For the first time, Relativity allows legacy data from sophisticated Micro Focus or RM/COBOL applications to be retooled as a full-featured relational database. The data can then be joined with other disparate data and accessed by Windows-based tools seamlessly and transparently. By using Microsoft's ODBC standard, Relativity makes integrating legacy data into distributed client/server applications a straightforward and efficient process.

Ease and Power for Developer and User

Using Relativity's Database Designer, which features an easy-to-use graphical interface with on-line help, developers can quickly define a relational view of COBOL application data. File descriptions are quickly imported directly from the COBOL source code and can then be dragged and dropped to create new relational database tables. These features result in cost and time savings during application development.

Using Relativity, developers empower end-users of an application with the capability to directly access live COBOL application data in a Windows environment using the powerful Relativity Relational Database Engine on the UNIX server, NT server, or locally on Windows. They can use their choice of the many available reporting, decision support (DSS), and executive information software (EIS) tools to manipulate and analyze the data with tools they already know. It's all done in three simple steps:

1. The Relativity Designer automatically extracts information, such as COBOL file descriptions, from existing COBOL application source files.
2. From there, it's as simple as dragging the data elements you're interested in onto a table object-- simple drag and drop. Relativity handles all the differences between the source application data and what you'd require in a relational database.
3. The end result is a data dictionary, or "system catalog", similar to what you would have in any other relational database. This catalog is used by the Relativity Database Management System to provide fully relational data to the PC. The Relativity DBMS acts as a Microsoft ODBC service provider for connecting virtually every Windows client-based tool to existing COBOL information.

Developers can also create new client applications using tools such as PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and Web tools that integrate existing system information easily without data replication or conversions.