The company that brought you Zork, Sorcerer, and a string of excellent mysteries has turned serious. Infocom has released Cornerstone, a relational database for the IBM PC.

Demonstrating a remarkable talent for comparing apples with pears, Infocom claims that Zork has outsold Lotus 1-2-3. Perhaps this success has spurred it to take on 1-2-3 on its own terms. Cornerstone is for business users who have no programming experience - not as flashy as the integrated packages, it offers a style of data handling that has proved itself in the minicomputer field as being easy to use.

Infocom says that it can be used with packages like 1-2-3 and Wordstar, but there's no hint as to when you might be able to use it to juggle the clues from the interactive fiction games that made the company's name.

The ray of hope for Infocom fans is that the company isn't turning its back on fiction - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears in the US in November.