HP assembles blessing for Eloquence database

TurboIMAGE substitute for alternative environments earns SIG recommendation, works toward scalability

HP officials are allying with the SIG IMAGE/SQL Special Interest Group to route 3000 customers onto a database bypass this summer. The two organizations are telling HP 3000 sites which are planning to move off the system that the HP Eloquence database is a viable vehicle for data at small to medium-size shops.

A few days of intensive technical examination this spring prompted the SIG’s second of HP’s Eloquence recommendation as a database alternative to IMAGE/SQL. The 12-year-old Eloquence was created in circumstances similar to the HP 3000’s current status. HP had announced in the late 1980s the end of life for its Series 250/260 small business systems, a computer whose applications relied on IMAGE just as the HP 3000’s programs do.

Now HP and SIG IMAGE/SQL are working to put HP Eloquence into the same kind of service: providing a work-alike data repository for the hundreds of thousands of 3000 applications written to use IMAGE and TurboIMAGE. HP recently began to second its own recommendation with the technical opinions of the SIG.

Eloquence is “an invaluable tool for HP e3000 transition projects for small to mid-range customers,” HP Webcast host George Stachnik said in the most recent registration call for the company’s migration education broadcasts. “HP Eloquence has been evaluated by HP and its SIG Softvend partners, and technically endorsed by SIG IMAGE’s IMAGE/SQL Advisory Committee (ISAC).”

Attempts to woo the HP 3000 customers onto alternative platforms — either those from HP or IBM — always had the IMAGE hurdle to clear. But SIG chairman Ken Sletten noted that the existence of a database that can replace IMAGE in to small and mid-size implementations is not by itself a good reason to migrate.

“Just because HP Eloquence is out there is not, in my opinion, a reason to leave the MPE environment,” Sletten said.

While the database looks to be a good fit for implementations of 300 concurrent users and less, it has very little field testing in environments requiring more than that many users. Customers attending this spring’s Solutions Symposium wondered if several hundred users would provide enough access for their companies.

When asked if Eloquence looks and behaves enough like IMAGE to let 3000 developers get started quickly in a migration, Sletten qualified his answer by size. “I believe the ISAC is fairly confident that for small-to-medium users who are already planning to move, the answer is pretty clearly yes on Eloquence,” he said.

Other areas to consider while evaluating Eloquence as a replacement for IMAGE include the database’s support for languages, Sletten added. COBOL compiler maker Acucorp and fourth-generation language maker Speedware are already pledged to release versions of their products with Eloquence support. These companies have begun to position their languages as migration tools for HP 3000 sites.

Such third parties are going to need HP’s help if the SIGIMAGE endorsement is to stand up. The specific language of the ISAC endorsement includes several tasks which the SIG expects HP to accomplish. The statement reads, “The ISAC supports HP Eloquence as the best solution for small to medium MPE customers that are planning to migrate as recommended by HP — with the understanding and caveat that HP will work with appropriate third-parties to make the HP Eloquence “infrastructure” more robust; and that HP will lay out for the MPE user community how long and in what fashion HP as a company will stand behind the product.”

Sletten said that Eloquence has some features, such as read-only database locks, that aren’t even supported on IMAGE. “And I believe HP already has efforts underway to make the HP Eloquence infrastructure more robust,” he said.

The chairman didn’t want any SIG blessing to be confused with advice on whether to migrate off the 3000. “The [SIG’s] endorsement was not meant to imply that I think all IMAGE users should migrate,” Sletten said. “Quite the contrary.”

Performance questions on large installations remain unanswered for now, because most of the database’s installations serve smaller companies. The database has a layer of TurboIMAGE support that’s been added, but underneath it doesn’t use the same functionality. IMAGE/SQL uses hashing for its performance edge, while Eloquence does not hash at all.

Despite the differences, much of the classic utility vendor community is readying or releasing support for Eloquence. MB Foster has its UDALink software in test this month for Eloquence.

Among suppliers already shipping Eloquence-ready solutions, Robelle has included Eloquence support in the latest release of Suprtool. VitalSoft has reworked its Visimage reporting software to access Eloquence. An ADBC API from Advanced Network Systems that uses Eloquence is available; company officials report the software “is currently being used in a major migration project to enhance and improve migrated applications originally written in COBOL.” Minisoft has been supporting Eloquence in its middleware for several months.

Even though such HP 3000 vendors are embracing the database, some believe the product is still evolving. “By the time most people get serious about assessing their transition and migration options — probably in 2004 — the environment will be much better defined,” said MB Foster founder Birket Foster.

Some application suppliers who are announcing porting plans are still avoiding an embrace of Eloquence. Ports from Amisys LLC and eXegeSys for their healthcare and ERP applications are supporting Oracle and other products as databases. Summit Information Systems is reported to be using Eloquence in its next release of its credit union app.

(See an item in this issue’s NewsWire Briefs, plus this issue’s net.digest column, for more on HP Eloquence.)