New York city firm Magna Software Corp has launched what it is touting as the first high-level application generator designed specifically for client-server transaction processing servers. First versions of Magna X will generate Cobol programs for Tuxedo or Encina by the next quarter. Cobol was chosen because information systems managers understand it and because the system provides access to mainframe applications and data. A C version is planned for mid-1995. Magna X, which sits between transaction processing front-ends and the database, has three main components: a graphical system for designing applications and relationships; a data definition facility to specify messages used, which can include several different transaction processing services; and the XPL – Extended Programming Language – source editor to build applications using Cobol-type English language statements. XPL includes the ability to encapsulate mainframe Cobol code and therefore build mainframe CICS services that can be invoked from within an application, executing as part of a Tuxedo or Encina program. The system generates a Cobol stub for the Unix server and a Cobol mainframe program. XPL can also handle encapsulated SQL code. All three components store data in tables in the user’s relational database, Magna says. Magna X does not use the unpopular Tuxedo/Host but says Encina’s PPC gateway provides two-phase commit and is compliant with X Open Co Ltd’s XA interface standard on the mainframe. Magna X can generate high level language server code for Unix and MVS/CICS which is compiled and linked into tables: developers need no knowledge of C or of low-level transaction processing monitor interfaces or of how the mainframe-Unix connections works. Desktop front-ends can be built with any Windows or Motif-based tool. It is up under Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and Unisys Unixes now, and DEC OSF/1 and Solaris implementations should be out by the end of the year. Oracle and Informix support is included, Sybase follows. Magna has two US beta test sites, is doing joint marketing with IBM Corp and Novell Inc and is looking for European outlets. Prices go from $40,000 plus $15,000 per development server to a maximum of $75,000. Magna reckons there are 400 Tuxedo or Encina users in a market said to be doubling annually year. It sees the relational houses’ move to replication servers as effectively an admission that they have been unable to build robust, high-performing distributed databases.
