EAGLE Visions, Winter 1996

Contents

• Eagle Software offer systems integration with backup solutions
• EAGLE teams up with Oracle Corp. for CEO migration to Oracle Office
• Behind the scenes: Accounting, sysadmin help company's smooth operation
• DISK_PAK for UNIX helps Swedish pet food supplier with system performance
• Free analysis software available; On-line help part of DISK_PAK for UNIX
• INFOS II replacement guarantees compatibility
• Tech Tip: For the Data General MV Eclipse
• EAGLE Software celebrates 15 years of quality, service

Applying 15 years of experience in serving the total needs of our customers, EAGLE Software, Inc. has formed a new business unit, focusing on providing total backup solutions. EAGLE has been selling backup hardware and software for four years; the newly developed business unit of the company will place an added emphasis on this aspect of EAGLE's business.

"We have been involved with a number of large sites since we began providing backup solutions," said Dave Hiechel, president and CEO of EAGLE. "As information storage continues to increase at exponential rates, it is imperative that companies realize the value of safely and automatically backing up their data."

Dale Swindler, vice president of sales, will oversee the new unit. With these services, EAGLE will evaluate the client's needs to determine the best solution, provide hardware and software sales, product installation, and after-sale support.

Since 1992, EAGLE has worked with Spectra Logic, a company in Boulder, Colorado, selling the AlexandriaTM Backup Librarian software. Alexandria is a high performance backup solution for UNIX file systems. Alexandria can also be used with Oracle, Sybase or Informix databases. The software is designed for backups with networked systems, and operates with tape libraries or optical autoloader units.

EAGLE has recently made available backup software from Arcada Software, Inc., in Lake Mary, Florida; Cheyenne Software, Inc., in Roslyn Heights, New York; and Palindrome Corporation, in Naperville, Illinois. These companies offer solutions for Windows NT and Novell Netware systems. Cheyenne also offers a UNIX backup software solution.(Palindrome and Arcada have recently merged to form Seagate Software, Storage Management Group. How the merger will affect product offerings from EAGLE will be announced in a future issue of "Visions.")

The backup software from each of these companies is supported by hardware from Spectra Logic -- the Spectra 4000, 4mm automated library, and the Spectra 9000, 8mm automated tape library.

The standard Spectra 4000 includes a single drive with 20 cartridges. It can be upgraded to 40 or 60 cartridges, two drives, three drives, four drives, or a bar-code reader. The Spectra 9000 comes equipped as a single-drive, 20-cartridge library, and it can also be upgraded, to 40 cartridges, two drives, three drives, four drives, or a bar-code reader. Both libraries offer a touch screen for simplified use, EISA expansion slot for future hardware expansion, and a fixed carousel and high speed polar coordinate robot. They are available in a rack mount, or horizontal or tower configuriations to fit your office space requirements.

EAGLE is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 1996, and for the entire history of the company, service has been the top concern.

"We offer 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service," said Hiechel. "Our service is what sets us apart from many other companies. We are extending that service even further, and applying it to turnkey operations for backups: from helping the customer make the decision about what product best meets his or her needs, to traveling to the site for installation, to providing service if there are any questions once the installation is complete."

Swindler will specialize in these third-party products available from EAGLE. He will be the on-site contact in many instances, as well as working with the EAGLE sales staff during the sales process to assist with technical information.

EAGLE teams up with Oracle Corp. for CEO migration to Oracle Office

EAGLE's migration software, CABINET CONVERTER, automates the conversion of CEO drawers, folders, and documents to other platforms safely and quickly. In addition to moving the document, folder, drawer configuration of CEO, CABINET CONVERTER can also migrate CEO Decision Base data tables and spreadsheets to Lotus 1-2-3 format. As the data tables and spreadsheets are moved, the formulas are retained, making manual reconfiguration unnecessary.

"Working with Oracle gives CEO users another platform to move to," said Andy Kratzer, senior software engineer at EAGLE. "Oracle is a well-known company throughout the world, and this option is sure to be a choice for many companies as they migrate to UNIX systems."

Behind the scenes:

Part three of this on-going series will introduce you to two more members of the EAGLE Software staff.

Cindy Carter, EAGLE's comptroller, came to work at the company in 1992. She graduated from Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina in 1991 with a degree in business administration and accounting. If you haven't been in contact with our accounting department for a while, you might remember her as Cindy West; she got married in 1994.

Cindy handles the primary accounting functions at EAGLE, as well as serving as the human resources representative.

C.J. Keist joined EAGLE in 1994. A software engineer, he works with EAGLE's UNIX products, as well as taking care of many of the UNIX system adminstration tasks around the office. He recently added on-line help to EAGLE's DISK_PAK for UNIX disk defragmentation software. He is also an integral part of the team that developed and maintains EAGLE's home page on the World Wide Web.

C.J. also attended Kansas Wesleyan University, completing a degree in computer science.

DISK_PAK for UNIX helps Swedish pet food supplier with system performance

After awhile, the same thing started to happen to the AViiON -- the system slowed down and Dogman asked if there was a disk optimizer for UNIX. As Dogman's supplier, Effux Software knew about EAGLE Software and their great DISK_PAK for UNIX software. So it was a piece of cake to let DISK_PAK take over Dogman's disks and keep them in good condition.

All of the people at Dogman's office had been complaining about the slow system for some time. They ran DISK_PAK for UNIX over the weekend, but did not tell the employees, so they could find out their reaction Monday morning when the employees started to work.

It did not take long before someone complained that the system had not worked correctly. He was running a report that usually took about 10 minutes, but after just a few minutes, the program stopped. He thought something was wrong, so he called the supervisor. At the same time, someone else complained about the order registration -- it was so fast they thought something was wrong.

Then the employees were told that Dogman had gotten DISK_PAK for UNIX from EAGLE Software, and the program had been run during the weekend. That's why the system was so fast! Everyone was very delighted. Today Dogman runs DISK_PAK for UNIX every weekend, and no one complains anymore. Instead of buying a bigger and faster AViiON, they just have to run DISK_PAK every week.

Dogman's sales revenues are about $29 million per year. They purchase their products from Hong Kong and other areas in the Far East. Dogman bought its first computer in 1983; a Data General CS/50. At that time, they had five employees in the office. They upgraded to the MV2000 in 1987.

Today, Dogman employs 65 people. All salespeople have hand-held computers. They use these computers to enter all orders from their customers. Every morning, they call Dogman's computer and transmit all of the orders from the day before. Before lunchtime, all orders are picked and packed in boxes. The orders are then delivered throughout the country.

Hagland is the financial manager at Dogman. Andersson is a reseller for EAGLE Software in Sweden.

Free analysis software available;

Help is on the way! Rev. 3.02 of DISK_PAK for UNIX, EAGLE's disk defragmentation software, is now available.

The new revision includes on-line help, which was written in hyper-text markup language (HTML). Help can be viewed with HTML viewers for the X11 environment, such as Netscape or Mosaic, or Lynx, the character-based viewer. The on-line Help includes search capabilities, and a clickable index. The text includes links that can take the user to related subject areas within Help. EAGLE is not shipping the viewers with DISK_PAK for UNIX, but users can get the browsers from EAGLE's file transfer protocol (FTP) site.

Users with internet access will soon also be able to access the on-line Help from EAGLE's home page (http://www.eaglesoft.com). The latest version of Help, other information about this product, and information about all of EAGLE's products and services will be available through the internet.

DISK_PAK can dramatically improve file system performance in the UNIX environment. As files are created and deleted, and as new elements are added to files, the elements of a file can become scattered across the file system. As a file system becomes more fragmented, disk throughput decreases, and the system spends more time finding available space. DISK_PAK will safely eliminate file system fragmentation as well as cluster frequently accessed files for peak file system responsiveness. DISK_PAK keeps file systems performing at their optimum level.

DISK_PAK for UNIX includes a user interface that has the look and feel of OSF/Motif. It reads system configuration files to identify existing file systems that may be organized, reducing the amount of configuration a system administrator has to do before running the DISK_PAK for UNIX program.

System administrators also have the flexibility to specify locations and priorities of files. There are four list designations into which the files can be entered: frequent files, archive files, transient files, and static files.

With DISK_PAK, scans and organizes can be interrupted during any phase of the optimization process. DISK_PAK for UNIX organizes different file system types, excluding raw partitions. The program can organize file systems up to the two-gigabyte size on AIX, SCO, and SunOS. It organizes file systems up to the four-gigabyte size on HP-UX, and goes above four gigabytes on DG/UX. There is no limit to the file system size DISK_PAK for UNIX can organize on Solaris systems.

EAGLE Software makes DISK_PAK for UNIX available on the following platforms: AIX, DG/UX, HP-UX, Solaris, SCO/UNIX, and SunOS.

To receive a free copy of EAGLE's disk fragmentation analysis software, call 800-477-5432 or retrieve the software from our FTP site.

The software is read-only, and illustrates the degree of fragmentation on your system. You don't have to unmount your file system to run the scan. The software reports statistics on available space, the degree of fragmentation, and the number of contiguous directories and files in each file system.

INFOS II replacement guarantees compatibility

Is your company considering migrating from Data General MVs to an AViiON system? What about all of those complicated INFOS II applications you developed in-house? Are they gone forever? Not if you migrate to TBAM, the hierarchical data manager available from EAGLE Software.

TBAM, which stands for Transaction-Based Access Method, is a high-performance replacement for INFOS II. If you have an INFOS II application, it can be ported to run on the AViiON, guaranteed.

Many system adminstrators are wary of considering such a migration, because they feel their applications are too complex to easily migrate to another system. But TBAM supports 100 percent of the functionality of INFOS. TBAM code migration utilities are recognized as outstanding in the industry, and can handle the migration, regardless of the complexity of the application.

Save time and money

Since your applications don't have to change with TBAM, you can realize tremendous savings in both time and money. Programmers don't have to learn a new language or database interface, and your users don't have to learn a new application.

TBAM is packet-level compatible with INFOS, so it supports the INFOS features that are the underlying structure of your applications. But with TBAM, there is improved functionality, durability, and performance, guaranteed.

With TBAM, many INFOS features are improved, including partial records, space management, record management, and database management utilities. TBAM also offers several features not available with INFOS, such as automatic file locking, automatic record locking, database unload and load utilities, automatic recovery, transactions, and multi-database transactions.

One of the most widely-acclaimed features of TBAM is the elimination of checkpointing. Users don't have to be locked out of a file, as they were during checkpointing with INFOS. Yet the recoverability features are still safe. With TBAM's soft recovery features, there is minimal downtime after a power failure. If the system fails, users can be back up and accessing data in less than two minutes. And, if the system fails while the database is open, you will lose absolutely no transactions.

Cross-platform connectivity

If you have multiple systems and need to spread your application across these systems or across platforms, TBAM-Net will provide that connectivity. With a TCP/IP connection and TBAM-Net running on each system, you can connect in a variety of configurations:

• your existing application on the MV to TBAM databases on the AViiON;
• your existing application on the AViiON to INFOS databases on the MV;
• your application on the PC to databases on the MV, AViiON, or both.

The connectivity provided by TBAM-Net also allows you to gradually move your applications and databases to open systems. Because TBAM-Net lets the different platforms communicate with each other, you aren't required to move everything at one time. You also can leave certain applications or databases on the MV system if that is most appropriate for your company for now.

The performance of TBAM and TBAM-Net truly is guaranteed. Contact EAGLE for more information about migrating your applications and taking advantage of the improved performance offered by TBAM, and the ease of connectivity with TBAM-Net.

Some information for this article was provide by Datatek, the creators of TBAM and TBAM-Net.

Tech Tip:

Most sites using Comprehensive Electronic Office (CEO)TM on their Data General MV systems don't know how many CEO documents they have, and many are afraid to know. Over the years, users have packed documents away: some never to be seen again and others to be used daily. If you want to see how close your estimation is to the actual distribution of CEO documents, CABINET CONVERTER from EAGLE can provide the information you need.

When the /COUNT switch is used on CABINET CONVERTER, CEO documents are counted and no migration is performed. The total number and archived documents can be counted with CABINET CONVERTER/COUNT. These counts are the sums of the document counts stored in each CEO drawer record. These counts are not always 100 percent accurate, but give a very good estimate. This is a very fast and efficient counting process because CABINET CONVERTER only has to visit each CEO drawer, not each individual CEO document.

If a detailed count of documents is desired, execute CABI-NET_CONVERTER with the /STAT and /NODUMP switches. The /NODUMP switch causes no documents to be migrated. This counting process is much slower because every document has to be visited to determine its type. The information produced by this type of count is very useful, though. The count of each document type is calculated as well as the number of filed messages.

Knowing the distribution of CEO documents is useful information. This is one of the ways CABINET CONVERTER can help plan your CEO migration strategy.

EAGLE Software celebrates 15 years of quality, service

In 1981, EAGLE Software was founded to provide Data General computer users with system consulting and performance enhancing software. The EAGLE staff has increased to 14 employees, developing and marketing software for the Data General market, as well as UNIX systems. EAGLE continues to refine and add to its mission, as outlined on page one in this issue of Visions, in the article about providing total system integration for backup solutions. But the performance tools are still a strong, steady portion of EAGLE's business, and will continue to be a staple in EAGLE's product line.

EAGLE's standard support policy for many years has been 7-days-per-week, 24-hours-per-day support. We know that if you are using our products to make your system run more efficiently, or to safely back up your data, you don't want to have to wait until the next business day to get help from us.

The company would like to thank you for your business over the last 15 years. We are looking forward to many more years of serving you and finding new ways to provide service to your company.

As EAGLE Software enters its 15th year, service and individual customer attention continue to receive primary attention. Call us if you have questions about any of the products and services mentioned in this newsletter, and let us know if you have a story idea for upcoming issues of Visions.

Editor
Shelly Chenoweth

Contributing writer
Andy Kratzer