News & Events – tcACCESS User Symposium 2004

The annual meeting of the tcACCESS users was held at the Kranzparkhotel in Siegburg, Germany, on April 26 and April 27. It was the fourth symposium jointly conducted by B.O.S. and tcACCESS user community. The highlights of the two days have been the user presentations and the presentations about the new version of tcACCESS.

 

The applications of the LUISS University Rome, Italy, were the first to be presented. LUISS is a tcACCESS customer for more than 2 years. Different areas of use have been presented:
 

   

 

   

  

   

 

Bernd Bleck from TITEX PLUS Günther & Co., Frankfurt was the next user to be on stage. Mr. Bleck presented several tcACCESS based applications that performed data synchronization between the Host ADABAS-databases and Microsoft SQL-Server databases. The purpose of the synchronization is to guarantee a highly up-to-date data-store for the Open System application, like the TITEX Internet-Shop, just to name an example. Bernd Bleck uses so-called DTS-packages to automate the data-exchange between the ADABAS-databases and the SQL-Server tables. The DTS-tables are part of the MS SQL-Server installation. Using this packages the entire data-exchange performed by tcACCESS can be organized, controlled and automated. The packages will be started using scheduling components. They also are being directly started from the host Online-programs.  

 

     

 

Markus Orth of Landesbank Rheinland Pfalz (LRP) gave a presentation titled "Faster than the sound with DB2". Subject of the presentation was the tcACCESS DRDA-component (tcEXPRESS). LRP use several software-systems that allow the development of high-performing applications, that are all DB2 based. The most important requirement for the applications was the existence of a high performance access path from the Client/Server-applications to DB2. The originally designed solution had been rejected because of an additional access layer between the Client/Server-layer and the DB2 on the mainframe. The goal of the LRP was to use a direct access to DB2 using the DRDA protocol. In addition to the standard connectivity software supplied by IBM tcACCESS was also participating in the evaluation. A development project was being established at B.O.S. and within a short period of time B.O.S. delivered and implemented a DRDA ODBC- and JDBC-driver. LRP performed extensive and detailed performance tests that resulted in up to 80% performance gains when using the tcACCESS DRDA-component compared to the IBM product. In the meantime quite a number of applications are in production that use the DRDA connector. Markus Orth praised the good relationship with B.O.S. und highly commented on the stability of the product.

 

      

 

The last presentation was held by Uwe Kirrkamm from Wuppertaler Stadtwerke (Government Utility Provider). Mr. Kirrkamm talked about the experiences that the Utility company made during the migration of the VSE based SAP R/2 to NT SAP R/3 and the conversion of the /R2-RIVA System to /R3-IS/U. Uwe Kirrkamm explained and pinpointed the difficulties that always come up when migrating a grown and stable VM/VSE environment to a NT server based installation. During the entire migration process tcACCESS has been used for the bulk data-transfers. Mr. Kirrkamm talked highly about the excellent performance of tcACCESS. Wuppertaler Stadtwerke managed to achieve transfer rates of up to 250000 bytes per second for native VSAM files using the tcACCESS TELNET3270 emulation as the connection to the mainframe. Mr. Kirrkamm said that they were pleased that they did not have to buy the VSE/TCPIP component because tcACCESS was flexible enough to use any connectivity path that was available to the mainframe. Mr. Kirrkamm had to face a lot of questions from the audience, indicators that his presentation hit the nerves!

 

      

B.O.S. got the full attention of the attendees when the new features and functions of tcACCESS were being presented. Like the past meetings the users came up with ideas and suggestions for additional functionalities.

After the official conference hours the users and B.O.S. had dinner together. It was a great chance to exchange ideas and also getting to know each other.

 

            

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