PowerHouse and IBM AIX

Fri, 2 Jul 2004 09:07:04 -0400

I would like to clarify where we are from the Cognos point of view before the questions roll in. As you know, version 8.43D on HP-UX and version 8.41D on Windows NT/2000/XP support Marxmeier Eloquence. This allows PowerHouse HPe3000 IMAGE users to migrate their data access to HP-UX and Windows with no changes other than a dictionary open name.

Once that version was released, we were contacted by a number of third parties regarding what we call IMAGE emulation. Specifically, Transformix and ImaxSoft. Their tools work in a similar way to Eloquence in that they provide a library that intercepts IMAGE intrinsic calls and translates them into something else. In the case of Eloquence, the something else is Eloquence calls. In the case of the other vendors, the calls are translated into relational database calls. The library routines handle all of the relational considerations (transactions, commits, etc.) so to the application, the data source looks identical to IMAGE. These tools also provide, as does Eloquence, utilities to convert the IMAGE database to the target data source. 

Transformix and ImaxSoft ran their own tests by substituting their libraries for the Eloquence ones. ImaxSoft ran their tests on HP-UX. I do not know what other platforms they have available. Transformix has run tests on HP-UX, Windows, and AIX.

AIX you ask? That wasn't in the Eloquence release list. That's right, but when contacted, we worked with these vendors to see whether we could provide a solution for our customers. We created a special AIX build that included the same IMAGE intrinsic calls that the HP-UX Eloquence version does. And I don't see any reason why we can't do the same on Sun Solaris if needed. The AIX changes will be part of the maintenance release due late this year so that they will be rolled into the production version.

In addition, we continue to work with Transformix and ImaxSoft to ensure that these IMAGE emulators continue to work with future releases by incorporating tests with their libraries into our own test suites.

That said, we will support third party IMAGE emulation in the same manner as we support ODBC on Windows. We support the standard and we test against SQL Server and SQL Anywhere, but we don't support specific drivers. Likewise, we support native IMAGE and Eloquence. If the IMAGE emulator shows an issue that is duplicated in our standard, then we will endeavor to fix it. If the issue is unique to the emulator, we will initially look to the emulator. Of course we will work with the emulator vendor to resolve the problem as much as possible.

We have a number of customers with a large number of COBOL programs. Just as during the Y2K years, they are much more concerned about their COBOL than their PowerHouse. COBOL, of course, will have embedded IMAGE intrinsic calls. By using an IMAGE emulator, they can avoid having to do major work to their COBOL programs. Since PowerHouse supports IMAGE emulation as well, their choice is clear.

As with platforms and relational databases, we do not specifically recommend one of these IMAGE emulators over another. Which you use, and whether you use one at all, will depend on your requirements. The fact that we have worked with these vendors to provide multiple options for our HPe3000 customers should be proof to our commitment to providing them with a viable migration path to another PowerHouse platform.

Bob Deskin              
Product Manager, Application Development Tools
Cognos Inc. 3755 Riverside Drive, Ottawa ON K1G 4K9 CANADA
bob.deskin@cognos.com (613) 738-1338 ext 7268

-----Original Message-----
From: powerh-l-admin@lists.sowder.com
[mailto:powerh-l-admin@lists.sowder.com]On Behalf Of Charles Finley
Sent: July 1, 2004 7:17 PM
To: 'Penney, John'; powerh-l@sowder.com
Subject: RE: PowerHouse and IBM AIX

Transformix has completed prelimary testing of our IMAGE emulation layer for
on AIX using DB2.  After using our migration tools to migrate the IMAGE
database to DB2 and recompiling the Powerhouse dictionary and QUICK sources
for a test application, we were able to migrate an HP 3000 IMAGE based QUICK
application with no changes to the source!  This is especially interesting
since the application contains sub-items.  

We will be starting a major proof of concept in August porting QUICK, QUIZ
and QTP to DB2 and AIX.  However, so far so good.  I'll know more in a
couple of months.

Charles Finley
Transformix Computer Corporation
(760)-439-3146 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: powerh-l-admin@lists.sowder.com 
> [mailto:powerh-l-admin@lists.sowder.com] On Behalf Of Penney, John
> Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 3:51 PM
> To: powerh-l@sowder.com
> Subject: PowerHouse and IBM AIX
> 
> 
> Greetings, Gentle Listers:
> 
> Can anyone give me an idea as to what, if anything, can be 
> ported directly from say, an HP3000 to an IBM AIX box?
> 
> Curious in Sacramento, 
> 
> I remain
> 
> Yours truly,
> 
> John M Penney
> 
> (360)789-8159 Cellular
> 
> 
> 
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