Flying Pig Software

Flying Pig Software was founded in 1985 by David Hearne.  Its headquarter was in Oakland, California. The company consisted of two programmers and a handful of contract programmers. The first major piece of software created by Flying Pig Software was a B-Tree written by David Hearne. The B-Tree was licensed to Zedcor in 1987 and in 1988 was included with the new release of their ZBasic compiler. Zedcor renamed the b-tree a z-tree. The b-tree object was a self-balancing tree data structure that kept data sorted and allowed searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time. A framed copy of the first check issued by Zedcor to David Hearne against royalties for the license to the utility proudly hangs in Hearne’s office. 

David Hearne created a program call MemoRX that was designed to repair memo fields in dBASE database files. It worked with any of the multitudes of databases that cloned the dBase file format referred to as Xbase. The program was sold by Quail Creek Computing and was available for purchase in computer magazines and from various software catalogs that existed during that era of computing.

Flying Pig Software became a major consulting company for Enable Software, INC.  Enable Software was an integrated office suite for DOS-based IBM PC compatible computers and the precursor to Microsoft Office.  
In 1992 Enable had over a million users for its software. Their primary customer base consisted of government, military and large corporations.

Flying Pig Software’s programmer David Hearne creates DotScreem an Interface Management System for Enable developers
Flying Pig Software was contracted to automate Sovereign Asset Company a large finance company owned by the son of former Dallas Mayor Austin Starke Taylor jr.  David Hearne vividly recalls that period of his time working with Sovereign because it coincided with the siege at Waco Texas. 

Flying Pig Software moved its headquarters to Austin Texas. The move was precipitated by California state income tax burden and as a response to the 1989 earthquake that rocked the San Francisco Bay region.
1991, Zbasic’s DOS version was sold to 32 Bit Software Inc headed by Harry Gish of Dallas, Texas. The Ztree created by David Hearne was also part of the sale and additional changes were required by Harry Gish to be incorporated into the Z-Tree. The customer base for ZBasic was sold to Microsoft but Zedcor retained the rights to the Apple version of their ZBasic.

Flying Pig Software programmer David Hearne is contracted to create a system to manage precious metal companies. Multiple companies involved in the rare coins and precious metals business become users of the system.

Flying Pig Software programmer David Hearne creates Developer’s Assistant an office management system for software developers and marketers. Product get great reviews from M&T Publishing, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, DBMS, and Lan Technology magazines.

Flying Pig Software was contracted to write a reservation system for the  Minnesota Zephyr dinner train that was located in Stillwater, MN.