~4 minute readCornerstone: "The Hottest New Business Product of 1985"
On November 1st, at a press conference in New York City, Infocom announced Cornerstone™, the first in a new line of interactive business software.
Cornerstone is a full-featured relational database management system. Data management programs have traditionally fallen into two distinct camps: simple-to-use programs with very limited capabilities, and full-featured programs that require the user to have programming skills (or to hire a consultant who does). Cornerstone was designed to put all the power of this second group into the hands of nonprogrammers.
With Cornerstone you can design, build, and use sophisticated data management applications without writing a single line of code. These applications could be almost anything — a personnel system, a client-tracking system, or a roster of current Stellar Patrol assignments. Once you've designed your database, you can use Cornerstone for five major activities: storing large quantities of data, selecting data meeting specified criteria, sorting data in a particular order, calculating new data, and reporting the data. In addition, Cornerstone can convert data to or from many other software programs, such as word processors and spreadsheets.
In true Infocom tradition, Cornerstone is special in its style of interaction. But in contrast to the games, Cornerstone is designed to make every decision clear and simple. Most of the time, all you have to do is select an option from a menu. Cornerstone then responds with a new menu, or tells you that it's ready to execute your command. For all other activities, Cornerstone displays a form for you to fill in. At any point, if you're not sure what to do, you can press the HELP key. This will give you a detailed description of your exact position and all your current options. It's like having your very own programmer in a cage. There's more text in these HELP screens than in two entire interactive fiction games.
Cornerstone also simplifies data entry. Whenever you've entered sufficient characters for Cornerstone to know what you want, it will complete the rest. Cornerstone will also check that your input meets specified constraints (such as minimum or maximum values). And at any point, you can press the OPTIONS key to see a list of all allowable data values. (A lexicographer in a cage?)
Why Business Products? See page 6
The other mainstay of Cornerstone is flexibility. You're never locked into one way of doing things. If you need to look at your information in a new way, you can create a new report in seconds (with no limit to the number of reports). If you need to add a third phone number for Uncle Morris (he always tries to keep one step ahead of the police), Cornerstone opens up more room in his record — without adding wasted space for everyone else. In fact, all information in Cornerstone is of variable length, so there's never a need to specify how long anything will be. The ultimate test of flexibility is the ability to redefine your database. With Cornerstone you can do that at any time.
Cornerstone comes with a wide variety of tools to make it easy to learn and to use. There's a Beginner's Guide with ten interactive lessons. There's an Owner's Handbook that explains, in clear English, all the features of the program. There's even a ready-to-use Client Tracking system database, designed to keep client histories, generate mailing labels, and maintain a directory of names and addresses. All these materials come in a unique box that continues Infocom's tradition of award-winning packaging. The box is made of heavy molded plastic; its top swivels down to double as a workstation, and is capable of holding an open manual.
As you can probably tell, we're pretty excited about Cornerstone. And we're not alone. One major distributor has said that Cornerstone "will be the hottest new business product of 1985." Another has said, "Every once in a while, a product changes the shape of the microcomputer market. Cornerstone, Infocom's new database management system, is just such a product."
The first release of Cornerstone is for the IBM PC, PC XT, PC AT, and 100% compatibles. Cornerstone requires a minimum of 256K of memory and two disk drives (or one floppy and a hard disk), and will be available at the end of January. The list price will be $495. In the meantime, if you have any questions, drop us a line or give us a call at (617) 576-3190.
[Editor's note: A free demonstration disk of Cornerstone will be made available in a month. If you are interested, address your request to Barnaby, c/o Infocom, 55 Wheeler St., Cambridge, MA 02138.]
This article appeared in
New Zork Times, The
Jan-Mar 1985
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
