Micro Focus Plc has picked up a product called AAI from Creative Systems Interface Inc, which it describes as a family designed to provide program-to-program communications and management of applications distributed across an enterprise. The company says that AAI v1.1 simplifies the creation of client-server applications by eliminating the need for programmers to write communications-specific code and can be used for re-engineering existing applications to client-server architectures. It supports communication between IBM Corp’s CICS, IMS/DC, TSO, MVS Batch, OS/400 and OS/2, MS-DOS, Microsoft Corp Windows and IBM’s OS/400, MS-DOS as a client, Windows, OS/2 and AIX. It is language-independent and supports Cobol, C, RPG, Assembler and most proprietary languages: programmers can develop applications using a combination of Cobol and non-Cobol programs, with say Cobol on the workstation and RPG on the AS/400. To use the feature, programmers need only ensure consistency in handling data structures between programs. AAI includes a Network Administration System designed to configure the network and manage applications distributed across the enterprise: it includes configuration and queue management, on-line performance statistics and name and location transparency. Performance statistics are used for tuning co-operative applications while under development and in production. The name and location transparency provided by the system enables parts of an application to be moved to different hardware or software without impacting the rest of the program. A simple programming interface is designed to enable Cobol and non Cobol programmers to write client-server applications without specialised communications programming skills. The Call interface enables peer-to-peer connections between programs to be made regardless of where the programs reside and application programs can be moved to different software environments or hardware transparently. The company did not put a price on the product.
