
The design process is unusually visual and object-based, revolving around icons and windows, in ways somewhat reminiscent of Prograph (see "Get Your Hands on Prograph" in TidBITS-312). In the Nucleus - Helix RADE (I’ll just call it Helix) is an environment for designing databases and then working with the data (inputting, viewing, querying and sorting, exporting, printing). Meanwhile, amazingly, the basic Helix product, now renamed Helix RADE (Rapid Application Development Environment), is free. Now it has been taken over by The Chip Merchant, which is run by a Helix enthusiast, and is being subjected to the nightmarish process of modernizing ancient legacy code, fixing memory leaks, and squashing bugs. The product was renamed again, as Helix Express, and more or less languished. It was ahead of its time, but was sent down an unproductive development path – basically, much time and effort went into creating a VAX-based server for Helix, whereupon personal computers suddenly got faster and cheaper than a VAX would ever be (can you say Mac IIfx?) – and the company split up in 1992. Helix (soon re-dubbed Double Helix) had been one of the earliest Mac products, dating back to 1984.

I had used Helix briefly in 1991, but then lost track of it. Then recently version 5, instead of improving core features, introduced some vastly higher pricing, and I wondered whether I hadn’t backed the wrong horse.Īround this time I learned, with surprise, that Odesta’s Helix was still alive. Version 3.0, dating from 1995, introduced relational database capabilities but subsequent versions offered so little (and cost so much) that I never upgraded further.
#Helix rade pro#
#1620: OS updates, AssistiveTouch for iOS shortcut palette, Photos album sharing bugįor many years, FileMaker Pro has been one of my standard tools for storing and retrieving structured information: with FileMaker, it’s easy to build yourself an address book or a guide to your music collection, and its thorough scriptability makes it splendid for exchanging data with other applications.#1621: Apple Q3 2022 financials, Slack's new free plan restrictions, which OS features do you use?.#1622: OS feature survey results, Continuity Camera webcam preview, OWC miniStack STX.
#Helix rade how to#

