Competing BASICs
An early competitor to Data General's Business Basic was Bluebird Business Basic, a compiled language running on its proprietary SuperDOS platform. Bluebird's Basic was not fully compatible with Data General's.
B32 Business Basic was a highly compatible interpreter which ran on the Eclipse MV line. It lifted many of the Data General Business Basic constraints, and ran significantly faster by using the full power of the 32-bit processor. B32 stored all variables internally as 64-bit, and emulated double and triple precision as required. It also provided new language features. B32 was ported to Unix and later to DOS, allowing Data General's customers to readily move to other hardware vendors. B32 also had substantial compatibility with Bluebird Business Basic.
Transoft produced another competitor to Data General's Business Basic, Universal Business Basic. UBB ran on Unix and DOS, and was substantially compatible with Data General's Business Basic. Transoft purchased B32 in 1992.
Data General ported Business Basic to the AViiON, but B32 and UBB were already available on that platform. Data General's programmers did have one major success on the AViiON when they unveiled a new version of Business Basic at a "shootout" between themselves, B32 and UBB. Data General had added a caching mechanism to speed up their Business Basic's disk access, and it outperformed the other companies' products. Within a month, B32 and UBB had added their own caching mechanisms, and drawn ahead of Data General again.
Transoft's UBB is now sold as the Universal Business Language.
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