Editing IBM Informix-4GL (section)

==History==
The Informix-4GL project was started in 1985, with Chris Maloney as chief architect. Roy Harrington was in charge of the related [[Informix]] Turbo (later renamed Online) engine, which bypassed the "cooked" file system and instead used "raw" disk access. It was based on software developed in 1983 by '''FourGen Software Technologies''', which were based in [[Seattle]].  The bundled product was presented by Informix as ‘’’Forms’’’ and ‘’’Menu’’’ until 1996. This ‘’’Rapid Application Development’’’ product, marketed as '''[[FourGen CASE Tools]]''', could access the user’s choice of ‘’’Informix’’’ and/or IBM’s [[DB2]] databases.  Another flavor of Informix programming-tool was produced, called "NewEra", which supported [[object-oriented programming]] and a level of code-compatibility with Informix-4GL.

Informix was acquired by IBM in April 2001.<ref name=IFXaqdByIBM2001NYT>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]]
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/business/technology-ibm-will-acquire-database-unit-of-informix-for-1-billion.html
|title=I.B.M. Will Acquire Database Unit of Informix for $1 Billion
|author=Barnaby J. Feder  |date=April 25, 2001  |access-date=October 25, 2022}}</ref> Despite its age, Informix-4GL is still widely used to develop business applications, and a sizable market exists around it due to its popularity.<ref name=PopularCW>{{cite news |newspaper=[[Computerworld]]
  |url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/2678533/4gl-tools-company-takes-on-java---net.amp.html
  |title=4GL tools company takes on Java, .Net
  |author=Paul Krill |date=June 13, 2003 |access-date=October 25, 2022}}</ref> With accounting being an inherently text based activity, it is often chosen for its purely text-based interface to optimize data entry efficiency. These tools are available today on major flavors of [[UNIX]] and [[Red Hat Linux]] and [[SUSE Linux]] operating systems; the FOURGEN business was later acquired in 2002, by www.gillan.com.