Amdahl Corp has bolstered its mainframe Unix offerings with the launch of a new Cobol from Micro Focus Plc, a new release of the UTS operating system, and of the Tuxedo transaction processing monitor. Amdahl Cobol Release 1.2 is designed to facilitate the migration of Cobol applications from minis, micros and proprietary mainframes and is based on Micro Focus Cobol/2. It includes the ingenious Animator feature, which enables developers to watch their programs running line by line and see the snags and bugs as they execute. It also comes with the Forms/2 screen painting tool and the Cobol/UTS Run Time System gateway. For those wanting to plunder moribund proprietary bases for applications, as well as conformance to the 1974 and 1985 ANSI definitions, Federal Information Processing Standard 21-2 and X/Open Portability Guide 3, it supports RM/Cobol, Data General Interactive Cobol, IBM OS/VS Cobol and VS/Cobol II, and Microsoft Cobol. UTS on the Amdahl mainframe can also be used for developing applications for other environments – the new Cobol generates an intermediate code that is portable to 250 different hardware and software environments. The new release of UTS is called UTS 2.1 Service Level 4, and is based on Unix System Laboratories Inc’s Unix System V.3.1. It adds protection facilities for improved security; supports Amdahl’s new 6390 disk subsystem; undertakes diagnostic testing of peripherals more efficiently; has enhanced tape management for conventional and silo tape subsystems; complies with X400 electronic mail standards; and supports Tuxedo and the Amdahl Unitree Release 1.0 hierarchical file management system from General Atomics Corp. And Amdahl Tuxedo Transaction Manager 4.2, based on the Unix System Laboratories Inc product, offers support for migrating some transaction processing applications to UTS from IBM Corp MVS systems while maintaining links to corporate databases in the MVS/CICS environment. It also links disparate transaction processing systems, is claimed to improve response times of critical transaction processing applications; and to enable users to update a shared database in real time. The link to MVS/CICS is via an optional /Host extension that uses the UTS/SNA implementation of IBM’s Physical Unit 5 and UTS/APPC Logical Unit 6.2 protocols; no prices given for anything.
