How Data Model Designer turned into DB-Examiner
My customer base, in Brazil, was growing fast. One of the first customers, Banco Itau, one of the biggest banks in South America, wanted me to develop a version to support XDB, a DB2-like product which run on PCs. It was very similar to DB2, but it had minor differences and I needed support from its distributor.
XDB happened to be distributed by a local company called INDABA, owned by a shareholder of a company I used to work for, SCI Sistemas, Computacao e Informatica. The moment he saw Data Model Designer he sensed an opportunity for business, and he proposed to me to sell it in the US. According to him, he had a friend who had recently sold his company -Johnson Systems- to Computer Associates, and would help in turning this product into something huge. I agreed, since I had nothing to lose.
FolderI developed a version of Data Model Designer for XDB, and I traveled to the US to show it at an XDB expo in Maryland (Figure 1, Click to enlarge). XDB President was skeptical of the product. But we run it on XDB Systems prod database, and it show a physical DB full of problems. Their DBA was really worried that his boss would see the reports.
We also showed it at US Customs, which was one of the largest Datacom users in the United States. If it worked there it would be a proof of the reliability of the software.
I was REALLY scared. After all, that was the FIRST time DMD was going to be executed in the US, on a REAL and HUGE database. But everything worked "like a clock", and in a couple of minutes after running the IDEAL program and downloading the results to the PC they were seeing an update graphical display of their data model, with some reports of inconsistencies. US Customs people were stunned.
Everybody left the meeting convinced that Data Model Designer was a great product, so Data Model Designer was transformed in DB-Examiner and brought to the US market.