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Ron Seybold
Editor In Chief
3000 NewsWire

In this month's Online Extra:

6.0 support still coming for many products...
...But it's safe from the PowerPatch 5 bug
Not all of HP’s Asia is downtrodden
IPROF tutorials feature 3000 experts
Powerhouse Web beta begins for 3000s
PatchWatch: Fast DLT searches on 3000s
JDBC ready to take off at Minisoft
Lund signs on ACS as reseller
Adager takes on DBMGR customers

6.0 support still coming for many products...

Reports from HP customers indicate that more than a few application favorites have yet to be certified for the 6.0 version of MPE/iX. To the list of Oracle 7 (not ready until summer, according to Oracle's projections) you can add Compuware's Uniface, a development suite in use at 3M. (Apparently PowerPatch 6 for MPE/iX 5.5 is okay for Uniface.) Customers are also wondering if the 9.4 version of the Amisys healthcare application has been certified yet for 6.0.

Tools vendors are usually early on the adoption curve for new HP 3000 operating system releases, so your favorite database manager, programming suite or Year 2000 tool should make the 6.0 cut today. But be sure to check with application providers before committing your staff time [and system downtime] to the upgrade. Customers are reporting successful upgrades, even with some unexpected situations. Brad Feazell noted that his upgrade experiences usually include doubling back to HP to get the vendor to put all of his subsystems on the update tape. (Things get left out pretty regularly, from customer reports). A newer wrinkle was part of his latest, 6.0 install:

"Make sure that all your optional subsystems are included on your tape set. HP has always been terrible with support contracts but lately, I think they've hit rock bottom. We had problems with missing software when we went from 5.0 to 5.5 and again when we went from 5.5 to 6.0.

We also found that newer firmware revisions on HP DAT drives will not work with the 6.0 setup. We had to have HP come out and dumb our tape drive down so the upgrade would work."

...But it's safe from the PowerPatch 5 bug

One thing that the 6.0 release does have in its favor is that it's free of the bug that made itself known while using DBUTIL ERASE, a problem that HP shipped out in the PowerPatch 5 of MPE/iX 5.5. (In case you hadn't heard, the bug can scramble databases while using DBUTIL.) Somehow the performance improvement that caused the bug got left off of the 6.0 build, and so the newest version of the operating system dodged that bullet. Things get left out pretty regularly, despite diligent quality assurance. HP left out a segment from VPlus in the 6.0 tape that gives the venerable screen handler new date intrinsic capabilities. It's fixed in a patch (see our January issue for details).

Such an omission is minor compared to what HP 9000 managers endure in a shift to a major release. Richard Gambrell, who manages both kinds of systems, reported:

"Major [HP-UX] OS upgrades (8 to 9, 9 to 10, 10.1 to 10.2) are always, always a major problem. The last one I was involved in is the first time I've ever had to go home and rest before returning to round up another day of working on making the update work -- and we even had an HP SE there to do it!"

"MPE updates are much more dependable - at least you can get AUTOINST and Patch/iX to run, which is more than I can say for SWINSTALL! Every MPE update I've done has worked out just fine with only a little messing around. HP-UX updates always seem to involve major screw-ups."

"Everything I said about being prepared for MPE updates goes triple for HP UX updates - like don't forget to read through all the little "readme" manuals for every product new release for HP-UX to catch the incompatibilities you'll run into -- and you always seem to run into them."

If you're new to the 3000 and uncertain of your upgrade capabilities, you can buy some help. HP 3000 Technical Consultant Ward Hammond of Forsythe Solutions dropped this note on the Internet:

"Forsythe Solutions Group provides consulting services for upgrades, migrations and installs. The services are performed by experienced, certified HP 3000 technician consultants. If you are interested, give me a call (847.982.5528) and I will put you in touch with one of our sales representatives.

Not all of HP’s Asia is downtrodden

Even with the dire forecasts of HP's Asian business in the near term, we could find a bit of sunshine poking through the financial storm clouds. HP Taiwan has announced that the company's sales revenues in Taiwan reached US$470 million in 1998, a 25 percent increase over 1997 results.

In 1998 HP Taiwan's staff increased by 200, and plans to expand it another 15 percent are underway. HP Taiwan said it expects to reach sales revenues of US$600 million in 1999. This fall HP CEO Lew Platt complained publicly that HP's sales would be off by $600 million in Korea alone. It looks as if HP Taiwan, which is the largest of Hewlett Packard's Asian companies and sells more than any other Asian HP company, will be helping to make up that shortfall.

IPROF tutorials feature 3000 experts

The MPE programmer-fest called IPROF has new tutorial tracks on the day before it officially opens, and we've learned who the presenters for the two tracks will be. These are optional, extra-cost Boot Camps that run all day on the 17th of February. (Contact Interex at 408.743.4640 to register, or sign up online at the Interex Web site's IPROF page, www.interex.com/iprof).

Tony Furnivall, leader of the SIG for MPE users, will lead the all-day MPE Boot Camp. And FREEWARE tape founder Michael Hensley, a fellow who's written a great guide to getting Posix up and running on 5.5, will teach Posix Porting skills to customers who want to bring across Unix utilities into the MPE world. One such current project we've heard about is a 3000 port of LDAP, the lightweight directory protocol on many other platforms. Lars Appel, who kicked off the Samba port that became part of the 6.0 release, was taking a first tilt at making an LDAP/iX in the weeks before the holidays.

Powerhouse Web beta begins for 3000s

Cognos is glad to admit that the current PowerHouse products are not supported over the Internet as a Browser Interface. Owing to the Internet's protocols, it is not practical to deploy standard PowerHouse.

But this month Cognos begins beta testing of its release of PowerHouse (8.2x), one which does support a Browser interface. Introduced as PowerHouse Web at the latest HP World, it interfaces to Web servers via the industry standard CGI and is purportedly easy to set up, with packaged controls and install scripts.

Cognos says that Web will be an additional component to your existing PowerHouse license, giving you a way to access both relational and non-relational data sources at the same time.

Cognos' Web site (www.cognos.com) has some details on Powerhouse Web, and we hope to have a more detailed look at the product in the coming months. Given that the reception to Powerhouse 2000 was a resounding thud (some say the product was overpriced, and others say it was pitched as a Year 2000 tool when it was more suited for major Powerhouse overhauls), a success with Powerhouse Web would give Cognos more reason to revive its HP 3000 efforts.

PatchWatch: Fast DLT searches on 3000s

Customers using the DLT 4000 tape drives with HP 3000s have weathered searches of the media slower than molasses in January. But this month there's a patch to speed up the process, so those vast stores of data can deliver an individual group or account faster. Patch MPEJXX0A provides DLT fast-search for labeled tapes with a new version of STORE. MPEJXT7 provides the same functionality for unlabeled tapes.

HP warns that "Due to the nature of the code changes made to implement DLT fast-search for labeled tapes, labeled tapes created using this version of STORE will not be FCOPYable by default. If there is a need to create labeled store tapes which are FCOPYable, use the new ;FCOPY option on the :STORE command, which will cause STORE to create labeled tapes without fast-search enabled, allowing the tapes to be FCOPYed."

JDBC ready to take off at Minisoft

Doug Greenup at Minisoft (www.minisoft.com, 360.568.6602) reports that the JDBC Java middleware solution for IMAGE databases will take off in February, after a testing period longer than expected. Minisoft's JDBC will be the first on the market if the company meets this timeframe. There's no word yet on when HP will make its JDBC driver available in the PowerPatch 1 for MPE/iX 6.0.

The Minisoft solution works with older versions of MPE/iX, although you'll really need 6.0 to get a supported Java solution working on the HP 3000. We'll have more details about the Minisoft solution in our February issue, including a first look at JavaShop, the development environment included with it. ODBC/32 customers of Minisoft can add JDBC for $1,000, Greenup adds. The company will be delivering the product via online demos, just as it has been serving up ODBC/32 for months now.

Lund signs on ACS as reseller

Advanced Computer Systems (www.adcomsys.com, 212.480.0800) dropped us a brief note to announce they have become a reseller for the Lund Performance Solutions product line. ACS plans to distribute the product for Lund in the US, Asia and exclusively to German-speaking Europe. Lund's products being handled at ACS include performance monitoring, long-term trend analysis, disk and resource management and capacity planning lines. ACS, which is a HP Channel Partner, is a full service systems integrator serving US companies with multinational flavors. The ACS team will join with Hamburg, Germany-based HCS Hanseatischer Computer Service GmbH to execute the German distribution.

Adager takes on DBMGR customers

Company missions change as a matter of course in the 3000 community, and it's good to see old allies of the system working together during such transitions. Dynamic Information Systems Corporation (DISC), plans to retire its DBMGR database maintenance utility on December 31, and has arranged for Adager to give its customers a new source for IMAGE transformation needs.

DISC has partnered with Adager to allow DBMGR customers currently on maintenance to upgrade to Adager Model 1 for a cost of US$300.00 per CPU, which includes the Adager first year maintenance. For more information you can contact DISC at 303.444.4000, or Adager at 208.726.9100.