Enable/OA

An integrated office software application for DOS that was in its day noted for the strength of its database system, which in later versions is fully programmable and the system was frequently used more as a database development system than as a office application. Originally released as ENABLE (always spelled all caps) but with version 3 the system was renamed "Enable/OA" with the OS standing for "Office Automation" and an OS/2 version was introduced, however that was not a port but rather a version of the DOS executable that supported OS/2 networking.

With version 4 (Four) the program was ported to OS/2 and Xenix, and gained multi-tasking and multi-user capabilities on all systems. The OS/2 version is more or less a straight port of the DOS version and appears to offer little in way of improvements over that version apart from being able to use larger memory.

Version

 * ENABLE v2 for DOS introduced in 1987
 * Enable/OA 4.50 Corrective 616 for DOS (English version)
 * Enable/OA 5.0 for DOS and OS/2 (1995, German version)

Known issues

 * Version 4 is prone to database index corruption, for a single user installation this is not a huge problem, re-indexing once a month or so seems to do the trick, or simply reindexing after you notice errors. However in multi-user mode this is a much more common occurrence and many users have set their systems up to reindex every day after working hours. The company behind the product apparently issued a fix for this bug, but because this happened just before it folded and was only issued to select customers, the fix never entered the more common BBS or FTP file archives and appears to be lost in time.

Publications

 * Walter R. Bruce: Using ENABLE: All Versions Through ENABLE/OA 4.0 - 1991, ISBN 978-0880227018 (note this later version at over 1400 pages is more than twice the size of the earlier one)
 * Walter R. Bruce: Using ENABLE - 1989, ISBN 978-0880224000
 * Charles Spezzano, Rick Mertens and Mike Wiedmann: Mastering Enable/OA: Office Automation Software - 1989, ISBN 978-0471507499

Publisher

 * The Software Group, Saratoga County, NY, USA.
 * Enable Software