Shadowbase Development News

John R. Hoffman
Sr. Manager of
Shadowbase
Development

Spring brings good things to Shadowbase software, with releases to all of our products, starting with our NonStop Integrity (TNS/E) replication suite in early April. We will be releasing HPE

Shadowbase for Other Servers throughout April and May as each Operating System passes our Quality Assurance process. In the beginning of May, we will release the NonStop Integrity/X version of our replication suite. For our customers who purchased Shadowbase software through HPE, all of the new releases will be available for General Availability through HPE NonStop Scout. All other customers can receive the releases directly from Gravic; contact Shadowbase Support for instructions on downloading the release.

The NonStop TNS/E replication release, Gravic Version 6.220 (HPE Versions T1122H06-AAC and T1123H06-AAC), includes:

• Support for long rows in SQL/MX tables.
• Support for long rows in Enscribe Key-Sequenced files.
• Support for long keys (greater than 256 bytes) in Enscribe Key-Sequenced files.
• Support for SYSKEY replication to SQL/MX. This support includes tables that use SYSKEYs as primary keys, and tables that use SYSKEYs as clustering keys within a primary key.
• Support for replication of Enscribe queue files while maintaining the SYSKEY values.
• A new DBS parameter for User Exit processing, allowing a text parameter to be passed to the user exit on a DBS by DBS basis.
• Support for larger communication blocks, reducing overhead.

The release also includes a new version of SQL Compare, which includes a major enhancement to the performance of comparisons across TCP/IP networks using the Remote Agent option. It now performs block reads, calculates the checksum, and transmits and compares the checksum; dramatically reducing the traffic across the network. It also includes several usability enhancements requested by our customers, including the ability to display both the queries being executed and their associated explain plan generated by the SQL executor.

The HPE Shadowbase for Other Servers release, Gravic Version 6.220, (HPE Versions T1124H06-AAB, T1125H06-AAB, T1126H06-AAB, T1127H06-AAB, T1128H06-AAB, T1129H06-AAB, T1130H06-AAB) includes a number of significant enhancements, including:

• An increase in the number of cached SQL statements (from 50 to 1000). This enhancement can significantly improve performance for customers with a large number of tables.
• Support for Oracle 12c databases HPE Shadowbase Log Source for Oracle.
• Bi-directional replication support with event cutoff by HPE Shadowbase Log Source for Oracle.
• TRS and Direct Writer support for named transactions when applying data to Oracle databases.
• Password obfuscation in the configuration file.
• Many customer requested enhancements to HPE Shadowbase Log Source for Oracle (refer to the SOFTDOC).

And, as always, we continue to improve the reliability of Shadowbase software. Both releases contain important fixes uncovered by both our customers and internally in our testing.

Finally, we will release the NonStop Integrity/X version of the Shadowbase Replication Suite (Gravic Release 6.230, T1122H06-AAD and T1123H06-AAD) in the beginning of May. This will include a new version of the Shadowbase Enterprise Manager (SEM), with a much improved look and feel.

Looking forward, we continue to work hard on our first synchronous replication product, Shadowbase ZDL, for HPE NonStop environments. This version is scheduled to be released in late summer/early fall, and will be available as a Controlled Availability (CA) release through HPE and Gravic. This release represents a major milestone towards avoiding any data loss even in the event of catastrophic data center failure, and is a stepping stone to subsequently providing collision avoidance in active/active architectures via the follow-on Shadowbase ZDL Plus SR product. Look for further announcements at the Connect HPE Technical Boot Camp.

In our HPE Shadowbase for Other Servers suite, we are adding support for DB2 as a source (HPE Shadowbase Log Source for DB2). We are also adding an option to our ODBC target replication for running batched I/Os, which is particularly important for replicating into columnar databases such as Sybase IQ and Teradata.

We would like to remind you that the HPE NonStop Shadowbase suite supports both the HPE Integrity and Integrity/X architectures. With the termination of support for the S-Series by HPE, Shadowbase Version 6.101 is the last release that will support S-Series systems. We will continue to make critical fixes to Version 6.101 for the S-Series on an as needed case-by-case basis for our customers, but we will not be enhancing the S-Series software beyond Shadowbase Version 6.101.

As always, please keep us abreast of your future technology direction, needs, and wants in the data replication, data integration, and data synchronization space so we can plan to meet them accordingly.

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