Columbia Pictures' "Anaconda" Wouldn't Make A Move Without Them

The giant Anaconda snake that slithered its way across theater screens early this year wasn't given "star" billing and won't be considered for an Academy Award. If it could win the "best actor" title, however, it might include Distributed Information Systems Corporation, DISC(R), and extended Business Basic, BBx(R), in its long list of on-camera "thank you's." This particular Hollywood snake is one of many hydraulically operated devices found in everything from the Dumbo ride in Disneyland to the trash compactor in the average garbage truck. DISC is a software supplier to distributors who serve the behind-the-scenes world of hydraulics and pneumatics -- including those specifically involved in making the "Anaconda" and its audiences squirm. The company's DISC software has been used for years in running distribution and manufacturers' rep businesses on IBM RS/6000 platforms.

DISC's new DISC*MAN(TM) has been developed to support manufacturing firms in general, and those in fluid control systems in particular. DISC*MAN provides them with facilities for scheduling, inventory management, opening new jobs, partial shipment accounting, drill-down cost inquiry, and unlimited levels of bills of material, to name a few. The new system borrows heavily from the 2,500-program suite for distributors, but adds and modifies hundreds of modules. DISC*MAN, like DISC, is implemented in BASIS International's version of extended Business Basic, BBx, and runs on the IBM RS/6000. "BBx made production of the new system much easier," says Ray Hrdy, DISC's vice president of technology. "Because it's an interpreted language, coding and checkout was much quicker. Our developers could stop, fix, and restart an operation without first going back to recompile. That saves a lot of time.

"Its CALL program capabilities allowed us to access common procedures from any part of the program without having multiple copies compiled in. That's a very powerful feature," added Hrdy. "And our ODBC program for database access is directly based on the BASIS ODBC Driver(TM). Having that made it possible to import a bill of materials directly from a CAD/CAM system, automatically generating a customer order and job.

"In fact, I'd say that BBx was one of the reasons that the first release of DISC*MAN had fewer bugs than any new large-scale development this company has ever been involved with."

DISC*MAN is available directly from Distributor Information Systems Corporation, 135 South Road, Farmington, CT 06032-2556. The company is an IBM Premier Business Partner and has twice been awarded IBM's "Mark of Quality" award. DISC can be reached by phone at 800/PIC-DISC or 860/674-0550, by fax at 860/678-8601, or at its e-mail or web addresses mktg@discmail.com and www.disclink.com .

About BASIS International

BASIS International Ltd. is the world's largest producer of application development tools for the Business Basic language. Nearly 1.5 million users are currently running applications written in BBx, the company's original multiuser, multitasking extension of the language, or in one of the versions which succeeded it. The company's current flagship products, PRO/5(TM) and Visual PRO/5(TM), retain all of the traditional capabilities of the language while adding such features as a graphical user interface (GUI), Auditing, Transaction Tracking, and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). BASIS also offers the BASIS ODBC Driver, which gives developers and end-users a simple method of consolidating and providing transparent access to both normalized and non-normalized legacy data from multiple databases spanning a host of platforms.

The company is headquartered at 5901 Jefferson Street NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87109-3432. Additional information is available by phone at 505/345-5232, by fax at 505/345-5082, or at its e-mail info@basis.com or web address www.basis.com . -0-

DISC*MAN(TM) is a trademark of Distributor Information Systems Corporation and DISC(R) is a registered trademark of Distributor Information Systems Corporation. PRO/5(TM), Visual PRO/5(TM), and BASIS ODBC Driver(TM) are trademarks of BASIS International Ltd. BBx(R) is a registered trademark of BASIS International Ltd. All other product names and brand names are service marks and/or trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.