Release Overview
Version 6.0

Introduction

Acucorp is pleased to offer Version 6.0 of our extend® family of technologies. This release marks the introduction of Acucorp's interoperability series, enabling your programs to interact with even more technologies than previously, including the increasingly popular XML.

In addition to the many enhancements made to the established members of the extend family, Version 6.0 introduces the following new features:

• Support for XML. With this new capability, applications compiled in ACUCOBOL-GT® Version 6.0 can be made to read, process, and output data in XML format so that the data can be transported and shared with trusted partners over LANs, WANs, and the Internet--even with partners that do not have COBOL applications.
• Version 5 of the Vision file system. Vision Version 5 introduces a new file format that, in addition to supporting all of the features of Vision 4, also supports records up to 64 megabytes in size, blocks of up to 8192 bytes, much larger pre-allocation and extension factors, the ability to recover deleted records, and more.
• A report composer in the AcuBench(TM) integrated development environment, which allows you to design sections of a report in a graphical designer and then generate each report section into an ".rpt" file.
• Graphical maintenance utilities for AcuConnect®, the AcuODBC® Server, and the AcuServer(TM) file access software. These utilities provide easy access to maintenance activities in Windows environments.

With the release of AcuConnect Version 6.0, we now provide the functionality of both our existing AcuConnect product and our AcuLaunch product in one product called AcuConnect. Licensing for AcuConnect is based on the functionality needed, so that a site can license the acurcl listener either for AcuConnect's distributed processing capabilities or its thin client deployment using Acucorp's Thin Client technology, or both environments. See the "AcuConnect" section for additional details.

This Release Overview contains highlights of new features in Version 6.0. Please refer to the respective product manuals for specifics on new features.

This overview provides information on new Version 6.0 features for the following technologies:

• Support for XML
• Vision File System
• ACUCOBOL-GT Compiler
• ACUCOBOL-GT Runtime
• Acu4GL®
• AcuBench
• AcuConnect
• AcuODBC and AcuODBC Server
• AcuServer
• AcuSQL(TM)
• Acucorp's Internet Solutions

Version 6.0 introduces our new HTML online documentation system. The HTML files are completely portable and can be viewed with any browser that supports the 3.2 HTML standard. The two-pane display keeps a book's Table of Contents open at all times. Simply scroll through the Contents pane to select the topic you wish to view. In addition, the entire Acucorp manual set is available to you. Click on the Books button in the Contents pane to open the list of books in the manual set. Then select the title of the book you wish to view. See the Quick Start card that accompanied your product for installation instructions and for directions on accessing the online documentation. Note that it can take a few minutes to install the entire documentation set.

Each page contains a link to the Acucorp home page. This provides ready access to the latest news at Acucorp, along with current service and support information. In addition, each page contains an email link to the Acucorp Communications department, providing a means of sending your feedback directly to those who create the manuals.

Note that at Version 6.0, the documentation set is available only in HTML; it is no longer available in WinHelp. We recognize that the popular full-text search feature is not available in this version of the documentation. However, this is only temporary; we are working on incorporating full-text search in a future release. In addition, we are also working to place the documentation in the Support section of the Acucorp web site to take advantage of the search capabilities offered there.

For optimal viewing of the manual set, please maximize your browser window.

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