MR-Win6530 now supports seamless switching between Guardian/OSS

The NonStop users are increasingly facing the requirement to work under both environments, Guardian and OSS.

In the former versions of MR-Win6530 the user had to run two different terminal sessions for each of these environments, a 6530-Terminal session for Guardian and a VT220 –Terminal session for OSS.

The new feature “Seamless switching Guardian/OSS” facilitates the user to run a single 6530-Terminal session and switch between Guardian and OSS dynamically by performing the proper NonStop commands.

There is no need for a separate VT220-Terminal session.

This functionality does not require any additional server components to be installed.

The functionality is also available when using either SSL or SSH encryption in which case you will need some NonStop component to implement server-side encryption.

For more information, visit our web site www.comforte.com or send an email to info@comforte.com.

CAIL Studio Release 2 Announcement

With CAIL Studio Release 2 there are new options to leverage NonStop based information services to support Open Web Services and SOA initiatives - with no change to current systems.

NonStop, Open Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a very important part of the new HP and NonStop software strategy. As well, given the increasing importance of SOA in the enterprise, there is a greater need to utilize information on NonStop and all platforms in an SOA environment to address new business needs. Why ? To realize benefits quickly at low cost with minimal risk.

Importantly, the new CAIL Studio Release 2 contains all of the original functionality with additional features, system optimization and Open Web development capabilities that includes -

1. Direct NonStop Transactional and Programmatic Access

This new feature is based on the original XML-RPC standard, is optimized for the NonStop environment and allows for transactional XML from heterogeneous OS environments using S/HTTP. The simplicity of XML and the CAIL Studio XML-RPC method gives Customers options not currently available anywhere else on NonStop and includes full TMF support as well as Pathway, direct process access and direct Enscribe capability.

2. Enhanced performance - between 2 and 4 times faster screen throughput in HTML

3. New "open" capabilities including improved Apache, Ajax, Axis2, .net and Java support

4. Improved interoperability with NonStop iTP Web Server - with new scripting and integration capabilities

5. Interoperability with HP SASH

Using Open Web tools such as Java, Apache, Ajax, and Axis2, CAIL Studio now fits solidly into the newly supported HP Spring, Axis2, Struts and Hibernate (SASH) strategy. With HP and CAIL moving in the same direction, Customers currently considering or using parts of "SASH" including Apache, Struts and Axis2 benefit by having CAIL Studio map directly with HP products and Open Web / SOA guidelines.

To summarize, CAIL Studio enables NonStop "green screen", Pathway and Scobol applications to address new requirements with a proven solution for enabling SOA and Open Web Services - without making changes to current systems. Also, Customers moving towards an open development environment find CAIL Studio appealing to compliment and extend on HP SOA direction for modern web enabling.

Today, many organizations are interested using Open Web Software including Java, Apache, Ajax, Axis2 and the new HP supported SASH stack with or without iTP Web Server, SOAP and OSS. CAIL Studio supports these technologies and provides extensive flexibility to use iTP, NSJSP and OSS or use off board Apache servers - your choice.

For additional insights about moving systems forward and utilizing Web Services, watch for CAIL Presentations at HPTF / ITUG and local RUG events plus the NonStop SOA article in the May/June 08 Connections Magazine.

Also, please visit www.cail.com/wsintro or contact CAIL at 1-800-668-5769 or Rick Hunter at 303-517-5727 to discuss the options to enhance NonStop information services.

EBOSS – The Enterprise Desktop

(Developed by Cross-El Software Solutions)

The eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop ensures maximum security for sensitive information and systems while delivering ease of use for operating and maintenance personnel. eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop provides the ability to utilize a single login process to access multiple applications operating on diverse platforms. eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop is an open architecture model which enhances productivity at every level from system administration to the users.

Benefits

Security

eBOSS™ Desktop utilizes a credential process along with the authentication and authorization functions of BOSS™ to ensure only defined access is given to any application and operational command on the Enterprise network. All security and access functions in the Enterprise network can be controlled by a small number of personnel from a single location resulting in minimal exposure to unauthorized incursions.

Productivity

The open environment of eBOSS™ Desktop increases productivity by making access as easy as connecting to the internet and by providing a desktop capability which is the same regardless of the physical location of the employee (or client).

Flexibility and Application Independence

eBOSS™ Desktop works across customer networks that include different hardware platforms and operating systems. This capability allows easy integration of the Enterprise with users and terminals.

Scalability

eBOSS™ Desktop is a cost-effective solution for the Enterprise. It provides an attractive economic result whether utilized in small size networks or very large operations.

Reliability

The mission critical nature of the services provided through eBOSS™ Secure Desktop to the Enterprise is a central factor in selection of the HP NonStop™ Server as the operating platform. The NonStop™ Server is one of the most robust systems presently in production and has an unmatched record for maintaining services. The capabilities of these servers are the result of an architecture including redundant systems and emphasizing fault tolerance.

Technology and Performance

eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop is a system utilizing software innovation to deliver both high security and high productivity through an open environment.

eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop provides a level of service unique in the industry. The fault tolerance of the server platform and the stability of the software are the keys to this reliability level.

eBOSS™ Enterprise Desktop Highlights

Provides secure access control and auditing in an open environment.

Performs authentication, authorization, and credential management.

Provides local or remote access to unique desktop of each user.

Scalable and economical over a wide range of system densities.

Runs on a reliable, fault tolerant platform.

For more information on eBOSS or to request a trial - contact Unlimited Software Associates at sales@usahero.com or call us at 610-296-2633.

NonStop - A Running Commentary - April, ‘08

I continue to participate in user events – RMTUG in Denver CO, DUST in Phoenix, AZ – but the recent EBUG meeting was of particular interest. Especially after ACI made the announcements in December (the strategic alliance with IBM), and in March (the outsourcing of internal IT to IBM), which seemed to indicate a major sea-change to the direction they were taking. As the majority of BASE24 users in EMEA are running on HP NonStop servers, I thought it would be a good time to show up and get a first-hand read on the mood of the community.

I have written a couple of blog postings to the ITUG-Connection web site on my initial impressions, and you can read them at www.itug-connection.blogspot.com and look for the postings We all have opinions! of April 21^st, and a few days later Vienna Dialogue! on April 24^th. It is not my intention to revisit the comments made in either of these postings, but consider the overall impression I came away with.

The Customer is King!

In an early presentation by IBM given by Boxley Llewellyn, of the IBM Payments Transformation Team “The ACI/IBM Alliance: Our Value Proposition” he referenced an IBM research paper produced by IBM Business Consulting Services called “The paradox of Banking, 2015”, subtitled “Achieving more by doing less”. This paper can be viewed on the IBM web site if you want to take a deeper look. However, in the slides Mr. Llewellyn used, his first point was “Customers are king”, which was a reference back to the IBM research paper’s first observation “Customers redefine the rules of the game!”

For many years, bankers have known of the power of the customer – a failed service often results in customers changing bankers. The more electronic the service being provided, the easier it is to find whatever is of interest elsewhere. What IBM was referring to was the results of research that suggested “customers are questioning the ability of banks to look out for their financial well-being.” Over coffee, this message quickly was turned around, as the ACI customers began to wonder about ACI truly looking out for their “solution” well-being. Many customers were in the throws of moving to HPs Integrity NonStop (Itanium) product family, and were looking for long-term support. And the proposed timeframe to move to the newer BASE24eps, before BASE24 Classic was “sunset” in 2011, was particularly worry-some for many of them. However, as the dialogue between ACI and BASE24 users opened up, it was clearly a case of the customer being the King.

The Customer is King!

Steve Saltwick, of HP BCS Cupertino gave a measured and highly professional presentation the following day. He talked about the partnership HP was developing with Logica that would help HP customers move to BASE24eps. And he talked about the Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the upcoming HP Bladed Architecture servers and how, in EMEA, of the two already onsite with customers, one was running BASE24 Classic. Both of these items came as a surprise to the ACI management – and it opened an immediate dialogue between the two parties.

ACI is not abandoning the HP NonStop community. It had been a goal of ACI for some time to provide standard product offerings into the IBM mainframe marketplace that, for years, had depended on home-grown applications. And this marketplace was even bigger than what today was running on NonStop! But the early going with IBM had been difficult and after several years, there were very few users. The decision to enter into partnership with IBM and to position the “open BASE24eps” application on top of IBM’s “Blue Stack” (Enterprise Server Bus, WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, etc.) was to accelerate the market penetration. I have to believe IBM still looks longingly at the BASE24 users of NonStop, but for me the reality is that this is an “additive strategy”, and not a “replacement strategy”, although I couldn’t get any senior ACI executives to quite say exactly those words!

But what HP recognized is that the marketplace for BASE24 users is wide open and that they can compete. With the banking community historically conservative, reference customers are extremely important. When one platform has 309 references, and the other less than 5, the playing field is very much angled in favor of the incumbent. However, it really is now up to HP sales teams to compete and for the first time, I sensed this is exactly the plan and after all, the customer is King.

The Customer is King!

Each day concluded with receptions in the exhibition area where the ecosystem of ISVs supporting BASE24 were present. It’s amazing what is discussed over cocktails and the longer the event went on, the more the ISVs recognized that the opportunities for the products were as strong as ever. By the end of the show there wasn’t a vendor who didn’t have a table full of prospect’s business cards.

BASE24 users on NonStop have very sizeable investments in a number of ISV products. At GoldenGate, we have been supporting BASE24 for many years and enjoyed a great relationship first with Insession, and then later, with ACI. BASE24 users were dependent on the GoldenGate product for Disaster Recovery as well as Migrations. But GoldenGate isn’t the only ISV with strong ties to ACI – comForte, XYPRO, Ascert, and several others were highly visible. For ACI to really gain traction with their own user community, particularly with the emphasis they now have on migration, they do need to engage the ISVs more proactively.

As I talked to the ISV representatives it surprised me that ACI wasn’t proactively engaging them. There were no scheduled “product roadmap” sessions, just for the ISVs, and no invitation to sit down with developers. Indeed, while some of this developed over the course of the event, it was strictly ad-hoc. The investments BASE24 users have made in third party products in critical areas (security, web services, disaster recovery, etc.) suggest that any migration, without ISV support, just will not happen – at least, in the timeframe ACI would like. However, it is really coming back around to where ACI needs to engage the ISVs, and soon, as the customer is King!

In closing, it is very clear that there will be supported product on the HP NonStop platform and that the support for the new BASE24eps product will be just as strategic on NonStop as the other major platforms. It’s also clear to me that the HP NED sales teams are going on the offensive and working hard on not only keeping the NonStop base but to grow it. After all, they have the numbers on their side. And it’s just as clear to me that ACI needs to do a little better job of working with all parties to ensure the smoothest possible transition to new platforms (HP included) and solutions. Yes, customers have certainly redefined the rules of the game!

Stefi has New Features

Stefi, the nice GUI to browse and edit Tandem files, has great new features:

Stefi has now an integrated File Copy tool. The file opened can be copied to the following destinations:

- Excel (csv)
- Html
- PC txt
- PC Binary file
- MS Sql table
- Existing Tandem Enscribe file

You can filter the records (with Sql query or Enscribe filter) and you can also select which columns you would keep in the destination file.

The PC Binary format is an exact copy of the Tandem file, that can be opened and browsed with Stefi. This makes it possible to make resource-consuming queries without taking any burden on your HP NonStop server.
This format makes it also possible to try the software without a Tandem. You can download this install
set: http://www.audit-profit.hu/dl/Stefi_offline_4_3.zip

About Stefi:

Stefi, serving for years, is a useful tool to handle Tandem Enscribe/Sql files. It gives you a fast and user-friendly grapfical user iterface not only to Browse the files, but also to Edit them. For Sql tables you can construct Sql queries, for Enscribe files you can build a so called "Enscribe Filter". Primary and alternate keys can be also used. A separate converter program makes it possible to convert Cobol record definitions to Stefi's structure definition format.
Stefi has specific features for BASE24 files. Lots of BASE24 files' structures are already converted, there is a built-in Token Browser, which makes it easy to take a closer look at all of those details packaged into the tokens of the log files. You can filter the records on the presence and also on the contents of tokens. Queris can be sent not only to one file, but also to a batch of files. Using alternate keys, we can query a montly batch of log files in seconds.

This is the tool that all Tandem administrator/developer should have, especially those working with ACI's BASE24 system.

A free personal version can be dowloaded:
http://www.audit-profit.hu/dl/Stefi_personal_4_3.zip

More information: http://www.audit-profit.hu/it_support_e.html

Merlon Software Corporation Releases MARS Version 2.13

MARS provides a mechanism for monitoring and correcting database degradation.

MARS continuously monitors the health of key-sequenced database objects using advanced data sampling techniques and reloads those objects when appropriate.

This latest release of the Merlon Auto Reload System (MARS) includes optional dynamic or static TCP/IP connections with a private listener process that provides additional MARS-specific features.

This release also includes Windows Vista support, enhanced Command Security and Reload Parameters.

Please visit www.merlon.com for full details.

Availability Digest Reviews Business Continuity Survey

The Availability Digest’s most recent issue explores the results of The Aberdeen Group’s 2008 Business Continuity Survey. A major industry analysis firm, Aberdeen introduced as one of its findings just how few companies regularly and thoroughly test their BC/DR plans. Also in the Digest is a comparison of parallel and sequential repair - is one really better than the other, Part 2 of Fault Tolerance for Virtual Environments, and a review of Parallel Sysplex.

Digest editor Dr. Bill Highleyman will present a full-day, pre-conference seminar on “Active/Active Systems: Theory and Practice” at the upcoming ITUG Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The seminar will be held on Monday, June 16^th. Visit www.itug.org to register.

The Digest is free online and focuses on continuous processing architectures, with particular attention given to active/active technology. Issues of the Digest feature articles on the following topics: Case Studies, Never Again, Best Practices, Availability Topics, Recommended Reading, Product Reviews, and The Geek Corner. www.availabilitydigest.com

Ross Systems International Releases Program Licensing Suite Version 2.0

Ross Systems International, has pleasure in announcing a Version 2.0 of RSI LICENSE, the second major offering in RSI’s cryptographic product range.

It enhances the capabilities of RSI LICENSE Version 1.0 by:

Enabling corporate Licensees to restrict the day of the week and the time that a license can be used. This has the advantage that System managers can lock down the use of a given application to very specific times and dates as part of their system management and security policy.

Licensors can also of restricting issued licenses so that they can only run on given CPUs within a system. This gives the capability of issuing limited licenses to users of very large systems who do not require their entire machine to be licensed.

As with HSEMM, RSI’s HSM Emulator Suite, RSI License has been developed to make advanced cryptographic techniques available to corporate solution providers who want and need to use security based solutions in the development and rollout of their products, but do not have the time or cryptographic know how to implement them.

The RSI LICENSE Product is a set of HP NonStop^TM programs and libraries that provide a simple, easy to use, flexible and effective method of setting up a program licensing environment, enabling program licensing control, issuing licenses, in the form of encrypted files, and maintaining those licenses for multiple HP NonStop^TM Systems over time.

RSI LICENSE is designed as a hierarchical licensing system in which Ross Systems International can grant licenses to licensors who can then grant licenses to their product users

It has the following benefits:

1. The licenses issued are very secure.

2. It is very easy to modify the licensing system for a new program or program group

3. Licensing Libraries exist for C, C++, TAL, pTAL and COBOL programs.

4. It is very easy to add licensing to a program

5. You can wild card a program to operate with any of your licenses.

6. Issuing licenses with LICENSE is secure, simple and flexible.

7. Multiple Systems Can be licensed in one license file.

8. Optional wild cards in the license file enable you to determine how the licenses operate.

9. You can determine what happens when a license is infringed.

10. Infringement reporting on EMS log and home terminal.

11. It is very easy to maintain license files using the VIEWLICE utility

Please contact Rupert Stanley at Ross Systems International Limited at rupert@rsi-ns.com or
+44-1206-392923 for additional information.

Information on RSI’s other products can be found on http://www.rsi-ns.com/.

ITUG

ITUG Summit 2008

ITUG Summit 2008 at HP Technology Forum & Expo, 16-19 June in Las Vegas, Nevada is the premier event for user training and technical information for the NonStop community.

ITUG Summit 2008 will again showcase an array of HP NonStop sessions. Download the track descriptions.

Stay tuned to www.itug.org for the latest program details. Registration will open in early March.

Looking for a Solution or an answer to a particular problem ASK Tandemworld. We will contact the vendors for you and find a suitable solution that meets for current and future needs.