VisualAge Smalltalk
An industrial strength multi-platform Smalltalk development system originally developed by IBM in the early 90's, commonly known as VA Smalltalk in the OS/2 world, VAST in the Microsoft Windows and UNIX spheres and inside IBM often simply as "visualage". The company had in the 80's realised the need for a rapid development system with a more modern and standardised language for application programming (as opposed to systems programming), that scaled across platforms and offered support for concepts like object-orientation and dynamic typing. After trialling Enfin Smalltalk internally for a few years the company settled on the language and started developing their own system that supported anything from PC's to mainframes from the same codebase, with the end result being VA Smalltalk.
IBM VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise 6.0 is the development tool for the Smalltalk language. It was also used by IBM to develop all other VisualAge tools.
IBM will transfer VA Smalltalk to Instantiations Inc. It was announced on 2005-04-27 that Instantiations will develop, market and support a new VisualAge-compatible version of Smalltalk called VA Smalltalk. Initially, Instantiations plans to enhance the VisualAge Smalltalk technology with many improvements including a modern user interface provided by its VA Assist product, new controls, and a preview of new "Migration Readiness" capabilities from Synchrony Systems' Software Modernization Technology - SMT. Longer range technical plans are under development.
The last IBM version is 6.01 and it can be upgraded to 6.03. The product line was sold to Instantiations, who sold and supported the 6.x branch for a while including the OS/2 version but have since dropped any OS/2 related development.
Add on systems
- Tenacity - Persistent Object Database - Freeware - Current.
- TORest - Regular Expressions Parser - Freeware - Current.
- TOScript - Smalltalk scripting interpreter - Freeware - Current.
- Totally Objects Readability - Source formatter - Freeware - Current.
- Totally Objects SocketSet - TCP/IP sockets library - Commercial - Current.
- Visibility Color - Enhancement for the report generator - Commercial - Current.
- VOSS - Database/transaction/object persistence system - Commercial/open source - Discontinued.
- WindowBuilder Pro - Simplifies the creation of user interfaces.
VA Smalltalk source code snippets, archives and collections
- Application Prerequisites - Replaces the Prerequisites windows in VA Smalltalk By Matt Sims/Totally Objects.
- Date and Time Editor - A small piece of VisualAge Smalltalk code that allows you to place date and time editors in a normal VA Smalltalk window. By Matt Sims/Totally Objects.
- JPEG Displayer - Demonstrates how to use JPEG images, requires VA Smalltalk 4 or up - By David Pennington/Totally Objects.
- Text Widget Hyperlink - A small piece of code that shows how to use a Text Widget as a hyperlink. By Matt Sims/Totally Objects.
- Vastgoodies.com - A reprisotory of VA Smalltalk functions run by Adriaan van Os, only a subset of these will work with the OS/2 version of VisualAge Smalltalk 6.x
- WebConnection File Attachment Adds file attachment capacity to the WebConnection part in VisualAge Smalltalk - By David Pennington/Totally Objects.
Version
- 1994:
- VisualAge V2.0
- 1995:
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Standard for OS/2, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Professional for OS/2, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Distributed for OS/2, AIX, Windows, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Reports for OS/2, Windows, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Database for ORACLE, for OS/2, AIX, Windows, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Communications/Transactions for OS/2, AIX, Windows, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, IMS Connection for OS/2, for AIX, Windows, V3.0
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, AS/400 Connection, for OS/2, Windows, V3.0
- 1998:
- VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise 4.5
- 1999:
- VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise, Versión 5.0
- 2000: IBM VisualAge Smalltalk 5.52
- Latest Version: IBM VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise 6.02
Links
- IBM Software - VisualAge Smalltalk - Product Overview
- Instantiations Smalltalk Products Home Page
- IBM Newsgroup
- VA Smalltalk Discussion Group - For VisualAge and VA Smalltalk users.
- VASTGoodies.com - A repository of VA Smalltalk classes, some work with or can be ported to VisualAge 6.x
- Info on VisualAge Smalltalk from Boris G. Chr. Shingarov.
Licence
Discontinued commercial software. Version 6: IBM. Trial version is available.
Documentation
- Version 3.0
- Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with IBM Smalltalk, Version 3.0 (SC34-4491)
- IBM Smalltalk User's Guide, Version 3.0 (SC34-4536)
- IBM Smalltalk Programmer's Reference, Version 3.0 (SC34-4493)
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Getting Started, Version 3.0 (SC34-4535)
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, User′s Guide, Version 3.0 (SC34-4518)
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, User′s Reference, Version 3.0 (SC34-4519)
- VisualAge for Smalltalk, Programmer′s Guide to Building Parts for Fun and Profit, Version 3.0 (SC34-4496)
- Version 5.5
Publications
- IBM Redbooks
- GG24-3903 - Smalltalk Portability: A Common Base
- GG24-3946 - VisualAge: Concepts and Features
- GG24-4227 - Object-Oriented Application Development with VisualAge in a Client/Server Environment
- GG24-4244 - VisualAge: Building GUIs for Existing Applications
- VisualAge for Smalltalk Handbook, Volume 1: Fundamentals (SG24-4828-00)
- VisualAge for Smalltalk Handbook, Volume 1: Features (SG24-2219-00)
- Books
- David N. Smith: IBM Smalltalk: The Language - Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company 1995, ISBN 080530908X
- Dan Shafer: IBM Smalltalk Programming for Windows & OS/2 - Prima 1995, ISBN 1-55958-749-0
- Michel Brassard; William Nadal: VisualAge and Transaction Processing in a Client/Server Environment - Prentice Hall 1996, ISBN 0-13-460874-7
- Skublics; Klimas: Smalltalk with Style - Prentice Hall 2002, ISBN 0-13-165549-3
- Grady Booch: Object Oriented Design with Applications - 1990, ISBN 0-8053-0091-0
- Brad Cox: Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach - Addison Wesley 1987, ISBN 0-201-10393-1