September 1996 FlashPaper

News so hot it might ignite

The 3000 division wants to revise those Roseville priorities. While there was a lot of good news from the HP World conference in Anaheim last month, one fly in the oatmeal kept popping up: the declining levels of support for HP 3000 software from HP's SST division at Roseville, Calif. SST was set up largely to maintain MPE/iX products no longer being sold as strategic solutions, like Transact or Open DeskManager. Presentations at HP World had a downbeat tone when the SST products were discussed, according to customers who attended things like the SIGRAPID meeting. Some customers said one marketing manager from the division spent time un-promising improvements to Transact, leaving attendees with the feeling that support for the three-and-a-half GL was slipping. Thankfully, the management in the Commercial Systems Division (CSY) doesn't see eye to eye with SST's priorities for such things, according to the HP press relations department. They wouldn't go into any detail by presstime, but left us with the distinct impression that the un-promising is about to stop.

Roseville's HP 3000 resources are important to customers beyond those using products like Open DeskManager or Transact. The group still manages the refurbishment and improvement of HP's performance management tools for the 3000, and in a more crucial role, has the responsibility for HP 3000 compilers. Activities at the SST group are funded not by 3000 system sales, but by support dollars, which could mean the group could set goals that are independent of those in CSY. With more than 500 products to support in SST, including things like the Domain operating system and RTE for HP's technical customers, it looks to us like SST has gotten pretty wooly in recent years. Over the years the original idea of "send us your used bits," has been stretched to include many times the number of products first designated as wards of the SST state. Customers using the formerly strategic products like Transact and Open DeskManager are hoping for some revisions in the SST priority list. While things like the Open DeskManager and LaserRX and RXForecast probably won't see much revitalization, Transact is another issue altogether. One of the Transact enhancements, multiple criteria for the SET(MATCH) statement, will not be implemented. The remaining enhancements are the use of literals in PROC calls and the new rounding specification. Before he was replaced as SST marketing manager, Jon Goulden announced at HP World that Transact will not support b-tree indexes for TurboIMAGE when they are implemented, due to lack of resources within HP. NewsWire subscriber Cecile Chi of the SIGRAPID group said "this statement generated much heated discussion. Since the"back end" of HP's compilers is now shared, a portion of the work for implementing IMAGE and VPlus enhancements will presumably already be done. RAPID product users consider it critical that the RAPID products keep up with the platform, enabling customers to make use of new features."(See our upcoming issues for more details on this story).

HP is looking into making OpenView useful for 3000s again. That LaserRX product mentioned above probably won't get much revamping (like Windows 95 support for its clients), largely because HP has new MeasureWare tools it sells. But those new tools require OpenView, a software element that has had managers at 3000-only shops rolling their eyes when talk turns to ease of use. For example, OpenView DTC Manager relies on a PC, and some managers compare that to jump-starting a Cummins diesel engine with a watch battery. OpenView on the PC has been notoriously picky about the arrangement of its network stack and other software pieces that make it work. If you try to change a setting like the local IP address of the PC, you will likely have to re-install all the network stack and OpenView software, and restore all the DTC configurations from backup (if you're lucky enough the restore works). DTC Manager is also fairly hostile toward most any other application you try to run on the same PC, especially network stuff.

HP has moved away from using Windows as an OpenView management node, but Windows remains the only supported platform for 3000 shops that don't want to install an HP-UX workstation. At HP World the general manager of the OpenView division, former CSY GM Olivier Helleboid, said OpenView DTC Manager does deserve an overhaul. Users there asked if the software was going to get ported to HP-UX or Windows NT. Helleboid said the DTC Management application team probably has prioritized DTC routing "higher than support on the Management platform. I'll carry feedback to the team that they need to relook at this priority supporting DTC management on OpenView." HP is making the shift from OpenView on Windows to OpenView on NT, and Helleboid thinks that DTC Manager could become part of that shift. He's not promising, but it's his division now, and he certainly should remember the work habits of customers using DTCs.

IMAGE b-trees are nearing a beta test. By this time next month testing on the b-tree indexes for TurboIMAGE should be underway, lab manager Jon Bale reported at SIGIMAGE in HP World. He reiterated the schedule at the September meeting of the Client Server Users Group, The feature should provide dramatic performance increases for search operations on HP 3000s. Doug Meyer of the database lab noted that the prototype of b-trees shown at HP World executed a LIKE predicate pattern match against a 160,000-record database in 5 seconds, something of a decrease from the 3-minute score without b-trees. It's no wonder that the Transact customers above want b-tree access. IMAGE/SQL will also be able to take advantage of b-tree improvements.(See our next issue for more details on this story).

Year 2000 efforts for MPE pick up pace at HP. HP told customers it will be making a Year 2000 compliant version of MPE/iX available by the end of 1997, and details on the enhancements are starting to appear. Some MPE intrinsics dealing with date conversion handle the year as a combination of two 8-bit "binary" integers,one specifying "year of century", the other "day of year." The"year of century" only represents the last two digits of a year, But in order to be able to deal with the next century they're actually not restricted to 2 digits (in the numeric date type). MPE/iX intrinsics using CALENDAR format will behave the same way as today. Intrinsics accepting/returning CALENDAR format (0:7 - Year of the century, 7:9 - Day of the year) interpret 0:7 bits as "Years since 1900," so 100 is for 2000, 101 for 2001. Using the CALENDAR store format, you can store up to the year 2027.

Browsers are emerging as interfaces for IMAGE database administration. Two developers who are NewsWire subscribers have released free software that lets HP 3000 managers track the structure of their IMAGE and TurboIMAGE databases. Duane Percox has created webdbx, a small utility script that allows you to navigate the basic structure of an IMAGE database from your favorite browser in real-time. Using an HP 3000 equipped as a Web server, the software allows you to build dynamic (on-the-fly) HTML code. Percox and Quintessential Software Systems have made three small test databases available for anyone who wants to see the results of this exercise. Point your browser to www.qss.com/webdbx.html. Alfredo Rego of Adager, who's been promoting the ADBC high speed pipe between Java and the IMAGE database world, said that webdbx is very impressive, adding that once Percox can "encapsulate his great ideas within a Java framework, he's almost there as far as ADBC is concerned.

Meanwhile, subscriber Stan Sieler of Allegro Associates has released DBHTML, which takes an IMAGE root file and builds an HTML page describing the database. The page at www.allegro.com/dbhtml.html leads to four sample pages produced by DBHTML. "For some time," Sieler explains, "I've thought that more and more of our interface to the computer will be via Web browsers instead of via application-specific user interfaces. Why write code to manage a screen when you can simply produce an HTML page and let a web browser handle the screen? In short, I see Web browsers as the VPlus of the 90s." DBHTML is on the Allegro web site, the Interex HP World Swap Tape, and the latest Adager tape.

Get started easy on the Web and serving pages from your 3000. If the above Web IMAGE tools spark your interest in the HP 3000 as the most stable Web server platform, take heart: getting started with intranets or external access will be easier using the NCSA HTTP-D freeware. An HP employee is working with client server guru Joe Geiser to put everything you'll need in a single file, one which automatically creates and fills a WEB account on your HP 3000. The process ensures all the pieces are in the right places on your 3000, as well as delivers demoware of the 3000-native Lynx browser, Navigator and Web page creation tools for your PC. The Web Starter kit began as a 14Mb download in ZIP format, and now it's being broken down into smaller components. Plans are to make it available at www.3kassociates.com, http://opus.admin.utc.edu (the host system for the 3000-L mailing list), and www.entrix.co.uk (Entrix Computing in the UK). HP is being asked to put the Starter Kit on its Jazz server as well. The TAPECopy Utility (unsupported freeware from HP employee and NewsWire subscriber Lars Appel) dumps a tape image and dumps it to disk and vice-versa. TAPECopy will be in Reflection "Labels" format for direct upload to a 3000. TAPECopy will also be in Binary format for upload with other utilities such as FTP for those who do not have Reflection. The Tape Image itself to be copied to the 3000 and written to tape with TAPECopy, will create the installation tape."Once a user downloads this file and unpacks unzips it," says Geiser, "a tape can be created and the software loaded within an hour."

A seasoned HP publication closes its doors. Word comes from England that HP Omni, a magazine that covered all HP platforms and was read through much of Europe, has published its last issue as of August. The event is notable for the departure of longtime HP writer and editor Tim Cullis, a respected colleague and seasoned observer of the HP 3000. Omni, which started as HP World in 1988, took a hard look at the 3000's past and future with analysis like "HumPhrey," its insightful and often funny column on HP which was team-written by HP insiders and others in the market. "The decision has been in the air for almost 12 months," Cullis said, citing a decrease in ad revenues as the primary motivation to stop publishing. We expect to see Cullis surface in another bully pulpit before long, and wish him "Good Show, chap!" on his eight years of coverage and commentary about HP.

Copyright 1996, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.