The wisdom of MultiValue developers

In spite of the fact that MultiValue programmers have generally had to pay more than $1,000 per user* for a complete set of database tools, they have stayed with the industry, in some cases for 30 years, selling well over 100,000 ports every year, in spite of paying 7 to 10 times what their brethren in other database environments pay.

Why has there been such fierce loyalty? Because these developers recognize how the MultiValue approach saves them time and improves the reliability of their product. These properties are externally measurable. MultiValue has one of the highest solution completion rates of any component part of the database or computing industry. More than 90% of MultiValue products begun in the last 30 years became successful solutions solving peoples problems. Comparably, the overall project completion rate for the software industry overall is a mere 50%.

But internally, MultiValue developers also "know" that they experience vast savings through sheer simplicity. Data in MultiValue solutions is less scattered and more readily verifiable than in relational database approaches. It also often has only 9% to 13% of the footprint and resource requirements of relational approaches. All of these translate into fewer human and machine errors. Similarly, the MultiValue language suite, including Basic, is an extremely natural language set, complete with array processing capabilities. All of these properties allow rapid development even in a hard-coded environment, but especially when 4GLs, and other productivity-enhancing tools are used.

Consider this story of just one developer producing highly customized application solutions, often in less than a week from start to finish, and perhaps you will understand just how dramatically more effective MultiValue developers are than their brethren in parallel industries.

 

* Based upon the published retail price for product and mandatory first year support, including database engine, commonly used 4GL tools, and Emulation or GUI interface tools. In many instances, specialized toolsets can more than double the per-user costs.