were stored was named LINC interactive or LINC Development Environment (LDE). Extensive reliance on terminal "screen painting" (i.e. "mocking"-up a CRT data-entry screen) was used to assist system definition. e.g. to define a components database attributes (name, length, alpha(numeric), validation rules, etc., and for defining report layouts). In the early 1990s, a new PC-based tool for developing LINC specifications was released, the LINC Development Assistant (LDA). LDA was written in a mixture of Smalltalk and C++ rather than the LINC 4GL (the latter of which was not intended to run on a personal computer). From version 17, it was intended that all development be done with LDA. Now LINC is known as Unisys Enterprise Application Environment (EAE) and can generate COBOL code for Burroughs & Sperry mainframes, Microsoft Windows, and various Unix and Linux platforms. It will also generate GUI front-end clients in Java Visual Basic 6 clients Active Server Pages Web services for Microsoft IIS ASP.NET VB.NET in addition to compiling generated code and deploying databases to correspond with the specification. Databases supported include Burroughs DMSII, Sperry RDMS, Oracle database and Microsoft SQL Server.Recent Update:Unisys is replacing EAE with Unisys Agile Business Suite' (AB Suite). The LDL language is promoted to LDL+, with new object-oriented features. The Development environment makes use of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE. The Model Driven approach is extended with a UML based Class Diagram integrated with all the source code of the solution, in such a way that a round trip update is achieved. Changes in the Business Rules can result in changes in the UML representation and vice versa. AB Suite 4.0 makes use of Visual Studio 2012 and integrates with Team Foundation Server 2012. AB Suite generates to either a .NET environment or a ClearPath MCP environment. With AB Suite a developer has to write less code than in a traditional C# or Java environment. History LINC was originally developed by two New Zealand computer programmers (Gil Simpson and Peter Hoskins) while working in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s. It was first developed exclusively for operation with a single model of Burroughs computer system comprising a totally integrated system of: B1000 hardware, MCP operating system, COBOL application programming language, WFL job control language, DMS II database management system, NDL Network Definition Language MT983/ET1100 CRT (user terminal), etc. The LINC system created 3rd GL COBOL (application), DMSII (database definition), NDLII (network description),