From: Chad Hill/Len Fernandes                                William Tseng
      Hill Communications                                    Confluent, Inc.
      510-945-7910 or 510-538-8916                           415-764-1000

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (January 9, 1995) -- A multipurpose drawing tool for Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) was announced today by Confluent, Inc.

Called Visual Thought 1.1 for Solaris, the object-based drawing program is designed to help software developers easily create software diagrams adhering to a variety of popular methodologies, including Booch, Rumbaugh, and Entity-Relationship.

As a diagramming tool, Visual Thought's most basic feature is the ability to draw shapes and rubberbanding connections between shapes.

Users can drag-and-drop objects from palettes containing over 80 symbols from a variety of methodologies to quickly craft software diagrams. Symbols include those for the Booch, Rumbaugh (OMT), and Entity-Relationship methodologies, but as a general diagramming tool, Visual Thought also includes symbols for other purposes, such as standard flowchart shapes for ISO-9000 applications.

Unlike typical CASE tools, Visual Thought allows users to mix and match methodologies or create custom methodologies simply by placing the desired shapes or shape configurations into a Visual Thought palette, which can then be made available site-wide for drag-and-drop drawing.

Visual Thought was designed to be powerful, yet extremely easy to use. Its palettes support drag-and-drop. Objects update while being dragged, a feature called "live" WYSIWYG that increases drawing productivity. 100-level multiple undo and redo makes it easy to recover from mistakes, or to play "what-if" games with drawings. An Inspector dialog permits live, active examination and editing of objects.

Visual Thought also offers integration with documentation tools and can export diagrams to Encapsulated PostScript files. These files can then be imported into documentation tools such as FrameMaker and Interleaf. (Many Visual Thought customers currently use the product in this way to support documentation efforts.)

Compared to typical CASE tools, Visual Thought is much less expensive ($695 for node-locked and $1295 for floating licenses), is designed for drawing diagrams, and is much more flexible. For example, Visual Thought doesn't force users to rigidly adhere to a methodology and its details before giving back useful information, such as a software diagram. And since Visual Thought does not enforce syntactic rules on diagrams, users are free to mix-and-match methodologies or even create custom methodologies. Because of its emphasis on the graphical portion of a design (the software diagrams), Visual Thought encourages concentration on the architecture of a software project, not the details.

While Visual Thought is not a comprehensive CASE tool because it does not provide traditional features such as code generation or reverse engineering, Visual Thought focuses on one aspect of CASE -- the rapid production of software diagrams that increase communication between members of a software development group.

Visual Thought was developed with the Galaxy Application Environment from Visix Software, based in Reston, VA.

Visual Thought began shipping last fall for SunOS 4.1. Shortly after the Solaris 2.x product ships, Visual Thought will be available on HP PA-RISC machines running HP-UX.

Confluent, Inc. * 400 Spear Street, Suite 207 * San Francisco, CA 94105
800-780-2838 and 415-764-1000 tel * 415-764-1008 fax * info@confluent.com

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