In article <[log in to unmask]>, "Wong, Wilson" <[log in to unmask]>
writes:

>
>I have been asked to forward the following question to the HP3000 experts:
>
>How does an application in HP3000 Image initiate a request to and receive a
>response from a SQL server?
>
>Any help is greatly appreciated.
>

Hello Wilson,

The application would have to know about sockets on the HPe3000 and that would
have to map to a program on the NT server which would handle the request and
return the information. This is a little trickier if you are also trying to
post a transaction to both.

Our R&D team has been studying this problem for a number of years and has
produced a couple of different methods based around the Microsoft technologies.
We are certified MS-NT Solutions providers in addition to being very
experienced with the HPe3000 environment. We are the lab for HPs ODBCLink/SE -
the special edition ODBC driver that is bundled with Image/SQL and ALLBase on
the HP3000 and HP9000.

We have done the work to have the transactions managed by MTS so that a
transaction can be directly posted to the SQL Server database; the most popular
scenario for this is to use tools on the HPe3000 to extract data, reformat and
summarize it and then using MTS arrange for this data to post to the NT server
database via ODBC.

Our second approach was for users requiring high volume transactions between
the NT server and the AllBase data base ... here we used the newer Microsoft
technology MTC - Microsoft Transaction Co-ordinator and allowed the
transactions to be managed by MTC by enlisting one or more servers and
databases in the transactions and providing commit and rollback between the
servers using XA compliant technology ... either side of the wire can be the
controlling program - thus the HPe3000 can initiate a transaction or the SQL
Server database can.

We also built a monitor which allows the observation of the transactions which
are being managed under the MTC between up to 25 servers so that if a
transaction stalls for one reason or another we can observe the HPe3000s and
the NT servers involved in the transactions - this also allows statistics to be
gathered on the number of transactions committed or aborted and rolled back.

The XA part avoids the need to use tweezers to pick apart the databases if
something goes wrong.

Our third approach to this problem has been to add the ComBuilder technology to
our MBF-UDALink software. This Combuilder extends the RPC (Remote Procedure
Call) part of our ODBC technology to allow any software on the 3000 to be
called from the NT Server - thus you can use the business logic on the HPe3000
server by making it available in a segmented library (an XL) and building Com
Components which are defined on the NT server to call these library routines.

By "wrapping" the library routine calls with the COM (Microsoft's Common Object
Module) technology you can keep the logic centralized on the HPe3000 and have
programmers work with MS-Visual Studio (VB, C or C++) to build programs using
these objects. The objects are browsable just like any other COM object so a VB
programmer can see the input and output parameters or the structures used to
define the data.

We register the COM Components for you so that they can be used from MS
products including MS-IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Services) in a web
application. This would allow for a browser based application to be using the
NT server to marshall transactions which are performed by your code which is
stuffed in the XL on the 3000 (or in a PROCLib on the 9000) ... thus the most
modern looking application could really be getting all of its real work done by
your old COBOL code on the HPe3000. [Or FORTRAN, C, Pascal, Splash, etc).

For More information on this topic see:

http://www.mbfoster.com/products/dax_udalink.cfm

If you have any questions please drop me a note ... you will have to remove the
NOSPAM from the email address.


Birket Foster
M. B. Foster Associates .. the 1-800-ANSWERS people!
Supplying UDALink w/cross-platform ODBCLink Option (3000,9000&NT)
See how DataExpress has evolved www.MBFoster.com
EC/EDI(3000,9000,NT) Phone (613) 448-2333 or (613) 448-2588(FAX)

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