Clarion (programming Language) - History

History

The first release of the Clarion language was a DOS product called Clarion 1.0 and was first released in April 1986. Clarion was created by Bruce Barrington, one of the founders of healthcare firm "HBO & Company" (later acquired by McKesson Corporation), and a small team of developers. Barrington's goal was to create a language that would be compact and expressive, and would maximize the use of the memory-mapped screen of the IBM PC by creating a screen designer. Version 1 produced pseudocode; the initial release included a screen designer, an interpreter, an editor, and a debugger. Initially it supported databases composed of DAT files and Clarion’s proprietary ISAM file format. Bruce Barrington formed Barrington Systems and released version 1.0.

Clarion 1.0 required the use of a dongle, at a time when industry sentiment was turning against dongles, which was offset by the ability to create royalty-free applications. However the dongle was removed with the release of 1.1.

At the same time, an even more basic version was sold. Called Personal Developer, it was very limited in what the user could do, but was adequate for very basic database applications. And it was a fraction of the cost of Professional Developer 1.x.

Version 2.0, released in May 1988, was known as Clarion Professional Developer, or CPD, and included a component called Designer, which incorporated a data dictionary. CPD generated Clarion code based on the contents of that dictionary and a template called a "model file." Because the model file was a text file, it could be modified (in limited ways) to create custom code. The model file was implemented with the "browse and form" paradigm, where data is initially displayed to the user in list box, and updating is done via a form called via buttons associated with the list. Designer created all the essential of the CRUD (create, read, update, delete) code, and developers could enhance functionality by inserting code at specified points in the generated code, or by hand-coding new procedures. Clarion Professional Developer also introduced Language Extension Modules (LEMs), that could extend the Clarion language using modules compiled in other languages that were built to the LEM format. Clarion Software and many third-party tool developers created LEMs for all purposes, including an extension for connecting to other databases such as dBase, Clipper and Paradox.

CPD 2.x was a database solution with everything required for screens, reports, databases and help files. A version of Clarion 2.x for end-users, Clarion Personal Developer, was also released just for the business user creating his own personal applications. Around the same time period, Clarion released Clarion Report Writer. This was created as both a stand-alone product for end-users of Clarion Personal Developer and users of programs written by developers with CPD, and as a built-in program bundled with Clarion Professional Developer version 2.1.

In 1991 Barrington licensed compiler technology from a company called Jensen & Partners International (JPI).

JPI was founded in 1987 by Niels Jensen, who had earlier (1979 or 1981) been one of the founders of Borland. Philippe Kahn was the marketing personnel who built Borland around the $99 Turbo Pascal compiler. Niels and his team were working on a new compiler technology at Borland when Philippe Kahn decided to buy Wizard C, and call it Turbo C. Niels and several other developers left Borland and started JPI, where they continued to work on their compiler technology, christened TopSpeed, which they bought from Borland for $1.7 million.

Clarion Database Developer 3.0 (CDD) was soon released. It was a revolutionary product adding many features and technology that could create programs with a “Windows like” CUA (Common User Access) user interface. Much of the CDD changes fit well into the Windows programming paradigm and laid the groundwork for the future Clarion for Windows product.

The CDD IDE was completely new and based on the JPI IDE. It included many professional programmer quality tools: editor, project system, compiler, linker, visual debugger. Gone was the p-code of CPD. The JPI compiler for the Clarion language produced true machine code EXEs, LIBs and DLLs. Binaries could be compiled for Protected Mode allowing DOS programs to use extended memory breaking the 640KB barrier.

The Clarion 3.0 language was enhanced in many ways, e.g.: new data types (CSTRING, PSTRING, DATE, TIME, USHORT, ULONG), file driver system (e.g. Btrieve, Clarion, Dbase, FoxPro, Paradox), queues (tables) were enhanced, screen processing was enhanced for CUA. Code generation by Models was replaced by “templates” that had more features and were extensible. This allowed generation of much more robust and complex code.

With all this new power came complexity. Many existing users found the transition to CDD difficult. CPD was simple and easy to use which attracted many non-programmers that could build programs by answering questions. CDD was more suited to professional programmers. Programs could still be developed as easily, but the size and vast features of the IDE made it appear complex.

The first 5 patch releases of CDD were buggy to the point of being unusable, which caused so many users to abandon the product that it was nearly a complete disaster for the company. Clarion kept working on CDD and by version 3.007 it was usable.

Version 3.1 named Clarion for DOS (CFD) was released in 1995. This proved much more stable, but by this time there was little interest in DOS development tools. A significant feature was the TopSpeed file driver, an ISAM file format allowing all indexes and multiple data files to be contained in one disk file.

During this time the relationship between Clarion Software and JPI grew closer, and on April 30, 1992, Clarion merged with JPI to form an entity which would eventually be called TopSpeed Corporation. The employees at the TopSpeed Development Centre in London went to work on CDD and ironed out many of the bugs.

TopSpeed released Clarion for Windows version 1.0 (aka CW 1.0) in January 1995. The final 1.003 release was June 1995. The IDE was completely written as a Windows GUI and could produce Win16 EXE and DLL binaries to run under Windows 3.x. The language featured many enhancements required to support the event driven Windows user interface. A Clarion developer could easily create a multithreaded MDI application. CW 1.0 continued the database flexibility added in CDD as well as adding an ODBC driver allowing connection to SQL databases, or any source supported by ODBC.

The DOS monolithic template model was significantly enhanced in CW 1.0 and replaced by a model that allowed a window to use multiple templates (Extension, Control or Procedure templates). For example, in DOS a screen procedure could support browsing a single data table. Under CW 1.0 a Window could use multiple Browse Control Templates each one displaying a different table. This design change was a major improvement in the power of Clarion code generation.

Clarion for Windows version 1.5 (aka CW 1.5) was released September 1995, with the final 1.502 release January 1996. This version added support for creating native Win32 binaries for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. The same source could target Win16 or Win32. The IDE remained 16-bit but added 32-bit compilers, linker and debugger.

Clarion for Windows version 2 (aka CW20) was released in June 1996, with the final 2.003 release March 1997. CW20 added classic object orientation to the language, including inheritance, encapsulation, virtual methods and overloading. CW20 enhanced 32-bit support, added ActiveX support and enhanced SQL support.

Clarion 4 (aka C4) was released December 1997, with the final 4.002 release May 1998. TopSpeed elected to skip the dreaded version number three (the official explanation was that CW 1.5 "should have been CW 2.0," so CW 2.0 "should have been CW 3.0", so let’s just call the next one version 4). Due to DOS development being dead the name dropped the "for Windows" title.

C4 came with a new template set and class library called "Application Builder Classes" or “ABC”. The original template set generated procedural code, which was becoming increasingly complex. The ABC template set generated far less code, and leveraged the class library, which contained most of the actual logic for windows, browses, forms, etc. C4 enhanced OOP by adding Constructors and Destructors (without parameters).

Clarion 5 (aka C5) was released May 1998, with the final 5.0B release June 1999. The product was split into Professional and Enterprise editions.

Clarion 5.5 (aka C55) was released August 2000, with the final 5.507 release January 2002. C55 added Interfaces to OOP.

Clarion 6.0 (aka C6) was released November 2003, and added direct support for pre-emptive threading.

Clarion 6.1 was released May 2004.

Clarion 6.2 was released May 2005.

Clarion 6.3 as released Jan 2006. Excluding patches this is the final release of the 16 bit Clarion development environment. The use of a 16 bit IDE produced some problems using current Windows technologies (ActiveX, OCX, COM, DOC, ...); however, note that the series 6.x of Clarion produces native Win32 executables (32-bit exes and/or dlls). Previous versions produced both 16-bit and 32-bit executables, the 16-bit support was dropped from the end-user product with version 6.0 of Clarion.

On April 13, 2009 SoftVelocity released Clarion 7 (aka C7). The new IDE will look familiar to SharpDevelop users; SoftVelocity obtained a commercial license for the SharpDevelop code and integrated Clarion's code generation and application generation technology. Major new features (other than the standard modern IDE features lacking in C6) include a build system based on MSBuild and backward compatibility with all releases of Clarion going back to Clarion for Windows 1.5.

C7 is still a Win32 development environment, but a beta .NET version of the Clarion language, called Clarion#, is available. Both Clarion# and C7 share the same IDE, although at present they are shipped as separate products. Unlike C7, Clarion# does not yet have a dictionary editor or application generator. When Clarion# goes gold it is expected that a single IDE will support both Win32 and .NET development.

The new IDE (in Clarion# mode) retains the ability to build .NET applications with VB.NET and C#.

On September 12, 2011 SoftVelocity released Clarion 8. It continues the line of Clarion 7 (the latest release was C7.3).