CA-VISUAL REALIA OFFERS NEW POWER TO THREE MILLION COBOL PROGRAMMERS; First Integrated Client/Server Development Tool To Fully Exploit COBOL.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--November 29, 1994--Computer Associates today began shipping CA-Visual Realia, the first integrated client/server development tool that allows the world's three million COBOL programmers to easily create mission-critical graphical applications.

"For COBOL programmers, CA-Visual Realia is the difference between hand-tools and power-tools," said Marc Sokol, CA vice-president, product strategy. "There is no faster way to bring current COBOL programmers and programs into the GUI, client/server world."

CA-Visual Realia uses a Windows-based visual programming environment to provide veteran COBOL programmers with new, highly productive tools for creating and updating new applications, yet retains the full functionality of COBOL.

"COBOL runs the world's business," said Peter Kastner, vice president of the Aberdeen Group, Boston. "Rather than throwing COBOL into the dustbin of IS history, smart IS executives should take a close look at how CA-Visual Realia can take COBOL applications to the next century."

CA-Visual Realia users can:

- Combine the programmer-friendliness of Windows with a powerful suite of COBOL development tools to facilitate the rapid deployment of new GUI applications.

- Use existing mainframe COBOL code to build the business logic for Windows applications; maximize and reuse existing COBOL mainframe application logic within the new Windows technology.

- Directly access both local and host databases; included with CA-Visual Realia are an SQL pre-processor and over 20 ODBC database drivers that enable applications to process information throughout the enterprise.

- Protect investments in their programming staff's existing COBOL skill set.

WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING

David Dunning, LAN administrator, Marco Consulting, Chicago, IL: "With CA-Visual Realia, COBOL code isn't obsolete. We found we could slide our existing COBOL applications into a Windows environment, so that we didn't have to start from scratch. That's an incredible plus."

Emilio Flores Jr., associate director, Education Service Center, San Antonio, TX: "I have been impressed with how easy it is to learn and use this product. We took a fixed assets program and converted it to GUI in approximately 20 hours as opposed to a total rewrite conceivably taking up to two or three weeks."

Arthur Haynes, vice president of product development, ACC Orlando, Inc., Orlando, FL: "Because we were able to use most of our existing COBOL code, we were able to turn our character-based DOS application into a GUI application in one week."

Kip Winrow, programmer analyst, Dresser-Rand Co., Painted Post, NY: "We can now leverage our applications and our COBOL code, and build professional looking GUI applications."

PRODUCT FEATURES

Building Windows Applications

CA-Visual Realia includes everything users need to build Windows applications: project management, client/server application development, enterprise-wide data access via ODBC, a personal database, GUI report writer, version control, configuration manager, forms editor, COBOL Workbench, COBOL analysis, navigation and debugging support, database administration facilities, and more.

Forms Editor

The CA-Visual Realia visual forms editor creates the graphical user interface without the programmer writing complex Windows code. COBOL programmers quickly become productive Windows programmers. Simply "paint" the Windows objects, such as buttons, listboxes, bitmaps and edit fields, and let the forms editor generate the code.

Project Manager

Use the CA-Visual Realia Project Manager to build working applications with just the push of a button. The Project Manager provides access to all application components so you can perform application builds, management tasks, reporting, and more.

COBOL Workbench

The COBOL Workbench provides all the tools needed to create your COBOL Windows applications. A high-speed COBOL compiler for DLLs, combined with powerful analysis and debugging capabilities, makes analyzing and testing COBOL code accurate, easy, and faster than ever before!

Life Cycle Management

The CA-Visual Realia integrated Life Cycle Management module controls application code by tracking changes to all files and automatically identifying and retrieving the correct files when an application is built. Check-in and check-out capabilities can apply to a single file, multiple files or all the files in a project. Difference and history reports can be generated for any source file.

Reporting Workbench

Take COBOL code and turn it into modern looking GUI reports, using CA's fully-integrated report engine technology.

Personal Database

The personal database provides each programmer with a central storage location for all retrieved data, simplifying the tasks of combining, manipulating and exporting data.

Royalty-Free Distribution

Application run-times can be distributed "royalty-free" throughout the enterprise.

PRICING

CA-Visual Realia supports Windows 3.1 and is priced at $2,500 a copy. A competitive upgrade is available for MicroFocus users. For more information, call 1 800 434-7325 in the United States and Canada or contact your local CA office.

From desktop to mainframe, Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) leads the world in client/server software. Guided by CA90s open architecture, 8,000 dedicated employees in 30 countries develop, license and support more than 300 integrated products that include systems and database management, application development, financial and manufacturing applications and consumer solutions. The world's major industrial, government and research organizations depend on CA, whose fiscal 1994 revenues exceeded $2.1 billion. -0-

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CONTACT: Computer Associates, Islandia

Bob Gordon, [phone]