1992
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SYSTEMS SOCIETY
COMPUTER COMPUTER Brighter
A Australian GRAPHICS workstations AUSTRALIAN
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PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING DeskPAC - MAESTRO Super Executive V 32 MODEM
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'mmamm, 'AUSTRALIA GITAL COMMUNICATIONS A.C.N. OOO 928 405 PHONE (06) 239 2369, FAX (06) 239 2370 UNIT 2 13-15 TOWNSVILLE ST, FYSHWICK, ACT 2609 PROFESSIONAL PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: Moving towards COMPUTING standards CONTENTS: MAY 1992 THE IT industry is moving, albeit slowly, towards the adoption of standards for hardware, for software and CLIENT/SERVER PROCESSING — THE PRACTICAL for communications. Yet we know that the most rele APPLICATION: The term "Client/Server” is used to cover a vant variable in IT work is people. whole range of computing scenarios. In this article we take a Paul Sayers from Mazda told a recent ACS Victori look at the practical application of client/server technology, an Conference that, when it comes to productivity utilising DOS based PCs with Windows, (the clients), to add tools and techniques, the winner will always be “smart processing power and user features to commercial systems with people.” Many studies have shown that smart people large databases on mini/mainframe computers, (the servers). 2 can make poor systems work — for smart systems you probably need even smarter people! So, will we have standards for communications, for IT ISSUES OF THE 1990s: Over the next few years studying hardware and for software — but not for people? Or is the computer industry will be akin to staring down a turning it time that we took a serious look at some “people kaleidoscope. The single most important differentiator in the standards?” If we had them, how would they be set? 90s is quality. 5 How would they be monitored and how would they be enhanced to keep up with our dynamic profession? At the National ACS Council meeting, we set up a OSI APPLICATION ESSENTIALS: A further extract from task force to investigate such matters. 'The essential OSI’ produced by the consortium of Standards Australia, OSIcom, the Australian MAP/TOP Interest Group Thinking about “People Standards” and NSW Tafe Commission’s Open College Network. 7 The Task Force will be looking at how other profes sions in Australia and overseas are addressing the “people standards” issue as well as at how other coun ACS in View 11 tries are addressing the “IT people standards” issue. We hope to be able to use the knowledge of some of THE CONVERGENCE OF MANUFACTURERS those attending the International Conference on Soft PRODUCTS?: The next 18 months in computing will be one of ware Engineering in Melbourne in May, especially the most interesting that we have witnessed for decades. those who have been involved in addressing these issues in their own countries. Traditional centralised systems will be replaced by distributed One body that has a long history in applying stan systems, new companies will dominate the transnational IT dards to IT people is the Institute for the Certification world, while better informed and articulate users will dictate the of Computer Professionals (ICCP) in the US. Found evolution of the industry. 16 ed in 1973, ICCP offers certification in four profes sional designations. You may have seen the initials THE TENTH AUSTRALIAN COMPUTING IN CCP CDP CSP ACP alongside author’s names in EDUCATION CONFERENCE: A good program takes books and magazines. These stand for Certified Com 19 puter Programmer, Certified Data Processor, Certified shape. Systems Professional and Associate Computer Profes sional. ICCP has 11 constituent bodies and five affili THE FUTURE OF COMMERCIAL COMPUTING: Growing ated societies. They include ACM, ASM, DPMA, demands for more powerful applications challenge PC DAMA, as well as COMMON, an IBM User Group, performance. 20 and FNUG, the Federation of NCR User Groups. (Is it time to ban acronyms?) Let me quote from an ICCP publication: OPENING MOVES: A Brisbane Branch Conference paper “If you are trying to distinguish yourself in the deals with the realities of Open OLTP. 23 crowded information processing technology field, cer tification puts you above the rest... whether you are sending out resumes, bidding for tenders or looking PROFESSIONAL COVER: This issue’s cover depicts for a promotion, certification provides proof of your the SPARC-based product family of professional experience and expertise. Certification is Australian systems integrator, the confidence-building proof that you have met spe COMPUTING Graphics Computer Systems. The cific requirements and possess that high level of H,t*STATIO.*S TO , SPARC marketplace is currently in a knowledge and skill. In tough economic times, certifi state of flux, as a wide range of third cation adds to your professional credibility and gives party manufacturers are introducing you an advantage in the competitive job market.” their CPU and peripheral support The ICCP Executive is made up of industry people products. Australian-owned and and the American Council on Education has recom Melbourne-based Graphics Comput mended the awarding of college credits to those who er Systems are part of this process, pass ICCP exams. ICCP certification is not about manufacturing both chassis and recognising entry level professionals — it is aimed at A Brighter future for ooard level products for the domes senior level personnel. A candidate must have at least Australian Computing ■ tic and export markets, with existing 60 months of full-time direct experience in IT. Those GRAPHICS sales to New Zealand, Singapore, the holding post-secondary and tertiary qualifications may » COMPUTER US and Canada. fj SYSTEMS substitute their qualifications for up to 24 months of GCS is contactable by telephone experience. on 03 888 8522 and by fax on 03 808 9151. Continued page 2k
PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 1 VICTORIAN BRANCH 1992 CONFERENCE PAPER
commercial arena. Many dangers were ex pounded as reasons why a mini-computer was Client/Server processing: inappropriate for commercial use. These included security, data integrity and data back-up disciplines. With PCs and work the practical application stations now offering an even lower level of distributed processing, there are still a few THE term "Client/Server” By Peter Hill and Brad Allen people in the industry who have trouble ac cepting the place of the PC in a commercial is used to cover a whole IFFERENT people have different transaction processing environment, prefer range of computing views or perceptions about what client/ ring to view them only as useful tools for server computing is. The US Business spread sheet and word processing. scenarios. In this article DResearch Group questioned Fortune 1000 inFortunately these people are in the minority, we take a look at the formation systems and end-user executives but those who have at least accepted the con cept of using PCs in a client/server role are practical application of who were implementing client/server systems and found that their definitions fell roughly still faced with the same problems that face client/server technology, into four categories: any decentralisation or distribution of pro utilising DOS based PCs ■ Applications offering file or peripheral shar cessing power. ing or remote computer access. But before we tackle some of the problems, with Windows (the clients) ■ Applications that disseminate a database let’s look at the benefits of including PCs in a to add processing power among more than one computer on a net commercial application. No matter how clever and efficient your and user features to work. ■ Messaging applications, such as electronic programming is, or how big your processor is, commercial systems with mail. if you have a central system with many termi large databases on ■ Process intensive applications that distrib nals attached, which is expected to perform ute different computing tasks amongst con multiple processing requirements simulta mini/mainframe nected computers. neously, then response times will vary. The computers (the servers). Some choose to use the term “Cooperative relocation of CPU intensive forms handling procedures on to the PC results in a significant We will provide some Processing” to describe the interaction be tween PCs or Workstations and mainframes. reduction in the demand on mainframe CPU examples of systems of Rather than argue the merits of the various resources and reduces the traffic on I/O and this kind that Megatec definitions, we need to provide you with our communication links. definition so that you can put the content of has developed and While the savings vary from one project to this discussion into context. For these pur the next, some client/server installations have installed, and discuss the poses our definition is: experienced* a 25 perl cent reduction in CPU advantages of such an A commercial application that utilises the demand following a partial “re-development” combination of a "mainframe” computer of an application whicfkwas previously totally approach as well as the and PCs, to provide the application user mainframe based. In addition to the improved pitfalls we encountered. with business benefits that are either not performance seen by the user, if users are be available via on-line terminal processing, or ing charged for CPU time then these charges are an improvement on those offered by will be reduced. There is also the potential to terminal processing. extend the life of the existing processor, even In the mid-seventies when mini-c * From page 1 on this topic. There was significant support clients would benefit. Whether we are in full for some degree of occupational regulation, time employment, or contracting or consult I am particularly keen to hear your views but there was also some support for leaving ing, the users of our services are entitled to on “people standards” for our profession. things as they are. What do you think? know what they are buying. In the broader Occupational regulation of any form needs sense, so many IT systems impact on society most diligent study, and the options include Who would benefit? and, in the long-term, it may be seen to be self-regulation, government-imposed regula As in all things, we need to ask ourselves professionally irresponsible if we do not ad tion or no regulation, that is, no change to what would be the point of it? That is, why dress the “people standards” issue in a seri the status quo. I am sure that most ACS consider occupational regulation at all? Just ous way. members would prefer to see self-regulation as there are many beneficiaries of standards Please let us know what you think. Write rather than government imposed regulation. in other IT areas so too could there be many to the Tisdall Task Force, ACS, PO Box A hypothetical conducted by the Victorian beneficiaries of “people standards.” The in 319, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. Branch in March 1992 indicated that there dividual would benefit, as the ICCP materi are a number of strong, and differing, views al states, but much more importantly, our Geoff Dober 2 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 performing month end processing or backups, The first client/server system that Megatec the client can continue a large part of its func wrote was for a major hardware manufacturer tion by performing local processing using the that wanted to gain a competitive advantage application software and data residing on the by providing dealers with a system which PC. For remote users there is the added bonus would make product inquiries and order of still being able to continue processing, placement easy and quick. Effectively, the or albeit with limited functionality, even if the der processing and inquiry functions which communications link has failed. were currently centralised would be decentra Thirdly, the user is presented with a graphi lised for members of the dealer network. The cal user interface (GUI) which is common plan was to write a sub-set of the mainframe across all applications whether they are main distribution system on the PC utilising Win frame or PC based. The incredible sales of dows (2.0 in those days) as the front end. Each Windows 3.0 underlines the demand for easy- dealer would be given a PC with the system to-use systems. The advantages of using a installed ready for use. GUI are now well recognised. The US-based The system was designed to allow the dealer research company Temple, Barker and Sloane to operate in stand-alone mode, uploading completed a study which found that users op and downloading to and from the mainframe Peter Hill erating with a GUI work faster, completing 50 at suitable intervals, or directly on-line to the tasks in the same time that a character user mainframe. The benefits to the dealer were the interface user took to complete 37. speed and convenience of being able to make Furthermore the GUI users get 91 per cent product inquiries and place orders without of their tasks correct compared with 74 per having to phone the supplier. The benefits to cent for non-GUI users. Their conclusion was the supplier included the competitive advan that GUI users accomplish 58 per cent more tage of having the dealer more likely to use work. The study also found that GUI users are one system rather than phone a competitor, far more likely to explore and make use of the and the off-loading of high volume inquiry features of their systems as they do not feel calls to the distribution centre. intimidated by them. When we initially tested the system there Finally by using the PC with Windows, the were a number of things that we learnt, that client/server model allows users to have ac new players should look out for when design cess to several applications at once regardless ing a client/server application. Obviously of whether they are mainframe or PC based. A there is a requirement for communications simple example of this is where a user can be software to enable the client-based application interacting with a sales analysis database held to interactively communicate with the server on a mainframe server, while at the same time application and databases. Megatec wrote this operating a PC-based spreadsheet package. software and designed it so that it was package To summarise the benefits, the processing rather than application specific. power of the PC offers improved performance Initially this data access layer (DAL/1) did and provides less varied response times. The not include data compression, we found this mainframe can have processing off-loaded to be essential and upgraded DAL/1 accord which results in its life being extended. Com ingly. Early testing showed that the initial ver munication links can operate far more effec sion of DAL/1 was also light on error checking tively as they are only transmitting data, not and correction. The quality of lines and mo forms information. The PC can also offer the dems quickly forced us to remedy this. In the flexibility of operating in a stand-alone mode general design area we had not put enough where required. thought into carefully working out what data The GUI available on the PC provides ma did, or did not, have to be transferred to the jor system acceptance and productivity ad PC. vantages. Of course there are other ways of Unnecesary transfer of data sometimes re providing users with a GUI front end to sys sulted in data transfers being too long. Finally tems, but a large number of corporations al we learnt a lot about the desirability of good ready have a major investment in hundreds or quality modems, MNP protocol proved to be thousands of DOS-based PCs and a lot of essential. these have Windows installed. Other items that have to be considered for Let’s have a look at Megatec’s experiences this type of decentralisation include whether developing and installing these commercial you let the PC user decide when they will client/server systems. download, upload and back-up, or whether FOR INTEGRATION Automatic UNIX based FAX system PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 3 The benefits to be you provide an automated function that con and the database communication software. tacts the client at a suitable time and performs This file access layer is responsible for making achieved were fairly an upload of the information waiting on the all file calls regardless of file type. The theory straight forward, sales PC, a download of new/changed information here is to provide the flexibility to change the from the mainframe to update the PC files and file system without the application having to information could be a back-up. be changed. entered directly into the Naturally file volatility has an impact on These experiences provide some specific ex system rather than go where data resides and how often the client amples of the pitfalls that we encountered in and server need to communicate when you are designing and implementing a DOS PC to a through the error-prone providing an off-line processing facility. mainframe client server system. The following process of being hand The next system that we wrote was at the list highlights the major areas that have to be written and then key time of the introduction of Windows 3.0 considered when designing this type of decen which was a great improvement over 2.0. In tralised system, especially when data is shared punched. The aim was to this case our customer recognised that the ad between the clients and the server: improve the accuracy of vantages of a GUI, a mouse and a client/ ■ Error recovery for data transfers between server approach would allow his company to the clients and the server. the invoicing, stock and use a computer system in a trade building ■ Strict audit control of all data transferred sales reporting. supplies outlet where terminals and a charac from the PCs to the host. ter interface were considered unusable due to ■ Verification of data before the host data the amount of keyboard use required and the bases are updated. lack of intuitiveness of such a system. ■ Synchronisation of host updates to multiple The benefits to be achieved were fairly PCs. straight forward, sales information could be ■ Minimisation and then compression of the entered directly into the system rather than go data to be transferred. through the error-prone process of being hand In addition to the design considerations, written and then key punched. The aim was to you will have to give some thought to stan improve the accuracy of the invoicing, stock dards for the new areas of development that and sales reporting. client/server systems introduce. One of the The processing was based completely on the main considerations here will be the graphical PC system, which was made up of a PC server user interface standards. At this early stage in with three PCs connected on a LAN. The PC the use of GUIs there is no single accepted server in turn communicated with the main standard, even Microsoft’s own products vary frame via a dial-up link for download/ in their window design. upload operations. The system is extremely However, Microsoft put out a design guide successful and achieved the stated objectives, which we found to be useful along with the but once again there were a few lessons to be IBM Common User Access, Advanced Inter learnt on the way. PC user discipline, or lack face Design Guide, (the latest version of this is of discipline caused one major problem. referred to as “CUA3”). To maximise the The users were new to computers, so prior benefits of using a GUI it is important that we to the system introduction they were allowed provide our systems with standard interfaces. to play games on a PC as a way of building This allows end users to deal with the same their confidence and skills. However, no con screens and methods as they learn and use all trols were put in place to stop the users load software applications, whether they be client/ ing foreign programs on to the company PCs. server or stand-alone PC applications like * One such smuggled game introduced a virus Word or Excel, this reduces training time an'd and destroyed a database on the live system expense, increases productivity and heightens before we realised the need to introduce strict job satisfaction. rules on the use of the computers. Designing and writing a system to handle Very poor quality Telecom lines demanded user driven input via a mousefdemands quite careful auditing of data trapsfers and strong/ different techniques than those used in a char flexible restart procedures. The PC system de acter user interface system. One major differ velopment was done using a Windows 4GL ence is that the use? has the ability to move which proved to be a faster way of developing between screens and applications even if a the system compared to programming in C. current transaction is incomplete. Our most recent experience involved a sys tem that our USA-based customer wanted to From our experience there are certainly new distribute to the company’s international of challenges to be met in designing client/server fices. Perhaps this could be considered the systems, but business benefits can be provided “original” client/server system as the “modus through the introduction of PCs as an active operandi” was to have the PCs do all the part of a commercial application. There is the processing but the mainframe hold and supply additional benefit for the developer of being all the data. able to provide a usable, as well as useful, This naturally involves the client being system through the use of a graphical user on-line to the server, rather than have an interface. In our experience the users reaction off-line operation facility with selected data to such a client/server system that utilises stored on the PC. The system was very Windows is one of enthusiasm and that can be straight forward and posed no problems, there a good start in the implementation of a new was however one design feature introduced system. that we consider to be well worthwhile: we Authors: Peter Hill and Brad Allen are with introduced a layer between the application Megatec Pty Ltd. 4 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 VICTORIAN BRANCH 1992 CONFERENCE PAPER IT issues of the 1990s By Tony Benson At the detail level there are minor incom patibilities which can be caused by interfaced VER the next few years studying the products being at different revision levels. computer industry will be akin to star In spite of these limitations, the widespread adoption of standards has led to the open ing down a turning kaleidoscope. The revolution. single most important differentiator in the 90s O The systems integration (SI) of open prod is quality. By this is meant not only product ucts requires special technical and manage quality but also ensuring that every process in ment skills, which are not readily available, the organisation delivers zero defects by the and it is difficult to manage the risk. It is use of closed correction loops: total quality important to understand where the risk is management. To remain competitive the business cycle managed. If the integration is done in the vendor’s time must increase: faster design and manu plant then the supplier certification and man facture of products, faster response to inci agement is done for you and the cost and risk Tony Benson dents and rapid dissemination of policy are reflected in the vendor’s price. (This is changes. To increase productivity, processes sometimes overlooked when buying PC must be collapsed; some that were serial can clones.) If the SI is done by the customer or an be run in parallel. The TQM analysis of pro SI agent, then allowance for risk should be cesses can identify those that need to be re part of the budget. engineered. SI is not a one-shot function as the compo In many cases this will lead to a major nents suppliers adopt standard revisions at revision of the purpose of computer applica differing rates, and sometimes with no prior tions, and in moving to the new way of com notice, so that what was inter-operating suc puting, systems will have to be re-designed. cessfully today may not work as well tomor Many old applications incorporate rules which row. To resolve these problems quickly re no longer meet today’s environment and are quires well-trained staff, good diagnostic tools difficult to change. and standard test environments. By providing users direct access to the data, Computer vendors have in the past been decision-making can be distributed, allowing recession-resilient, and have usually done well the organisation to be more responsive and to in poor times. However the current downturn keep its customers competitive. Intelligent ter is not only due to the economy, but to a minals will increase the accuracy of the basic fundamental re-structuring of our industry, data. caused by the new way of computing. By their nature, standards take a long time Those vendors which adopted open systems to define and agree, so that in our rapidly early are generally doing better than those moving industry many implementations get which are stretching their R&D resources by ahead of the standard definition. Even exist trying to straddle both open and proprietary ing standards can be interpreted differently by systems. product developers. In NCR’s case we moved to open systems in Also, to gain differentiation, vendors aug 1981, on the basis that if our proprietary sys ment the standards with “features” which may tems were going to be made obsolete, it would not be incorporated in later standard revi be better to do it ourselves than have it done sions. We see the wasted productivity of com to us by competitors. At least we could tell our peting standards within the US and between user base where our long term strategy was the US and Europe. leading. FOR UNIPLEX Automatic UNIX based FAX system PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 5 The drive for R&D critical In the open arena, where every level of sub- rity to proprietary operating systems, the delay mass and manufacturing assembly can be sourced from competing sup being appropriate certification processes. volume will cause pliers, the pressure on margins is intense, so However, maintaining security in an open sys reaching a critical volume is mandatory to tem will continue to require the attention of alliances to occur, not remain in business. To ensure this, NCR like specialised skills, which will probably reside in only between computer other open vendors, will sell its technology at the SI companies and the major vendors. any level of integration to anyone. Accumulation of all transactions and their and telecommunications Reduced margins must be made up in high potential availability over a global network companies such as volumes or through value-added services such will cause questions of privacy and control of AT&T/NCR, but with as systems integration and services’ This access to be widely debated. Voice recognition could lead to the phenomenon of “computer systems will open the door to computer eaves large users of computers less computer companies” which exist entirely dropping. Advanced encryption algorithms and vendors of related on these value-add revenues. will absorb some of the new mips and smart The drive for R&D critical mass and manu card controlled entry points to the system will technologies. facturing volume will cause alliances to occur, become the norm. not only between computer and telecommuni It will become increasingly difficult to dis cations companies such as AT&T/NCR, but tinguish a computer from a network switch, with large users of computers and vendors of and network management will embrace LANs, related technologies. enterprise systems and the transmission net Previous strength in the market is not only works. IT planning and management will be of little value, it may be a major obstacle. The come more complex as network topography, user organisations can best be protected from traffic and tariff issues are considered with the the effects of these changes by moving to open array of options that scalable distributed com systems as quickly as possible. puters will offer. Once the economic advantages of the move Design, simulation and diagnostic tools and to open systems are recognised and all but the the skills to use them will be a major new most essential development work on the old growth service industry. systems terminated, the key issue is the identi The MIS charter should extend to cover fication of the processes and data elements both computers and telecommunications. that should be transferred. A small group in NCR Sydney has been Candidates are those which will deliver the developing a general tool to assist in mapping greatest improvement in productivity or qual the enterprise onto a distributed computing ity. Existing systems can be left in place as framework. their data can be incorporated using an inte The concept is a simple yet comprehensive grating environment. picture of the enterprise on a single sheet of This move will take most of the decade to paper, showing the seven levels of computing complete. as defined by NCR, plus a customer interface There will be considerable resistance from level. The key issues that top management those with a heavy investment in the old way wish to address are listed. of computing, and a significant training bud The strategic processes that absorb most re get should be allocated. Outplacement pro sources or contribute significantly to be bot grams will need to be planned. tom line are identified, usually by the Total Top management must become heavily in Quality Manager. Major data bases are volved as this is the opportunity to consider mapped shewing over which levels tjiey are where data is held and decisions delegated in distributed, such as desktop, deskside, work the enterprise, which will'greatly impact the group LAN server, department, business unit distribution of computing* power and capacity. or enterprise. If required, the current distribu Downsizing (or rightsizing) the computing tion of data and processes can be plotted to resource can offer significant cost savings. _Jf contrast with the open system plan. The |JIS role will change from one of “own Since the introduction of open systems is ing” tlfe computing resource, to one of em evolutionary, for a considerable period old powering the organisation and deploying the and new systems must exist together, yet ap MIS team to work alongside users to ensure pear to users as a single computer. In fact, correct data management practices are in users should be unaware of the transition of place. data or applications form one to the other, or Serious consideration should be given to both. providing basic development tools to users Thus an integrating environment is the first who will start to build their own decision sys step in a strategy to move to the new era. tems given controlled access to the database. Another important step is to get users work Returning some responsibility for processing, ing together as peers across the organisation, which has been perceived as the domain of the particularly in dispersed workgroups. MIS for the past 30 years, can have a positive The best starting point to do this is E-mail, effect on the attitude and productivity of which should be supported from the very top workers. of the organisation by giving faster response to The professional MIS will continue to have letters delivered electronically and issuing all responsibility for the integrity, security and management directives by E-mail. performance of the database. Issues of locking Once this is in place, products like Grape- control and granularity and the impact on per Vine (which distributes soft information or formance will be key issues. intelligence) can offer added value by intro- By 1994 Unix will provide equivalent secu ► Continued on page 22 6 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 STANDARDS A further extract from OSI application essentials: The essential OSI’ produced by the An excerpt from ‘The essential OSI’ consortium of Standards Austraia, OSIcom, the ONTRARY to some misconceptions will be the most significant OSI protocol Australian MAP/TOP there are many hundreds of OSI prod adopted. At present, the major users of X.400 Interest Group and NSW ucts on the market, and the number will products are national carriers, multinational Cincrease in coming years as OSI gains greaterorganisations, and value added network ser Tafe Commission’s Open acceptance and vendors begin to jockey for vice providers — organisations that need to College Network. positions in an expanding market. transmit large volumes of information to OSI application products sit at (and above) many destinations around the world, quickly the seventh layer of the OSI model. The pri and reliably. mary purpose of this layer is to provide a data X.500 electronic directory services communications interface for business applications. The X.500 standard defines an electronic Work is still proceeding on defining stan directory service analogous to the telephone dards for some applications, and several early directory. The major difference is that the standards have already undergone revisions. X.500 directory can contain a much wider It is in the applications area that the most range of information and can be accessed via obvious benefits of OSI can be seen. Electron standardised protocols. Therefore it has a ic data interchange (EDI), electronic mail, and much wider range of application. office automation products already exist, are X.500 is a directory for user-friendly names the day-to-day “tangibles” of OSI for many (electronic mail users, business application organisations, and more applications are on names). It can provide mapping from these their way. names to an equivalent network address, such Outlined below are some of the standards as that required to locate a user on a network defined under the application layer, and the and can also become the knowledge base for practical capabilities and products that these OSI management systems. standards offer. Unlike many OSI standards, there are no real alternatives to X.500. Proprietary X.400 message handling services schemes will be unable to attain the same The X.400 MHS standard provides a com independent widespread adoption and usage mon user electronic mail and message hand that X.500 will enjoy. Major vendors have ling service. The closest alternative to X.400, recognised this and are now working on gate from an interpersonal message viewpoint, ways from proprietary directories or are align would be Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ing their existing naming schemes with the (SMTP) which is widely available on X.500 naming scheme. Unix-based networks. Adoption of X.500 places an organisation in X.400 provides a secure, internationally ac a much better position to avail itself of busi ceptable messaging service that can be in ness applications such as EDI, and OSI com voked by users directly, or by applications munication services such as X.400 areas his using X.400 as a message carrier. Together torically not supported by directory services. with its companion product X.500 Electronic Directory Services, X.400 is a powerful mes File transfer access and management saging service for both interpersonal messag (FTAM) ing and EDI. For most organisations, X.400 FTAM is a standard designed to support a FOR CLIQ Automatic UNIX based FAX system PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 7 Although in its infancy, total file-handling service in a multivendor proprietary OA products. While this is a logi FTAM co-exists with the environment. It provides a means of handling cal first step, user organisations need to assure files remotely, independent of local file defini themselves that the gateway solution proposed many local area network tions or the way in which files are manipulat does in fact provide a reasonable ODA migra file transfer protocols, in ed locally. It achieves this using a concept tion path. time it will become the known as “virtual” file store. With Government Open Systems Intercon There are alternative file transfer protocols nected Profile (GOSIP) encouraging the adop single consistent file in existence, including FTP (UNIX, TCP/IP), tion of ODA by government departments, it is transfer mechanism an Kermit (workstations), IBM 2780, IBM 3780 likely that many small businesses will need to and IBM 3770. implement ODA in order to conduct business organisation will be Some organisations use X.400 protocols to with government departments around the required to support. transfer the majority of office automation world. files, and as long as the files are relatively short, it is an easy-to-use solution. The major Remote database access (RDA) advantage FTAM has to offer over other pro RDA enables access to a remote database tocols is that it provides a single consistent file system. While it is sometimes confused with transfer mechanism with a wide range of user Standard Query Language (SQL), there is a options to accommodate transfer of files that difference. RDA’s role is to provide the com are short, long, complex, simple, partial trans munication path between a business applica fers, all possible file types, and interactive and tion and a remote database. SQL is the lan business application interfaces. guage used to access and manage the database. Although in its infancy, FTAM co-exists With the increasing adoption of distributed with the many local area network file transfer processing solutions, RDA will become a key protocols. In time it will become the single component of open system computer net consistent file transfer mechanism an organi works. Some proprietary alternatives to RDA sation will be required to support. already exist. However, because they are pro prietary, they have not been taken up by other Open document architecture (ODA) suppliers and will remain a single vendor solu The purpose of ODA is to allow the many tion only. different document types now produced in the RDA is still a draft international standard office environment to be easily and transpar (DIS) and it is unlikely that products will be ently exchanged and integrated. It is a relative widely available for some time. As just about ly new area of standardisation pertaining to every reasonably sized organisation now has the representation and electronic transfer of some database capability with an associated structured documents such as letters, facsimi SQL, most organisations will eventually need les and orders. to consider migration to RDA. Most of the popular office automation prod ucts will have translation products which con Virtual terminal (VT) vert incompatible document formats. A num The VT concept is that all terminal and ber of documents architectures, such as IBM’s computer vendors have a common under DISOSS/DCA and Office Vision or Digital’s standing of the functions and sequences re ODA, are already on the market. quired of a “virtual” terminal that they can The nearest equivalent to ODA is SGML incorporate in their products. This “virtual” (Standard Generalised Markup Language) standard terminal can then be mapped to a which is itself an ISO standard. Most suitable vendor’s real' terminal, or terminal-handling for unstructured, large documents, SGML has software. VT is designed primarily for connec been widely used in the publishing industry tion to an application residing on a remote and has been adopted by the US Department host, where the terminal uses a local host (or of Defence for its CALS (Computer-aided Ac- j f terminal server) as an intermediary. quisition and Logistics Support) program. The The commonly available TCP/IP Telnet, two standards are in fact complementary and Digital VTxxx and IBM 3270 terminal proto CALS specifies both. cols are all examples of protocols performing The major benefit of ODA will be improved similar functions to those described by VT. productivity due to the increased ease-of-man- Telnet and VTxxx are closely related to VT agement of documents consisting of text and basic (which has current sponsorship from graphics. While some proprietary office auto GOSIP). mation (OA) systems claim to offer straight One of the benefits of VT is that it will forward reproduction of documents, it can extend the life of current terminal equipment only occur if a user’s preferred OA products where it is required to access OSI-based appli have been integrated by the incumbent OA cations. Also, the costs of developing and vendor. maintaining business applications software The ODA standards work has only now pro that accommodates interactive terminal users duced the first tangible deliverables to the OA should be significantly reduced. vendors from which they can build their next The functionality of the VT has been kept to generation of products. There are few ODA a minimum level, due to the difficulty in gain products available today and very little con ing agreement regarding the actual model to formance and interoperability testing has been be used to describe the VT. This means there conducted. is some uncertainty as to how the VT standard Most of the major OA vendors will be offer will be further developed. ing a gateway solution to link ODA and their Today, the use of intelligent terminals is 8 PROFESSIONAL GOMPUTING, MAY 1992 The functionality of the growing rapidly throughout most organisa factors as cost of maintenance and upgrade are tions. These terminals tend to be graphics- considered). It will streamline data communi VT has been kept to a based and have software capable of manipu cations throughout the factory environment, minimum level, due to lating images and text on high resolution requiring only one set of data communica screens. VT has not yet been extended to cater tions protocols. the difficulty in gaining for such terminals. Of those products that al Prior to MMS the factory environment was agreement regarding the ready conform, the majority only accommo segmented into “islands of automation”. The actual model to be used date non-intelligent terminals acting in the cli best that a production manager could hope for ent role of VT. The server function has not was to restrict the number of incompatible to describe the VT. This been widely implemented. Many computer devices within each island. MMS provides the means there is some vendors have committed to building VT prod mechanism to integrate those devices. ucts. Governments have endorsed VT and MMS can be supported either by MAP- uncertainty as to how some departments may, in the near future, based IEEE 802.4 networks or on TOP (office the VT standard will be implement VT. environment) networks that use IEEE 802.3 further developed. There are many industries with existing ter (Ethernet) or X.25. minal-based networks that are also good can X.700 systems management (SM) didates for the VT protocol. It will be impor tant to monitor the success of these early The X.700 management standard was creat implementations of VT, as there are still a ed in order to meet the challenge of managing number of areas of uncertainty surrounding data networks comprised of both hardware the standard. and software. The rationalisation of the many Many organisations have a mixture of non- network management systems that exist in or intelligent and intelligent terminals (X-Win- ganisations today will be tomorrow’s chal dows) and workstations (PCs). They will have lenge for network managers. By adopting uni problems trying to build a common user inter versally accepted X.700 standards this will be face to all their business applications from greatly simplified. such a variety of terminal types. Functionally, X.700 SM percolates through all seven lay VT will be the lowest common denominator, ers of the OSI model. Hence OSI application and so knowledge of the standard will be re services such as X.400 or FTAM, OSI routers or LAN bridges, multiplexers and modems quired. will all have in-built X.700 SM routines, all of Manufacturing message specifications which will be part of the same X.700 network (MMS) management system. The Manufacturing Message Specification The nearest equivalent to X.700 today is the has been initially defined to meet the need for Simple Network Management Protocol integration of the various electronic devices (SNMP) commonly adopted in Unix-based (ranging from high level computers to simple data networks a widely implemented set of de pressure or temperature sensors) that are facto management standards. Many network found in a typical factory environment. MMS managers believe that SNMP is a logical solu is essentially a standard language used to tion for most of today’s management prob structure and control the messages/instruc lems and that X.700 will be tomorrow’s solu tions passed between different MMS-compati- tion once sufficient products emerge. ble devices on a network. MMS has the poten The X.700 standard will not only be appli tial for use in any situation where cable to data networks but also to voice net application-to-application messaging is works. The telecommunications industry, due required. to its own need for improved network man While there are many proprietary equiva agement, is currently leading the development lents of MMSD, there are no true equivalents and application of X.700. capable of addressing the communication re Application program interfaces (APIs) quirements of the wide range of computer- An API is the “pipe” that connects business based control devices used in supervisory con applications, such as payroll, stock control, trol and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, logistics and accounting to the OSI commiini- programmable logic controllers (PLCs), weld cation services. APIs are not part of the formal ing machines, robot controllers and numeri OSI standards. They are the mechanism by cally controlled machines. which vendor-supplied products interface to The major benefit of MMS will be the re OSI services. Each API is specific to the OSI duced cost of maintaining large numbers of services to which it interfaces. incompatible devices (particularly when such ______► Continued on page 22 TRUFAX is the first truly versatile fax package. TRUFAX is easily integrated into any UNIX based application system. TRUFAX bundled together with a fax modem gives the user a low cost fax system. aw. TRUFAX fax output will be as clear as output from any laser printer at the receiving end. Contact: - Saki Computer Services Pty Ltd. Tel: (03) 752 1512. Fax (03) 752 1098 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 9 5 DataBoss performs with an Seriously though... If you want more informa tion about intelligent WYSIWYG report DataBoss 3.5 or ManualVWriter, please mail designer which automatically offers this coupon to the address below. you suggested report designs. 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Telephone 61 -7-379 4551 Facsimile 61-7-379 9422 Let DataBoss perform for you! WHO’S WHO IN ACS Prins Ralston, Northern Territory Chairman OW does the smallest ACS Branch Prins’ first job was as an electrical engineer manage to achieve the highest profit of and his current position is information sys all branches? Just as the best answer to tems manager at Northern Territory Universi Hincreasing productivity in IT is to “hire smartty where he also lectures in information sys people” then the answer to improving ACS tems and management accounting. Prins performance in branches is to “elect smart manages a network of over 500 devices utilis office bearers”. ing optical fibre, co-axial cable and a Translan Prins Ralston, possibly the youngest ACS bridge for both data and voice communica branch chairman, was born in 1963 and was tions. There are other micro networks includ educated in Victoria and in the Northern Ter ing DEC “thin wire ethernet”, Novel, IBM ritory. He matriculated in 1979 as dux of the Token Ring and Appletalk. Several multi- school and then went on to study electrical media solutions are being researched on a engineering at Sydney University, business mixture of Apple, DEC and IBM platforms. computing, accounting and law. In his spare Prins’ involvement in ACS activities is a time he undertakes the CPA exams. logical extension of his earlier involvement in During his student days, Prins won the IBM student and sporting bodies. “If you think Award for outstanding achievement in com something is important,” he says, “then you puting project work, the Institute of Chartered do your best to make it work as well as possi Accountants’ prize for the highest mark in ble and I think that ACS is very important. auditing and the KPMG Peat Marwick award “In a small branch such as ours, ACS provides for the highest grade in Computer-Based Ac a vital opportunity for professional network counting. ing and we are gradually extending our profes Prins Ralston In order to maintain a balanced life, he also sional development activities. We are becom played soccer, rugby and cricket at university ing a major and very relevant force in NT’s IT and at State level, played reserve grade volley profession.” ball and golf and, to acquire management Prins sees his major challenge as “getting skills he was president of the Sydney Universi other IT professionals involved in ACS man ty Soccer Association, foundation chair of the agement so that we can maintain the momen student association at Darwin Institute of tum we have built up. Another challenge is to Technology, a member of the Northern Terri make ACS known to the wider community so tory Council of higher Education and manager that the skills and knowledge of ACS members of the Northern Territory men’s volleyball become a valuable community asset for the team. Northern Territory”. Victorian Branch News returned when the item comes back. If we incur handling and postage costs they will be passed on to the borrower, but. if members HE Victorian Branch hosted a confer collect items there will be no hire charge.” ence for student members in March. It was most successful with the student au Denise Martin is now “boss of the office,” Tdience and the branch now has over 30 stutaking over this role from consultant Kate dent contacts in various institutions who are Behan whose initial three-year contract with prepared to be involved with promoting ACS the branch has now expired. Kate will remain activities on their campus. Several students on as a consultant for at least another year, but commented that the conference had renewed on reduced hours and with a primary focus on their desire to work in IT and they were un membership activities and promotion. aware of the scope of opportunities. Borrowing from the branch library may now The branch’s very successful professional become a reality, also the branch intends to development program continues. A two-day make videos available on loan. Videos such as conference will be held in June, a hypothetical that made at the recent hypothetical on on metrics — “How Long is A Piece of “Should You Have a Licence to Do IT” will String”, a Rob Thomsett executive briefing on be able to be borrowed. Managing Systems Development, and the “We plan a simple system,” says Victorian popular Ross Jeffery course on Function Point manager, Denise Martin. “Whatever you bor Analysis are just some of their quality offer row will require a $50 deposit, which will be ings during the next few months. PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 11 ACS IN VIEW mm Pearl Levin, FACS — Farewell EARL Levin, a highly respected and ac many of .the computing systems she designed tive member of the Victorian Branch of are still in operation. the Australian Computer Society since The many computing graduates of Chis 1971, passed away on 13 April 1992 after a P holm Institute of Technology (previously valiant struggle with illness. Caulfield Institute of Technology and now She was elected as a Fellow of the Society in Monash University) will remember the excel 1990 for outstanding services to computing in lent foundation education in computing they Australia, particularly in education. It was in received at the hands of Pearl, also the chal computing that Pearl took up the cause of lenges involved in progressing through her advancement of women, and her dedication to carefully designed case study assignments. that cause resulted in many females achieving More particularly, however, students will Pearl Levin a successful career in the field. She was also a remember the thoughtful and caring way Pearl member of the Membership Board of the na treated her precious brood of students, and the tional body of the Society and, at the time of compassion she had for those students who her passing, was the Chairperson of the Inter had difficult personal problems. She was nal Membership Committee. known to staff and students alike as the “Mother of Computing” both for her long ser A long and highly successful history in com vice to computing in the Institute, and her puting lies behind these remarkable achieve sympathetic but thorough approach to the ments. Pearl joined what was then the Caul teaching of computing. She was at all times a field Technical College in 1965 as a Data thoroughly professional person, respected by Processing Operator for the early Ferranti Siri both staff and students. us and Control Data 160A computers. In 1990 Pearl accepted an appointment as Director of the Pearcey Centre, which is tied In 1969 she became a Tutor/Demonstrator to the Faculty of Computing and Information in the EDP Department and was in charge of Technology at the Caulfield Campus of Mon the highly successful Operators and Coders ash University. Certificate course, with graduates being keenly sought after by industry. In 1981 Pearl was She was I member'offthe Victoria^ Branch promoted as Lecturer having completed her Executive G&mmittee, for several years, and studies for the Bachelor of Applied Science was the Programme Director for the ACS Na (Computing). Subsequently she was promoted tional Conference in Melbourne in 1987. as Senior Lecturer and later Principal Lectur er. The Principal Lectureship position was ti- g We say goodbye to this remarkable person tied the “Caroline Chisholm Principal Lec-^ who will always be remembered for her out tureshiu” and was awarded to Pearl in 1987 standing contributions to computing educa for outstanding contributions to Jeaching. tion and the computing profession for more Pearl was also a successful consultant and than 25 years of dedicated service. Subscriptions, orders, editorial, correspondence The Australian Computer Society Professional Computing, 45-50 Porter St, Prahran, Victoria, 3181. Office bearers Telephone (03)520 5555. Telex 30880. Fax (03)510 3489. President: Geoff Dober. Vice-presidents: Garry Trinder, Bob Tisdall. Immediate past president: Alan Underwood. National treasurer: Glen Advertising^ Heinrich. Chief executive officer: Ashley Goldsworthy. National sales manager: Peter Dwyer. PO Box 319, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. Telephone (02) 2115855. Professional Computing, an official publication of the Australian Fax (02) 281 1208. Computer Society Incorporated, is published by ACS/PI Publications, Peter Isaacson Publications 45-50 Porter Street, Prahran, Victoria, 3181. A.C.N. 004 260 020 Opinions expressed by authors in Professional Computing are not necessarily those of the ACS or Peter Isaacson Publications. While every care will be taken, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for articles and photographs submitted for publication. HEditor: Tony Blackmore. Editor-in-chief: Peter Isaacson. Advertising The annual subscription is $50. coordinator: ChristinePROFESSIONAL Dixon. Subscriptions: COMPUTING Jo Anne Birtles. Director of the Publications Board: John Hughes. 12 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 ACS IN VIEW of the Australian Computer Society honored ACT Branch Notes Professor Overheu with honorary life membership. Recruitment criticism Professor Overheu becomes only the 15th such member in a society of more than 14,000 from Foundation Fellow members. Overheu was an instigator and MERITUS Professor DJ Overheu has founding member of the South Australian criticised ACT IT employers, govern Computer Society formed in 1960 and the ment and commercial, for overlooking Queensland Computer Society formed in Ecomputer engineers when hiring computer1962. He served as president of that society in software staff. 1963 and 1964. He then started and was a Professor Overheu was addressing the annu founding member of the Canberra Computer al general meeting of the Canberra branch of Society formed in 1965. He served as chair the Australian Computer Society on the topic man of that society in 1967 and 1968. of the Ada computer programming language. Professor Overheu played a leading role in He departed from his prepared text to express the formation of the Australian Computer So concern that ACT IT employers had a too ciety in 1966. He was a member of the first narrow focus when selecting staff. council of the society and served as vice-presi Professor Overheu stated that the Universi dent in 1968-69 and 1969-70. He was honored ty of Canberra produced the best IT graduates by being elected a Foundation Fellow. in Australia from its computer engineering He had a distinguished academic career at course. However, many employers were fail the University of Queensland, the Canberra ing to recognise that the talents of these people College of Advanced Education, the Austra included computer software development, not lian National University and the University of just hardware development. Canberra and was appointed Pro-Vice Chan At its March meeting in Sydney the Council cellor of the latter institute in 1990. = 5= = DP Education (Seminars) pty ltd INDEPENDENT SPECIALISTS IN EDP TRAINING SINCE 1972 Independent trainers since 1972, we provide specialised training to professional computing personnel. Many of our courses are workshop style, with a limited audience of 20, ensuring excellence and value in training and development. Over 2000 professionals attend our courses each year. We take this opportunity to advise you of our calendar of courses during early 1992. All of these courses have PCP allocated hours. Technical Leadership Workshop Sydney August 9-14 Data Analysis Workshop Sydney June 22-23 Daniel Freedman & Dennis Davie Sean Boylan Melbourne June 24-25 Program Testing Workshop Sydney May 25-26 User Documentation Workshop Sydney July 20-21 Geoff Quentin Melbourne June 9-10 Geoff Quentin Melbourne July 22-23 Program Maintenance Workshop Sydney May 27-28 Small Team Leadership Melbourne July 20-21 Geoff Quentin Melbourne June 11-12 Dennis Davie Sydney July 23-24 Software Testing Tools Sydney May 29 Geoff Quentin Project Management Techniques Sydney July 27-29 Peter Puschak Melbourne August 3-5 Structured Analysis Workshop Sydney June 1-3 Sean Boylan Melbourne June 15-17 Quality Assurance via Technical Reviews Sydney July 30 Business Analysis for Users Sydney June 4-5 Peter Puschak Canberra July 31 Sean Boylan Melbourne June 18-19 Melbourne August 6 EARLY BIRD fee discounts are available to all our public courses, for those who act quickly. 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Software Technology was established to provide you with the skills necessary to build And train for the systems and applications for this new future by enrolling environment of distributed computing. at The Microsoft Institute. Attending a course at The Microsoft Call (02) 870 2250 for a prospectus and Institute is the most effective method of course schedule now. mastering the new model of client/server computing. Microsoft Institute of Advanced Software Technology PC’92 BURNING ISSUES CONFERENCE PAPER lowed software companies to invest millions of dollars to develop the “best” generic soft The convergence of ware that would have a market of tens of millions of machines. The manufacturers could focus on quality and performance to manufacturers’ products? gain market share of their Intel-based personal computer systems. The success of that strategy has led to the By Vance X Gledhill In the workstation and extrapolation of the idea into all areas of IT: Personal Computer HE notion of standardisation of IT prod from mainframes, to midrange, to worksta tions, to communications and data standards. market we have more ucts has its genesis in the 1950s and ’60s with the very successful efforts to pro Unfortunately the idea is not as easily scalable true generic operating Tvide a common development environment asfor was thought intitially. systems than ever — programmers in order to make the most of The title of this session reflects the naive their intellectual investment in computer pro hopes of people that saw the advantage of the and more agreement on grams. Fortran and, later, Cobol provided the PC revolution and the benefits it brought. standards. opportunity for programmers to build applica These hopes failed to recognise the new so tions on one set of hardware with its propri phisticated demands of the market and the etary operating system, and then port those fierce competition among key transnational programs with relative ease to new computing IT companies as they sought the formula for platforms. The idea of any standardisation in survival and growth in the 1990s. hardware or operating systems was thought to Although sound in theory, it is a quagmire be an unattainable goal in the 1950s and 60s. in reality. “Standards” and “open systems” With the advent of cheaper hardware or have become the most overworked and mean personal computers, CP/M from Digital Re ingless words in the industry. Are open sys search gave developers a taste of what might tems those that can simply exchange informa be possible. A simple operating system that tion or must they also run each other’s would run on a range of hardware provided by software? Should they be built from standard different manufacturers. Now an independent parts, or from parts that conform to stan software developer could build a product for a dards? The only commonality among the in horizontal (eg Wordstar) or vertical (eg local dustry is that they will endorse “standards” government) market and be assured that com that they can live with in their business plan. petition among hardware suppliers would pro Thus we are seeing hastily formed and oppor vide cheap, reliable systems. Hundreds of ap tunistic alliances amongst all companies in the plications were available on that platform. industry inan effort ti> survive. It is the classic Such was the success of the idea, that compa battle of the,robber Barons who will bed, wed, nies and government agencies seized on it to hunt, and dine with anyone who will serve standardise when determining equipment pur their purpose. As in the classic game of Diplo chases. The NSW government issued an edict macy, it is not a matter of when these alliances jthat government departments should only Jt will break down, but who will move first to try purchase CP/M compatible systems to ensure®' to take advantage of the other members. optimii support. No, unfortunately, we should not wait as A decade ago, this idea reached/maturity has been suggested, for the manufacturers with the belief that adherence to standards for products to converge into a single open sys hardware, software and communications in tem. That will not happen. On the contrary, terfaces, would mean that computers would be the first five years of this decade will be one of far easier to buy, connect and use. If one hard thejmost. confused as different groups seek to ware manufacturer was unsuitable, a user reach market dominance of MS-DOS and the could switch to any one of dozens of other PC of the 1980s. compatible machines without fear of losing Yet this diversity and experimentation will their software investment. Software vendors be for the good of %e user. The products that had a standard target machine and operating win the hearts and minds of the users for the system which enabled them to invest heavily remainder of the decade will be battle-wise in generic packages which could address a and well honed. The competition will produce wide market. Users were given greater choice.' technology and applications that we can This reached a high point with the release of scarcely envision. the IBM standard of PCs supported with the This article examines some of the turmoil in Microsoft DOS operating system. Over 70 the industry and focuses on the diversity in million have been installed worldwide. each of the sectors of the workstation market. This standardisation, or acceptance of a It will conclude with observations about the common IT platform by the marketplace, al likely outcome. 16 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 Hardware diversity: Integrated hardware platforms: The idea of broad adoption (standardisa As the size of the PC and workstation mar tion) first embodied in the success of CP/M ket grows, and the forecast of sales for mid and the Apple II reached its ultimate realisa range and mainframe computers indicates tion with IBMs specification and marketing of continuing decline, numerous manufacturers the Intel-based IBM-PC. The openly pub are looking to this new, workstation-based \S*I lished architecture and design of the PC al multi-billion dollar industry as their salvation. lowed literally hundreds of other manufactur Today, and over the next few years, we will ers to enter the market leading to the see a confusing array of new systems available dominance of that system in the personal to buyers. Not only will there be the Intel- computer market with over 70 million sys based PC, but also the Intel-based ACE work tems installed with a standard development station (see later). In addition there are environment of MS-DOS, a relatively unso current and viable alternatives from Apple, phisticated operating system. Sun, Next and Tron. There have been signifi The IBM-compatible PC defined the chip cant alliances formed for future releases which architecture, the bus, the interfaces, and the include the Intel/MIPS ACE system, the I/O configuration. MS-DOS provided a basic IBM/Apple Power PC, and a new generation program interface that would ensure of Sun and Next computers focusing on the Vance Gledhill “shrinked wrapped products” which were bi Intel processor platform. nary compatible across products from a num Software diversity: ber of suppliers. Microsoft and Apple dominated the desktop The perceived dominance by a few key play market for a number of years. For reasons ers to the exclusion of others led to the compe discussed previously, the opportunities now tition looking for chinks in the armor. Apple exist for more sophisticated systems to take a introduced the highly successful Macintosh in significant part of the future software market. recognition of the unfriendliness of the New requirements such as security, fault toler MS-DOS interface, while SCO Xenix intro ance, multiprocessor support, multitasking, duced the world of Unix to the PC user. These integrated communications, and support of two developments have encouraged others to object technology will lead to the introduction follow their lead. of much more sophisticated systems and Chip diversity: software. The PC world was dominated for many Operating systems: years by the Intel Chip set. Over 80 per cent of There will always be a place for simple file all processors sold for PCs were part of the management and scheduling systems. How Intel series. Events of the past 18 months have ever, these will largely continue to be satisfied opened the door to a number of other chip by a continuing evolution of MS-DOS. It is in manufacturers which, over the decade, will the workstation area that the interest lies. threaten Intel’s position. The main contenders for the new worksta Manufacturers of chip sets that are vying for tion market are principally OS/2 2.0, a joint dominance, or at least a significant market, IBM/Microsoft development, the “Pink” op include MIPS, Motorola and other RISC sets erating system from Apple and IBM, Win including the Power series from IBM/Apple/ dows, NT from Microsoft and a wide variety Motorola, the Alpha series from DEC and the of Unix variants. SUN Sparc series. Each of these operating environments look This competition will lead to markedly im superficially similar and it will be hard for the proved performance for users. Not to be left naive user to make an informed decision in behind, Intel have recently announced their regard to the most suitable systems. On the P5 chip which will contain over three million other hand, each environment is quite differ transistors and operate at around 100 MIPS ent. Software developed by IS Vs or corporate on a desktop workstation. Similar or better developers for one platform will not run performances can be expected from the others without significant source modification on to remain competitive. another. Bus architecture: Ultimately, experience has shown, that the Workstations that wish to be successful in IS Vs will determine who will be successful. future will have to have an open bus architec The system that is the focus of the major ture to enable third parties to integrate boards applications developers and vendors will be of their own design. For years, the AT was a pushed to the fore as more and more users standard to which many suppliers could build. look to pre-packaged solutions and maximum In an attempt to improve performance and connectivity for their purchases. This, in part, gain some further control of the market, a explains the current success of MS DOS and number of alternative bus designs are being windows and the limited success of OS/2 and promoted. Unix on the desktop. * Now users have to contend with decisions Development tools and standards: about ISA, EISA, MCA, NUBUS and a range There is little sign of a convergence in the of new designs that are being promoted to tools that developers use to build their soft provide an adequate bus speed for the new ware. The success of Cobol and Fortran on high performance processors, memories and mainframes is unlikely to be repeated on per peripherals. sonal computers. / PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 17 The main contenders for the new workstation If there has been a trend in recent years, it is noted, however, that two major players, IBM towards C as a language. For the past six years, and Apple, are not members of the ACE con market are principally C has been the basic tool in System Develop sortium. OS/2 2.0, a joint ment Kits (SDKs) used to build new applica Multimedia PCs (MPC) IBM/Microsoft tions. Multimedia is seen as a major market op However, the complexity of the graphical development, the “Pink” portunity in all areas of business, the profes user interface, the shift to event driven pro sions and home use. The Multimedia PC plat operating system from grams, and the promise of reusable modules form arose out of a desire to focus on a from object technology foreshadows a’further Apple and IBM, desirable and sufficient set of technology to change. Over the next 18 months C++ will support this next and important applications Windows, NT from become a significant tool. This is not simply environment. Microsoft and a wide an extension of C, it is a new programming A number of computer hardware and soft philosophy that may provide the marked in variety of Unix variants. ware companies, representing over 25 per cent crease in program and systems productivity of the world PC market, are producing Multi- that we need. media PC stand-alone systems or upgrade kits Riding on the back of this emphasis on to turn standard PCs into MPCs. The mini object technology and GUIs are development mum requirements for an MPC are a two M- environment such as Visual Basic, Smalltalk Byte 80286 (or higher) based PC with Win and Eiffel. dows 3.0 and Multimedia Extensions. Storage Fortunately, the manufacturers and devel to include a 30 M-Byte hard drive and a opers are coming together on some issues. CD-ROM drive, a VGA board and a sound There is agreement evolving internationally board. Experience would indicate that higher on the Application Program Interface (APIs) specification would be highly desirable. for Mail, LANs and Object Data Bases. This The MPC platform has been slow to be seen will allow application builders operating at as yet, but that is largely because of the lack of higher levels to ensure that the products they adequate software tools. At this early stage of develop will interoperate with other system product specification, a large number of devel components. opers are building authoring tools to allow Computer applications: applications to be more easily assembled using There is considerable uniformity amongst the combination of the processor logic, high the products from different suppliers in the quality graphics, sound, and images. seven basic PC applications viz: Word Pro cessing, Spreadsheets, Presentation Graphics, Conclusion Personal Data Bases, Project, and Mail. Mi Where does all this leave us? What started crosoft, Lotus, Borland, etc have now focused out as a wishful hope for the convergence of their primary applications on the Windows manufacturers hardware and software plat environment with the subsequent porting of forms has turned into a nightmare of great this “Look and feel” to other workstation diversity which is leading to great confusion worlds. amongst serious developers. We can anticipate this consistency to con What will be the outcome? There are as tinue, with different products, from time to many views of that as there are players in this time, having market ascendancy. cprrent roupd of product announcement, alli It is anticipated that the major new applica ances, takeovers, and’ bankruptcies. > tions areas of Work Group Computing and The good news is that the outcome will be Multimedia will go through'a period of experi to the user’s advantage. The second decade of mentation before the pattern of products in PCs will see high performance workstations, these areas are established. communicating cooperatively to bring infor |# the Advanced Computing mation from a wide variety of sources to the user. New operating systems will be sophisti Environment (ACE) cated, secure and reliable. New applications in Currently over 85 different IT companies multimedia and workgroup computing will are members of the ACE consortium. Princi dwarf stand-alone applications of the past. ple companies include Microsoft, DEC, Com The bad news? We will not know the out paq, MIPS, Pyramid, SCO, Sony and CDD. come for some time yet. The next 18 months The aim of the consortium is to agree to a in computing will be one of the most interest nonproprietary, standards-based computing ing that we have witnessed for decades. Tradi environment that will provide a specification tional centralised systems will be replaced by for workstations for the coming decade. The distributed systems, new companies will dom specification nominates two chip standards, inate the transnational IT world, while better Intel and MIPS, and two operating systems, informed and articulate users will dictate the the SCO Open Desktop Unix and Microsoft’s evolution of the industry. This time next year, Windows NT. there will be some winners and more losers, It is hoped that by ensuring a high level of which will lead to consolidation of manufac agreement amongst equipment manufactur turers offering — we can only hope that this ers, the PC phenomenon of the 1980s can be provides a solid platform to launch the next recreated for high end workstations. First stage of computer systems development. products against the ACE initiative, together with the appropriate operating systems should Author: Professor Vance Gledhill is director of be available this calendar year. It should be the Microsoft Institute. 18 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 CONFERENCE Computing the Clever Country: Conference program takes shape HE program of the 10th Australian ■ Paula Dawson, artist in residence, Austra Computing in Education Conference is lian Museum, is working with the RMIT taking shape, and will feature a number Computer Graphics Centre to create the Tof well-known and exciting speakers addressworld’s largest computer-generated holo Melbourne ing the topic Computing the Clever Country? gram. The work requires innovations in 3D It has been a tradition in conferences such as modelling; electron-beam lithography, sci this to import British and American speakers, entific visualisation and computer-generat sometimes ignoring the fact that Australia is ed holography techniques. Paula is the epit ACEC’92: Australian among the leaders in computer education. ome of the Clever Australian and we hope Computing in Education To redress the balance this year, ACEC’92 you will be inspired by her example. will feature a number of well-known Austra Conference, Melbourne, lian speakers including: ■ David Woodhouse currently holds the posi July 5-8. ■ Vance Gledhill, director of the Microsoft tion of deputy executive director, Hong Institute of Advanced Software Technology, Kong Council for Academic Accreditation, will speak on Personal Computing Second but many ACS members will remember Decade. It is only ten years since IBM intro him from his work for the ACS and at La duced the first PC based on MS-DOS and Trobe University. Asian countries like industry and commerce began to take the Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong microcomputer seriously. The second de are not just talking about becoming the cade will be even more dramatic as the per Clever Country, their education and indus sonal computer becomes part of many con trial policies are aiming at ensuring that sumer products, is integrated into home they become Clever. Has Australia some information services and becomes a basic thing to learn from these countries? office tool for all workers. ACEC’92 does, of course, also have its quo ■ Bill Caelli, director of the Information Secu ta of excellent overseas speakers. These in rity Research Centre and Professor of Com clude Jeremy Roschelle (from the Institute for puter Science, Queensland University of Research on Learning, Palo Alto, California), Technology, is well known as a lively speak John Mason (Professor of Mathematics Edu er who compels his audience to come to cation at the Open University, UK), Howard grips with important issues. In 1986, Bill Flavell (a British secondary teacher who also won the Australian Information Technology works at the University of Birmingham), Bri award for achievement in the Information an Alger (from River Oaks Public School, On Technology Industry. Bill is also technical tario, Canada), and Kathleen Sunshine (Direc director of ERACOM. tor, International Telecommunications Centre ■ Gitte Lindgaard, principal scientist, Human and Professor of Communications, Ramapo Factors Research Team, Telecom Research College of New Jersey). Laboratories, is known to many ACS mem bers for her work in the Ergonomics Society. Early bird registration for ACEC’92 is $ 150 ■ Rhys Francis, senior research scientist and for the three days, and is open until 5 June. project manager in the High Performance After this time, full registration will be $170. Computer Program, CSIRO Division of In Single day registration is $85 per day. These formation Technology, will address the topic prices include admission to all conference ses Computing: Changing the Way Scientists sions, conference proceedings, lunch, morning Work. The advent of computing has permit and afternoon teas. ted science to address problems which If you are interested in what is going on in would otherwise be unsolvable. Computing education and whether education should be has also changed the way scientists work. contributing to Computing the Clever Coun Computer-based simulations, visual depic try?, or even in acquiring some PCP points, tion of results and the availability of tre ACEC’92 has to be the best value you are mendous calculating power have given to likely to find. day’s scientists much better tools with which to pursue science than those available For further information contact the CEGV: to Einstein or Newton. phone (03) 520 7311, fax (03) 510 9750. PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 19 PC: GROWING UP The future of commercial computing: Growing demands for more powerful applications challenge PC performance This is the challenge of By Steve Thomas multi-tasking, multiuser Windows NT operat ing system. These new-generation operating the 90s: how to maintain PCs: Performance challenges systems will include the powerful capabilities compatibility with the of the second decade typically found only in proprietary vendor op SINCE their first scattered appearance on erating systems, such as integrated network dominant PC desktops a decade ago, the personal computer ing, multiprocessing, fault-tolerant support, hardware/software has become the dominant force in commercial object linking, and distributed services computing. Sales of PCs continue to gain mar model while rapidly support. ket share, with mainframes and minicomput Data access, peripheral sharing and file increasing the PC's ers continuing to lose ground. The commercial transfer make up the bulk of today’s integrated power and functionality computing market represents about 90 per PC LAN applications. But emerging “group- cent of all computing purchases, with only 10 ware” productivity packages, such as work- to meet the exploding per cent going to engineering and scientific flow applications and document management needs of commercial applications. Today, there are over 90 million software, are beginning to exploit the fuller PCs installed around the world. computing. potential of enterprise networks. Behind this explosive growth is a de facto Groupware relies on dedicated (database) standard, Microsoft’s DOS operating system servers or distributed server functions to (OS) and its successor, Windows. Today, networked PCs. Either way, PCs and the de DOS/Windows supports more than 40,000 partmental servers that power them must applications. greatly expand their power to meet the stagger Now in its second decade, the PC is entering ing needs for network-wide fast responses and an era of “collaborative computing”. Increas resource sharing. ingly, PCs need more power to meet the needs Both PC applications and graphical user in of larger applications and databases. Sales of terfaces (GUIs) grow more power hungry as 32-bit PCs (386- and 486-based) have explod they exploit graphics, audio, video, and grow ed, exceeding 18 million units in 1991. To ing multimedia capabilities. These technol exploit enterprise wide networks, software is ogies require even more power as they become becoming much more integrated (utilising integrated and interactive, -and offer refine many developer and user-oriented layers) to ments suclj as three dimensional imaging, meet the needs of the professional within com high-resolution, full fcolbr, and full motion. puting workgroups. The combination of multi According’' to PC Week (21 October 1991) layered, graphical applications operating elaborate graphical ana* audio capabilities will seamlessly within collaborative networks be standard in PCs by 1994. That will mean poses many challenges to today’s PC architec monitors with 1024-by-768-pixel resolution ture. PCs will need to deliver five to 10 times,, and a 70 MHz refresh rate at a minimum. their current power to meet these computing Disk storage, magnetic or optical, will increase needs while preserving Microsoft application to 500 M-bytes. And PC Week estimates that compatibility. / CPUs will need more than 60 MHz of power, This is the challenge, of the 90s: how to nearly twice the clock rate of most x86 desk maintain compatibility with the dominant PC top systems today. hardware/software model while rapidly in The integration of all these power-hungry creasing the PC’s power and functionality to applications and their “building block” sup meet the exploding needs of commercial port software will totally change the commer computing. cial PC desktop into a “collaborative comput Applications: Increasingly graphical, ing environment.” Historically, as PCs evolve integrated and collaborative from standalone to network and on to collabo rative environments, so do overall power LOCAL area networks (LANs) continue to needs. grow rapidly in the 1990s, challenging the pro cessing power of PCs. According to Dataquest, Building on a dominant PC base one-third of all PCs in the US were networked WHILE PC power needs are growing, so is the in 1990, and that figure will rise to two-thirds world’s vast PC user base, which will top 150 by 1995. million by the end of 1993. With this much Fuelling this growth is more powerful net momentum behind it, the PC market will con work computing software from Novell tinue to grow in its user and overall market NetWare, USL Unix, and Microsoft’s new pervasiveness. New architectures and envi- 20 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 ronments will have to adapt to it not the other way around. PCs are dominant because they are truly “open systems”. Independence in operating systems, hardware, peripherals, and the wealth of applications are the heart of the PC model. The tremendous volume of the PC industry keeps prices low and application volume high. Users prefer to be independent of a propri etary hardware supplier, and this accelerating trend is reshaping the computer industry. Desktop operating systems such as those from Microsoft and Unix have become the single most powerful factor in the computing hierarchy. In terms of dollar volume, open operating- system-based hardware now accounts for more than half of the computing dollars and represents 85 per cent of all units shipped. The power base in the industry has shifted from the hardware vendors to the software vendors. The most powerful software vendor is Micro soft, and its independent operating system is at the centre of industry mass migration to hardware independence. The “Microsoft PC” MICROSOFT’S Windows 3.0 has garnered more than nine million users, sold more than 70,000 developer kits and generated over 5000 applications in less than two years — the fast est selling operating system ever. Improved capabilities such as 32-bit processing, ad vanced graphics, networking and application integration will further extend Windows’ mar ket share in the near term. Most observers agree that if OS/2 from IBM does not garner a larger share of users and software developers soon, it will be perma nently eclipsed by Windows. According to IDC, by the end of 1992, the OS/2 installed base will account for only 500,000 units and Windows will represent over 20 million units. The upgrade of 70 million DOS users to Win dows 3.0 represents the largest mass migration in computing, and this movement is reshaping the industry. The new Windows 3.0 NT micro kernel brings the powerful capabilities typical and functionality needed to fill the “PC per The MIPS Magnum 4000 ly found in UNIX and proprietary operating formance gap”. Without this greater perfor advanced Rise personal systems to the PC market. Microsoft’s deliv mance, software developers will be hampered computer and the MIPS ery of Windows NT on advanced 32-bit com by inadequate platforms to run their new gen Millennium 4000 ARC mercial processors (Intel’s 80386/80486 and eration applications. 4 server MIPS RISC R4000) signals that a new genera Such commercial desktop-compatible and tion of open computing, beyond the desktop, scalable power is not likely to come from is under way. work-station vendors. These vendors have fo cused their efforts on-technical (floating-point) New generation PCs: Not a workstation performance, rather than balanced micro TODA\( the challenge is to expand rather processor designs to address commercial (nu than replace the PC model to provide the merical) performance. Above all, vendors power, price/performance and scalability that such as Sun, HP and IBM each dominate users and developers demand. For example, their architecture channel and only offer their any new processor architecture that wants to proprietary versions of Unix. Lack of a hard address the commercial desktop must be PC ware-independent, truly open operating sys compatible. PC compatible means it must tem has limited overall growth of these work I support the PC operating systems and Win station vendors and the overall workstation dows applications, and protect the user’s in market. Workstation vendors shipped 520,000 vestments in applications data, peripherals, units in 1991, versus 28 million units for PC networks and training. vendors. Beyond compatibility, a new architecture Some observers believe that sales of Unix must be able to deliver the higher performance workstations have peaked at half a million PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 21 Rather than adapting the units in 1991. According to Dataquest, in 1991 does RISC offer higher performance because PC model to workstation unit sales actually declined eight of its inherent design simplicity over CISC accommodate the Unix per cent from the third to the fourth quarters. architectures, but it provides a much steeper As Dataquest noted in its report (November, technology curve. This trend has accelerated workstation paradigm, 1991) the average price of workstations re since the mid-1980s. the opposite is occurring. mains high at $18,000. These high prices and Higher performance RISC architectures and Independent providers of lack of PC applications compatibility have better price/performance solutions are acceler kept workstations from overtaking the ating the shift from proprietary mainframes Unix operating systems desktop. The lack of volume from each of the and minicomputers, are making inroads into (SCO and USL/ incompatible workstation vendors has kept virtually every sector of the computing software developers from writing applications industry. Novell) are gravitating to for each vendors small Unix workstation mar An expanded PC model: high-volume commercial ket. Compatible innovation processor architectures. Rather than adapting the PC model to ac RISC technology, coupled with developments commodate the Unix workstation paradigm, such as more powerful operating systems and the opposite is occurring. Independent provid networking, will give PCs the room to grow in ers of Unix operating systems (SCO and USL/ the 1990s. This shift will enlarge the PC model Novell) are gravitating to high-volume com to include mid-range commercial computing mercial processor architectures. requirements. And it would make scalable This transition of the largest Unix applica power available to all systems in an enterprise tion base to the commercial architectures may network eliminating incompatibilities be spell the end of general workstation market tween today’s clients and servers. growth and relegate them to their “engineering For the PC model to expand to its full po workstation” niche market. tential, the performance gap must be filled. More power to the desktop Once a compatible, scalable environment ex In the 1990s, commercial users are driving ists, application developers will deliver an an exponential rise in the processing power ever increasing level of innovation to meet needs of PCs just as they have done for work end users growing needs. The continuum of stations since the late 1980s. In the worksta application innovation requiring more and tion arena the rush for power has meant a more power has never been satisfied and likely major shift in technology, from complex in never will. The promise of RISC provides the struction set computing (CISC) to reduced in technology bridge over the PC performance struction set computing (RISC). In a short gap, allowing large commercial environments three years the workstation market moved to implement truly open, large scale solutions. from 80 per cent CISC-based systems to 75 Author: Steve Thomas is commercial market per cent RISC market share by 1991. Not only manager, MIPS Computer Systems Inc. For 10 years OSI has i From page 9 i From page 6 The provision of an API reduces the com ducing external information feeds, which can coped with changes in plexity and hence design and programming then be enriched with comments from users of the IT industry. effort otherwise required to provide an inter the network. face between the business application code „ Fax remains more popular than E-mail be and the OSI communication service code. cause it is easier to use, so attention shpuld be It frees system designers and programmers given to the’'E-mail user interface. from providing software to process OSI com Using simple data analysis tools, such as munication services. This is a major benefit, NIAM (Nijssen Information Analysis Meth- as the difference between the business applica od), users should work with professionals to tion logic and the OSI communication service^ develop simple relational tables of the data logic is quite distinct. they work with and become conversant with The major users of APIs are software prod basic SQL of a simple forms product. Those uct development companies that have EDI, with no computer background quickly accept mail- or file-handling packages and wish to the table as an electronic sheet of paper and build applications for gateways to OSI com soon automate simple tasks that used to be munication services. Software developers can done in a notebook kept in the top drawer. use API software products to reduce overall New tables get created, although the MIS product development costs. manager must keep a watching brief on the Where to next? data structures. The OSI protocol suite is constantly evolv The move to opeij, systems offers consider ing, particularly at the application layer. While able economic benefits, but as there is no such ODA, RDA, MMS and so forth are being thing as a free lunch, the potential risks must enhanced, new applications such as Transac also be considered. tion Processing (TP) and Security and Authen I remember the computer revolution of the tication are still being developed. 1960s as a period of great excitement and Because of the way OSI has been designed, learning. We are fortunate to have the oppor as a series of layers, it has coped with the tunity to participate in a second revolution. enormous changes in the IT industry in the past ten years. And it shows every indication Author: Tony Benson is general manager, of continuing that way. NCR Australia Technology Centre. 22 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 MAY 1992 Open systems transaction processing: a reality Products and By David Moles competition drives down margins, service becomes an important differentiator in a performance makes open HERE is a case for developing On-Line crowded market; systems a natural Transaction Processing Systems (OLTP) ■ Shortened product and service life cycles — on Open Systems; the components for solution to this key tailoring services and products to market Tthe necessary infrastructure are already availdemands combined with enhancement of able in the marketplace for these complex and commercial application existing products; critical systems. In this article I will use Unix- ■ Increased competition; area. based references for a number of reasons: ■ Decision support — complete and timely ■ for many people Unix is synonymous with decision support for managers; Open Systems; ■ Price/performance — the IT challenge is ■ many of the de facto and de jure standards delivery of these services within budgetary are being most rapidly delivered on Unix constaints: systems; ■ Control of business resources — control ■ most (if not all) vendors have incorporated and accountability for the application of the Unix in the technology development IT resources. strategy. Organisations are placing increased de Furthermore and not the least, I am most mands on their IT systems. These IT systems familiar with the Unix environment having must be easily extended and modified to meet “downsized” from a mainframe environment. these business challenges but at the same time Definitions work within cost constraints. Firstly we must establish a framework. IT implications What is OLTP? These business pressures have dramatic im “Computer involved operations that change plications for the OLTP systems of the 1990s. or display the state of the business in real OLTP systems must now operate as part of time.” ! a unified computing architecture. The com While this is a very general definition, I puting architecture must incorporate the vari believe it succinctly describes the problem. No ous styles of processing: OLTP, Batch, Interac mention is made of the technical complexity, tive and Decision Support. All these styles the size of the system or the implementation play an important role in the complex process technology. The essence is the timeliness of ing systems required for the 1990s. the operation. Customers are demanding increased service Real time is a piece of computer jargon — I levels requiring systems to provide a more am not referring to process control applica complex “point of service” facility. The OLTP tions, although OLTP application response system increasingly must be capable of pro times are critical to meet business service cessing all the customer needs — not just the levels. Real time in this sense refers to num most frequent business transactions. bers of seconds rather than milli-seconds. The quick in/out transaction associated Timeliness, service levels and accuracy are with banking transactions (TPC benckmarks) critical for successful OLTP systems since the are no longer sufficient to cope with the busi business is far more exposed to the public. ness environment. “Transaction sagas” han Why on-line processing? dling the complete business transaction are As organisations address the business pres needed. Transactions become more complex sures of the 1990s, the search for a competi as the “scope” of the customer interface is tive edge is increasingly important. Rather expanded. OLTP systems must handle more than viewing IT as a byproduct of the busi complex transactions types and processing. In ness, businesses require Information Technol tegration of multi-media processing will be ogy to assist the competitive edge by including come increasingly necessary. Already in the technology within product offerings and cus USA, systems are combining imaging of docu tomer service. ments for capture and storage with transaction The business pressures manifest themselves processing for the traditional data processing. in many ways: To successfully integrate these requirements ■ Improving customer service — as market an open system architecture is required. The PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 23 port for distributed computing with Distribut Worldwide OLTP Market Size ed Transaction Processing (DTP). Interopera Source: Dataquest/Abeerdeen bility with heterogeneous computers is provided within the Unix (Open Systems) Billion of $ OLTP environment with specific transactional 70 gateways to mainframe systems considered fundamental to the environment. Client/server computing Client/server computing, considered funda 60 mental to Open System Transaction Process ing, divides an application into two compo nents, the two parts co-operating to implement some business function: Clients — interface to the external world, 50 collect data and submit the business action to the server. Servers — process the business actions received from clients and respond to the client. The benefits of Client/Server com 40 puting include: ■ integration of PCs and workstations to pro vide a more intuitive and effective inter face; ■ optimisation of computing resources; 30 ■ reduced network traffic; ■ scalability of application through addition of more servers for increased capacity. There are three generally recognised points 20 to divide the application into the client and server components (with plenty of variation in between). Presentation Client/Server locates the sim ple presentation on remote terminals, eg, 3270 10 block mode terminals. Client/Database Server separates the data base from the client using SQL to manage the interface with the majority of the application 0 executing on the input device. 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Both these techniques intermingle presenta DMP Software tion services, networking, processing of the business transaction and data manipulation within the single application. open systems environment allows the integra , Client Transaction Server divides the tradi tion of the key elements to address these com tional application info client and server com plex transaction processing systems. ponents connected by,a transaction manager: Industry trends ■ the client responsible for the user interface OLTP comprises the largest segment in the using a presentation tool; commercial computing industry today with a ■ the transaction manager responsible for growth rate double that of the overall comput^jfr routing the transaction (a unit of work) and er industry. Market projections indicate this managing the network to the server located trend will continue and increase in the coming somewhere in the network; years. Dataquest/Aberdeen predial world ■ the server responsible for processing actions wide hardware and software revenues for received from clients via the transaction transaction processing will increase to $65 bil manager. Client Transaction Server extends lion in 1994. This has grown from $30 billion the benefits of the client/server model to in 1989. include: The applications of OLTP technology will • sharing the server resources over a large be felt in a number of industries. Aberdeen number of clients reducing the cost per has predicted the growth for various market user; segments. As you can see in figure one, all bar • removal of the client processing with the two indicators are above 10 per cent. Perhaps associated heavy communications and in these predictions will be modified in the light terrupt processing; of economic circumstances, but considering • network independent applications since the relative rather than absolute values indi the network is managed by the transaction cates the impact of OLTP technology. Two manager; major industry groupings, Open Software • device independent applications allowing Foundation and Unix International, have a variety of transaction sources. both identified transaction processing as a The Client Transaction Server architecture critical element of the technology directions. has demonstrated a factor of over 30 times Identified with this OLTP requirement is sup improvement in processing capacity for the 24 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 same hardware configuration. This dramatic improvement translates to reduced capital ex penditure for hardware and reduced mainte Opening Moves nance charges for both the network and hard ware systems. distributed computing environments. The Standards Tuxedo model of client transaction server has In the rapidly changing technology market been adopted by X/Open within the Distribut place — selection of products based on stan ed Transaction Model. dards is vital. Only by using these guidelines X/Open will the customer be assured of the continuing X/Open has been very active in defining a operational viability of systems. The politics Distributed Transaction Processing model. and relationships of standards creation is a The model identifies three major elements large enough field to warrant a separate pre and describes separate interfaces (APIs) for sentation. There are a large number of bodies the interface: actively concerned with the creation of stan ■ XA defines the interface between the Data dards (both de-jure and de-facto) for OLTE base (Resource Manager) and the Transac This count does not include the various activi tion Manager; ties associated with the OSI networking model ■ ATMI defines the interface between the Ap or the work of the POSIX working groups. plication and the Transaction manager; International Standards Organisation ■ ISO TP defines the interface between each ISO is defining a protocol for communica systems transaction manager; tion between Transaction Monitors. This is ■ SQL is the interface between the Applica currently available in Draft International tion and the Database (resource Manager). Standard 10026 and is known as ISO TP. This Technology convergence standard will be incorporated by X/Open as Commercial availability of the core technol part of the DTP model. ogies of OLTP has been achieved. Each of the Open Software Foundation various components required are available OSF has selected technology through the Re from a wide variety of suppliers (including quest for Technology process and selected the hardware vendors). These products mesh to Transarc Corporation model. This is based on provide a commercially viable OLTP environ a Remote Procedure Call paradigm. It is ment on Open System/Unix. planned to ship the Encina product later this Transaction monitors quarter. Encina is currently concluding Beta A number of products are available in the testing in selected customer sites in the US. marketplace now. Tuxedo, Encina and Topend Unix International provide the central transaction management Unix International (UI) has adopted Tux component for OLTP previously cited as miss edo from Unix Systems Laboratories as the ing by mainframe proponents. For new appli- ▼ Figure 2 — X/Open transaction processing system. Tuxedo has cation development, Open Systems TP moni- Distributed Transaction been incorporated with the UI Atlas model for tors provide many of the features of CICS, Model SYSTEM 1 DMP Software SYSTEM 2 Server Application Server Application ZY A eg SQL ATMI ATMI eg SQL 3 V Iz 2 Transaction Transaction Resource Resource Manager <±=^> Manager Manager |< DTP Manager XA XA ATMI ATMI Client Application Client Application PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 25 COMPUTING S E R VI C E S OPEN SYSTEMS PRODUCTS SERVICES SKILLS Accounting Conversions Pick Distribution Fixed Price Prime Information Financial Development Universe IMAGINE Human Resources Maintenance Unidata Treasury and Support Progress Non Contact Systems Analysis System Builder Identification Management SB+ Fax and Teiex Consulting Advanced Pick Interfaces Systems Review Unix Xenix ADAM BASE MACPHERSON OPEN SYSTEMS PTY LTD Brisbane (07) 870 8262 Melbourne (03) 866 1177 Sydney (02) 416 2788 Fax (07)371 4028 Fax (03) 866 4540 Fax (02) 416 9578 SI GOOD MEMORY EXPANSION PRICES AT MAY 3RD. 1992 SIMM T2000SX 4MB $320 1MB x 4-80S $25.00 T1600 2MB $140 DRIVES 1MBx9 80ns $48 3V4 PANAS 1.44 $80 1MBx8 100ns $43 T31000SX 2MB $135 YOUR T3200SX 2MB $135 S'GATE IDE 64/16 $420 1 MBx8 80ns $48 S'GATE IDE 42/28 $325 4MBx9 80ns $183 T3200 3MB $230 T5200 2MB $150 S'GATE IDE 106/16 $475 256x9 80ns $17 S'GATE IDE 130/16 $530 (FOR SIP ADD $1) T2000SX SMB $760 DRAM-DIP CO-PROCESSORS 4MBx8 80ns $175 387/33/40 $235/$280 256x9 80ns $16 411000 80 $5.40 256 x 4 80 $5.60 387/20/25 $210/$215 PROSPECTS (FOR SIP ADD $1) 41256 80 $2.00 SX 20/25 $155/5170 TOSHIBA 287/10/20 $100/5125 T1000SE 2MB $230 1MB x 4-80Z $25.00 Sales Tax 20%. 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Should an advertiser lodging material with the publisher for publication or auth 26 PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 while adding additional features geared to dis tributed environments. Unix OLTP systems High-End Open Systems Performance provide additional features such as: ■ global transaction control with two phase commit; ■ support for leading databases via the X\ 3000+ : max MP interface; ■ distributed systems support; Mainframe ■ integration of the workplace v ia PC and Unix workstation integration. All these products are (or will be) available for 100+ : SP a variety of platforms, as an example Tuxedo is available on over 20 separate Unix plat forms today and can be “ported" to new plat | forms relatively simply — 1-2 months work. Databases I The major Unix relational database suppli ers have announced their intention to ship XA compliant products. By supporting global transactions, these products can be integrated into distributed networks, allowing existing data islands to be connected and to preserve existing applications. rithms providing for fixed priority processes, Figure 3 — Open Computer Aided Software Engineering many hundreds of concurrent users and sup systems performance CASE products are available to support cli port for large ol’disk storage arrays. Disk man ent server computing. An Australian company agement system similar to the Logical Volume is enhancing their CASE tool to incorporate Manager specified within OSF/f provide en the Tuxedo client/server transaction process hanced management facilities over traditional ing model. As the market grows, increasing Unix. These facilities allow mainframe class enhancements to existing tools and new prod management strategies for disk storage ucts will appear to support this style of pro sub-systems. cessing. Hardware Networking An important component ofthe total OLTP The adoption of the OSI Reference Model package is the underiving hardware. High end provides for the interchange of data indepen Unix system arc delivering mainframe class dent of the data representation of a particular solutions. Figure three displays the compari hardware. Adoption of GOSIP will improve as sons of various classes of hardware. The com more vendors announce the availability of bination of Reduced Instruction Set Comput compliant products. Already a de facto stan ing (RISC) and Symmetric Multiprocessing dard of Simple Network Management Proto (SMP) is delivering hardware configurations col (SNMP) is well established for TCP/IP capable of matching proprietary mainframe networks and already OSI CMIP/CMISE solutions. Many high-end Unix hardware ven products are appearing in the marketplace. dors are incorporating high availability op Workstation integration tions without the associated price penalty. Many organisations have hundreds of PCs These systems provide automatic reconfigura or workstations. These typically provide con tion to provide equivalent or better service nectivity to host systems via file transfer, net levels to mainframes. work file systems or terminal emulation. What can I buy today? These features will continue to be required for Before I start, this product survey is pub various applications, but the incorporation of lished as a representative list only. The rate of the workstation into the OLTP environment change in this industry segment is so rapid any allows for local processing together with the list is out of date on publication. I will concen benefits of graphical user interfaces for access trate on the transaction managers and value- to workgroup and corporate systems. added products since database and the Unix Unix operating system operating system availability is well estab The Unix operating system has and contin lished. ues to undergo revolutionary change. The hacker image of Unix is being replaced by a Transaction Managers commercial acceptability. Features are being Tuxedo from Unix System incorporated within the Unix system to pro Tuxedo is available from a variety of vide the necessary infrastructure for commer sources including Independent Software Ven cialisation of Unix. Security has been im dors (ISVs) ourselves arid many hardware proved to comply with US Department of vendors. When marketed by various vendors Defence Orange Book standards. Unix Tuxedo adopts a variety of names such as SVR4/MLS provides B1 level security with “Open System Transaction Management” extension available through the SVR4ES ver from ICL. Each vendor enhances the product sion to provide B2 level rating. Workload without changing the standard application in management has been improved through the terface to take advantage of the particular en incorporation of improved scheduler algo vironment; for example ICL has enhance the PROFESSIONAL COMPUTING, MAY 1992 27 California has developed a complete Open Systems (Unix) Transaction processing solu Opening Moves tion. Currently, Tuxedo provides the transac tional engine in a similar fashion to the The emergence of de jure standard mainframe connection to provide RDBMS engine supplied by database vendors. ICL mainframe (VME) and IBM connectivity. A transactional language derived from C inter and de facto standards is USL is a source code software company and face to the TPM and applications code is con bringing about a change as such sells source licences for the product, trolled by the transactional C language. This model of operation allows use of a variety of in the market. It is no this is advantageous in some circumstances for large companies and allows delivery of TPMs for applications when a viable business longer necessary to Tuxedo through IS Vs and incorporation in alternative to Tuxedo emerges. Incorporated in the ITI model is a complete development obtain all the products. Tuxedo is compliant with the X/O pen Distributed Transaction Model and is environment including configuration manage environmental software available now. ment, test management and a Graphical User from the hardware Interface for interfacing to Tuxedo. To com Topend from NCR plete the development environment, ITI also vendor. Topend is available from NCR and offers provides a complete operational management similar features to Tuxedo. NCR is making facility for the OLTP environment. The man available source licences for Topend in a simi agement tool incorporates network manage lar fashion to Tuxedo form USL. I know of no ment based on SNMP or CMIP, system man implementations of Topend other than on agement of all the hardware and software NCR platforms. Topend is compliant with the components using management agents and an X/Open Distributed Transaction Model and operator interface to the system all based on is available now. GUI interfaces. Encina from Transarc Encina is shipping to OSF members. Pre-re- lease documentation is available from the Conclusion Transarc Corporation. When I spoke to Tran The emergence of de jure and de facto stan sarc last September, the product was undergo dards is bringing about a change in the mar ing beta testing at selected client sites. These ket. It is no longer necessary to obtain all the were large mutli-national companies who had environmental software from the hardware purchased the software for evaluation. Encina vendor. Arguably it is not desirable or possible can also be purchased as a source code prod since each vendor has limited research and uct from the Transarc Corporation. Encina is development resources. To effectively spread shipping to OSF members. the resources across all the standards emerging Unikix from Unicorn Systems in the industry is and will be extremely diffi Addressing the mainframe downsizing mar cult. ket, Unicorn Systems have a IBM CICS prod Transaction processing software, like Rela uct for Unix platforms. This allows migration tional Database software, will become freely of Cobol CICS applications from IBM main available in the marketplace. Conforming to frame hardware to more cost effective Open standards and technical innovation will deter System platforms. The programming para mine the success of products — not just the digm is preserved with a high degree of com technology\.alone. The j commodity market patibility included screen forms support, place gives the purchaser the benefit! of (al most) shrink-wrapped\software a la the PC VSAM file support and, ilsing an enhanced Cobol environment th# programming lan market. Multiple startup companies will pro guage. Unikix is available for a number of vide technical innovation and expertise to ad Unix environments currently but does notjf dress specific market segments. The down side comply with X/Open since this is limited by of the new market is the level of knowledge the CICS implementation. required to integrate the various products from various vendors. Customers can no long VIS/TP from VISystems / er be assured of integration — subtle interpre The VIS/TP transaction monitor also al tations/variations of the standards can dra lows for the migration of IBM CICS Cobol matically impact delivery of services. The role source to Open Systems. IBM CICS Cobol of the - system integrator becomes increasing programs are executed without modification important to ensure the solution will operate by providing a CICS environment on open as advertised. systems. Support is provided for C programs. In conclusion to summarise: VIS/TP delivers transparent connectivity and ■ apologies need not be made for Unix; interoperability among CICS systems and oth ■ Open Systems Transaction Processing can er VIS/TP systems using IBM LU 6.2 or tackle large complex TP applications; TCP/IP for communications. ■ Open Systems offer excellent price/perfor Future directions mance advantages; As the market matures, we can expect to see ■ Open Systems promote non-obsolescence of companies adopt and incorporate the OLTP applications. technology in products or enhance the devel There is no doubt, the 1990s is the decade of opment or runtime environment. Open Systems Transaction Processing. 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