Tools that cross over both sides of the 3000 planning continuum seem especially useful these days, as customers continue to rely on HP 3000s whose future is uncertain. The recent implosion of Lutris, a company that offered free J2EE Web solutions for platforms including the HP 3000, might provide an opportunity for an API from Advanced Network Systems Inc. (ANSI). In addition to J2EE, ANSI-Web uses Eloquence, the replacement for IMAGE/SQL. It also provides fast native interfaces to IMAGE databases already at the heart of 3000s. ANSI-Web’s ADBC technology was licensed from Adager — that’s what the “A” in ADBC stands for. Dave Thatcher of ANSI said the software has always been written to provide “client access that is platform-neutral and uses the quickest way possible to your data, bypassing all unnecessary overhead and communicating with the database’s native intrinsics.”

Such crossover tools let sites continue development in their HP 3000 environment, then start moving things over to targets like Eloquence, DB2 or Oracle once they need to. “People can continue with development and feel very comfortable,” Thatcher said. “If you decide to replace this with Websphere or WebLogic, just simply move our pooling and ADBC classes over to those expensive Web servers.” Since Lutris did a massive layoff in April and dropped Enhydra development, Thatcher noted that “ANSI-Web can also help those Lutris customers who thought Enhydra was a great J2EE application server (even though not certified) and did development using it on the 3000.”