At HP World, e3000 customers hunted for more evidence their server is ready to do business over the Internet. In many a 3000 meeting they heard one clue, full of promise and already packing accomplishment: Enhydra.

The software ran in demo in the e3000 HP booth on the show floor. It came up on general manager Winston Prather’s keynote slide set while touting the newest capabilities of the 3000. A meeting of Java experts included a presentation from Enhydra’s evangelist, and it appeared in a Special Interest Group of Web developers. Finally, during the HP 3000 management roundtable, Enhydra was offered as evidence that this computer isn’t your father’s HP 3000.

One of the distinctions about this software, available as a free download in the Web’s usual topsy-turvy business model, is the timing of its entry on the 3000 market. Owners of the server are getting their hands on this tool at nearly the same time as every other platform.

Enhydra (www.enhydra.org) is an Open Source application server that enables the rapid development and deployment of Java and XML-based applications. Unlike a hardware server, an application server handles all application operations between browser-based computers and a company’s back-end business applications and databases — in this case, IMAGE/SQL or Allbase and HP 3000 apps written in languages like COBOL.

Because most databases can’t interpret commands written in HTML, an application server works as a translator. It can allow a customer with a browser to search an online retailer’s database for pricing information. The demo run at the HP World e3000 booth was the one which is shipped with Enhydra’s Open Source code: a golf shop retail sales program, where purchases are made through a Web browser.

In Europe, HP 3000 customer Lindauer-Dornier is using Enhydra as an application server. This year the company was one of several honored as the Enhydra “Site of the Week.”

Enhydra in action

The world’s largest manufacturer of custom power looms has been developing and running all its business-critical applications on an HP 3000 Series 979/200 since the 1970s. It recently completed its i-POS project, which permits customers to order replacement parts for power looms online. Lindauer-Dornier realized the project on the 3000 with the Apache Web server, Java-based Enhydra and an Oracle database.

For the most part, the power looms built by Lindauer Dornier are custom designs. In 1995, the company made the transition from paper documentation and replacement part catalogs to an electronic parts ordering system (EPOS). Replacement parts – vital for maintaining the productivity of the looms – arrived quicker, thanks to faster retrieval and forwarding of orders to customer service.

Dornier developed the idea further with Enhydra, taking the order process directly to the customers. When HP released Apache/iX to permit the 3000 as a full-scale Web server, Dornier saw the opportunity to process replacement part orders online. A consulting firm, Transparent Solutions, had developed a new Java application, I-POs, under Windows NT. Last year, Apache/iX, Java and Oracle were installed on the HP 3000. With the support of HP Services, I-POs was then transferred to the HP 3000 without needing any modifications.The implementation went smoothly, and the Enhydra application was up and running within a few hours.

I-POs complements EPOS and provides a fast, simple channel for replacement part orders. All data needed by individual customers for their orders is served in an up-to-date, customer-specific form by the Oracle database using the browser interface. Replacement parts can be marked directly in the drawings, and then Dornier processes the orders immediately.

E-commerce glue

Engineers and developers are praising Enhydra as the glue that can hold together the promising pieces of Web commerce. Enhydra is an application framework that separates an application’s data, the presentation and the business logic.

“It has modules that help a developer define each part of the model-view-controller pattern,” said Mark Wonsil, a Web developer at 3M Enterprises who builds applications employing HP 3000s. “Without Enhydra or some other framework, a company would have to develop its own presentation scheme, data connection and business logic modules.”

Enhydra converts files into Java Objects. Applying other tools to these objects can then render HTML, track the application’s state, and maintain data.

At HP World in the management roundtable, general manager Winston Prather of the e3000 division said the software shows how far Java has come in helping build applications.

“A perfect, recent example of Java’s coming of age is Enhydra,” Prather said. “This new application server, which is 100 percent Java, was brought over to the 3000 very easily.”

Lutris Corp. developed Enhydra “to foster a development community to prove the product and get it adopted,” said CSY engineer Mark Bixby, who ported the Apache Web server to the HP 3000. “If you want support for Enhydra, you can buy it from Lutris,”the creators of Enhydra.

Bixby said two customers he’s talked with are writing their own application servers, using the PHP freeware that he ported to MPE. “That’s a viable way to do it, if you want to roll your own. Or you can use a full suite like Enhydra.” He added that the Enhydra Web site is full of help files and examples to shorten the learning curve.

Java’s bounty

Developers of long standing in the 3000 community say that HP’s port of the language to the platform has paved the way for cutting-edge development tools like Enhydra.

“The investments in Posix things like Apache and Java have gone a long way towards keeping the platform viable in the Internet Age,” said Gavin Scott, co-chair of SIG-Java and a developer at Allegro Consultants.

“The continuing significant investment in Java for MPE is starting to show real results in the area of performance,” Scott said. “With the availability of the Enhydra application server and similar products, it is looking like it will result in some new application development and availability.”

Linking to IMAGE

Over at ORBiT Software, another developer is working on a project to create a Web-based front end for ORBiT’s internal problem-tracking database. The back end will be an IMAGE/SQL database on a Series 989, which the Enhydra app will access via JDBC. Jon Diercks was enthusiastic about Enhydra’s promise for his project.

“I’m excited about Enhydra and the benefits it brings to this project,” Diercks said. “There is a bit of a learning curve, but the deeper I get into it the better it gets.”

Diercks said he discovered an MPE patch is required to resolve a problem with the JDBC drivers which are included in MPE/iX 6.0.

“Something about the way Enhydra’s database-abstraction layer accessed the JDBC driver was triggering a NullPointerException,” Diercks said. “Patch JDBLXB6A for MPE/iX 6.5 is now available from the Response Center as a beta patch, and it should include version 1_1_3 of DRIVERJ.JDBC.SYS. This is a jar-format archive containing the various class files needed for Java programs to access databases as a JDBC client connecting to the HP IMAGE/SQL JDBC server.”

Diercks added that “Although JDBLXB6A is a 6.5 patch, I don’t think there should be any reason not to use the same client classes when talking to JDBC on 5.5 or 6.0. I haven’t tried this, though.”

After installing this fix, he said his Enhydra project is moving along well. The only other problem he said he’s encountered with Enhydra on his Series 989 concerns Enhydra’s XML compiler, XMLC.

“It sometimes seems to get stuck at the end of a compile,” he said. “I can usually break/abort and resume the project build where it left off, but I haven’t tracked down the ultimate source of this problem yet. Luckily, with the platform independence of Java, I can do my initial development and testing on a PC, and just move the compiled project (which Enhydra wraps up in a single convenient jar file) to the MPE system for deployment.”