It's true, the HP 3000 has gotten a few COBOL alternatives in the past, so you may wonder why this effort makes any difference. It makes a difference simply because there have been other attempts to sell a COBOL other than HP's. Those other products, from AccuCobol and MicroFocus, simply didn't understand MPE and IMAGE very well. They were engineered to behave like their HP-UX counterparts, without much knowledge of the native MPE/iX namespace or -- even worse -- IMAGE intrinsics. Making 3000 programmers write applications inside the Posix environment of MPE/iX without the ability to call IMAGE intrinsics was like trying to eat a cupcake through a screen door, by some accounts. You just couldn't get away from remembering how much better a program performed with fast calls to IMAGE inside the "real" HP 3000 file system. People trying to make existing COBOL code run in such environments couldn't justify the rewrites needed, either.
Fujitsu's Charles Townsend promised the attendees at the SIGCOBOL meeting in San Jose that his company wouldn't even bother porting its PowerCOBOL HP-UX product to MPE/iX without the intrinsics and MPE namespace support. They're conducting a feasibility study to see how much engineering effort it will take to port PowerCOBOL, which Townsend said was the fastest in the HP-UX environment. At first the Fujitsu engineers thought it might be a straightforward port, but a closer look revealed all the nuances of the HP 3000. Customers love those nuances so much they've stuck with HP's COBOL. But the prospect of a long wait for many of the COBOL97 features has them hoping Fujitsu will find a good business case for its port. Fujitsu certainly has the manpower to make it happen, with more than 250 engineers working in Japan on engineering for its COBOL products. The main company is right on HP's heels in size, with more than $37 billion in 1996 revenue. PowerCOBOL for MPE/iX would come out of the Developer Tools Group, which has offices in Silicon Valley. A good part of the port would probably happen in Japan, since the US offices have only two engineers.
Perhaps most importantly, it's a sure bet Fujitsu's support for COBOL97 will arrive sooner than the features HP can be talked into for COBOL II. HP hasn't promised when, or even if, COBOL97 support will arrive for its compiler. Some of its hesitance is because of the scope of the changes in the standard. The SIG listed 38 features that would have to be added, then tried to get input on how important each would be to help focus HP's efforts. Presumably, Fujitsu won't need any such winnowing, since its product runs on 10,000 mainframe sites and 300,000 midrange sites. Customers at IPROF were especially excited by one similarity between HP and Fujitsu COBOL plans: no runtime license fees. MicroFocus collects runtime dollars from the developers who use the product for commercial use. The Fujitsu strategy is the same as that of HP's COBOL II. SIG leader Jeanette Nutsford told attendees "A lot of "Fujitsu's philosophy is the same as HP's." For the clincher, the price point for Fujitsu's product is $2,000 per compile, regardless of processor size. For an extra $500 a year a developer gets a CD subscription with updates and new tools, things like Object Oriented environments for Windows. Townsend promised to report back on the engineering investigation in the HP World timeframe in August. You can get more PowerCOBOL details on the Web at www.adtools.com.
A new free tool helps manage that IMAGE/SQL snarl.
HI-COMP's Denys Beauchamin recently turned a commercial product into a
gift to the HP
3000 customer base, putting his DBTune/SQL database utility up on a free
Web site. The
software satisfies a nagging request customers have been asking HP for: the
ability to
retain/reuse attach parameters across a detach/attach cycle. Customers need
something
better than the kludge of administration they have to wade through because
IMAGE/SQL
relies so heavily on Allbase/SQL. In last three years the item kept making
the top 10 list of
requested enhancements for SIGIMAGE. Beuachamin's utility, which he wrote
in 1993,
maintains the parameters and much more besides, such as global update
statistics,
password changes, listing and cross-references and preservation of views
across a
detach/attach cycle. In short it means you don't have to manually,
frustratingly, and
meticulously maintain those little XEQ files to recode and split mappings
between
TurboIMAGE root files and IMAGE/SQL DBEs.
HICOMP simply decided this utility really wasn't focused on the company's core products, networked backups (see item below). "At IPROF, seeing that the item was once again in the top 10, we decided to make the utility available free to the IMAGE community," Beauchamin said. "This is in the hope that it would help make the task of administering an attached database less painful." Beauchamin said he invited members of the SIGIMAGE Executive Committee to download the program and verify it would work at their sites. You can download DBTune at www.hicomp.com/hicomp/ by looking for the link to the DBTune program, about 15 lines down on the Web page.
Why wait for networked backups to HP 3000s?
HP was glad to announce that the Legato Networker/iX client software
has gone into beta
testing in the last month, and it gave people something to anticipate by
reporting Legato
is looking into porting the server side of its heterogenous backup
application to MPE/iX.
We can't figure out why you'd want to wait for Legato to make up its mind
when HICOMP
is offering that very backup solution for the HP 3000 and other popular
servers, all
networked together. Offered it for three years, in fact. The Legato
solution that's in beta
test now demands that you make the HP 9000 the controlling system in a
networked
backup, something too risky for lots of managers who rely on MPE/iX
stability. HICOMP's
HIBACK solution enables various platforms on the network to back up to the
devices
attached to the HP 3000, such as existing tape drives or DDS drives, or
backup to a
group/account on the HP 3000 disk drives. You can back up your Windows NT, Unix
servers or Windows 3.x and 95/NT PCs to your HP 3000. You can also back up
your
3000 to devices on NT servers, Unix servers or even Windows 95 PCs in a
pinch. Wait for
Legato for make up its mind about a 3000 port, or choose a vendor who has
your HP
3000 interests at heart (see previous item). Contact HICOMP at
www.hicomp.com/hicomp or
800.323.8863 (281.288.7438 from overseas).
Watch for your first cup of Java from the 3000 next month.
HP is working hard on finalizing the 1.1 release of Java for the HP
3000, which should
become available sometime in the month of May. While we don't have a
complete feature
set at hand by now, we know that the port will include the Java Virtual
Machine and Java
Developer's Kit, and the software will be free and downloadable from the
CSY Jazz Web
server. In addition to the work that Java for MPE/iX founding engineer Mike
Yawn is
doing, engineers from other parts of Cupertino HP and Bangalore CSY are
assisting in
the port. A beta version of the 1.0.1 release of Java is downloadable from
http://jazz.external.hp.c
om/src/java/index.html (See our May issue for more details)
CSM is getting inside the latest version of MPE/iX.
CSM, that great tool for compressing files on your HP 3000s to save
disk space, is
getting integrated tighter into MPE/iX 6.0, according to its creator and
NewsWire
subscriber Paul Wang. He reports, "While CSM has always been able to
transparently
decompress files upon access, thereby providing users with virtually
immediate access to
compressed files, MPE/iX did not distinguish CSM-compressed files -- and would
unnecessarily trigger decompression on some operations. MPE/iX has been
enhanced to
not decompress on COPY, RENAME, and PURGE, and also to identify compressed
files on
LISTF, LISTFILE and through new system catalog messages." Wang, who helped
create the
Transaction Manager for MPE/iX, said that CSM/MPE integration is available
for MPE/iX
5.0 and 5.5 via the MPEJXA2 patch from HP, and is being incorporated into
the MPE/iX
6.0 code base release.
Lund adopted tools from former 3000 supplier Carolian Systems.
Lund recently acquired just about all of the Carolian Systems line of
HP 3000 products,
with the exception of Smart Alert, a network console manager. Lund said the
purchase
will "augment Lund's current suite of performance software and services
that are
presently available on the HP 3000 and platforms." The sale was really
executed at the
end of 1996, but Lund wanted a chance to contact the customers using the
products
before announcing the purchase. Lund and Carolian have implemented a
multi-phase
transition plan extending over the next year, with in-depth training
provided to LPS sales
and technical support team members, as well as ongoing back-up support from the
Carolian technical support team. The product acquisition increases Lund's
customer
base substantially. You can contact Lund at 541.962.3800 or info@lund.com.
Bradmark unveiled an Allbase/SQL tool from its alliance chest.
Allbase/SQL, the relational
database that's the Rodney Daingerfield of SQL offerings, got a little more
respect in the
form of a release of DBGENERAL for Allbase. The product includes object
management,
table reorganization, DBFileSet restructuring and authority management,
according to
Bradmark's PR rep Beth Miller. Mike Whitely, who created the tool while he
worked with
UK software house Proactive Systems, said his product offers point and
click simplicity
and improved organization for increased performance. We think it's a decent
shot in the
arm for Allbase, a database that HP's shuffled around in its 3000 strategy
and still comes
in a lot cheaper than Oracle. HP maintains the database can outperform
Oracle on a
3000, too, although a tool like the Bradmark offering would go a long way
to making
that true in more cases. Perhaps the most obvious advantage is the
graphical interface
you'll use instead of memorizing ISQL commands. Capacity management and
those tricks
with tables (reorganization, restructuring) are also key to getting the
most out of any SQL
database. If you find yourself learning more than you ever imagined about
Allbase while
putting IMAGE/SQL to work, some kind of Allbase tool could ease that
lesson. Contact
Bradmark at 800.275.2723 or www.bradmark.com for more information.