Abstract: A method and apparatus that permits creation, reading and modification of 3GL application programs by SQL requests. A catalog is created by selecting source programs from 3GL application data for which file definitions are to be extracted, identifying specific files within the selected source programs to be processed, extracting appropriate schema from the selected files, and recording the appropriate schema in a catalog. Once the 3GL-specific data schema contained in the application source has been extracted and stored in the catalog, the relational database which is to be based upon the data represented by the 3GL schema is defined and stored in the system catalog so that tables in the relational database may be accessed by a runtime SQL database engine. Further, both 3GL data and relational database data may be modified and maintained with a single tool set.

Abstract: A laser 10 comprises a pump source 11, a resonator 13 including an etalon of gain material 15, and means 12 to focus the pump source 11 output onto one end 14 of the resonator 13 as a spot having a diameter in the range 50-150 .mu.m. The resonator 13 includes substantially parallel end faces 14,19 having a relative taper better than 0.25 milliradians, and the end faces 14,19 are substantially free of scratches greater than 10 .mu.m in size and pits greater than 5 .mu.m in size. A thermally induced microlens 22 is formed at the surface 14 of the gain material 15.