My company runs a database product created by Tominy Inc. that was called DataBase Plus or Mach 1. It was a cross platform product that ran on PC's, SCO Unix, AIX, NCR, AT&T 6386, IBM Series 1, possibly IBM S36, DEC VAX, DEC Ultrix, and Novell as well as others. I believe Tominy is of business. The last sighting I've had was in 2005. They were located in Cincinnati, they were related to a company called Sentinel Computer Crop and were probably connected to a company called MB Computing. I have collected some conflicting information, but I have not located anyone who is familiar with the company.

One of Tominy's large customers was School Book Fairs, who was located in Columbus, OH and later moved to Florida. They ran the product on the VAX platform. I believe Tominy also had a fairly large customer out west who sold natural gas. Tominy also sold a product called DataBasic, which allowed you to access their database from basic programs. In addition they had a product that helped in the conversion of legacy COBOL code to an Oracle based system. I believe they were located, or at least had offices, in Maryland or DC when they were selling this product. At one time Tominy was located in Phoenx, and may have been briefly owned by a foreign company.

When we purchased our original licenses in 1991 there was some discussion about escrowing the source code for the database engine in the event the company ever went out of business or became bankrupt. We have some interest in obtaining a license for a newer platform than the ones we are currently running.

We have been running this product on and off for over 20 years. We would be interested in hearing from anyone who worked with or for Tominy or who has information about the state of the source code escrow.

Thanks for reading.

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Teresa

Hi, I have also been trying to locate them without success. We have actually worked for customers of theirs, cleaning up some things and in one case completing a COBOL modernization. If anyone knows what happened to them, or has contact information, please let us know, thanks!

Is this the same company that was headquartered in Maryland, with offices in Cincy, Phoenix, and San Diego?

I took a look at the internet way-back machine, and this outfit's last updated webpage was in 2004... (after this, you've got redirect links) Their contacts page has names that might be able to help. They were also a subsidiary of AT&T.

ref Application Transformation and Data Re-engineering Main Page

Thanks. The trail had gone cold, but I think there's some information here that can help me.

Tominy was founded in Cincinnati in the 1970s. The company's original core technology - DataBase Plus and Mach 1 - was actively developed through the 1980s, but by about 1990 was on the downhill side. By that point in time, the company was trying to find other avenues to survive.

Sentinel Computer Corp. was a third-party company manufacturing hardware that used Tominy's software.

MB Computing acquired Tominy in the mid 1980s, then sold it, sometime after 1990, back to one of Tominy's original owners.

It was probably in the late 1990s that Tominy was acquired by a Maryland company, hence the contact information seen in the site on the Wayback machine.

My company's software was based on the Tominy's database. We acquired the source several years ago. I have since re-written the program. We can help you migrate to the new version or perhaps explore other options.

Computer Services Company
ricardo@smartcsc.com
915-996-1602

recently, i posted a reply to this topic. it is not here now.

must replies be "approved" before they are visable?

thanks

di

As far as I know, unless you said something spammish..., All replies are accepted.

Well, it has been a while. . .

A bit of Tominy trivia - where the name Tominy came from. Once upon a time, the founder of Tominy went looking for a company name that could be used in all of the states. All of the names he wanted to use that had "database" in them were used somewhere so the founder (one Tom Richley - whose wife's nickname was Iny) made a contraction of both their names giving Tominy.

Tom was also a co-founder of Cincom the inventors of Total, Supra, Ultra, Mantis, etc.

The original database plus (or database+) was written at/for a client site. At that time it was known as CDPS (Champion Distributed Processing System) and when Tominy was founded a more marketable name was wanted. Tom came to work with us on a contract basis with the agreement that if it worked well, he/Tominy would have the right to market and enhance the software.

Fortunately, i was picked to be the lead developer for this adventure<g>. The target for the distributed systems was to be the IBM Series/1 - their early entry to the then quite successful mini-computer market. When we bought into the Series/1, it had no operating system, so we had to write everything from the ground (it had i/o drivers basically) up as well as the rest of that environment (file handler, print handler, screen handler, etc, and all of the utilities needed to support the environment). As no one knew anything about the Series/1, we implemented a prototype on MVS so the programming staff could code/test. Then we learned how to work on the Series/1.

Thanks to Hurricane Katrina most all of my "paper stuff" went to sea. . . Fortunately, my memory still works<g>. If i might be able to answer any questions, i would welcome them.

di