Event Summary
"Burlington, MA, December 10, 1999 - Bus-Tech, a leading supplier of data center
connectivity solutions, announces the EnterpriseExpress Adapter for DB2 Access.
The product is a PCI-compliant ESCON adapter using IBM's Multipath Channel+
(MPC+) protocol to provide the highest possible throughput between Windows
NT applications and DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 using IBM's DB2 Connect."
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Glossary:
SNA:
Systems Network Architecture. IBM's mainframe network standards introduced
in 1974. Originally a centralized architecture with a host computer controlling
many terminals, enhancements such as APPN and APPC (LU 6.2), have adapted
SNA to today's peer-to-peer communications and distributed computing environment.
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IBM's
DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 continues to be a system of choice for managing
the most critical data in the world's largest organizations. While mainframe
systems manage the data, there is an increasing demand to integrate this data
with applications running on Windows NT Servers providing client services to
Windows, Unix, OS/2, and Apple client workstations. "We are delighted that
Bus-Tech will be providing their ESCON adapter to our DB2 Connect users," said
Dan Russell, Director, Worldwide ISV Software Sales & Marketing, IBM Software
Group. "Our customers' experiences as well as our own analysis indicate that
Bus-Tech's PCI ESCON adapter provides excellent performance and scalability
for most demanding Web, ERP and Business Intelligence applications that use
DB2 for OS/390 database servers."
EnterpriseExpress
Adapter for DB2 Access is a hardware/software solution specifically designed
to provide Windows NT Server applications access to DB2 Universal Database for
OS/390 over a high-performance, point-to-point connection. Distributed Relational
Database Architecture (DRDA) Application Requesters, such as IBM's DB2 Connect,
can realize immediate performance improvements by using this solution to provide
the server or network clients with access to DB2 data housed on the OS/390.
This provides an ideal environment for applications such as ERP (PeopleSoft),
BI (Business Objects, Brio or Cognos), CRM (Siebel), and Web servers (IBM's
WebSphere) that require reliable and fast access to S/390 resident files.
Market
Impact
Data transfer rates have long been a problem with mainframe DB2 connections,
especially with Extract/Transform/Load tools. Any improvement in this area will
be well received by the market. The vendor states that MPC+ allows multiple
ESCON (Enterprise System Connection) connections to be combined and run as one
pipeline, giving users up to 40% greater speed, and reduces mainframe CPU cycles
by as much as 63%. The adapter was tested with DB2 CAE (Client Application Enabler)
clients accessing data on DB2 for OS/390 V6.1 running on OS/390 V2R6 and VTAM
Version 4.4. MPC+ is IBM's fastest host communication channel protocol.
User
Recommendations
Customers using DB2 on a mainframe for their back-end database should strongly
consider an ESCON connection. In addition, TCP/IP should be considered as the
protocol of choice instead of SNA. With the recent improvements in IBM's TCP/IP
stack, it now absorbs much less CPU than SNA does. SNA is also a broadcast protocol
that can not be routed, is more verbose than TCP/IP, and should be considered
the protocol of last resort.