After telling us about the tangible benefits of the newest version of MPE/iX, HP had to pull one of the most obvious ones when it started shipping the Express 2 tapes last week. Those enhancements to the Command Interpreter that would have let you see who is accessing a file didn't make the final cut of the tape. HP was calling the improvements "CI enhancements," but by early May it was pretty plain the beta testing process had uncovered enough problems to push the enhancements back into the next Express release, scheduled for sometime in September. What are you missing? Well, the enhancements to the LISTF command will let users discover who is accessing a file, including the remote accessors, and LISTFILE output can be filtered by access type or file code. CSY engineer Jeff Vance also enhanced the PAUSE command so it can cause a wait to occur until one or more jobs reach a certain state. Previously, PAUSE could only cause a wait for a specified number of seconds. That enhancement will be particularly helpful in managing complex job interdependencies, when it surfaces. The omission was surprising because the enhancements were already outlined in HP's Customer Note and Advisor marketing materials, as well as early versions of the Communicator documentation for Express 2.
What's left in the Express 2 release to make it worth ordering? Some things of significance, provided you want to use telnet access for your 3000 or are a big VPlus user. Our net.digest editor John Burke also points out an obscure bonus in his column this month that makes configuring modems with 3000s easier than it's been in a long time. But a lot of everything else in the Express release has been available through patches, and HP is trying to get the LISTF stuff out on a patch in the meantime. The LISTF enhancements and the PAUSE command enhancements first became available to 5.5 users through patch MPEHXY8 -- at least that was the number of the patch before HP tried to roll the enhancements into Express 2. It's not clear now if HP will continue to ship patch MPEHXY8. Vance reports that "PAUSE, HPLASTSPID var, HPSPOOLID var, file create time, # extents # sectors, and raw PRINTing were all part of the same patch." What caused the problem? HP hasn't gotten too specific, but Vance reported that "Despite design and code inspections, a nine-member beta team using the patch for two months, and fairly rigorous unit testing, there were problems that only surfaced in high end stress testing." HP also faces a lot of testing and paperwork to make any of the above enhancements available to MPE/iX 5.0 users. Migrating to 5.5 seems to be the fastest way to get the enhancements, but nobody is going to be using them in an Express release until this fall.
But TurboStore users really need Express 2 anyway
HP will ship plenty of Express 2 tapes for MPE/iX 5.5 anyway, despite the
fact that some
of the broadest reaching enhancements didn't make the cut. HP has made
Express 2
absolutely essential to any shop that's running TurboStore/iX II or
TurboStore/iX 7x24.
That's because those two products, ordinarily an extra-cost item, were
shipped for free
with every MPE/iX 5.5 tape that HP sent in the first release. After posting
a Web page with
instructions on what to do about the mistake, and running a blurb in the
Advisor
marketing newsletter and a two-page article in the Communicator
documentation for
Express 2, HP still has some work to do to make it absolutely clear how the
mixup will
affect TurboStore customers. Some customers are using phrases like "here's
my theory"
in describing their plans to straighten out the mess. Some have gotten
letters along with
the Express 2 tapes, but we don't yet know if HP contacted everyone. Of
course, sending
a letter with a patch tape isn't the big red flag that a busy 3000 manager
would need to
understand that installing the Express 2 software is the only way to keep
TurboStore
running. HP says the software mistakenly given to all its 5.5 sites will
expire on July 15.
And that means it will expire for everybody, including customers who are
relying on the
True Online version of the backup software -- because they can't even
afford enough
downtime to do regular backups.
Apparently TurboStore customers can only avoid this loss of their backup capability by installing the SUBSYS tape in the Express 2 release of 5.5 -- or at the least, an XL for their product. HP's got a four-step process in the C.55.02 Communicator that shows how to copy the correct XL from the Express 2 tape to keep TurboStore from going belly-up on July 15 (it's in the Technical Articles section, page 2-1). You can perform the process without taking your system offline, but you won't be able to do backups during the operation. HP's mixup makes ordering and receiving the Express 2 tape mandatory for TurboStore customers, if the following sentence from the Communicator is to be believed: "Failure to install either the SUBSYS or the appropriate XL will remove TurboStore/iX II or TurboStore 7x24 from your system, leaving you with FOS STORE functionality."
All we can say is we're glad HP's TurboStore customers started
receiving the
Express 2 tapes beginning the first week of June. We know those sites will
be putting at
least part of Express 2 to work by July 15. As for the rest of the 3000
customers who are
using 5.5, it appears they're going to revert to their original STORE
capabilities on July
15. We'll leave the exercise of checking to see if TurboStore really
expires July 15 to our
more adventuresome readers. Drop us a line at seybold@io.com and let us know.
There's more GUI help available for MANMAN
The most widely installed manufacturing package in HP 3000 sites is getting
some more
GUI help from Speedware, which has introduced software to address the
special needs of
the HP 3000/MANMAN environment. A ready-to-use application, Speedware
OrderPoint,
is a Web front end to the MANMAN database that allows the direct entry of
orders from
the Internet into MANMAN databases on the HP 3000. Speedware is leveraging
its work in
Autobahn, the rapid Web application development product for HP 3000s. Speedware
sells the OrderPoint template with the Autobahn toolset. OrderPoint is up
and running
in customer sites, another place where the HP 3000 is engaging in
electronic commerce
(See our July issue for more details).
HP is taking notes on scrollable picklists, at last
It was one of the longer-standing enhancement requests for MPE/iX, but creating
scrollable picklists has finally become a to-do item in CSY. The VPlus
experts in CSY's
Bangalore, India operations started requesting customer input in late May
on the
enhancement, but there's no promise yet on when it might be available. HP
will provide
a facility for a scrollable pop-up window which can be used for a pick list in
conjunction with VPlus forms. HP says the pop-up window should be able to
overlay a
part of the screen, should display text on several rows and allow the user
to select the
text on any row. The window should also provide a facility for scrolling so
that
additional rows of text can be displayed, and the display and interaction
with the
window should be in block mode. HP proposes to bundle this functionality
into an
intrinsic.
It's an interesting proposal, because the functionality is already being offered by a third party firm as HP 3000-native software. CSY has stopped offering its own versions of software and features which third parties offer, so it's not quite clear why INFOWIN/iX, written by NewsWire subscriber Michael Berkowitz, is getting this "competition" from CSY. INFOWIN does everything the CSY intrinsic proposes "and does considerably more," Berkowitz explains. Just as an example, he says, "The data that appears in the window can be gotten from an IMAGE data set, KSAM XL or KSAM V file, or MPE flat file. INFOWIN comes with a data engine that you use to build your custom picklist at window execution time, just like MS Windows. No fixed file name is used." We reviewed INFOWIN/iX in our November 1996 issue (the article is up on the NewsWire's Always Online site), so we have a soft spot in our hearts for the product. But that's because we like the idea of a focused-vision product produced by a small company, meeting a need that nobody else is meeting. (Given what we're doing, we would.) Call Silton Information Systems at 213.846.9823 if you want pop-up window support in 3000 applications during 1997. You'd be supporting the concept of better ideas from smaller providers, too.
ODBC options are expanding
The long-awaited ODBC/32 alternative from Minisoft rolled out the door in
the first week
of June, satisfying hundreds of demo orders and even some sales. Minisoft is starting with
read capability, then adding write in the next few weeks, says Doug
Greenup. We expect
to get our crack TestDrivers looking at it as soon as all the features are
in place. Over in
the European market, Linkway has surfaced as another ODBC alternative from
CSL, a UK
supplier who says they've been selling ODBC connectivity since late 1995.
Linkway is
supposed to be available in both 16- and 32-bit driver versions. Meanwhile,
the supplier
of longest standing in the ODBC-for-3000 marketplace, M.B. Foster
Associates, is taking
to the road with a set of single-day seminars on connectivity for HP 3000s. The
company's "Functional Framework for Client-Server Deployment" is scheduled for
Houston on June 24 and Dallas on June 25. The $150 training opportunity
includes a
continental breakfast and instruction from Birket Foster, who's been
speaking on items
related to desktop connectivity for nearly all of the 20-plus years his
company has been
serving the HP 3000. You can register for the Texas dates, or others being
offered this
summer, by calling 800.267.9377, or send e-mail to info@mbfoster.com.
Java capabilities are starting to brim for 3000s
If you need a broader platform strategy for your 3000 connectivity than PCs
running
Microsoft Windows, there's always Java links. ADBC, the software that
brings IMAGE data
into Java applications and applets, is getting improvements with version
1.1. The tool
from Advanced Network Systems, Inc. (ANSI) will be completely compatible
with Java 1.1
and take care of current security issues. Developer David Thatcher said the
software,
which reads from and writes to IMAGE databases using Java clients and Java
Virtual
Machine (JVM) applications hosted on MPE/iX, will contain some helpful Java
tools --
including some to convert current applications to Java-enabled applets.
ANSI is big on
converting existing applications, since its customer base (manufacturing
sites) demands
that kind of compatibility. The company is working on VPLUS+, a product
that will plug
into ADBC and be offered free with the purchase of an $8,700 Model 1 ADBC.
Thatcher
said that VPLUS+ will Web-enable HP 3000 VPlus applications with no programming
changes on the 3000. An HP 3000 shop runs the VPlus-to-Java utility on the
HP 3000,
transfers it to a JVM, then fine-tunes the VPlus Java methods to
communicate with the
redirected VPlus calls from the HP 3000. The program on the 3000 then must be
recompiled with an ANSI library that contains Java calls. VPLUS+ can run
independently
of ADBC and can also be purchased separately. Thatcher expects to have the
software
ready for HP World in August, another component in the growing Java
solution for HP
3000s. More growth? Well, HP posted its latest 1.1.2 version of the Java
Developer's Kit
this month, including the Abstract Windowing Toolkit for the first time on
MPE/iX. It's
free, available from the CSY Java Web
page.