Ingres World 96 Synopsis
by Michael Greene, NAIUA Communications Chair

Ingres World 1996 in New Orleans was once again the main event of technical conferences for Ingres products. There was a strong attendance, with 680 non-CA and over 100 CA staff and developers. A number of new products were introduced and demonstrated, and all of the beta and pre-release versions of the Ingres product line were on display. Many of the attendees even managed to attend the technical presentations after rigorous patrolling up and down Bourbon Street.

Of course the newest and certainly the most hyped product from CA was Jasmine, the completely object-oriented database and development suite. I know that a lot of readers will ask "“Why are you mentioning Jasmine in an Ingres newsletter?", but the fact is that Jasmine will be an option for database users in the near future, and I choose to keep you updated, not to pressure you to start porting from Ingres. For those few of you that are unaware of Jasmine, it is the result of a CA partnership with Fujitsu, and it is, to quote Charles Wang, "“fully buzz-word compliant”." What this means is that Jasmine can create full scale multimedia applications with all the bells and whistles. It seemed obvious from the demo (Christian Dior) that CA is targeting the high end retail segment with this product. Stay tuned to see how well Jasmine performs.

Before I review the specific products in more depth, let'’s talk about an issue that is near and dear to all of us, that being technical support. It has been fairly obvious that technical support has been erratic over the course of the last 6 months. Some people get excellent support, some get the run around. CA is addressing the support issue by moving most of the functions to Islandia New York (CA World headquarters) from the old ASK headquarters in Alameida. We had repeated assurances from Wai Wong (Client Base Owner of Ingres) that staffing levels were being beefed up and the quality of the support will be top notch. There were also NAIUA-monitored problems with call escalation, and these have been addressed. Wai has also gone to the trouble of setting up an 800 number for clients who are having trouble with their account information. The number is 1-800-210-6663.

The next burning issue that warrants a couple of paragraphs would be the problems with the production releases of OpenIngres 1.2 (on all platforms). Many people are in the same position as I am in that they would like to take advantage of the new features in OpenIngres 1.2. For those still not in the know these include reduced logging and locking, outer join support, RAM based temporary tables, more ABF file handling commands, and increased security flexibility. However those of us on the bleeding edge this time had to resort to field dressings on many of the OpenIngres releases.

Both Wai Wong and Marceil Schmitt (in charge of Quality Assurance) were very much aware of the problems with the early releases of OpenIngres, and an important maintenance release of 1.2 (1.2/01) is scheduled for all platforms to handle the stability problems that have plagued this release. CA is also going to beef up their Beta client program to insure that any subsequent production releases are as stable as the old faithful 6.4.

CA-OpenIngres 1.2/01 will be available on Solaris (2.3, 2.4, 2.5x) in October 1996. HP/UX, IBM AIX, NT, OpenVMS, DEC Unix, SunOs, DG/UX, SCO, Unixware, NCR GIS, Pyramid DC/Osx, Sequent, and Siemens are targeted for November 1996 release.

Before I leave OpenIngres 1.2, I would like to mention one more feature that is still in the works. For those of you using OpenVMS the ability to cluster Ingres is sometimes critical, especially if you run any 24x7 applications. OpenIngres 1.2 does not yet have the ability to create a clustered installation, but it is high on the priority list for CA to get this feature back. I will get you the release number as soon as possible and publish it in one of our columns(since this is my platform and I have a vested interest).

OpenIngres 2.0 was shown at the World Resource Center (WRC), and many of the new features were touted by the CA developers, highlighted by Mark Sokol in his “State of the Ingres” address. Some of the advanced features beyond the 1.2 release will be row level locking, variable page size for table creation, and a true alter table command. At the database server developer’s forum we also asked about some possible enhancements to IPM using the new IMA features, and John Ainsworth assured us that these were in the works. I thought it was particularly interesting that the proposed rollout date for OpenIngres 2.0 is not far off (probably within a year). I have to add that there were still several prominent Ingres users at said forum who were not happy with the speed of Ingres development, particularly in providing features that the competitive products were already advertising.

On to OpenIngres Desktop. Since CA purchased the Desktop product it has undergone an evolution that is making it look more and more like the regular Ingres. Version 1.2 of the Desktop product was demonstrated at Ingres World. 1.2 is in Beta now and should be ready for production around Christmas time. It will be the first really “Ingres-like version (non-Gupta). This is an important product because it will support bi-directional replication from the desktop to the enterprise server. Many Ingres clients are coming to grips with mobile computing and various flavors of client server deployment, and OpenIngres Desktop could be a key part of these new environments.

Speaking of Replicator, let'’s review the status of this product. Version 1.0/05 allows desktop users to bi-directionally replicate data with enterprise OpenIngres databases. The desktop Replicator has a number of new utilities for easing set up and administration for mobile computing clients. CA-OpenIngres Replicator 1.1 is still in beta. This software provides a number of structure changes and fixes to the existing GA version 1.0/03. The addition of a dedicated queue management server, a revised method of compiling the Replicator executable and CDDS level scheduling are some of the nice features included in this release.

The key replication announcement was version 2.0. Version 2.0 will ship simultaneously with the OpenIngres 2.0 software. The key change to the new Replicator is the rewrite of the change capture mechanism. With 2.0 Replicator changes will no longer use rules and procedures to update the shadow, archive and input queue tables. The DBMS server will directly write the shadow and archive records. The input queue will be loaded by the archiver. Transaction integrity is still guaranteed with the shadow and archive records still being part of the user transaction. This change removes the biggest performance bottle neck in the Replicator today. The locking contention on the tables is greatly reduced while significant performance gains are realized. The queue management and distribution pieces of the Replicator have not changed.

I was quite pleased to see a new product launched at Ingres World which allows you to create multimedia applications against OpenIngres Desktop. The product is Opal, produced by the Infresco Corporation , a newly formed subsidiary of Computer Associates. Not only does Opal allow you to create front ends for OpenIngres Desktop, but it also allows you to GUI-ize your existing character based applications. I will run a full detailed article on Opal in the next NAIUA newsletter. Opal is in Beta now, and will be commercially available sometime around November. For those looking to GUI-ize their character applications with Opal you will need a WinHLLAPI compliant terminal emulator. Examples of such emulation packages include Attachmate's Extra Personal Client and Wall Data's Rumba.

Desktop connectivity follows along from the desktop. CA is making progress with connectivity, but it is still a sore point with many users. The need to use an ODBC link to access Ingres has been a problem. There was some confusion over whether CA was even going to sell an ODBC driver anymore. In fact CA does resell the Intersolv ODBC driver and I thought that we might get some help from Mike Norton, the new CA Member At Large. Here is the Q&A:

Q: Does CA sell the driver directly ?
A: Yes.

Q: What is the price per unit ?
A:  You should get the prices directly from your CSR.

Q: Is it in stock and ready to ship ?
A: Yes.

Q: Will it be bundled with any other desktop
   products (Net or OpenIngres Desktop) ?
A: At this time it is not, nor do I know of
   plans to do so.
 
Q: What is the current rev ?
A: Version 2.12. For windows, there is a 16-bit version. For
   NT and Win95, there is a 32-bit version.

Of course with most ODBC drivers you also need Ingres Net on your desktop to make the connection to your server. The Windows 95 version of Ingres Net is still in Beta and I will be Beta testing it myself later this month.

There is an alternative to the ODBC/NET connection and that is to use the OpenLink driver. OpenLink has a regular ODBC, but it also has a 2 phase driver that makes its own API connection to Ingres, bypassing Ingres Net. I have not tried this myself, but I have heard good things from those that have. Try it yourself by hitting their web site www.openlinksw.com.

Since I have very limited exposure to OpenROAD I will pass the torch to Elena Yatzek to continue the Ingres World synopsis.

CA-World 96 OpenROAD Update
By Elena Yatzek, Lead Programmer, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

CA-World ’96 had a great deal to offer the CA-OpenROAD user community. Highlights included:

• Presentations and demonstrations of OpenROAD 4.0, which is scheduled to enter the Quality Assurance phase of development in the first quarter of 1997 and production release in the second quarter of that year.
• Presentations from CA staff and the user community on the use of the increasingly stable OpenROAD 3.5 product. In addition to attending formal presentations, OpenROAD users met for a noontime BOF session.
• Formation of an OpenROAD Special Interest Group (SIG) under the auspices of the NAIUA.

CA-OpenROAD 4.0 new features were officially previewed in Ingres World Sessions NAG06DR and NAG06DS. Information on these sessions should be available in the conference proceedings. Additional information was available from CA-OpenROAD developers who were available to demonstrate the new features throughout the conference in the World Resource Center. Based on these presentations and demonstrations, it appears that CA-OpenROAD 4.0 will offer significant new features, particularly on the MS-Windows family of platforms.

Although CA appears to view CA-OpenROAD'’s cross-platform capabilities as one of the product's great selling points, the new version will no longer be limited to the least common denominator of available platform behaviors. While it will offer significant functional improvements on all platforms, CA-OpenROAD 4.0 is built to compete, and, we must all hope, win, in the MS-Windows market, by giving it standard MS-Windows 95 look and feel, OLE controls, and a powerful point-and-click report generator.

New features will include:

• Standard MS-Windows look and feel on MS-Windows platforms: OpenROAD 4.0 has standard Windows 95 look and feel, both in terms of the new development environment and the appearance and behavior of the applications which it can deliver to users. Developers have made it clear that internally, the code makes much more use of standard MS-Windows objects. New system class objects which will be available for use by developers include tabbed folders, a list view, and a tree view of hierarchical data.
• Support for external controls (OLE/Active-X): OpenROAD 4.0 will support OLE (Active-X) controls on MS-Windows platforms. This has been accomplished by making OpenROAD accommodate external classes in a manner which makes them look to OpenROAD like its own system classes. OLE controls appear to be quite far along in the development cycle; developers at CA-World ’96 demonstrated an OpenROAD 4.0 application which played video footage using an OLE control. Although OLE controls are the first practical application of this technology, external controls are not designed to be limited to MS Windows functionality. Theoretically, OpenROAD could support protocols such as CORBA on non-Windows platforms, if there were significant demand.
• Visual report generator: The visual report generator, currently dubbed “CA-Reporter,” is a repackaged version of the “Advanced Reporting Option” which has been available since about this time last year. The product provides a graphical interface for designing both the queries and the end appearance of reports against the database. Output can be directed either to the screen or to a printer. Work on this part of the product did not appear to be as advanced as work on external controls, so it is harder to predict what this will look like in the 4.0 product.
• Improved workbench interface: The CA-OpenROAD development interface has been completely redesigned in an attempt to reduce screen clutter and demand for computer resources. The new interface, which was demonstrated at CA-World, is much more visually appealing and provides developers with the ability to view the GUI interface and a list of objects on the frame being viewed simultaneously.
• Language extensions: Most notably, the new version provides a CASE statement and the ability to pass parameters with user events.
• Better integration with Ingres installations on the same machine. Current implementations of OpenROAD do not coexist comfortably with the CA-Ingres desktop database product or with the NT CA-Ingres and CA-OpenIngres releases. Some of these problems have already been addressed as part of the 4.0 development effort. Again, this work was not complete as of the CA-World ’96 conference, so it is harder to predict what will be available in 4.0. At minimum, 4.0 will support the decimal data types and several SQL extensions.

Presentations on OpenROAD 3.5

The “Applications Development Track” of presentations at CA-World ’96 offered roughly 30 presentations on aspects of the existing CA-OpenROAD product. Copies of materials from these talks are available in the conference proceedings, which are available from the NAIUA in paper and CD form. For information, contact the NAIUA at mgmt@naiua.com.