The best of all worlds.
The best of Clipper, Fox and our own ideas. OnCmd incorporates the best syntax and ideas from each.

Simple porting.
Clipper (code blocks, BEGIN SEQUENCE) and Fox (DEFINE WINDOW syntax, Index Tags) while improving on other things - our BROWSE is vastly superior to the TBROWSE in Clipper. Clipper and Fox code can be relatively easily ported to OnCmd without being restricted by the limits of those languages.

Standards.
Many things that are add-ons for our competitors are a part of the basic OnCmd package. For example, extensive bitmap support, ODBC connectivity, direct modem support, compression/decompression, encryption/decryption, TCP/IP and others.

Index server.
By off-loading the work required to handle indices to a local server, network traffic can be radically reduced resulting in faster overall performance.

Development tools written in OnCmd.
OnCmd is powerful enough to allow us to write our utilities and development tools in OnCmd without having to resort to another language. In those very rare cases where OnCmd cannot directly handle the requirements of an application, it is very easy to create a .DLL in C/C++ to interface with OnCmd.

Integrated SQL.
OnCmd offers two modes of SQL support. Like Fox, OnCmd can communicate with an SQL server by sending SQL statements and working with the result tables. Unlike Fox OnCmd can map most xBase commands onto their SQL equivalents. A programmer familiar with xBase could write an application using an SQL server with almost no knowledge of SQL itself.

Memory.
Memory can be allocated and worked with directly ( as in C ). Memory can also be allocated as shared so that multiple, separate OnCmd applications can all read from and write to the same block of memory.

Threads.
Functions within OnCmd can run independently of the main application ( multi-threading ). For example, the main application can be waiting for user input, while a background function is processing data.

Operating system specific support.
OnCmd takes advantage of options available under a specific platform. For example, the OS/2 version supports REXX, PEN, VOICE and SOM, while the WinNT version supports ToolBars, Treeviews AND multi-threading.

Strings can be handled as arrays.
For example to refer to the ‘e’ in ‘hello’ simply say str[2]. This makes a lot of string manipulations considerably simpler. Changing a character in the middle of a string is just a matter of a simple assignment statement as opposed to several complex string manipulations.

Time stamps.
A new class of data for storing date and time information ( down to the second ) in a single variable including several functions for working with this new type of data.

Scrollable windows.
OnCmd screens can be larger than their windows. For example a read template can extend beyond the edge of a window. OnCmd will automatically scroll over as the user tabs from field to field, or the user can use the mouse to click on scroll bars.