Robelle Tech: Suprtool/UX and Eloquence

March 2002

Get the most out of your Robelle tools

Suprtool/UX and Eloquence

Suprtool is Robelle’s product for extracting, massaging, sorting, and exporting data. It runs on MPE and on HP-UX.

Suprtool on HP-UX now accesses HP Eloquence databases on HP-UX in the same way it accesses IMAGE databases on HP e3000. You can read records using serial or keyed reads, and create, update and delete records. In other words, Suprtool/UX now supports the BASE, GET, CHAIN, PUT, DELETE and UPDATE commands, as well as DEFINE, EXTRACT and IF on Eloquence data fields. The syntax is virtually identical between the MPE and HP-UX versions of Suprtool. We decided not to implement the EDIT command of Suprtool, which allows interactive editing of field values for entries selected by a key value, since there are similar functions already built into Eloquence.

And even though HP Eloquence does not natively support IMAGE packed- or display-style numeric data, Suprtool can map those data types onto other, available data types.

Of course, all the other powerful features of Suprtool are available to HP Eloquence users

• Link records from multiple datasets or other sources using Suprlink

• Sort data quickly.

• Transfer data between HP Eloquence and IMAGE using portable self-describing files.

• Transfer data between HP Eloquence and other HP-UX databases, such as Oracle and Allbase.

• Export HP Eloquence data using STExport, with output to HTML or XML documents, or to comma-delimited files for easy import into other applications.

In short, all the critical Suprtool functionality you have come to rely on for IMAGE is available for HP Eloquence, simplifying your transition from HP e3000 to HP-UX. No need to retrain staff on new data manipulation tools.

As of February 2002, we were looking for a few select alpha testers, who are familiar with Suprtool on MPE and are looking at HP Eloquence on HP-UX. We have the same Suprtool commands that you are familiar with on MPE now working on HP-UX, and we need people to try the software out, especially in testing the various data types available in HP Eloquence. This first release uses the “official” Eloquence API, and appears quite speedy. If we get good feedback from users, our next step is to see if the internal Eloquence data structures are similar enough to TurboIMAGE to justify doing a high-speed Nobuf/Block Read version of Suprtool for Eloquence.

Please send an e-mail to neil@robelle.com if you are interested in testing Suprtool with Eloquence, and let us know whether you already have Eloquence installed, whether you have a database built, and what your plans are, or even if you are just investigating.

For more information on Suprtool/UX, see this Web page: www.robelle.com/products/suprtool/moreinfo-sx.html. For more Web links on HP-UX, visit the About HP-UX page at Robelle: www.robelle.com/abouthpux.html