History. Ultra Tree, which has a long Phil Carroll history at IBM from the early 1960s through the mid 1990s, was based on developing software for the Manufacturing Industry. Within that industry there included a multitude of software systems based on Bill of Materials. Below are a few abstracts from Wikipedia on this topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_mat-erials) .
Simply put, a BOM is “a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product.”

 
“BOMs are of hierarchical nature, with the top level representing the finished product which may be a sub-assembly or a completed item. BOMs that describe the sub-assemblies are referred to as modular BOMs.”

One of the critical components of the ANSI Standard language, SQL, contains the ability to use the SQL language to both populate and manage the Bills of Materials. The author of this ANSI Stanard SQL component was another Phil, Phil Shaw. While the two Phil’s never met, and both have now passed away, Mike Gorman, the Secretary of the ANSI Standards committees on Database Languages sent examples of Phil Carroll’s work to Phil Shaw, and vice versa over many years. Both Phil’s are probably conversing on their life’s common work and hoping that Mike Gorman can--successfully--carry it on.

Once Phil Carroll retired from IBM in the early 1990s, and after being introduced to Clarion, it was natural for him to discover that there was no easy way to accomplish Bill of Materials processing in Clarion. It was missing two data model components. These were both developed by Phil as templates that, in turn, generated Clarion-based Bill of Materials type of data structure and Clarion application coding.

The two missing two Clarion Data Model components (tables, columns, relationships and operations) were named by "Clarion Phil" as Ultra Tree. There were two major versions of Ultra Tree. The first was operational in Clarion through Clarion 8. It was based on fundamental functionality.
The second, a complete re-architecture, was released starting with Clarion 9. It's goal was to increase performance. The first version was commonly known simply as Ultra Tree and the second version while technically called UTLX also remains commonly known as UltraTree.

Because of the entirely different architectures, templates and code generations, there is no upgrade path between the two versions. While the UltraTree displays remain quite similiar, the only path forward is both complete software replacement and a complete end-user re-implementation of the Ultra Tree specifications within Clarion's DCT and Apps.

Mike Gorman of Whitemarsh, a Clarion user since the latter 1980s was introduced to Phil Carroll’s UltraTree after spending more than a month of evenings specifying and implementing a single instance of a BOM structure in Clarion 4. While elegant and operational, its immense draw back was that it had to be completely recoded with every new instance of a BOM structure. Told of Phil Carroll’s UltraTree templates, the decision was simply, which is both shorter and less costly, two-months or four-hours? Finally, a nobrainer decision.

Whitemarsh’s use of UltraTree was continuous up until the end of Clarion 8, when UTLX was introduced. The thought of both spending more funds for a license and having to spend significant time re-specifying the UltraTree structures resulted in a carefully thought-out decision. But after conversations with Phil, the decision became obvious and so Whitemarsh spent the funds and embarked on the change-over process. A decision–looking back– that has never been regretted.

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