Henry writes:
> I've read that HP is port JAVA to the HP3000.

Yes.  I believe it will be distributed initially as freeware available via
the net (from the JAZZ web server at HP most likely).  There is an Alpha
version of it currently available for early-adopter types.  There is a
separate Interex sponsored mailing list (SIGJAVA-L) for people who are
interested in the general topic of Java on HP computer systems, especially
the HP3000.

> I'm expecting and hoping the use of JAVA will enable me to access all of
> my HP data files (KSAM, Turbo Image, and Flat Files) from PCs connected
> to my internal network.

Yes this would be a very cool thing.  There are two ways for this to work.
You can either have a server program on the HP3000 do the access for you
and then return the data to the client (this could make use of the new HP
port of Java to the 3000 which you could use to write the server in), or
you can do the access from the client, probably through the JDBC to ODBC
bridge software.  This would require that you have an ODBC driver on the
client which can get to your data, but it would not require Java on the
3000 server at all.

> I know there is an ODBC driver for Image/SQL but I haven't heard of a
> driver for KSAM or the Flat Files on the HP3000 or a direct ODBC to
> Turbo Image data bases.  Does anyone know of any other ODBC drivers?

HP has announced that they will be distributing a version of MB Foster's
ODBC product as a replacement for their own ODBC driver.  I believe that MB
Foster have a more advanced version that supports access not only to Image,
but also to KSAM and flat files.  You could use this product today along
with the JDBC software and Java to write complete applications on a PC that
access all your data on the 3000.  Note that in this scenario there is no
Java code running on the 3000, and no need for it either.

Symantec have announced a new product called dbANYWHERE, which is a JDBC
gateway that runs on a PC, and allows Java applets and applications to use
the JDBC API to talk to remote databases without having to install any ODBC
or database drivers on the client.  The JDBC requests are forwarded on to
the dbANYWHERE server PC which performs the actual ODBC (or native RDBMS)
access calls and then returns the data to the client.  This is a pretty
slick solution, though it still has the security problems of any
client-side database access architecture.  There is a free demo of
dbANYWHERE available at http://cafe.symantec.com/

So tools for using Java to access data on the 3000 in a client server
application are all there *today*.  The work that HP is doing to port Java
itself to the 3000 will allow you to do a few more things, among them:

*) Writing the "server" part of your client/server application in Java *on*

   the 3000, which would enable you to use things like Java RMI for remote
   objects and other cool thing like that.  It's also the best way to
   ensure that the security of your system is sufficient.

*) Writing complete HP3000 applications on the HP3000.  This could either
   be part of a larger multi-platform distributed application taking
   advantage of the Java language's cross-platform nature, or it could
   even be simple standalone HP3000 applications which are written in Java
   just because it is a better language to program in than the other
   alternatives available.

Before Java *on* the 3000 will really be useful, libraries of Java "Native
Methods" will need to be written to allow direct access to Image, KSAM, the
File System Intrinsics, and whatever else people need.  It should be
possible for anyone with the HP3000 version of the JDK to write their own
such routines, but I'm hoping that HP or the user community will be able to
provide a standard set of HP3000 Java API extensions that everyone can use.
I'd be working on the Image interface libraries myself right now if I had
any free time at all.  Anyone interested in working on such a project is
invited to join the Interex SIGJAVA-L list.

G.