Back in the early 1970's a visionary legend by the name of Richard Pick invented a unique database environment to solve inventory management problems for aircraft parts at TRW. Eventually this was re-engineered with a "virtual machine" approach and licensed to many hardware vendors who became known as "Pick Licensees".

When UNIX came to the forefront, a couple of other companies implemented compatible environments -- VMark developed Universe and Unidata developed their Unidata database environment. Eventually those two merged and have become known as the "U2 Databases", currently under the auspices of IBM. The company founded by Mr. Pick himself has recently merged with Omnis and has been renamed Raining Data. They call their current "Pick-based" database "D3".

In the mid-1980's a faction of people, wanting to create a sort of brand-unity, invented the "Multivalue" logo.

.

Whether you call it Raining Data, D3, Pick, Multivalue, Universe, Unidata or U2 -- its still the same great, flexible, fascinating development environment that we've come to love.

Copyright © 1992-2004, SJ+ Systems Assoc., Inc.