Re: ASSET

Al's overview of AS/SET is not entirely correct. The product was created by
SSA and was a development based on BIR, a report writing product that had
been written by a company owned by Riz Shakir and sold to SSA. Riz became
the head of development for SSA when this happened.

AS/SET is not a "pre-compiler" but is a CASE (Computer Aided Software
Engineering) tool. It's purpose is to let programmers create pseudo code
descriptions of how programs should work and then generate the RPG code for
them. It was SSA's direct answer to Synon IIE (know as Synon in the UK). The
pseudo code was based on a data model of file relationships and high level
instructions of how the data / files should be processed. Unfortunately the
data models were only hierarchical models and not true relational models.
This proved to be a drawback for AS/SET when being compared to most other
CASE tools available on the IBM mind-range platform at the time. Initially
the code generated from AS/SET was only RPG. However, a small software
company in the UK had purchased a copy of AS/SET and created their own "C"
code generator to create code that could run under UNIX. SSA adopted this
code generator to try to move BPCS to UNIX. Although the code did eventually
run it was not very successful.

SSA did attempt to re-write all the BPCS programs in AS?SET and, as I
remember it, they did manage this.

I used to work for Synon and moved to SSA in 1991 to help set up the AS/SET
Affiliate network in Europe. I was at SSA for 12 years.

Cheers

Will Hogan
-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Al
Sent: 07 November 2011 15:04
To: 'BPCS ERP System'
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] ASSET

ASSET is a pre-compiler which Infor-SSA used to develop a lot of its code,
for most of the versions of BPCS still in widespread use.

The theory was that BPCS could run on IBM midrange, or PC Microsoft world,
or UNIX or some other platform. Software would be written, which would
ignore the strengths of the platform, then ASSET would convert the code into
a version to work on IBM midrange. Sales on the other platforms were
dismal, and eventually abandoned.

Some company other than Infor-SSA actually invented ASSET, licensed
Infor-SSA to use it, and supply it with some BPCS deliveries. In theory
someone could find that other company and independently get at it.

-
Al Mac
-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of rhhwfh@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 9:45 AM
To: BPCS ERP System
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] Single Vendor Payment Selection

Is anybody out there still using a product called ASSET? And do you know
anything about its origins?

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