RETIRED-APR02.TXT
>
> Can anyone tell me what DECLEARN and DECDESIGN were?
>
> Interesting stuff so far - it would be nice to compile a list of 'the
> best of DEC software'...
>
> Regards, Mark.

Don't know about DEClearn, but DECdesign was a software design tool,
for use on workstations. I don't know its origins, but I do know that
workstations in general were very very slow to arrive internally in
many DEC field offices (if you couldn't do it with ALL-IN-1, it didn't
need doing, according to the end user IT people), which made DECdesign
and other workstation-based products almost invisible outside the
specialist workstation groups.

"DECdesign is an environment that helps you analyze and design
software systems according to the rules of a design methodology. The
DECdesign environment is independent of the methodology you use.
Currently, there are DECdesign libraries that support the Yourdon and
the
Gane & Sarson methodologies." From
http://www.sysworks.com.au/disk$cddoc04jan11/decw$book/aa-pabra-te.p12.decw$book


Some of what was available from DEC around then was well ahead of its
time though. A not particularly well known product was VAX EDCS, the
"Electronic Data Control System", which was an early entry into the
"product data management" arena, and could perhaps be viewed as an
early precursor to stuff like today's Telelogic (IBM) Synergy, EDCS
managed the secure storage of data and distributed controlled
auditable access to it, it understood things like review processes,
all that stuff which has been hip+trendy for a few years now but back
then was a bit novel. An EDCS SPD: http://h30266.www3.hp.com/masterindex/spd/spd_004f34f4.txt