THE REXX LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES its incorporation and introduces Officers and Board of Directors to members.

Research Triangle Park, NC - The Rexx Language Association announced today that it is now a Non-Profit Corporation.  The initial Officers and Board of Directors were introduced to RexxLA members attending the Ninth International Rexx Symposium here.  The following individuals have voluteered to serve on the Board of Directors for terms which vary from one to three years:

Tom Brawn
Ian Collier
Chip Davis
Mark Hessling
Les Koehler
Dave Martin
Larry Nomer
Roger Root

In addition, the following Board members have accepted one-year positions as Officers of the corporation:

President:              Chip Davis
Vice-President:         Mark Hessling
Secretary/Treasurer:    Dave Martin
Webmaster:              Tom Brawn

The announcement was made at the Ninth International Rexx Symposium held in Durham, North Carolina.

The Symposium filled three full days and addressed a wide range of Rexx topics.  The keynote speaker was the author of Classic Rexx and NetRexx, Mike Cowlishaw, an IBM Fellow from Hursley, England.  Mr. Cowlishaw discussed the latest developments in NetRexx, an easy-to-use alternative to the Java language.

Kurt Maerker and Ingo Holder from the IBM Rexx Development Team in Boeblingen, Germany demonstrated some of the enhancements which will be released later this year.  These include security features, a graphical user interface, dynamic HTML generation, and Agents and Agencies for developing client/server applications with TCP/IP Sockets.

Other speakers exhibited a wide variety of experience using Rexx to solve real-world problems.   Dr. Brian Marks of Formcroft Ltd. described his very compact implementation of an ANSI-compliant Rexx interpreter.  Tom Brawn from IBM discussed using NetRexx with IBM's Host On-Demand product.  David Both from Millennium Technology shared how he was using Rexx for complex LAN administration.  Les Koehler from IBM spoke of using Rexx to address Year 2000 issues, and on VMServe, a listserver written Rexx on VM/ESA.  John Blumel, Assistant Director of Medical Informatics at Tulane University Medical Center demonstrated Object-Oriented Database Programming using Rexx/SQL.  John Urbaniak of Aviar Inc. discussed developing major real-world speech-aware applications using Object Rexx and DB2.  Chip Davis of Aresti Systems explained how to easily turn your Classic Rexx code into Java code using NetRexx.

The Symposium program concluded with Ian Collier of Oxford University demonstrating how to have Fun with Rexx.  Ian also showcased the power and ease-of-use of Rexx: some of his most impressive examples were written on the flight over.

In addition to the above, there were product demonstrations by Aviar, IBM, and MicroEdge.  Aviar demonstrated its Computerized Maintenance Management System "Oz, The Ounce of Prevention System".  IBM provided a pre-release peek at the Object Rexx Developers' Workbench for NT, which facilitates the generation of a graphical frontend for Object Rexx programs.  MicroEdge demonstrated SlickEdit, truly a slick and impressive programmer's editor.

Indelible Blue, Outfitters for the Information Frontier, offered a wide variety of software titles, and provided much-appreciated projection equipment.

The diversity of the Symposium program demonstrated the power, versatility, and flexibility of the Rexx family of languages.

Plans for the 10th Rexx Symposium are already underway.  Mark your calendars now for the first week in May, 1999.