Psion releases Rapid Application Development environment for EPOC16 handheld platform

OVAL supports Oracle Mobile Agents

Sep 23 1996

Psion Software PLC, world leaders in ROM-based computing platforms, today announced a Rapid Application Development environment for their EPOC16 platform. OVAL (Object-based Visual Application Language) is a Microsoft Visual Basic-compatible development environment and is available for EPOC16 platforms from Psion.

OVAL is a complete development environment which runs under Windows on a PC. It allows developers to write programs on EPOC16-based platforms such as the Psion Workabout and recently-announced Psion Series 3c, using the industry standard Microsoft Visual Basic programming language.

The OVAL development environment provides:  

• visual layout of controls on forms
• a code editor with syntax color highlighting
• a fully featured debugger
• extensive on-line help
• advanced resource file support
• automatic downloading of applications and data files to the EPOC16 platform

"Developers today expect to use visual, integrated development environments. OVAL provides EPOC16 developers with the tools they need to develop high-quality, visually appealing applications in the shortest possible time" said Simon East, Product Manager at Psion. "Rapid Application Development for EPOC16-based computers is now a reality with OVAL."

OVAL will also support the EPOC16 client for Oracle Mobile Agents [ http://www.symbian.com/news/1996/pr960923b.html ] (OMA) announced jointly today by Oracle and Psion Software. This will allow existing Windows OMA applications to be ported to an EPOC16 platform in a matter of days.

OVAL for EPOC16 will begin shipping within 30 days.

The recently-announced EPOC32 platform from Psion, which is being developed for high performance ROM-based computers, will support a 32-bit version of OVAL and is due to be released in Q2 1997.