Omnis from 01 to 11

[Andrea Guidi]

#114089

Omnis from 01 to 11
LinkedIn newsletter May 15, 2023

The English development team has just released the new main release of Omnis Studio. Version 11 enriches the development environment with brilliant new features which these days are the subject of conferences, webinars, articles and posts. Here instead I propose a brief history. The path that in more than 40 years directs the vision of Omnis Software: the future of app development.
Taking a look at the evolution of Omnis, today we can perhaps identify three macro-periods. The first 1980-96 of Omnis Classic, of the graphical interface to data, the second 1997-2009 of Omnis Studio, of object oriented and web, and the last since 2010, of mobile and cloud applications.

It all began in 1979 in Suffolk, where the team of development engineers and the heart of the company still beats, when Paul Wright founded Blyth. Shortly thereafter, the company launched Omnis on Apple II for the creation of data-oriented applications, designed by David Seaman and written using the UCSD Pascal language.

Paul and David are the root of the growing tree, those who first imagined the future of application development. Think of the starting date of this journey.

To help the memory comes Wikipedia, where over the years in the Italian version I myself have often reported the news, feeling, together with dear colleagues and collaborators, in part the protagonist of that story.

Omnis 1 the “file manager” facilitates data manipulation, Omnis 2 the “information manager” simplifies programming, Omnis 3 the “database manager” allows free customization of applications. Omnis 3 is cross-platform: available on Apple and IBM compatibles with MS-DOS operating system. A quality that extends over time to other platforms up to the present day.

In 1985, following the launch of the Macintosh by Apple, Omnis 3 Plus was released, followed by Omnis Quartz equipped with a graphical user interface (GUI) for Microsoft Windows and then Omnis 5 for developing applications on both Windows and Mac.

In 1991 Bob Mitchell joined the company destined to become chief of development, mentor and driving force behind future versions over the years. Omnis 7 v1, v2 and v3 are released, integrated development environments (IDE) for accessing the most popular databases at the time in client/server mode, including Oracle, Sybase and Informix.

Incidentally, in Italy in those years we were engaged in the downgrade project of GS Supermercati, today Carrefour, from PC in terminal emulation of a centric mainframe system, to hundreds of “intelligent” Mac and Windows Clients with Omnis and Unisys mainframe Server with database proprietary DMS and Unix departmental systems with Sybase SQL Server database. Since then, countless mission-critical applications have been built with Omnis by the customer and its IT partners, from sales price management to competition.

In 1997 from the latest version of “Omnis”, which has since been referred to as Omnis Classic, “Omnis Studio” v1 was born, a change of name and paradigm, with a new powerful approach to object oriented programming. Omnis Studio v2.1 includes the Omnis Web Client or “thin client” for building browser applications via the Web and has the first version “Omnis Studio for Linux” added to Windows and Mac.

Since 2000 we have Omnis Studio v3, then v4 which also supports MySQL and Java, and v4.1 with Unicode. Later native support for Mac Intel and the component to create web services was added, then for Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). Omnis Studio 5.0 includes the development of applications for “Windows mobile”, then support for iOS platforms.

In 2012, Omnis Studio 5.2.2 launched the JSClient: the JavaScript-based web client for desktop and mobile browser applications, including those for Android and iOS. Omnis Studio 6.0 includes new wrappers for creating standalone mobile apps, new controls for accessing device functionality and for JavaScript, and server-side multitasking. Since 2014, a new SDK (software development kit) allows you to integrate your own JavaScript objects into the Omnis Studio environment.

In 2016 Omnis Studio 8.0 has 64-bit and Cocoa support for OS X, the ability to use HTML components in Windows classes for desktop applications, Drag and Drop functionality for JavaScript clients. v.8.0.2 has a new wrapper for mobile apps on Windows 10. In 2017 8.1 has GIT support, JSON controls, push notifications for mobile apps, responsive forms, “headless” server for Linux.

In 2018 Omnis Studio 10 has a new free-type Method Editor and a new Coding Assistant, WCAG 2.0 compliant Accessibility support, new JavaScript and fat client components, remote debugging support, support: Node .JS, POP3, Crypto, Hash and FTP.

And we come to the most recent years. v.10.1 has new components for a better user experience. 10.2 supports themes for the JS Client, SVG icons, placement assistance for aligning visuals, Linux Headless server can now be used in MultiProcess Server (MPS) mode to take advantage of the multi-core processors on the server and improve the performance of server, web and mobile applications.

At the end of 2022, the Community Edition for PostgreSQL, the first free-of-charge version of Omnis Studio, was made available, opening the space for use to a wider and more extraordinary audience of software designers.

Bob Whiting leads the company with his incredible team of engineers Jason Gissing, Peter Kelly, Andrei Augustin…

Two observations and we conclude. The first, when we talk about cross platform in this context it means not only that the code runs indifferently on one rather than the other platform, for example Windows/Mac and Android/iOS, but also that the programmers can vary indifferently between one and the other in continuity, what is written in one works immediately also in the other.

The second observation, I say this from real life experience, is that versions decades apart allow the almost always immediate, however easy, upgrade of the applications.

Finally, a few days ago, on May 10, 2023 Omnis Studio 11 was released and the story continues.

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