Software is the real key to any computer solution. Choosing hardware with sufficient capacity to perform the work you require is an important step in the overall selection process, but without software that actually solves your problems, your investment in computer hardware is worthless.

R5 has been designed to not only solve your business problems quickly and efficiently, but also to maximise your overall return on investment in a total computer solution. How?

For the technically minded, R5 has a powerful Relational Data Base Management System(RDBMS) at its core, which has evolved specifically to solve business problems. Originally developed for the US Department of Defence to track helicopter parts over 20 years ago, it was the first implementation of a RDBMS on a mini-computer.

With such a large technological lead, and continual enhancement and refinement, it is not surprising that the underlying Data Model and RDBMS is generally recognised as the most efficient available.

This leading edge technology is coupled with a powerful Fourth Generation Language, or 4GL, designed to optimise the many benefits of the underlying RDBMS. Stamina R5 was written using these 4GL tools, resulting in a completely integrated application environment that offers you a number of significant advantages.

Training costs are greatly reduced, with all systems and screen forms following a consistent set of rules. Once you have learnt to operate one screen, you have mastered the entire system!

Full online documentation is available at any point during processing with the touch of a button. This is like having an intelligent assistant with the user manual on hand, turned to the right page, whenever you need help or assistance.

One of the most important design rules embodied within the Stamina product is, "If you maintain it, you shouldn’t have to remember it!" Extensive cross references and alternate access paths mean that you don’t have to memorise hundreds or thousands of computer codes. Instead you can access a FiND screen to quickly locate the information you need with a single keystroke from within any process.

You can also suspend screen processing at any point, perform another task, then resume your initial process. For example, you could be mid way through entering a stock receipt, put this task on hold to answer a telephone account enquiry, then resume processing the receipt from the same point at which you were interrupted when your call is finished.

Data entry errors are minimised through the highly interactive nature of the entry forms. Extensive validations are performed on each field, such as range checking, existence on associated files, numeric type matching etc, as each field is entered, catching errors at the source rather than the end of the day.

For the security conscious, you can control access to information right down to the level of individual fields within a form, hiding information from sight, allowing information to be seen but disabling changes, protecting fields with passwords or allowing full access to view or modify a field at your descretion.

This access can be controlled to the level of individual users and terminals, or at a higher level if required, to simply ensure that operators only see processes on menus that they actually have a need to use.

The Stamina menus themselves can be operated in the usual "by the numbers" technique. Once you are familiar with the system you can by-pass the menus, within your security constraints, and move quickly from process to process, with function key access to standard processes as required.

Should you need additional reports or enquiries not found within the standard Stamina system, the powerful RDBMS Query Language Interface allows you to issue plain English commands to obtain the information you require, providing you with endless possibilities. For example, a valid query would be:

SORT THE CUSTOMERS WITH A BALANCE OVER "$5000" BY SALESMAN SHOWING SALESMAN CUSTOMERS.NAME TELEPHONE.NUMBER TOTAL BALANCE LAST.PAYMENT.DATE

The intent of this query is plain, and so obvious that the system will actually produce a list of all customers that currently owe more than $5,000. The list will be sorted by salesman, and show the salesman, customers name and telephone number, current balance of their account and the date they last made a payment. A total value for all of these debts will be shown at the bottom of the list.

Though this is a trivial example, it demonstrates the real computing power that Stamina puts in your hands. You do not have to be a "computer expert" in order to get the computer to do some useful work.

Nor do you have to be an expert to educate the system as to the way your business works. You can simply turn off questions or whole systems that are not appropriate to your environment, and parameter tables establish how the various systems are to operate and interact on a day to day basis in order to mimic your current operations.

If you have multiple companies, locations or departments, Stamina also allows you to mimic the various ways you may look at each of these accounting entities. You could establish multiple views, or groups, to correspond to, say, a normal company/division/department structure, another to group similar departments from multiple companies, and yet another corresponding to geographic or regional boundaries.

Of course, all of these views can be used in any of the Stamina systems, greatly extending the analytic, enquiry and reporting capabilities of each.

Should changes be required to the basic Stamina system, a technique called DYNAMIC BINDING allows customization to be preformed without making changes to the underlying system core. This approach is somewhat unique in that it provides you with the benefits of an individually tailored system, while maintaining access to all future upgrades to the base system.

The Stamina 4GL tools are provided with the system, allowing you to write your own systems or enhancements with the same look, feel and facilities as the rest of the Stamina system. If you already have existing systems that need to be integrated with Stamina, this can also be achieved with a minimum of effort.

This type of integration is greatly simplified by the open systems approach adopted within Stamina, and also the range of hardware platforms that support the RDBMS, from PC’s through to mainframes supporting thousands of online terminals. A wide range of popular operating systems is also supported, including MS-DOS, Unix, VMS, VM, or you can also use the RDBMS in a native mode to control your hardware.

With the level of application portability, you may be able to outgrown your initial hardware configuration, but you will never outgrow your investment in Stamina.

You can also easily integrate Stamina with other industry standard products. For example, a spreadsheet can directly extract information from the Stamina database, information can be exported for inclusion in a Word Processing document or for manipulation by other PC or mainframe based products.

If your business is seeking to achieve a Quality Assurance Management System to ISO9001 or ISO9002, then Stamina is the obvious, proven choice. Stamina integrates with 75% of ISO9001 and 70% of ISO9002. Areas such as Contract Review, Supplier Assessment, Instrument Control, Document Control, Process Control, Statistical Techniques, Non-Conformances and Corrective Actions, Training and Quality Records are just some of the areas where a total software solution can be provided.

The concept of Quality Assurance (QA) has also been extended with Automated Test facilities available for some industries, allowing to offer your customers a superior service that far exceeds International Standards. Most modern test instruments can be integrated into the system with relative ease, and greatly increased accuracy.

In the final analysis, Stamina provides you with a TOTAL solution that is uniquely flexible, extremely powerful, highly efficient and simple to use. The following sections will give you some indication of how Stamina will solve your problems and put you back in total control.