3000 NewsWire Online Extra

Volume 1, Issue 12 Update

HP READIES NEW 3000 SYSTEMS ANNOUNCEMENT
It's getting to be the end of the fiscal year for HP, so we know there's going to be a new systems announcement for the 3000 line just around the corner. HP traditionally breaks the news of its systems additions in the first week of November to jump-start its first quarter sales, and it looks like they're sticking with that schedule. We're hearing early reports of a new PA-8000-based 9x9 system, and that makes sense, since the September announcement of HP 9000s using the PA-8000 expanded on the same chassis. HP calls this the K-class of computer. We've expected for awhile now that the earlier models in this line, the 939 and 959, would be dropped. It's likely that's going to be announced at the same time that we get word on the new 9x9s. Since HP 3000 customers enjoy backward compatibility with the entire line of hardware (unlike their HP 9000 bretheren), HP's worked to keep the 3000 line simple. The redoubtable 9x8s are going to continue to serve on the low end for some time. We expect we'll have some more details in the October FlashPaper. The official announcement will be in November.

JAVA PROJECT STILL BREWING
HP's Mike Yawn and friends outside of HP are still at work to create the first implementation of the Java Virtual Machine for the HP 3000. This software, which HP will distribute on its Jazz server at CSY, will let 3000 servers execute any object code written on any platform which is targeted for the Java Virtual Machine. The standard packages java.io, java.lang, java.net and java.util are being ported and tested now. HP doesn't plan to port other parts of Java which are needed to run a Java client, including java.applet, java.awt and java.image. Instead, the MPE/iX systems will get only the Java server pieces. This isn't supposed to matter, since HP doesn't expect many customers to want to use the 3000 as a client. However, these Java "applets" -- and HP believes that someday we'll see financial and manuacturing systems in that group -- will probably need to communicate with the 3000. That's where the Java Virtual Machine work comes into play.

Customers are already talking about database access for Java on the 3000. Alfredo Rego's ADBC project is getting close to delivering working code, according to Rego who promised more details within the next month or so. There are Java JDBC middleware tools already on the market, but they are not optimized for the IMAGE database structure and so carry significant overhead for transaction processing.

HP's Yawn is already hard at work thinking about the design of class libraries for Java on the 3000, the place where the port takes on its greatest MPE/iX flavor while providing practical functionality for the HP 3000 environment. A new mailing list for Java has been opened for discussion of that design, and Yawn had some interesting comments on Remote Database Access:

"The open() method of the Database class can be passed either a String, which it interprets as a local filename in HFS syntax, or a URL. When given a URL, the open() routine will open a connection with a TurboIMAGESever object running on the designated host, and pass it the name of the designated database to be opened. Subsequent calls should be identical in local and remote configurations.

Java defines a JDBC database access methodology, which so far no one in HP3000 land has been clamoring for. Some folks are actively working on an 'ADBC' architecture for native access to TurboIMAGE from Java client platforms. Also, a JDBC-to-ODBC bridge exists, allowing clients to write to JDBC and access any database supporting ODBC clients.

So it looks like will get JDBC access to TurboIMAGE 'for free' via the JDBC-ODBC bridge. Some sort of Native access to TurboIMAGE will be provided by ADBC, which may or may not be compatible with the scheme I've described (I'm not aware of anything publicly available that describes ADBC in any detail). Based on these two, is there any need for a 'native' JDBC implementation (that would be faster than the JDBC-ODBC bridge, but slower than ADBC or the class library I've described)?

My original concept for a native TurboIMAGE library was that it would be based on JDBC. Upon further thought, my current thinking is that JDBC access to TurboIMAGE is important to provide open access to TurboIMAGE from all the Java code that expects to access databases, but that there is no strong reason why native access to TurboIMAGE should necessarily look anything like JDBC. (This decision may have gone the other way if I _liked_ JDBC better; I just didn't see anything there that made me feel it was in any way better than something that looks and feels like TurboIMAGE)."

In a prior Online Extra we talked about beta test opportunities for Java. If you simply want to follow the technical discussion and get your two-cents' worth in, subscribe to the mailing list. Send a message to listproc@mbrnet.interex.org with no subject. In the body of the message type SUBSCRIBE SIGJAVA-L [your name]. You'll start receiving mail on Java for the HP 3000.

Computerworld printed a Java story that included the HP 3000 in a September edition. NewsWire subscriber Dan Buckland at Hickory Farms reported to the trade weekly that he wasn't using Java on the 3000, but thought it was a good idea. We couldn't agree more, since the software promises to level the playing field and let applications migrate transparently to the most efficient and appropriate server platforms. For transaction processing, that's the HP 3000.

TRAINING FOR MPE/IX 5.5 AT ALL-TEXAS RUG
A great training opportunity for the new 5.5 release of MPE/iX has emerged as part of this year's All Texas RUG conference Oct. 27-29. Outer Banks Solutions has been contracted by HP to do a full day's training on the new release, and the cost is only $100 for 10AM to 6PM class (lunch is included in the price). The new release of MPE/iX is jammed with new functionality that will simplify the lives of 3000 system managers (whose lives are pretty simple compared to those managing other systems). Outer Banks is led by Steve Cole, a former 3000 IS director at Northern Telecomm, so the quality of the training is bound to be top-notch. The class is being held on the Sunday before the All Texas conference in Galveston, a lovely little island just off the Gulf Coast.

The conference that follows on Monday and Tuesday is a real bargain at $200 (provided you register by Monday Oct. 7; then the price goes up to $250). There are three tracks of talks, including sessions on Year 2000 issues for HP 3000s (from a member of the Adager lab), client server strategies from M.B. Foster Associates and Bradmark Technologies, data warehousing, HP 3000 performance management from Lund Performance Solutions, Oracle training including Web servers, a rundown on RAD tools for Internet application development on the 3000 and manufacturing systems savvy from The Support Group. There's a vendor show as well, to get a hands-on look at the tools that can help you manage your HP 3000.

To register: call conference chair Elizabeth Stanley at Bradmark (713.621.2808 x132) and have her fax you a registration form. You can also register at the door for the extra $50 -- but telling the RUG you're coming helps them plan meals (there will be two lunches, a kickoff reception and a dinner on Monday night). Make your reservations at the San Luis hotel (for a special $99 rate) by calling 800.392.5937. Low-cost, safe Southwest Airlines (an HP 3000 customer) serves nearby Hobby Airport in Houston with dozens of flights a day. The NewsWire will be there, and we hope to see you too!

MPE/iX 5.5 TRAINING FROM HP -- A DELAYED BROADCAST
We reported in our September issue that HP would be broadcasting an audio conference on October 11 for the new 5.5 release. HP has changed its mind about broadcasting the training, but it will still be available -- just later. You'll be able to order an audiotape on the subject by late October. Order your tape (it's free) by browsing to www.hp.com/go/tapes, or calling 800.224.HP3K, or 408.447.7885.

3K ASSOCIATES ADDS 3000 FTP AND FAX SOLUTIONS
3k Associates (800-NetMail in North America or 703.569.9189) one of the 3000's great champions and the host of the NewsWire's Always Online and FreeNews web sites, has added solutions for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and fax communications to its Internet and communications connectivity solutions for HP 3000 servers.

The company now supplies and supports Office Extend Fax and Office Extend FTP software, two MPE/iX solutions developed by Fransen/King Ltd. Office Extend FTP permits HP 3000 customers to use 3000s to distribute documents over the Internet and corporate intranets, while Office Extend Fax fax-enables programs hosted on the HP 3000, Unix and PC network servers.

3k has assumed exclusive sales and support responsibilities for the two products in the Americas, extending its World Wide Web site for product support. 3k president Chris Bartram said the agreement consolidates 3k's position as a complete source for Internet and telecom application solutions. 3k has already made great headway with its flagship NetMail/3000 package and DeskLink SMTP mail gateway for HP DeskManager e-mail sites. Bartram said the new packages integrate well with DeskLink and NetMail, which bring HP 3000 users directly onto the world-wide networks of the Internet.

FTP, a world standard in document exchange over the Internet, is only partially supported by the HP 3000 operating system, even in the latest release. Office Extend FTP lets 3000 sites set up controlled access to and from anonymous users anywhere on the Internet and lets managers select which users can access FTP services -- features unavailable from HP.

"Office Extend FTP is the only product that gives HP 3000s the ability to accept anonymous FTP access," Bartram said, "which is vital if you're serving the world with things like sales materials or public documents from your HP 3000." Without Office Extend FTP, prospective customers must log-on to HP 3000s with passwords and IDs to receive files.

Office Extend Fax is a highly reliable cost-effective way to send faxes from 3000 applications. The software links fax devices with programs on HP 3000s over Novell and TCP/IP networks. Office Extend Fax interoperates multiple fax gateways throughout corporate wide area networks. Faxes can be routed over the Internet to the nearest corporate fax server to reduce long-distance charges.

3k is adding technical staff as well as tripling its floor space to support the additions to its product offerings. The company is also extending its toll-free support hours from 9 AM to 8 PM EST, and will be distributing updates to the Office Extend products over the Internet. "Customers can already download updates to our NetMail and NetMail Freeware packages, and we'll make trials and updates of the Office Extend products available, too," Bartram said. To see the latest, browse to the 3k web site at www.3kassociates.com, or send e-mail to sales@3kassociates.com.

5.5 IS IN HEAVY DEMAND
HP has a PowerPatch 6 available for the 5.0 release of MPE/iX, but HP's engineers are saying it might make more sense to go to the new 5.5 release instead. HP's Jon Cohen reports:

"I would certainly recommend 5.5 -- it has a lot of features that are not and will not be available on 5.0. In addition, 5.5 will be our primary focus for the immediate future -- new features will appear on 5.5 before (if at all) they would appear on 5.0. This is because we do not want customers to lose functionality when they upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 -- this implies that we must offer new functionality on a 5.5 base before we do so on 5.0.

"Platform releases" have longer support life than regular ("pull") releases. Yes, 5.0 is a "platform", and 5.5 is a "pull". Here are our support guidelines:

A Platform Release is supported for 2 years or 12 months after the next Platform Release, whichever is longer.

A regular release is supported for 1 year or 6 months after the next release ("pull" or "platform"), whichever is longer.

We try to release a "platform" release every 18-30 months.

For your information, 5.0 Push started shipping February 17, 1995; 5.5 started shipping August 23, 1996. 5.0 is 18 months older than 5.5 -- so at this point, both will have about the same remaining support life. At this point, there is no guarantee that new functionality will ever make it all the way back to 5.0.

These are our guidelines, but the bottom line is that business needs will drive all decisions on support life, introduction of new functionality, etc. For example, based on customer feedback, we have extended the previous platform release's support life. 4.0 should have become off support life last February, but we have extended it until next February.

In summary, we will ensure that 5.0 is stable by quickly providing bug fixes to it as needed. We will also provide bug fixes and new functionality to 5.5. If business needs so justify, new functionality may find its way back to 5.0, but only after it first appears on 5.5."

So 5.5 looks to be a safe landing place for the future of HP 3000 systems, but you may have to circle awhile to find an open runway. Cohen added that HP got more than 1,000 requests for the new operating system in the first few days of manufacturing release in late August. Be patient -- it really is shipping, and our own John Burke will put the code through its paces in our December TestDrive.

HIDDEN VALUE: REMOTE JCW TESTING
If you're looking to test if a JCW is set on a remote HP 3000, Michael Smith at Hertz offered this example recently on the Internet:

!REMOTE :system HELLO jobname,user.acct,group
!REMOTE FILE remjcw=remjcw:$back
!REMOTE SETJCW cierror 0
!REMOTE LISTF xxx
!REMOTE ECHO setvar remote_cierror !!cierror > *remjcw
!remjcw
!IF remote_cierror=0 THEN
!  ECHO REMOTE LISTF successful.
!ELSE
!  ECHO REMOTE LISTF unsuccessful.
!ENDIF

"There are a couple of advantages of doing it this way.

1. No extra programs have to be executed. Just RFA.
2. This will work for any variable.
3. You can return more than one variable, with some modifications.
4. The local command file is a temporary file.

Disadvantages

1. Due to temporary file, debugging is harder.
2. You must remember to use the double exclamation marks or you will get very frustrated (since that will use your local CIERROR instead of the remote CIERROR).
3. Not pretty.

The best way of implementing this RFA version of remote variable access would be via a command file. This way you could address disadvantages 2 and 3, maybe even 1 if you work at it:)"

BE SURE YOU'VE GOT THE RIGHT VERSION FOR PREFETCH
Robelle Consulting has been great about alerting customers to the potential benefits of the Prefetch process in TurboIMAGE, but they've added an important update to the story in their latest issue of What's Up Doc, a quarterly product and news update which they post on the Internet.

"After recommending that you enable IMAGE prefetch in our last newsletter, we discovered that some versions of MPE/iX had some problems. One of our customers was getting "CORRUPT DBG DISABLED; POTENTIAL DAMAGE; ONLY DBCLOSE ALLOWED" messages. Pretty scary! HP said the messages were bogus and advised the customer to disable IMAGE prefetch. When this was done, the problem went away.

When should prefetch actually be used? As per Marguerite Bryan of the HP Response Center in issue #20 of the IMAGE Support Newsletter, you may use prefetch when

1. The system has adequate memory available to manage the increased data page locality as well as adequate processor capability to handle increased concurrency of processes.

2. The application makes numerous calls to DBPUT, DBDELETE, or most recently DBUPDATE to critical items. Other TurboIMAGE intrinsics only read or update data, not pointers or counters where multi-block access is a real issue.

3. As PREFETCH is intended to increase database concurrency, multiple users must be processing data before the benefit can be realized. Prefetching data blocks offer little or no benefit to single processes executing against a database.

The problems have been found in TurboIMAGE versions C.04.06 through C.04.08 on MPE/iX release 4.0. This problem is documented in detail in SR 5000-668673 and can be fixed by installing the patch TIXFX04 (TurboIMAGE C.04.09). "

"Is there a way that an executing MPE/iX command file can determine its name (filename, group, account)?

The stated answer works, but relies on the command file being invoked explicitly at the CI prompt. HP has thoughtfully added a much easier way as of 5.0 -- the variable HPFILE. This contains the fully qualified name of the "currently executing" UDC or command file.

HPFILE contains the "right" answer even when the command file is invoked from an application or from another command file. The only real down side is that it is not (yet?) supported from within Qedit (world's greatest text editor :)."

Thanks for the tip, Glenn.

HIDDEN VALUE: LISTING FILES IN DATE ORDER
CSY wizard Jeff Vance of HP delivered some nifty code and examples of how to do just this in response to the question: "Is there a way of listing files in a group in date order (modified, accessed or created?)"

There are a couple of ways to do this using just MPE: 1) if you have release 5.0 or later you may use the POSIX shell.

     ls -l -t [-u | c] 

               -u uses last modification time
               -c uses last access time
               -t does a sort by time
               -l is the long output

Remember that fileset follows POSIX naming rules - not classic MPE rules. So to see all files in your logon group beginning with "S" you need to specify fileset as "S*" (not "s@").

2) you can write a CI script that lists all matching files plus the appropriate date and use SORT.PUB.SYS to sort it. I've included a script below. Example:

      xeq lf s@ create >foo   <-- see the LF script below
      sort
        INPUT foo
        KEY 1,8
        OUTPUT $stdlist
        END

(there's got to be an easier way to drive sort.pub.sys. It doesn't appear to have built-in help!)

3) you could use a combination of a CI script and POSIX sort. Example:

      :xeq sh.hpbin.sys
      shell/iX> callci lf s@ modify | sort
      ("lf" is the CI script below)

Here is the LF script I have used in 2 and 3 above:

-------cut here-----------
PARM fileset=./@, datetype=ACCESS, entry=main
# Usage: lf [fileset] [ACCESS | MODIFY | CREATE ]
#        Default fileset is './@' and datetype is ACCESS.

if '!entry' = 'main' then
   # convert datetype to an finfo date item
   if ups("!datetype") = "ACCESS" then
      setvar _lf_dateitem -7
   elseif ups("!datetype") = "MODIFY" then
      setvar _lf_dateitem -8
   elseif ups("!datetype") = "CREATE" then
      setvar _lf_dateitem -6
   else
      echo Invalid datetype; expected: ACCESS, MODIFY or CREATE.
      return
   endif

   errclear
   continue
   listfile !fileset,6 >lftemp
   if hpcierr = 0 then
      # read lftemp file and write to $stdlist the filename and date.
      xeq lfa entry=write_date 

Copyright 1996, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.