By Timothy Prickett Morgan
IBM duly shipped the next release of OS/390, version 2.7, last Friday as expected. The new OS/390 includes enhancements for web and file serving as well as updated security and e-business tool support with the addition of IBM’s WebSphere Web Application Server (CI No 3,603). Now that OS/390 2.7 is out the door, IBM is drawing attention to the forthcoming two releases of OS/390 that it is going to bring to market between now and September 2000.
OS/390 2.8, due in September of this year, will include an enhanced OS/390 Print Server, the first of which was announced with OS/390 2.5. OS/390 Print Server will include printer data stream transforms that convert the HP-PCL and PostScript data streams commonly supported on non-mainframe applications (such as PeopleSoft or BaanERP) to the Advanced Function Printing (AFP) printer data stream IBM has always supported on its AS/400s and mainframes and the IBM printers that connect to them. The incompatibility of AFP with either PCL or PostScript is what makes it so hard for IBM to sell the Printing Systems division or for a vendor such as Xerox or Hewlett-Packard to buy it. It is easier and cheaper to raid the IBM customer base.
IBM is also creating a special data stream transformer to convert SAP R/3 output so it can be printed on any AFP-enabled printer. Presumably, the 600 or so customers running high-end ERP software from SAP or PeopleSoft on their S/390s are writing their own printer drivers, getting by in ASCII-emulation mode or using someone else’s printers at the moment, most likely Xerox’s very highly respected high-end printers. OS/390 Print Server will also include support for printers using the TCP/IP Simple Network Management Protocol, which will be able to manage both SNMP- enabled printers as well as those that are connected to the mainframe via IBM’s Print Services Facility V3 for OS/390. OS/390 2.8 will also include support for the emerging Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), which is aimed at allowing any internet-connected device running a web browser to print to any printer it can find through IPP over the Internet or over an extranet or intranet. OS/390 2.8 will include the same Network Neighborhood print server facilities that have already been added to OS/400 and AIX that allow these operating systems to look like Windows NT to a Windows client; the upshot is that end users working from Windows clients will not have to have any special software installed on their machines to link to and print to an IBM printer connected to a mainframe.
OS/390 2.8 will also include an enhanced internet firewall that can automatically handle cryptographic keys used in virtual private networks through the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) standard. eNetwork Communication Server for OS/390, a network management program, will also include support for IKE. eNetwork CS will also include Triple DES session-level encryption for those customers sticking with the IBM SNA protocol for their networks rather than moving to TCP/IP. The server will also include more stringent security for TN3270e clients coming in off a TCP/IP network trying to access SNA resources and applications that make use of them. The communications server will also include better interoperability of SNA and TCP/IP clients so administrators can easily identify users on the network and see what is going on when they crash. Additionally, OS/390 2.8 will include a slew of obscure and arcane Unix shell enhancements that bring the Unix subsystem in OS/390 more on par with other industrial-strength Unix variants, all of which are aimed at making it easier to port and maintain applications designed for true Unix environments on OS/390 servers. OS/390 2.8 will also include IBM’s native mainframe search engine, formerly known as NetQuestion and only available in the Intelligent Miner data warehouse suite. These text search functions, now called OS/390 Text Search, will now be a part of OS/390. OS/390 2.8 will come out roughly at the same time as IBM’s G6 mainframe proce
ssors, which will use IBM’s CMOS-7S copper chip process.
Looking further down the road to September 2000, IBM is warning customers that the next release of OS/390 – which will likely be called OS/390 3.0 because it will be a 64-bit enabled version of OS/390, compared to the 31-bit version currently on the market – will make use of S/390 instructions that are not supported on many of its prior generations of mainframes. This 64-bit version of OS/390 is expected to run in S/390-mode and offer some performance enhancements over OS/390 2.8. But the new G7 processor that runs with the so-called OS/390 3.0 with also include a new native mode that, with program recompilations, will offer substantial performance improvements compared to OS/390 running on older iron. This G7 processor will likely draw rather heavily on Power4 Giga Processor design elements. Power4 is expected to be used in RS/6000s and AS/400s in the 2001 and 2002 timeframe.
IBM says that the September 2000 release of OS/390 will not run on ES/9000 9021, 9121 or 9221 processors. Nor will it run on 3090 or 4381 mainframes, or first generation 9672 E or P transaction Servers or 9672-RX1 Enterprise Servers. The OS/390 release in 2000 will run on G2 through G6 processors used in the 9672 and Multiprise lines as well as on P/390 and Integrated Server baby mainframes, although on all of these machines it is unlikely that they will run in 64-bit mode – unless IBM has been secretly using 64-bit processors in its mainframes for years and is only just now coming clean on that fact in a backhanded way. It is unlikely that P/390 and Integrated Server chips are 64-bit processors, but it is perfectly possible that the Symphony G5 processor, or even earlier G processors, were field tests for 64-bit mainframe processor technology. All of the major server vendors blatantly offer 64-bit processors way ahead of their actual support of the 64-bit features in software, and that if IBM did this with mainframes it would not be surprising in the least.
