DATABridge Client Version 6.0 Release Notes (includes New Features)

This technical note includes important notices and new features in the DATABridge Client version 6.0 (released December 2008).

Note the following:

• For DATABridge Enterprise version 6.0 Release Notes, see KB 7021893.
• DATABridge 6.1 is available beginning in September 2010. See the DATABridge Documentation page (https://support.microfocus.com/manuals/databridge.html) on the Attachmate Support site for additional information about DATABridge 6.1, including links to New Features and Release Notes.

Product Description

DATABridge is a combination of host software and client software that provides replication and updates of DMSII databases to relational databases. The original DMSII database resides on a Unisys ClearPath NX/LX series or A Series mainframe, and the replicated DMSII database resides as an Oracle, DB2 or Microsoft SQL Server relational database on the Client system.

The DATABridge Client resides on a Windows server, UNIX system, AIX or Linux system and communicates with the DATABridge Server Accessory on the host or with DATABridge Enterprise II on a ClearPath PC or other server.

For information on the DATABridge host software, see the DATABridge Host Administrator's Guide.

Release Contents

One CD image or one e-delivery package, which contains DATABridge host and client software products, and documentation for each product.

Important Notices

• DATABridge Client Console (DBConsole) must be installed in conjunction with DATABridge Version 6.0. It is not compatible with earlier DATABridge versions.
• In the DATABridge manuals, Unisys MCP platforms are referred to using terms such as A-Series, ClearPath, NX/LX, Libra, CS, mainframe, and host. The current Unisys term, MCP Server, is the preferred term and will cover any current or future MCP-based Unisys system.
• To install the DATABridge Client, follow the instructions in the DATABridge Client Administrator's Guide. An electronic version of the DATABridge Client Administrator's Guide is available on the DATABridge installation image.

• If you are upgrading from a previous version of the DATABridge Client, see Chapters 2 and 3 of the DATABridge Client Administrator's Guide for specific upgrading instructions.
• You must stop the DATABridge client before upgrading to this release.
• You must run the DATABridge Client program (dbutility) from a command prompt or terminal session; therefore, it is recommended that you add the DATABridge program directory to the PATH environment variable. The Windows client installer offers to do this in its last step, or you can change it later using the System icon in the Control Panel. For Unix clients, add the PATH environment variable to the user profile, or edit it if it is already present. See the DATABridge Client Administrator's Guide for details.

• If you enter dbutility from the command line each time you execute it, enter it as follows:

• If the DATABridge Client becomes unresponsive, check the host ODT for a waiting entry from the DBEngine or the DBServer Accessory. For example, DBEngine may be waiting for an audit file. If you make the audit file available to DBEngine, the DATABridge Client continues automatically, and the waiting entry at the ODT is removed.

• Check for "MSSQLServer" errors in the Windows event log using the Windows Event Viewer (for example, select Start | Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Event Viewer).
• Check the SQL Server error log using SQL Server Management Studio (SQL Server 2005) or SQL Enterprise Manager (SQL Server 2000). To view the current log file, expand the "SQL Server Logs" sub-node and double-click the "Current" icon.

• If you clone DMSII datasets that do not have unique keys defined, the program creates a unique key using RSN's, if available, or AA (absolute address) values if possible. It is recommended that you create a unique composite key for the tables derived from the dataset. Refer to the DATABridge Clients Administrator's Guide for details on creating composite keys. Alternatively, enable the use_primary_key option in the client configuration file and declare the unique keys within the client database. Otherwise, after a DMSII reorganization, you must reclone all datasets that use AA values as the unique key. DMSII embedded datasets replicated to the relational database also use AA values as unique keys. Therefore, embedded datasets and their parent datasets must be recloned after DMSII reorganizations. This includes record format, file format, and garbage collection reorganizations.
• To use the client exit codes with a UNIX Client, you must set both use_8bit_exit_codes and extended_exit_codes to Yes. The use_8bit_exit_codes parameter returns the 8-bit equivalent of the client exit codes normally returned from the extended_exit_codes parameter. Previously, UNIX Clients received invalid exit code values when the extended_exit_codes parameter was set to Yes. Both of these parameters default correctly in version 6.0 where extended_exit_codes enabled by default.
• The DATABridge Client ignores filler substitutions when you are using a non-tailored supported library. Therefore, you have no opportunity to alter the relational database to handle the new record layout.
• Any changes to the host DATA/SERVER/CONTROL file that involve the "SUPPORT" line should be followed by running "dbutility -R redefine database" at the Client.

New Features and Important Changes in the 6.0 Release

The list below reflects new features and changes for DATABridge 6.0 release.

• The most visible change in this release is the implementation of the DBClntControl program, which automates most of the client operations. This improves security by using background runs, launched from a service (or a daemon). The run is no longer associated with a command session, which could be accidentally or maliciously terminated. DBClntControl automatically restarts when the system gets rebooted, which means that the client can automatically be restarted after a system failure. To enable this feature, set the parameter run_at_startup to true (or yes) in the section for each data source in the DBClntControl configuration file. This feature is available on all the platforms and databases for which there are DATABridge Clients.
• The migrate program is an optional upgrade utility that can assist you in upgrading client operations from older clients to 6.0 service/daemon based operations. After you identify your data sources and their working directories, the program reads the old configuration files for all of the specified data sources and migrates them into the new working directories.
• The dbauditwait program has been incorporated into DBClntControl. It can be used to launch the client from an application on the mainframe and to specify the number of the last audit file to process before stopping. The program can be made to disable the data source when the run reaches this point. The data source must then be enabled from DBConsole before audit file processing can resume. This feature allows you to discontinue updates while end-of-day reports are being generated.
• All of the 6.0 clients are capable of doing multi-threaded updates. This feature allows multiple tables to be updated simultaneously using different threads. This feature improves performance only when you have sophisticated disk systems that provide independent paths to various table spaces. In the absence of such hardware, multi-threading offers no advantages and should NOT be enabled because the various threads will contend for access to the disks. In the case of SQL Server, you must have SQL Server 2005 and use the SQL Native Client ODBC driver, to use multi-threaded updates.
• Logging and tracing have been split in the clients. Log files are written to the logs subdirectory of the working directory for each data source. You can configure the client to switch to a new log file dynamically if the file exceeds the configured maximum size or if the date changes. You can also force the client to honor these options when a new client is started. The log files are also easier to manage since the date is now part of the file name, which makes it easier to find the log file for a given date and time.
• The SQL Server client has several new features. The DBLIB client was discontinued in favor of the ODBC client. When using SQL Server 2005 or 2008 there are no restrictions on the user's schema, as was the case with the 5.2 clients. The SQL Server ODBC client works with all recent SQL Server databases starting with SQL Server 2000.
• The SQL Server client allows you to use primary keys with non-clustered indexes without having to edit the scripts generated by the client.
• The SQL Server client now supports the bigint data type, which is now usable for numeric data. To maintain backward compatibility this code must be enabled by setting the parameter use_bigint to true (or yes) in the client configuration file.
• The UNIX clients use a thread for allowing the index creation to happen in parallel with the data extraction. This was done using a process in the 5.2 clients, which used up a lot of unnecessary resources.
• Oracle 11g is supported on most UNIX platforms. The Windows clients work with all recent, Oracle databases including Oracle 9i, 10g and 11g.
• There is now an Oracle 10g (release 2) client for the HP-UX Itanium platform.
• The Oracle clients for the AIX platforms are dynamically linked, making them compatible with all other Oracle clients in UNIX platforms.
• The Oracle clients have a new configuration parameter, rollback_segment. This allows you to specify the name of a rollback segment, which is used to construct a SET TRANSACTION USE ROLLBACK SEGMENT SQL statement that is executed as the start of every transaction. This allows you to make the DATABridge Client have a private rollback segment much larger than the default rollback segment.
• The Oracle clients now support the CLOB data type for holding DMSII ALPHA items that are too large for the VARCHAR2 data type. For backward compatibility this feature is enabled by setting the use_clob parameter to yes in the client configuration file.
• The OCI_SUCCESS_WITH_INFO status now displays the reason for the error. Because the 5.2 Oracle clients did not do this, it was difficult to figure out the reason for this status. This status occurs when the password is about to expire and when there is a compilation error in a stored procedure.
• The client now reports any changes in the audit file access method when using DBEnterprise. DBConsole displays this information as af_origin with several possible values such as DirectDisk, IndirectDisk or Cache.
• The handling of DMSII reorganizations is vastly improved over 5.2. The client can now handle back to back DMSII reorganizations correctly.
• The DB2 client for the AIX platform has been greatly enhanced. It now uses host variables like the SQL Server client.
• A new ds_options bit (DSOPT_Use_AA_Only) was added to the DATASETS client control table to force the client to use the AA values (or RSNs) as the index, regardless of whether the data set has a SET that qualifies for use as an index. This option overrides the DSOPT_Include_AA bit, which is still supported for backward compatibility.
• The 6.0 client has console commands to dynamically change the commit frequency parameters for the Engine. The client also provides commit statistics which can be useful in adjusting these parameters to improve performance.
• The 6.0 clients are provided with critical information including the value of the INDEPENDENTTRANS flag in DMSII and the type of server they are communicating with (DBServer or DBEnterprise Server).
• The 6.0 client displays audit file statistics during the fixup phase.
• New exit codes were added to the client. See Appendix A for a complete list of client exit codes.
• The 6.0 clients are capable of combining two non-contiguous numeric DMSII items, which represent a date and a time, into a single column in the database without having to use the support library.
• The 6.0 clients support numeric AA values that are stored as NUMBER(15) in the Oracle client, BIGINT in the SQL Server client, and DECIMAL(15) in the DB2 client.
• Loading the control tables in the 6.0 clients handles cases where certain columns in the control tables are NULL. Previously this caused the client to fail. This situation occurred when user scripts that insert rows into the control tables were not updated to specify values for all the new columns. You no longer have to do this.
• The 6.0 clients report a long period of inactivity on the connection to the server to DBConsole (or the display when using the command line version). This message is issued after five minutes of inactivity, then 15 minutes and then every 30 minutes thereafter.
• The script processing has been enhanced in the 6.0 client to allow comments (using // to treat the rest of the line as a comment) and to handle extraneous white spaces after the script delimiter.
• The SQL Server client has been enhanced to only use the data source parameter to connect to ODBC and to run BCP. The database and server parameters, which are needed to run BCP, are now retrieved from the ODBC data source, instead of requiring them to be in the configuration file.
• The 6.0 clients handle aborted and restarted clones correctly in conjunction with DBEnterprise. Previously, in a few cases involving sectioned files, DBEnterprise would abandon a clone done using direct disk and switch to indirect disk via DBServer. When it did this it would restart the clone causing a massive amount of duplicated records, which the client was not equipped to handle. This situation is now handled by having DBEnterprise send a StateInfo record to the client telling it to purge the tables as it is starting over. In response to this, the client drops and recreates the tables for the data set after making sure that all the records are processed.
• The 6.0 client makes sure that the index provided by the Engine does not have too many columns, in which case it reverts to using AA values.
• The DATASOURCES client control table now contains the versions of the various DATABridge components. DBConsole also displays this information in a Property view so all the version information can be accessed in one place.

Installing DBConsole on Windows 2000 Systems

On Windows 2000 systems, if you do not have .NET 2+SP1 installed, you need the GDI+ hotfix. Copy the required dll (gdilpus.dll) into the SYSTEM32 directory, which is generally c:\winnt\system32. Note that GDI+ has a pre-requisite of WIN2K SP4. If GDI+ is not installed, DBConsole reports that Charting will be disabled and references Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 915052.

The DATABridge Product Profile, which includes system requirements, can be viewed at https://docs.attachmate.com/databridge/6.2/050125_DATABridge_PP.pdf.

DATABridge documentation is also available on the Attachmate Support site at https://support.microfocus.com/manuals/databridge.html.

For information about upgrading, see KB 7021895.

Legacy KB ID

This document was originally published as Attachmate Technical Note 2402.