Helix (database)

Helix (database)

Helix is a pioneering database management system for the Apple Macintosh platform, created in 1983. Helix uses a graphical "programming language" to add logic to its applications, allowing non-programmers to construct sophisticated applications. While this sort of ease-of-use should have made Helix a killer app on the platform, the uniqueness of the programming language, limitations in the Mac OS it relied on for data I/O, the proprietary nature of the databases it created, and a variety of business problems relegated it to a niche product. As of 2005, Helix is twenty-one years old, but still has a dedicated, if small, following.

Despite being the first multiuser database on any PC platform, the first object-based, visual programming tool, and, perhaps, the first relational database on a PC platform, Helix's marketing and ownership problems led it to a life as a niche product on an OS with a small market share.