New York, NY, December 19, 2005—QSA ToolWorks, LLC today announced the release of Helix 6.0, its first foray into the realm of OS X software for the Macintosh® platform.

Helix is an application development and deployment environment that was one of the original thirty software products created for the Macintosh platform prior to its debut in 1984. It is comprised of seven principal applications:

• Helix RADE—the Rapid Application Development Environment, which is used to create relational database applications, called “collections.” RADE has two operating methods: Design Mode and User Mode. RADE may also be used to deploy an application for a single user (User Mode).
• Helix Engine—a User Mode access tool (runtime engine) that allows a Helix collection to be used to enter data, while keeping the structure of the collection from being modified. Engine is often distributed with Helix collections when designers produce demos of commercial collections.
• Helix Server—used to deploy a Helix collection to a workgroup in both local- and wide-area networks, using TCP/IP.
• Helix Client—used to visit a collection hosted by a Helix Server.
• Helix Utility—used to assure the data integrity of a Helix collection.
• Update Collection—used to update a Helix collection to the latest version of Helix and to assure a collection’s structural integrity
• Helix Developer Utility—a set of tools for the professional Helix application developer.

In its initial release, Helix 6 features a native OS X Helix Server and native OS X versions of Helix Utility and Update Collection. Native OS X versions of the other applications are still in development and will be rolled out over the next calendar year as they are completed. A Platform-independent Helix Client (PiHC) is also in the early stages of production. PiHC will allow Helix collections to be deployed to diverse workgroups using Macintosh, Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

In addition to its ability to allow Clients around the world to simultaneously access a Helix collection, Helix 6 introduces the ability to maintain databases larger than 2 GBytes and provides a host of new features (many of which are already familiar to Helix users as they were included in versions leading up to this release) and numerous performance enhancements and improvements.

Helix was created in 1983 by Jonathan Schneider, Larry Atkin, David Harmon and Daniel Cheifetz and originally produced by Odesta Corporation of Northbrook, Illinois in November of 1984.