HP catalogs middleware options at conference

Session rich in third-party tools leads insights at GHRUG meeting

It’s not the favorite talk of HP’s top managers, but Alvina Nishimoto keeps giving it and improving it. A thorough tour of the rich middleware options for HP 3000 customers and developers stood out among several fine talks at a recent meeting of the Greater Houston Regional Users Group. Nishimoto, the R&D Program Manager for HP’s Commercial Systems Division (CSY), carried the banner of enabling e3000 interoperability through third-party software, options HP is leaving for its partners to supply.

HP has few presentations for its 3000 customers so full of references to third-party tools as this “Your HP e3000 E-Toolkit” talk which Nishimoto gives. It’s the kind of soft recommendation that’s good for growth of the tools segment of the 3000 market, when a mention from an HP rep can add credibility or put an alternative on the radar screen. Over more than three years of presentation, the session has grown to categorize middleware and kept up well with the latest options. Nishimoto says the subject is vital because IT staffs are getting slimmer.

“It addresses a lot of the IS labor shortage,” she said of middleware at the GHRUG meeting. “A lot of the people coming out of college have been trained in a lot of the standard middleware pieces. I talk about the various types and what they do, and give a feel for what’s available.”

Desktop access is the one of the most common types of middleware, giving customers a way to leverage VPlus applications. GUIs get connected to existing apps with little or no change to source code. Desktop access tools give immediate results and step into the benefits of a distributed system. Software which offers connections at this level is available from Advanced Network Systems, Bradmark, LegacyJ, Minisoft, Walldata and WRQ.

Terminal emulation in a Web browser is another kind of middleware tool, one which “gives you a Web interface but is pretty much the screen you already have,” Nishimoto said. Millware’s ScreenJet, Minisoft’s Javelin, Walldata’s NetManage and WRQ’s Reflection for the Web serve these needs, she said.

On another level are products which do VPlus conversion, intercepting calls and letting a developer enhance beyond those basics. “You change the look and feel of the screen and go beyond,” Nishimoto said. Advanced Network Systems’ VPlus+ API, Computer Associates’ Opal for MANMAN sites, Bradmark’s VB-View written by Robust Systems, LegacyJ’s Java Remote Client, Minisoft’s Web Dimension (the subject of a TestDrive in this issue), and USINet’s Visual Magic fall into this category. Millware’s enhanced, for-purchase version of its ScreenJet product also enables conversion of VPlus applications, she added.

On a more administrative level rest tools for 3000 system management and file access. Offerings here include Bradmark’s MPE Command Center, Millware’s TheDash, GUI3000 from Omnisolutions, and Samba/iX. The latter is bundled as part of the MPE/iX operating system. Capabilities vary widely among these products; for example, TheDash is chiefly concerned with system performance, while GUI3000 is more of a file access and database examination tool. The third-party options “give you more capability than Samba, because they can address things that are MPE-specific and do things with jobs,” Nishimoto said.

This GUI approach now exists for HP 3000 development environments, she added. Offerings in this category include 4GL tools from Speedware (Visual Speedware, Autobahn); Cognos PowerHouse for the Web; Robelle’s Qedit for Windows and Whisper Technology’s Programmer Studio.

At GHRUG, Nishimoto talked about how Programmer Studio has been used by HP to create e-parts Direct, an HP application hosted from an e3000 which lets HP resellers order parts through a Web interface.

“They found it a huge productivity boost for their people, because a lot of them are trained more in Windows,” Nishimoto said of the HP developers. “Many of the programmers coming out of school are Windows-based. Whisper Technology is part of the Developers Garage program, meaning its tool is what we recommend the Internet startups and dot-coms use.”

The e-parts Direct application has helped HP “use fewer resources than it previously did, and made the process more efficient.” Resellers can look up and order parts, check on order status, and confirm warranty information using the application.

Data access middleware

Data-oriented APIs are among the most popular with the 3000 community at present, according to Nishimoto. This middleware gets data from 3000 databases, often using SQL syntax. The ideal is to use one API to get to all databases on all platforms.

ODBC and JDBC solutions are most prevalent in data access tools. HP has drivers for both, tied to its Allbase/SQL database environments, included in MPE/iX. Third party tools are Advanced Network Systems’ ADBC, for direct IMAGE access to Java applications; Minisoft’s ODBC/32 and JDBC/32 drivers; CSL’s Linkway ODBC; MB Foster’s UDALink module inside its DataExpress product; and DISC’s Omnidex for the Web. Excel, Lotus and Crystal Reports are among the client tools which can work with 3000 data by using this kind of middleware.

Proprietary API solutions include the EDA/SQL software from Information Builders, Inc. “They have the widest support for all the databases out there,” Nishimoto said of the IBI product. “They come from the IBM mainframe environment, so they have virtually every database out there” for a gateway solution.

A new category in the middleware map is extraction, transformation and transport software. This is used for decision support in data warehousing and integration, to move from one database format to another. Transformation tools include Taurus Software’s DataBridge and LeeTech’s DOOR, as well as Quantum Software’s ITS/3000.

Nishimoto said that the 3000’s typical database design isn’t made for decision support. “If you’re going to be efficient for OLTP, your database design is much different than a decision support system,” she said. “If you want to do decision support, it’s not real efficient for processing.”

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) middleware delivers application to application connections. It’s widely associated with DCE, which tends to be bundled with every platform, including the HP 3000 as of the 6.0 version of MPE/iX. RCP front ends for manufacturing and distribution are available from Bradmark, Ironside Technologies and Fioravanti-Redwood. Speedware’s Autobahn and Visual Speedware use RPC calls as well.

Another new area of middleware has been fueled by Web development: message-oriented middleware (MOM). “The MOM is a queue of events that has to happen,” Nishimoto. “We have three message oriented middleware products for the 3000, and none of these came to happen because HP went out and sought them. They were funded by e3000 customers.” Web Methods’ ActiveWeb product, IBM’s MQ Series from Willow Technology and Level8’s Geneva MQ supply MOM capability.

“When you’re dealing with message-oriented middleware, you have to think about applications differently,” Nishimoto said. “In MOM, every single one of the fields on your VPlus screen is a message. You have to have a new paradigm when you do programming.” It’s a little harder for 3000 users accustomed to block mode programming, she added, “but it’s very popular because it’s very scalable. You can be asynchronous, meaning you don’t have to keep lock step between the client and the server. If the network or server goes down, it guarantees delivery of the message.”