A Manager's Guide To Integrated Software;

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SYMPHONY

Lotus Development, Corp., 161 First St., Cambridge, MA 02142, (617) 253-9150, Min. memory: 320K RAM, Retail: $695

Spreadsheet-based, as opposed to the modularity of most of the other integrated packages, Symphony is tied into one gigantic ledger sheet on whose larger than 2-million-rectangle surface all five components are laid out. You can't load files from various sources, but must stick to one worksheet -- as large as it may be -- at a time. This means that you can't intermingle material on the screen from two or more data disks, as you can in other systems, or even from a second Symphony file on the same data disk.

As restricting as that may be, the immense area nonetheless allows third-party software writers to supply particular applications that fit onto the sheet, where they then can tap into the host's considerable computing abilities. Ironically, one such program-within-a-program teaches you how to use Symphony. And any help you can get is welcome: Symphony can juggle more than 30 windows at once, venting areas of the worksheet like the calderas of a volcano. The command structure used to probe among them is formidable, if followable, and utilizes the resources of a PC keyboard (to which Lotus wisely supplies a fold-out map) several times over.

Changing work environments is outstandingly simple. With a single keystroke, on-screen work that may be a spreadsheet can instantly be integrated into a database or a text document without leaving the open window. Unseen by the user, Symphony ingeniously moves data out of the way when more space is needed. But that continuity of space can be a handicap as well as an advantage. Two texts can't be efficiently set up in contiguous windows, for example. And anything erased in one window is also reased in other windows that may overlap that area of the spreadsheet.

In a departure from the group, printing graphs requires loading a separate program, and graphs can't be included within a printed document, but must be appended to it. Little matter, though. Symphony's graph selection is thin and its execution run-of-the-mill -- although it does contain the rare but useful open-high-low-close chart.

A NOTE ON JAZZ

Developed exclusively for Apple Computer Inc.'s 512K Macintosh (which makes it possibly the savior of 1985 for both Lotus and Apple), Jazz is to Symphony as, well, the St. Louis Blues is to the Eroica. It is even more sprightly, once you get past the puerile cartoons that regulate the Mac. The major differences are that Jazz lacks a user-programming language, but it can manipulate several files from different sources at the same time, including Symphony spreadsheets complete with formulas. It is the only system that can impose a grid of rectangles over the spreadsheet, as one an old-fashioned bookkeeping ledger. And, calling on the Mac's native ingenuity, you can enlarge a section of a spreadsheet on the screen, as if placing the range of cells under a magnifying glass. Also singularly among the packages, Jazz is able to update numeric data that has already been spliced into a text document, and it can dynamically link other components as well. Jazz can draw graphs of any size on the screen and decorate them with the Mac's large but sometimes silly font selection. However, unlike Symphony, mouse-driven Jazz is a closed system and cannot accommodate third-party applications.

CORPORATE MBA

Context Management, Systems, 23868 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance, CA 90505, (213) 378-8277, Min. memory: 384K RAM, Retail: $695

Few situations better testify to the fact that to stand still on the fast-spinning world of microcomputers is to take a giant step backward. MBA is little changed from the Dark Ages of 1982 when it first emerged, despite the added appellation "Corporate." Only minor adjustments have been made to this four-window system since then, such as better memory-management and improved (but still creaky) filing routines. That is like taping a couple of paper wings on a brontosaurus and assuming it will fly.

The new terminal emulation is no big deal, since a microcomputer is comparatively dumb-struck in the presence of mainframe data, anyway. And MBA's database entry-forms generator, a feature likewise tacked on, is rudimentary.

Virtually nothing has been enhanced in text processing, which remains the worst of the integrated bunch. Indeed, sometimes it is inexcusable: When a cell containing up to eight pages of text is moved to a different location on the worksheet -- a common maneuver -- only one-third of a page makes the leap; the rest gets summarily expunged by the system.

The command menu, a parade of one-word entries that are summoned by the old "/" key left over from 1979's VisiCalc, is obscure, containing such bony choices as "glbl." Four key-strokes are required just to expand or close a window. Always a powerful number-cruncher, its usefulness is compromised by a stubborn refusal to enter titles across columns -- a virtual necessity that everyone else executes without a fuss. Nor can you "point" to a range of cells with the cursor and see them high-lighted on the screen, as most of the other systems let you do.

Both telecommunications and graphics require finicky formulas entered at the top of the screen that are often broken up into lines that disappear off the edge of the screen. If there is an error, the system suggests merely "about" where it is located. If you're lucky, you'll find it in half an hour.

FRAMEWORK

Ashton-Tate, 10150 W. Jefferson, Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230, (213) 204-5570, Min. memory: 256K (512K recommended), Retail: $695

Cleverest of the lot, Framework is centered around an outline motif, in which an overall subject (cost of sales, for instance), can be broken down into as many as 32,000 subsubtopics within subtopics. This nesting is done inside windows ("frames") that can be shaped and dragged around the screen at the user's will. They make up Framework's metaphor for integration, the desktop, complete with a little in-basket for files. Perinent parts of a subject -- memos, sections of spreadsheets, parts of dataabases, even graphs -- may be placed like Russian babushka dolls in a "containing" window that thematically houses the whole. Or a body of work can be given residence in its own independent frame. Any number of frames can be opened on the screen at once, like so many manila folders on a typically messy desk.

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