Background
Information
Muli's Vision
Muli first came into existence in 1982, the result of Ron Skeoch setting up his own construction business after 10 years working at Civil & Civic as a Site/Project Manager.
As many projects were construction management, the ability to keep the client informed of projected end costs and the need to support and obtain regular progress payments to maintain company liquidity was a major requirement, so Muli set out to develop a construction based solution. Available accounting packages were delivering historical job costing, not forward looking management systems predicting the outcome.
A Short History
Muli has evolved since 1982 starting life on the Durango "all in one", utilizing the multi tasking Star Basic environment.
Durango then ported Star Basic to the Zenix operating system, running on "Poppy", a 80286 CPU with 81086 utilized for input/output.
Durango were taken over by Molecular Computers and finally ceased to trade.
After a jittery period, Muli obtained the source code to the "Star Basic" computer and runtime and ported the solution to Unix system V on the Honeywell Bull Superteam, and Australian made OSIRIS computers. To provide the total suite, we picked up the US Defence Department MDQS (Multi device Queuing System) for printer management.
Muli have developed a detailed security control system that controls the access of individuals to programs, the type of project and if required, specific projects as it is expected that all personnel in the company would have access even if only to receive Mail.
Problems were encountered with Infomix C ISAM product on older platforms. Infomix advised we could buy the Source code and fix same ourselves at big $$$, so we moved to the Source provided DISAM product for data management and subsequent ODBC interface and entrenched a Muli Business pillar "that Muli have access to the source code of all core system products and utilities to enable Muli to provide full customer support service".
While this platform proved a stable ASCII based User interface, clients were wanting the Graphical User Interface, then evident on Apples and emerging on Microsoft Windows PCs.
Muli had to evolve, but how! - Re-write over 700 proven application programs?
We chose to commission the total redevelopment of our environment both compiler and runtime written in "C" utilizing the TCL & TK graphical interface in a standard XWindows facility. A major task for a small company. The solution proved the correct approach to progress the product and provide a solid base for ongoing development.
Provision has also been made to produce all external documents in multiple languages using Unicode facilities.
Muli Development Environment Available
Muli are happy to make available this very efficient development environment for other developers to provide a solution that utilizes Muli core accounting facilities or standalone package.
For a software company to exist for 19 years, it has to constantly develop its product. We foresee that the future will see further integration of processes within the Linux operating system environment using TCP/IP local and wide area networks.
Muli's current development efforts are concentrating on:-
Ngipi Project Services for Document
The Ngipi E Project is a conceptual model being developed to provide a service to building owners and managers to maintain the total building details in electronic form.
This data is served via the Internet to authorized team members to enable that all activities are executed on the latest managed documentation.
Ngipi are aware that projects do not just exist for the construction phase, but continue through many fitout changes, upgrades, renovation and recycle. Data may be limited to the basic design documents or extended to indicate all planning and construction, letters, minutes and service history.
The E Project concept will be extended as the Emerging abilities of the IAI (International Alliance for Inter operability) developing and offering electronic interfaces to project design documents for the interface of logical data between the various projects life cycle functions.
We provide an initial worked example:
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