Transoft Developers

DBPronto 1.4 is now available for download from the Transoft FTP site. This release is available on the following platforms:

• Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, Windows XP, VISTA, 7
• Linux PowerPC or Intel, 32 or 64 bit
• HP-UX PA-RISC
• Solaris SPARC

New features in the DBPronto 1.4 release include:

Block Read Mode in the DBPronto Server. This provides performance improvements where the client application is reading sequentially through the data.

PostgreSQL performance has been improved by modifying the query syntax to ensure the query plan is optimal.

Support for Micro Focus COBOL Filename Mapping.

If environment variables are set in one of the following formats, DBPronto will translate them at “open” time:

• dd_FILENAME=DESTNAME
• DD_FILENAME=DESTNAME
• FILENAME=DESTNAME

Client Block Read

Block Read Mode can be used to improve performance by reducing the network traffic between the RDBMS and the DBPronto Server. Block Read Mode and Client Block Read Mode both improve performance in scenarios where the client application is reading a large number of records using READ NEXT or READ PREVIOUS.

If Block Read Mode is configured, Client Block Read Mode can also be used to reduce the network traffic between the DBPronto Server and the DBPronto client application.

The Metadata Creator will now ignore any records which have no indexes if command line option, x is specified.

New features in the CIO 1.3 release include:

• Optional mapping to SQL Date types : A numeric or display COBOL data field can be mapped to an SQL date type.
• Support for the Sybase Advantage Database Server
• Support for Transaction processing commands :  COMMIT TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK TRANSACTION.
• COBOL Relative files can now be mapped to an RDBMS table using CIO.
• CIO Lock Server API for .NET : An API for the CIO Lock Server that can be used from any .NET language.
• CIO Server Failover : If, for any reason, the primary CIO Server fails, any subsequent client connections can be redirected to the failover CIO Server.
• Multi-company support : CIO uses a simple client configuration file to provide multi-company support after  data has been moved to an RDBMS without requiring any code changes.
• Automated ETL program generation : automatically generate a COBOL program that will extract the data from your COBOL files and write to the target RDBMS.
• Data cleansing and mapping : CIO can be configured to handle nulls in fields where printable ASCII characters are expected, uninitialized binary fields, spaces in numeric fields, invalid date values.
• Index Access : CIO handles HIGH-VALUES in key fields. CIO uses Primary Key specification when creating the RDBMS data structures.

CIO 1.3 will be released in early January 2009. It will include the following features:

CIO Lock Server API for .NET

An API for the CIO Lock Server that can be used from any .NET language. We also produced a Java API for the CIO Lock Server in CIO 1.2.

CIO implements locking using a Lock Server rather than using RDBMS locking in order to fully emulate the locking functionality in the client application without requiring any application code changes or having a negative effect on RDBMS performance.

By providing an easy to use API to the CIO Lock Server, we enable you to develop applications in Java or .NET that access and update your RDBMS data concurrently with your legacy application.

CIO metadata creator options

The CIO metadata creator will be enhanced with new options to filter extra tables in FDs created by FlexGen and also to automatically convert the sqlname attribute of records and fields to lowercase.

The option to automatically create RDBMS tables and columns with lowercase table names and column names may be particularly interesting for PostgreSQL users.

Support for Transaction processing commands

CIO 1.3 will include  support for Transaction processing commands: START TRANSACTION, COMMIT TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK TRANSACTION.

New commands will be implemented in the CIO API and, where possible, the CIO I/O Intercept client library will intercept existing transaction processing commands in COBOL code.

Multi-company support

CIO 1.3 will provide a highly configurable method for implementing multi-company applications.

Typically a multi-company application will be able to access different sets of data depending on some variable such as the user id. With legacy COBOL data this may be implemented by accessing data files in different directories or by accessing data files with a specific naming convention.

CIO uses a simple client configuration file to provide this functionality when your data has been moved to an RDBMS without requiring any code changes.

Automated ETL program generation

CIO 1.3 will include a new development tool that will enable you to automatically generate a COBOL program that will extract the data from your COBOL files and write to the target RDBMS.

This program will provide an automated ETL process that has no intermediate flat files.

CIO Server Failover

CIO 1.3 will provide the ability to configure a failover CIO Server on the client side.

If, for any reason, the primary CIO Server fails, any subsequent client connections will be redirected to the failover CIO Server.

Create FDs and CIO metadata from existing RDBMS schema

CIO 1.3 will include a new utility which will read an existing RDBMS schema via a JDBC connection and will generate the FDs and CIO metadata that are required to access that data via CIO from a COBOL application.

This will be of interest to people who already have some data in an RDBMS and want to be able to integrate that data into their existing COBOL application.

New features in the CIO 1.1 release include:

• Support for a wide range of COMPUTATIONAL and BINARY data types
• Support for COBOL Sequential files
• Support for files that have a variable file name
• CIO I/O Intercept library for Micro Focus Server Express
• CIO status codes mapped to COBOL file status codes

The latest documentation and release notice can be downloaded from

ftp://ftp2.transoft.com/pub/CIOextras/