Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!not-for-mail From: Manmathan Muthukumarapillai Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Mjolner System, Release 4.1 available. Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 18:44:53 +0100 Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University Lines: 275 Message-ID: <34917815.68C95AD9@mjolner.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: ran.mjolner.dk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (WinNT; I) Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.lang.beta:11324 Mjolner Informatics is happy to announce the availability of The Mjolner System, Release 4.1 TRY MULTI-PLATFORM RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT WITH THE Mjolner SYSTEM FOR FREE! IMPORTANT NEWS IN R4.1 ---------------------- + The Personal Edition of the Mjolner System is now available for >>> FREE DOWNLOAD <<< You can download it from http://www.mjolner.com/download/ for PC's running Windows 95, Windows NT, or Linux Power Macintosh running MacOS 7 or 8 Sun SPARC running Solaris 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 Silicon Graphics running IRIX 5.3 or 6.x Hewlett Packard HP-PA running HP-UX 9 The only restriction of the Personal Edition, compared to the professional version is, that you may not use it for commercial development. There is no lack of functionality, compared to the professional version. + FREE EDUCATIONAL LICENCES. The Mjølner System can now be used without fee for educational purposes. Please contact mailto:support@mjolner.com for more details. + STRONGLY REDUCED PRICES FOR UNIX PLATFORMS. The prices for the Professional version have been strongly reduced. The prices are now identical to the prices for PC and Macintosh. More information on http://www.mjolner.com/warehouse + People, who has previously bought The Mjolner BETA System can get a >>> FREE UPGRADE <<< to Release 4.1 of The Mjolner System. Please contact mailto:support@mjolner.com + The persistence, distribution, and process libraries now handle cross platform byte ordering. This means, that, e.g., a persistent store may now be created on UNIX and later opened on PC or Macintosh. + The Windows NT and Windows 95 version of the system can now use the GNU Win32 package as SDK. This means, that you can use the system without having to invest in any additional software. + The Linux version of the system now works with the LessTif libraries (available from the "Hungry Programmers" - www.hungry.com/products). This means, that you do not need to buy Motif to use the system. + The compiler and fragment system now supports a BUILD property eliminating the need for maintaining Makefiles for externally linked code. + The Valhalla debugger is now available for linux and Windows NT/95 too. + Bifrost is now available for Windows NT/95, and supports saving and loading of Encapsulated PostScript. THE Mjolner SYSTEM - GENERAL DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------- RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT (RAD) Modern object-oriented methodologies recommend an evolutionary approach with free alternation between analysis, design and implementation. The Mjolner System supports Rapid Application Development including initial prototyping, object-oriented modeling and design, implementation, documentation and development of full applications. The Mjolner System makes it easy to alternate between analysis, design and implementation. RAD with The Mjolner System includes UML-based design diagrams, GUI construction, and implementation. MULTIPLATFORM DEVELOPMENT The same source code can be used on Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX and Macintosh. Multiplatform development includes: a common object format for persistent objects, heterogeneous object distribution, cross-platform development, and platform independent GUI framework. ONLY ONE LANGUAGE FOR DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION. The Mjolner System provides a modern object-oriented language, BETA, which is a design language as well as an implementation language. BETA has a graphical notation based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for describing object-oriented design diagrams. BETA has also a textual syntax for describing implementations. The underlying concepts are the same. BETA unifies class, procedure, generic class, process, exception, etc. into one abstraction mechanism, the pattern. | class procedure generic process exception | class -----------------|--------------------------------------------------- pattern | + + + + + subpattern | + + + + + virtual pattern | + + + + + pattern variable | + + + + + nested pattern | + + + + + Some of the advantages of the unified pattern concept are: In addition to class inheritance, subpatterns give method and process inheritance. Virtual methods are supported by virtual patterns which in addition support genericity (templates) without a special concept. Nested patterns are useful for structuring large frameworks with hierarchical structures. No special construct for exceptions. CONCURRENT OBJECTS BETA has builtin concurrency in the form of active objects. The basic synchronization mechanism is the semaphore, but BETA's powerful abstraction mechanisms make it easy to define high-level concurrency abstractions on top of semaphores. The Mjolner System libraries contain a number of such abstractions, including monitors, and rendezvous-based synchronization. DISTRIBUTED OBJECTS Objects can be distributed in a network. Access to distributed objects is transparent and looks the same as for local objects. A proxy mechanism forwards remote method invocations. Client/server applications are supported, and an object can at the same time be a client as well as a server. It is easy to make distributed applications in a network of UNIX, Windows PC's and Macintosh computers. PERSISTENT OBJECTS Any BETA object may be saved in a persistent store. Persistence is type orthogonal. When an object is saved, all objects reachable from that object are also saved. Similarly when an object is read, all objects reachable from that object are also read by need. FREJA: OBJECT-ORIENTED CASE TOOL Freja supports the UML-based syntax for BETA. Freja has incremental code generation and incremental reverse engineering. This is achieved without destroying the overview of the code with internal technical comments. Changes in the design are immediately reflected in the code and vice versa. Freja makes it easy to alternate between design and implementation. SIF: SOURCE BROWSER AND EDITOR Using abstract presentation and semantic browsing Sif provides good overview of libraries, and frameworks including your own design and code. Sif is a structure editor. It always operates on syntactically complete structures. Sif prevents syntax errors and has powerful operations for modifying even large pieces of code. The need for scrolling is reduced, making it easy to select large structures not fitting into a window. FRIGG: INTERFACE BUILDER Frigg supports construction of graphical user interfaces in a direct manipulation graphical editor with automatic incremental code generation. The developer can alternate between working on the user interface and coding the underlying functionality. Due to reverse engineering the user interface can be changed in the graphical editor throughout the whole process. VALHALLA: SOURCE LEVEL DEBUGGER Valhalla supports breakpoints, single stepping, tracing, object inspection, stack inspection, code inspection, source browsing, etc. The accompanying objectbrowser can be used to inspect objects in a persistent store. EFFICIENT COMPILER The Mjolner System includes an efficient compiler that implements BETA using native machine code, automatic memory management with generation based scavenging, separate compilation, and configuration control - no makefiles needed. Class libraries and frameworks LIDSKJALV: GUI FRAMEWORK Lidskjalv makes it easy to construct advanced graphical user interfaces. Lidskjalv is platform independent meaning that a user interface developed on one platform can easily be ported to another platform. The look-and-feel of a user interface will be that of the respective platform. BIFROST: 2D GRAPHICS FRAMEWORK Bifrost is a platform-independent object-oriented Stencil & Paint imaging model, for construction of advanced, interactive drawings, using e.g. Bezier splines, colors, fonts, and pictures. Drawings can be saved and restored using Encapsulated PostScript. BASIC LIBRARIES The basic libraries of The Mjolner System include classic data structures such as text, file, container, list, set, and hashtable. YGGDRASIL: METAPROGRAMMING SYSTEM Yggdrasil provides a well-defined interface for manipulating programs as data. The metaprogramming system provides general grammarbased tools, including an LALR(1) parser generator and adaptive pretty printer. EXTERNAL INTERFACES BETA has a general interface to external languages such as C making it easy to call C functions and provide BETA patterns as callback functions to C. The libraries include interfaces to the underlying operating systems. AVAILABILITY The Mjolner System is available for Windows 95, Windows NT, PowerPC based Macintosh, and many UNIX platforms such as Sun Sparc, Silicon Graphics MIPS, Hewlett-Packard HPPA, Linux. TEACHING Teaching of object-oriented software construction should be based on state of the art programming languages and tools. The Mjolner System provides a complete solution for teaching object-orientation. The Mjolner System has successfully been used for introductory programming, programming in the large, software engineering, distributed computing, and persistent data modeling. INTERNET RESOURCES The Personal Edition of the Mjolner System can be downloaded from http://www.mjolner.com/download More information on The Mjolner System can be found at http://www.mjolner.com/warehouse More information on Mjolner Informatics can be found at http://www.mjolner.com More information on the BETA programming langauge can be found at http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~beta Sincerely, Manmathan Muthukumarapillai _____________________________________________________________________________ Mjolner Informatics Aps Phone: (+45) 86 20 20 00 ext. 2752 Science Park Aarhus Direct: (+45) 86 20 20 11 - 2752 Gustav Wieds Vej 10 Fax: (+45) 86 20 12 22 DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Email: mannan@mjolner.com _____________________________________________________________________________ BETA is better -----------------------------------------------------------------------------