Holos - Conception

Conception

The Holos product succeeded an older generation of mainframe products such as System-W. It was the first to use an industry standard SQL database (as opposed to a proprietary one), and also the first to use the new GUI PC for the user interface. In physically separating the number crunching from the user interface, the product was immediately client/server, although the term didn't come into use until some time later. In fact the process was described as cooperative processing at the time as client/server was not a current term at that time. The client/server model used for Holos was initially for a very "light" client as it was not clear at that time (1986/7)that PC's were going to be so commonplace and most PC's were still running MS-DOS. In fact it was technically possible to run the system using "dumb" terminal with reduced functionalty in early versions although save for in Holistic's test environment this was rarely if ever done. In time due to the increased popularly of PC's and their increased power and the available of a stable and more functional version of Microsoft Windows additional functionality was added to the client end mostly in the form of development aids. In addition to data services, the Holos Server supplied business logic and calculation services. It also provided complementary services to the Holos Client which meant the internal processing associated with the report writer, worksheet, etc., was distributed between the two components.