Jeff Woods wrote ...

>>There used to be a tool by Tymlabs that would allow you to compile
>>"The C word" code into an executable
>
>That product is called PDQ and has been dead a long time, although I
>believe a tweak was made to the code to get it to work on MPE/iX 5.0 for
>some customer who was still using it then (assuming I am remembering
>correctly).  PDQ generated a CM program from Quiz (or was it Quick?)   
source
>which would run quite a bit faster than the interpreter did at the time.
>As I understand it, it was never updated to keep up with changes to the
>product and Tymlabs ceased sales of the product as part of the   
settlement
>with Cognos.  I suppose Cognos wanted to protect their customer license
>assets.  They seem to have succeeded in doing so fairly well thus far.
>
>I suspect that Cognos would be just as passionate now about protecting
>their assets as they ever were.  Why shouldn't they be?

PDQ compiled only Quiz (the report writer component) source into PROG   
files. It did provide a measurable performance improvement on the series   
70 on which I tested it (so looong ago :-) but I doubt that this would be   
true on a current big 3k. Lost in the compile process were run time   
prompting and the ability to apply run time overrides, both useful   
features of Quiz. There were no corresponding compilers for either   
Qdesign and Quick (the screen program builder and handler) or Qtp (the   
volume processor).

Most of the argument from Cognos was based on the fact that Quiz syntax   
(which PDQ obviously had to use) was proprietary and copyrighted by   
Cognos. As Jeff notes Tymlabs discontinued the product.

John Pickering
Toronto