Informix-4GL is a 4GL

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

developed by

Informix IBM Informix is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose I ...

during the mid-1980s. At the time of its initial release in 1986, supported platforms included Microsoft Xenix (on

IBM PC AT The IBM Personal Computer/AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 8028 ...

), DEC Ultrix (running on

Microvax II The MicroVAX is a discontinued family of low-cost minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The first model, the MicroVAX I, was introduced in 1983.(announced October 1983) They used processors that impleme ...

, VAX-11/750, VAX-11/785,

VAX 8600 The VAX 8000 is a discontinued family of superminicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA). The 8000 series was introduced in October 198 ...

), Altos 2086, AT&T 3B2, AT&T 3B5, AT&T 3B20 and

AT&T Unix PC The AT&T UNIX PC is a Unix desktop computer originally developed by Convergent Technologies (later acquired by Unisys), and marketed by AT&T Information Systems in the mid- to late-1980s. The system was codenamed "Safari 4" and is also known as th ...

Description

It includes embedded SQL, a report writer language, a form language, and a limited set of imperative capabilities (functions, if and while statements, and supports arrays etc.). The language is particularly close to a natural language and is easy to learn and use. The Form Painter, Screen Code Generator, Report Code Generator (Featurizer) enabled adding custom business logic. It also had, as additional components a menu system, and a front-end

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

(graphical user interface) Generator. The package includes two versions of compiler which either produce 1) intermediate byte codeknown as P-code, for Pseudo-Code, which ran interpretively for an interpreter (known as the rapid development system), or 2)

C Programming Language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...

code for compilation with a C compiler into machine-code (which executes faster, but compiles slower, and executables are bigger). It is specifically designed to run as a client on a network, connected to an IBM Informix database engine service. It has a mechanism for calling

functions and conversely, to be called from executing C programs. The RDS version also features an interactive debugger for

Dumb terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...

s. A particular feature is the comprehensive error checking which is built into the final executable and the extremely helpful error messages produced by both compilers and executables. It also features embedded modal statements for changing compiler and executable behaviour (e.g. causing the compiler to include memory structures matching database schema structures and elements, or to continue executing in spite of error conditions, which can be trapped later on).

History

The Informix-4GL project was started in 1985, with Chris Maloney as chief architect. Roy Harrington was in charge of the related

Turbo (later renamed Online) engine, which bypassed the "cooked" file system and instead used "raw" disk access. It was based on software developed in 1983 by FourGen Software Technologies, which were based in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. The bundled product was presented by Informix as ‘’’Forms’’’ and ‘’’Menu’’’ until 1996. This ‘’’Rapid Application Development’’’ product, marketed as

FourGen CASE Tools Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is the domain of software tools used to design and implement applications. CASE tools are similar to and were partly inspired by Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools used for designing hardware products. CAS ...

, could access the user’s choice of ‘’’Informix’’’ and/or IBM’s DB2 databases. Another flavor of Informix programming-tool was produced, called "NewEra", which supported

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...

and a level of code-compatibility with Informix-4GL. Informix was acquired by IBM in April 2001. Despite its age, Informix-4GL is still widely used to develop business applications, and a sizable market exists around it due to its popularity. With accounting being an inherently text based activity, it is often chosen for its purely text-based interface to optimize data entry efficiency. These tools are available today on major flavors of

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

and

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used Commercial software, commercial Open-source software, open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. R ...

and SUSE Linux operating systems; the FOURGEN business was later acquired in 2002, by www.gillan.com.

References

{{Authority control Fourth-generation programming languages

Informix-4GL Informix-4GL is a 4GL programming language developed by Informix during the mid-1980s. At the time of its initial release in 1986, supported platforms included Microsoft Xenix (on IBM PC AT), DEC Ultrix (running on Microvax II, VAX-11/750, ...