About Clarion

Clarion is a 4GL programming language, developed by SoftVelocity (formerly TopSpeed Corporation).  This document aims to address what Clarion is, where it came from, what it offers, and who uses it.

Timeline…

  • 1995 – Clarion for DOS is released.
  • April 1992 – Clarion merges with JPI (founders of Borland), to form what will eventually become “Topspeed Corporation”.
  • January 1995 – Clarion for Windows version 1.0 is released, featuring a brand new IDE which can produce Win16 EXE and DLL binaries to run under Windows 3.x.
  • September 1995 – Clarion for Windows 1.5 is released, which can create native Win32 binaries for Windows 95 / NT 4.
  • June 1996 – Clarion for Windows 2 is released, introducing classic object orientation to the Clarion language, including inheritance, encapsulation, virtual methods and overloading.
  • December 1997 – Clarion 4 is released, introducing a new template set called “ABC” (Application Builder Classes), which generated OOP code (as opposed to procedural code which had been generated until this time).
  • May 1998 – Clarion 5 is released.
  • August 2000 – Clarion 5.5 is released.
  • November 2003 – Clarion 6 is released, adding direct support for pre-emptive threading.
  • April 2009 – Clarion 7 is released, featuring a new IDE (based on the SharpDevelop IDE).

The Present…

Independent software developers and corporate developers have similar needs: to increase productivity to meet demands for new database applications. Clarion is a data-centric Rapid Application Development Environment with an emphasis on code generation and reusable metadata to quickly create “corporate quality” applications to manage business data.

Clarion is the foundation of the SoftVelocity product line and anchors the company’s reputation for fast, efficient database application development. In addition to the Clarion 4GL language, the Clarion product also includes both a C++ and Modula-2 compiler (developed by JPI, founders of Borland). All of the languages share a common optimizer, and they can be mixed within a single application.

Unlike most other tools based on general purpose languages, Clarion has always and exclusively been designed for database applications. The Clarion language is a powerful fourth generation language, easy to learn. It is object oriented, and Clarion contains its own data-centric object framework. The benefit to the developer is that they can extend the default application into anything they imagine, because the tools and the language are powerful enough.

Clarion produces high performance, commercial, mission critical quality, file server or client server systems, thin-client or web enabled software with a fraction of the effort required by other tools. Clarion can create 32-bit programs for Windows and the Internet / Intranet / Extranet, as well as .Net applications, ASP.Net / PHP / Compact Forms applications from a single repository!  Clarion also features an integrated Data Dictionary Designer, with native drivers to many database formats (Oracle, MS SQL, Informix, Btrieve, Pervasive SQL,…ASCII, DOS/Basic, xBase) and with integrated powerful multi-user databases (Topspeed, Clarion).  These features set Clarion apart from other development platforms.

The application generator is language neutral. Templates can create code in any language, and the templates are able to access metadata stored in the data dictionary. The Clarion development platform can produce either native code Win32 applications (using Clarion 7), or .Net applications (using Clarion.Net). The Clarion.Net compiler produces 100% verifiable .Net assemblies. This language-neutral, platform independent environment enables Clarion code to be mixed with any other .NET-supported language (such as C# and VB .NET) on any .NET-supported platform.

In addition to Win32 and .Net, Clarion can also produce ASP.Net applications, Compact Forms applications (for mobile devices), PHP applications, and an independent company has even begun work on a Java template library!

Clarion is clearly embracing the future, without losing touch with its roots.

Who uses Clarion?

Below are a few examples and testimonials from companies using systems developed with Clarion.  Please contact us should you wish to add a company to this list.

Top Clarion Development Companies

(Coming soon…)

A bit of History…

TopSpeed Corporation was formed in 1992 by the merger of Jensen and Partners, International with Clarion Software Corporation. The two companies were perfectly suited for each other.

Jensen and Partners, International (JPI) had spun out from Borland International in 1987 when Niels Jensen and the entire language development team left in a disagreement over compiler quality. Jensen had previously founded Borland in Copenhagen in 1979 to produce software for the emerging microcomputer market.

Jensen earned his plaque in the computer hall of fame by perfecting the integrated development environment-the underlying framework of all modern software development tools. Drawing on his expertise with word processors and menuing systems, Jensen envisioned a Pascal programming environment consisting of tightly integrated high quality components. Although, the University of California at San Diego had previously combined a Pascal compiler with a source code editor, the results were disappointing. Jensen believed that an intuitive and efficient user interface was the key to improving programmer productivity.

Borland’s first hit product, Turbo Pascal, advanced the state of the art of programming tools in much the same way that Lotus 1-2-3 refined computer spreadsheets. Like Lotus 1-2-3, Turbo Pascal proved to be enormously popular, selling 300,000 copies in less than two years.

Jensen’s team quickly followed that success with SideKick – another smash hit. In the meantime, the team moved to London and began writing compilers for C, an emerging language standard, and Modula-2, the successor language to Pascal. The three compilers were very similar. So a new design was proposed splitting each compiler into a “front end” and a common language independent “back end” that would produce optimized machine code. In 1989, this approach yielded the TopSpeed line of compilers which proved superior to all other compiler technology at the time.

Clarion Software Corporation was formed in 1982 by Bruce Barrington, also founder of HBO & Company. HBO, a $700 million health services company, had been named for Barrington and his cofounders, Walter Huff, Dick Owens.

The technology that produced HBO’s phenomenal growth was a hospital information system built on a proprietary operating system that Barrington developed for the Four Phase line of computers. In 1970, Four Phase, Inc. had introduced the first desktop computer. Barrington, then a software development manager for McDonnell Douglas Corporation purchased the second unit shipped.

In 1973, Barrington left McDonnell Douglas and began writing Medpro on his dining room table. Nine months later, the Medpro hospital information system was installed and fully operational in a hospital in Galesburg, Illinois. In that period of time, Barrington and Owens had written an operating system, a compiler, a hospital information system, and all related documentation and training materials. Ten years later, the Medpro system was installed in more than 300 hospitals making HBO the second largest computer services company in the health care industry.

In 1982, Barrington founded Clarion Software Corporation to apply the rapid application development technology he had created for HBO to the new IBM PC. This was a natural step because the PC was architecturally similar to Four Phase computers which also used memory mapped video displays.

For 3 1/2 years, Barrington’s development team worked on a comprehensive set of tools for building commercial quality PC software. In 1986, Clarion Version 1.0 was introduced at the spring Comdex in Atlanta. Two years later, at another spring Comdex, Clarion introduced Clarion Professional Developer Version 2.0. This landmark product included Designer, the first of the template driven application generators that have come to characterize the Clarion product line.

(Aside: Clarion is historically notable as being one of the first computer languages for MS-DOS that provided a 4GL screen painter, report writer and native database access.)

By 1990, Barrington knew that the Clarion product line required a major infusion of new technology. Clarion developers were the most productive in the industry. But the programs they created were big and slow. Clarion needed a new compiler.

Barrington learned that TopSpeed compilers represented the state-of-art. Better yet, the “Back end” of a TopSpeed compiler for the Clarion language was already written. In the summer of 1990, Clarion licensed the TopSpeed compiler technology from JPI and began writing a new compiler. This project drew the two companies tightly together, culminating in a merger two years later.

< /Fine Print >
- Page last updated 17 August 2009.
- Feel free to refer clients to this page, using the direct link www.strategyonline.co.za/about-clarion
- Content on this page published with permission from Alfred Blaho.
- “The TopSpeed Legend” is copyrighted by TopSpeed Corporation.