ORBiT Software and Allegro Consultants announced a joint development project called Rosetta Store, inspired by what ORBiT’s president said is “perhaps the most famous piece of rock in the world. Just as the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to unlocking the meaning of the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, Rosetta Store will unlock data stored on MPE-created tapes and restore it onto Unix machines,” said Paul Meszaros. The product has been designed by Gavin Scott, a vice president at Allegro Consultants. “Customers migrating data from the HP 3000 to another platform will want to perform repeated conversion processes to keep the new platform up to date during their transition period,” said Scott.

Once configured, Rosetta Store will be able to restore and convert MPE data directly from backup tapes as often as needed without the need for complicated processes that are different for each database and file. ORBiT’s officials said customers who have completely transitioned off the HP 3000 can use Rosetta Store to gain access to archival data stored on legacy MPE backup tapes and get the information out in a form that is easy to access on the new platform. “We plan on being able to demonstrate a prototype at HP World,” said Meszaros. Release of version 1.0 is targeted for end of 2002. Rosetta will be distributed by ORBiT’s US and European offices.