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Porting to OS/2 (1987)

from the November 1987 issue of PC Tech Journal magazine An inside look reveals how one company rapidly converted a complex data manager from DOS to the OS/2 environment. by Steven Armbrust When Microrim, Inc., became a beta site for IBM’s new Operating System/2 (OS/2) in late 1986, Microrim chairman and founder Wayne Erickson knew immediately what he and his staff had to do. Not only did they have to convert R:BASE System V, Microrim’s largest and most complex database manager, to run under OS/2, but the job had to be done in time to demonstrate a working product when IBM officially announced OS/2.

Microrim is counting on OS/2 to be a big boon in the constant battles die company must wage with competitors, most notably Ashton-Tate of dBASE fame, to add new features and otherwise improve its products. Although Microrim management remains committecj in the long term to enhancing R:BASE System V so that it can eventually use all applicable OS/2 features, time constraints forced the company to take a conservative approach in the beginning. The OS/2 conversion was less involved than it might have been because Microrim earlier had decided to limit its near-term efforts to producing a functionally equivalent OS/2 version of R:BASE System V without adding all the bells and whistles.

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