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OMNISolutions, Bradmark tools put
graphical interface on HP 3000 management

OmniSolutions ( 800.935.0101) and Bradmark (800.621.2808) are both introducing a graphical look for MPE software this summer, although the OmniSolutions release is the se-cond version of its GUI3000 tool. Bradmark leverages work that was begun with its Starvision middleware project to introduce its MPE Command Center. Both products hope to make HP 3000 management benefit from point-and-click advantages, giving MPE/iX a makeover much as Windows transformed the ugly duckling of DOS.

Both products benefit from the increased acceptance of graphical interfaces as controls for complex environments. GUI3000 first introduced itself in early 1997 as a Windows Explorer-like utility for MPE, using a client on a Wintel system talking to an HP 3000 server job. MPE Command Center enters the field with a similar structure but different features, including the ability to manage alarms from user-written applets and a way to launch Reflection sessions for 3000 applications. To counter in the feature comparison, GUI3000 is set to have a version ready this month that enables users to access IMAGE database files using a Berkeley Sockets connection, skipping over the need for ODBC middleware or SQL administration.

Officials at Bradmark believe that a graphical interface can help make the HP 3000 more attractive to managers who are unfamiliar with the system. “This will help HP acquire new business for the 3000,” said president Brad Tashenberg. “The appearance of the operating environment is going to be very much the look and feel that these younger new users want to see when they evaluate the 3000.”

Installed-base HP 3000 customers are bound to look at the new interface solutions differently, considering the effort many of the customers have made to get comfortable with administration through a command line. Current 3000 sites see the tools as a way to get more work done in less time from the same desktop as their corporate browsers and Windows-based screens.

Going GUI to databases, MPE

OmniSolutions’ GUI3000 is getting a second generation release this summer from Pete Vickers, the creator of the GUI tool for MPE/iX management (See our March 1997 TestDrive for details). Vickers said the release, expected to be available in a demo version 3 downloadable in mid-June, will add a number of new features to the administration utility, most notably the ability to retrieve IMAGE data for use in desktop applications.

Users will be able to see all data items in IMAGE datasets, which can be protected with standard IMAGE password security for datasets and data items. The software lets users select data using criteria and recognizes Omnidex keys, resulting in records retrieved into an Excel-like client running on the PC. The data is also downloadable as CSV files, which can be imported into Excel and other PC tools.

The database browsing selections use either key or non-key items, and include an option that allows administrators to limit the number of records a user is allowed to search. GUI3000’s database browser is read-only.

GUI3000 will also link to Adager for database management in a future release, Vickers added, providing another graphical interface for the well-known IMAGE tool. OmniSolutions is also working on a way to link GUI3000 with Robelle’s Qedit for Windows, but in the meantime the company ships the product with a simple editor for manipulating files. It also supports StreamX and Security /3000 from Vesoft and launches Windows applications from the GUI3000 interface.

The product supports Vesoft’s MPEX commands from a utilities window, the method GUI3000 uses to handle commands of the 3000 Command Interpreter for which it doesn’t have standard GUI buttons, clicks or mouse actions. This window saves a user’s 50 favorite commands for one-click execution.

“Syntax errors are a thing of the past, since GUI3000 command window can be pre-programmed to handle the most complex MPE or MPEX command,” said OmniSolutions’ Simon Tsalyuk.

GUI3000 provides graphical reports on capacity of IMAGE databases and disk space occupied by groups and accounts. Disk space reports on available and used space, totals, and by device.

GUI3000 is multiuser and operates across multiple 3000s; it doesn’t require sessions on
the HP 3000. It will print from its File Explorer and Database Explorer modules, and can stream and schedule jobs from File Explorer. A Spoolfile Explorer lets users search for spooled jobs by attributes, including date printed and size of job, printing jobs on local PC printers. Another feature of the product monitors and reports on outstanding replies from applications or jobs.

Command Center launches

If GUI3000 leans heavily into exploring HP 3000 contents, MPE Command Center offers a way to keep users away from command lines with MPE Launcher, its launch facility for 3000 applications. The facility invokes WRQ’s Reflection to start a session with any HP 3000 application, a feature that appears to serve the product’s design objective of integration.

“Bridges have to be put in place between systems,” said Bradmark’s Tashenberg. “This is a continuum on the integration path for the HP 3000, putting it together from a top-down methodology.”

Command Center also works to give MPE administrators control of systems from a single console, Tashenberg added. “It’s a virtual console – any PC can become the command center,” he said. The product offers performance monitoring at the CPU usage and IO level. It also tracks alarms and alerts which can be generated by user-written applets written in object-oriented designs with FORTRAN, C or Java.

“We’re trying to develop a methodology for them to go to any level they want, to develop these and hook right into our structure,” Tashenberg said.

Database monitoring for Command Center will come from whatever utilities are already running in the HP 3000 environment, including Bradmark’s own DBGeneral as well as Adager.

“If we had a Windows front end to the utility, it could be brought up as a Windows function,” Tashenberg explained of his own product. But DBGeneral’s IMAGE/SQL version operates as a character-driven application, “and Adager could be brought up the same way. We’re trying to identify whatever the user has as a suite of utilities, and allow them the flexibility to bring those utilities up.

“We’re just trying to build a structure that makes what they have in place easier to use,” he said. “You’re looking at the 3000 as a virtual machine and the enterprise as the whole machine.” While MPE Command Center covers only networked 3000s and the clients attached to them today, Tashenberg said the product will ultimately have the same reach as the open systems version of DBGeneral, designed to manage a variety of non-IMAGE databases on multiple platforms.

Samba and similarities

There’s a baseline of interface functionality that products like this need to provide, often measured by the abilities of management tools users have come to expect from Microsoft utilities like File Manager and Explorer: viewing files in any order by sorting files in ascending or descending order of attribute, and the ability to purge, copy and rename groups of files at a stroke. Like its competitor from Bradmark, GUI3000 can manage files, groups and accounts and provides an interface to the HP 3000 for carrying out commands. Both products create and modify groups and accounts, performing drag-and-drop copying between HP 3000s and between the 3000 and PCs.

This ability to drag files for copying between 3000s and PCs is on the way in this summer’s MPE/iX 6.0 release through Samba/iX. Bradmark’s Tashenberg said that MPE Command Center understands MPE filecodes and spoolfile management and Samba doesn’t, features that GUI3000 also understands.

The MPE specifics set these tools apart from software created for multiple platforms. “Samba is an NT operating system imposed on the 3000,” Tashenberg said. “We’re trying to develop a Windows version of MPE. We’re not interested in keeping the same look and feel of an NT operating system. We’re trying to elevate MPE.”

Until July, GUI3000 is priced at $1,200 for Series 9x9 and 99X systems, licensed for a single HP 3000, and $950 for other HP 3000s. MPE Command Center is priced in user tiers and server tiers, starting at $1,500 for an 8-user license and $7,000 for a 64-user license on a Series 995.