Lotus Symphony
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Lotus Symphony was a follow-on to Lotus Development's hugely popular spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3.
1-2-3 had originally been billed as an integrated product with spreadsheet, database and word-processor functions, thus the name 1-2-3. In reality however, the product was a simple spreadsheet that allowed you to type in as much text as possible. In the 1980s truly integrated products such as AppleWorks started to become popular, and so Lotus tried their hand.
Symphony was a DOS program that was loaded entirely into memory when started. Using ALT-F10 the user could switch between the various modes of the program, which include a spreadsheet very similar to 1-2-3, a word-processor, a communications program, a table based database, a charting program, and an outliner. The program allowed you to split the screen and view these "modules" side by side. It was at this point that the user would notice that changes made in one module were reflected in others in real-time, perhaps the package's most interesting feature.
All the data that Symphony stored was kept in spreadsheet cells. The other modes of the program—wordprocessing, database, etc.—simply changed the editing functionality and display of the data.
Symphony was designed to work completely in memory; this was the standard 640k of conventional memory supplanted by any Intel 286 extended memory configured as expanded memory. Similar and competitive packages included SmartWare, Microsoft Works, Context MBA, Ashton Tate Framework, Enable and Ability Office.
Viewed in the context of the spreadsheets of the day, the spreadsheet engine was the same as the one used in Lotus 1-2-3—the most popular of its kind.
Viewed in the context of the wordprocessors of the day and the people who used them—Micropro Wordstar 3.3, WordPerfect 4.2, and Microsoft Word 2.0, the word processing mode of Symphony was simpler but effective and unencumbered.
Viewed in the context of the database programs of the day—Ashton Tate's dBase III, MDBS Knowledgeman, Borland Paradox (database) 2.0 and Borland Reflex 1.0, Symphony's database was weak, lacking the analytical abilities of Reflex and the pseudo relational power of dBase III. However, it was integrated directly into the spreadsheet, simple to query, it was fast and the data could then be accessed using VLOOKUP features of the spreadsheet.
Symphony, like its predecessor Lotus 1-2-3, contained a reasonably powerful programming language referred to as Macros. One of the most significant features of Symphony was the integration of the various modules using this command language. In its day it was one of the few programs that would be able to log onto a stock market source, select data using dynamic or pre-assigned criteria, place that data into a spreadsheet, perform calculations, then chart the data and print out the results. All of this could occur unattended at prearranged days and times.
Lotus Jazz on the Apple Macintosh was a sibling product.
