IMAGE tracing facility simplifies app monitoring, migration to Eloquence

OmniSolutions (www.omnisolutions.com) is offering the first in a series of utilities designed to facilitate the migration of TurboIMAGE applications to other systems.

IMAGO.L1 is a run-time IMAGE tracing facility, software the company says is “intended to simplify the task of monitoring, and reverse engineering if necessary, HP 3000 applications.” Managers can configure the level of logging, and IMAGO allows tracing of IMAGE calls, all supplied IMAGE parameters, and all fields returned by the IMAGE call. All data field types are traced in ASCII, and array data types are also supported.

IMAGO.L1 can also log the names of all disk files that are opened by the application, as well as all MPE commands that are programmatically executed by the application. IMAGO.L1 works with all CM and NM application programs, requires no changes to be made to applications, and does not require source code to be available.

OmniSolutions is also offering IMAGO.L2, software that aids in phased migration of TurboIMAGE applications to HP Eloquence on non-3000 platforms. Customers need to maintain dual copies of databases on both platforms and keep databases synchronized with each other.

“It’s designed to address a real-world problem that is not being given enough visibility in other vendors’ migration plans,” said OmniSolutions president Simon Tsalyuk. “If your company has limited resources, you’re probably not going to be switching over to migrated applications over a magic weekend.”

IMAGO.L2 allows HP 3000 applications to run directly against HP Eloquence databases located on other systems, without requiring any local TurboIMAGE databases. Like IMAGO.L1, no changes have to be made to HP 3000-based applications to function with IMAGO.L2, and source code is not required.

“IMAGO.L2 also serves as a useful insurance policy,” Tsalyuk said, “in the event that migrated applications are found to contain problems — the original HP 3000 applications remain available.”

The IMAGO products also can help 3000 users avoid upgrades of HP 3000s, Tsalyuk said. “By moving databases off the 3000, you’ll essentially be using the 3000 as an application server, and greatly reduce the load it has to carry,” he said. Because of the limited lifespan of the IMAGO utilities, OmniSolutions will make the products available on a leased basis. The Migration Tools page on the OmniSolutions Web site has a form to request a free evaluation copy.