Hitherto little noticed transaction processing company Insession Inc has come up with an alternative approach to connecting legacy host systems to standard clients. By using its new product – TransFuse – programmers will no longer need to learn the finer points of classic TP monitors, claims the company. TransFuse, launched this week, performs the task of transaction processing monitor access, and makes it available to developers using standard tools such as C++, Visual Basic, Java, PowerBuilder, ActiveX, LotusScript and others. At the back-end, TransFuse supports such TP monitors as IBM Corp’s CICS, IMS and MQSeries, Tandem Computers Inc’s Pathway, and BEA Systems Inc’s Tuxedo. The product is a set of C++ libraries that are bound in with an application on the client side, supporting a single applications programming interface for all transaction processing monitors. This enables separate information from IMS and CICS systems, for instance, to be collected in one transaction and presented back to the client. At the front-end the API supports the rival Microsoft Corp DCOM Component Object Model and the Object Management Group’s CORBA. Insession supports four object request brokers, from Sun, Iona, Visigenic and Expersoft. Aimed at software developers, TransFuse will be marketed direct to large companies who wish to do their own integration work, but also to application software tools vendors. NetDynamics Inc is set to announce an agreement to use TransFuse with its eponymous web development tool, and others are expected to follow. Insession, which has its corporate offices in Boulder, Colorado, has 100 employees and has been in business since 1988. Until now has concentrated on software to enable Tandem machines to participate in IBM SNA networks, typically for such high volume applications as automated teller machine networks or point of sale retail applications. It says it’s learnt its lessons, and included features in TransFuse to enable scalability up to large systems. The firms’ chief technology officer is Mark Phillips, said to be one of the original architects of CICS at IBM’s Hursley Labs in the UK. The TransFuse server runs on Windows NT, HP-UX, IBM’s AIX and Sun Solaris, and costs $5,000 for ten concurrent users, or $40,000 for 100 concurrent users.
