Business Controls Corporation is a privately held computer company that developed an application-program-generator and also a series of accounting software packages. These packages were widely enough used for various business magazines to have back-of-the-book ads for companies seeking accountants with experience in one or more of them.
Computer magazines ran coverage for their SB-5 application-program-generator as from time to time new versions were released, each with new or improved features.
Early days The company's initial offerings were packages for the DEC PDP-8, although Business Controls Corporation also wrote custom-written programs for customers.
Large customers with mainframes who also used smaller systems for departmental use and distributed processing also used BCC's services."It was the committee's feeling that ... vendors who are capable of ... offered by Business Controls Corporation."
SB-5 The addition of an application-program-generator named SB-5Systems Builders-5 that, from specifications, could generate COBOL code was a major step forward. Although this began with supporting the DEC PDP-11,RSX11-M, RSRS/E or IAS: they subsequently began to support COBOL on DEC's DECsystem-10 & DECSYSTEM-20. VAX support came later.
The specifications also permitted COBOL inserts and overrides: SB-5 could build an application that was all COBOL, yet only code the portions that varied from BCC's "vanilla" accounting packages.
Similar offerings A similar idea was done for the IBM mainframe world in the form of a series of application-program-generators from Dylakor Corporation. They were named DYL-250, DYL-260, DYL-270 & DYL-280. Dylakor was acquired by Computer Associates.
The specific syntax was different, but it had wider use, and - a mark of success and recognition in the industryThe dBase syntax was implemented by many competing companies, including Computer Associates - syntax-compatible implementations were released by a competitor."We have a version of Z-Writer (called ZWDYL) that uses the same syntax as DYL-280 (shown below). That means you can now replace DYL280 ..." "z/Writer's ZWDYL is an Alternative to CA DYL-260 for your mainframe."
Still another alternative was Peat Marwick Mitchell's PMM2170 application-program-generator package.PMM trademarked "SYSTEM 2170" , but the software was distributed as PMM 2170. Like the others, it supported COBOL inserts and overrides.
Extended integration Business Controls Corporation subsequently extended SB-5's feature set to provide support for System 1022, a product for the DECsystem-10 & DECSYSTEM-20; 1022's vendor also had a VAX/VMS (later OpenVMS) product, System 1032.
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