A tool for multiple managers

Canadian firm Pictorius tomorrow will release iNet Developer, its team-oriented intranet development tool designed to let multiple users create complex Web sites, manage intranet databases, and change content.

The tool lets content developers work directly on content while IS departments control the technology, thus cutting Web development costs and speeding deployment of intranet sites.

"This product lets the IS people do their piece--making sure they have interfaces to legacy systems, robustness, up time--and gets them out of places where business people are active," said Jesse Boudreau, Pictorius president. "For human resources, IS people don't know beans about staffing or hiring practices, so they're a bottleneck."

The product uses agents to help content managers create forms, image maps, discussion groups, group calendars, and site maps; it also generates HTML dynamically and lets content managers update content.

For IS managers, iNet Developer provides tools to build custom functionality into an intranet site.

iNet Developer, which supports Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) for linking to existing databases, includes Prograph CPX, Pictorius' visual programming language and development environment.

The product, now available for Windows 95 and Windows NT, requires a 486 or higher processor, 16 MB of RAM, 40MB of hard disk space and, optionally, a web server that supports the CGI-Win 1.0 specification. A Macintosh version is due next month.