HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
TurboIMAGE/XL Enhancements
by RJ Diepeveen
Commercial Systems Division
TurboIMAGE/XL now offers you five new enhancements. In this version of
MPE/iX, TurboIMAGE/XL supports the following new functional capabilities:
* critical items (search and sort items) can now be modified with
DBUPDATE
* indexing is now possible using the Third Party Indexing Interface
(TPI)
* Dynamic Rollback Recovery can now function with remote databases
* IEEE Floating Point Real Number data types are defined and
supported
* four gigabyte dataset size is now possible
Each of these enhancements are discussed briefly in this article. For
more a detailed description of these enhancements, refer to the related
article in the "Technical Articles" section in this Communicator.
CRITICAL ITEM UPDATE
For as long as IMAGE has been available, users have been requesting the
ability to change key, search, and sort items: critical items. That
request is being fulfilled. With this release, search and sort items can
be updated with DBUPDATE. Search and sort items are located in detail
datasets. Modification of key items in master sets is still not
possible.
The ability to update critical items is either controlled by setting the
CIUPDATE flag in the root file or by dynamically selecting the option
through the intrinsic calls to DBCONTROL or both.
INDEXING
Another enhancement request is the ability to perform generic key
searches. This feature, standard with KSAM, is now available with
TurboIMAGE/XL through the use of the TPI.
What has been added to TurboIMAGE/XL is a seamless interface to the
indexing products of Dynamic Information Systems Corporation (DISC) and
Bradmark Technologies Inc. Their products, Omnidex and Superdex,
respectively, offer generic and keyword search capabilities through the
standard interface in TurboIMAGE/XL.
Indexing is an option that, with the presence of Omnidex or Superdex, may
be optionally enabled by setting the INDEXING flag in the root file.
DYNAMIC ROLLBACK With Remote Database Access
In MPE/XL 3.0, TurboIMAGE/XL introduced Dynamic Rollback. This feature
made it possible to demarcate a logical transaction intrinsically and, in
the event of program abort, system abort, or program design,
automatically roll out the transaction as a whole. This feature, new to
TurboIMAGE/XL, is common in relational database models.
Now, with MPE/iX Release 4.0, this feature is available when using remote
databases. Whether your application uses RDBA files or file equations,
Dynamic Rollback maintains the logical consistency of your data for you.
Implementation of Dynamic Rollback with remote databases is the same as
with local databases. Regardless of database location, there are coding
requirements and design considerations with Dynamic Rollback. Some of
this information is discussed in the technical article, "TurboIMAGE/XL
Enhancement Details."
IEEE Floating Point Real Numbers
TurboIMAGE/XL, for years, has supported HP 3000 formatted Floating Point
Real Numbers. In this version, IEEE formatted numbers have a defined
data type with single and double precision. The new data type, 'E', is
supported in lengths E2 and E4, defined in halfwords.
In addition to TurboIMAGE/XL, Query, DBChange Plus, and TurboIMAGE/V are
enhanced to support and manipulate this data type. Additional details
concerning DBChange Plus can be found in the article "DBChange Plus
Enhancements" in this Communciator.
Four Gigabyte Datasets
You can now create TurboIMAGE/XL datasets up to four gigabytes in size.
Prior to MPE/iX Release 4.0, the file limitation was two gigabytes. This
enhancement to TurboIMAGE/XL has no impact on how your application
interacts with the database, and minimal impact on other operational
externals.
DBSCHEMA, DBUTIL, DBCHANGE/CM, and DBChange Plus supports the new dataset
size maximum. DBCHANGE/CM and DBChange Plus both create and expand
datasets up to the new limit and, as with DBUTIL, process the file
change, failing only if the file system cannot accommodate the request.
DBSCHEMA calculates dataset sizes and reports the error "DATA SET SIZE
EXCEEDS MPE/XL FILE SIZE LIMITS" should the dataset size exceed that
limit. There is also a warning, "DATA SET SIZE EXCEEDS MPE/V FILE SIZE"
should a dataset on MPE/iX be designed to exceed the MPE V file systems
limits.
Although this feature may not be of use to you today, as your system
grows this may become more important to you. It may be comforting to
know that these sizes are available.
Other Information
So, there you have a summary of what is new for TurboIMAGE/XL in MPE/iX
Release 4.0. For additional details, refer to the related article in the
"Technical Articles" section and the overview article entitled "DBChange
Plus Enhancements" both included in this Communicator.