EAGLE Visions, Summer 1996

EAGLE hosts NADGUG forum to provide migration answers

We would like you to submit your questions before the Roundtable, so we can make sure we cover a variety of issues related to migration during the short time we will have at the discussion. You can return the information card that is included in this newsletter by fax or mail, or send us your questions via email or our Web page. If you are unable to attend the Roundtable, or your question is not answered during the discussion, we will send an answer to you at your office, so please be sure to give us complete company information. We hope this will be a very informative session and I look forward to seeing you at NADGUG '96 in Phoenix.

Government agency in Germany uses EAGLE's CABINET CONVERTER to move to open systems

Often, internal office communication can be challenging. Add four locations spread throughout a region of the country, and those challenges can increase. Regierungspraesidien, a part of the regional government of Baden-Wuerttemberg in the Federal Republic of Germany, has relied on Data General's Comprehensive Electronic Office (CEO) for their day-to-day communications.

Baden-Wuerttemberg is a state in the southwest part of the country. The Regierungspraesidien in the cities of Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Freiburg and Tuebingen are subordinated to the ministries of Baden-Wuerttemberg. They have been using CEO since 1988, on four MV/40000 systems with 500 users on each system.

Regierungspraesidien decided to replace their current environment with a more efficient and less costly system. They decided to install a new solution with distributed Windows NT servers and PC clients, running Windows 95 and MSOffice for Windows 95 (Word 7.0, Excel 7.0, etc.). The new system will be integrated, step-by-step, to all agency offices. The integration will be complete by the end of 1998.

The main problem Regierungspraesidien faced for the integration of the new system was the migration of the existing CEO documents to the new environment. They determined that 400,000 of the documents must be migrated to the new system. To find the best tool for this job, the Regierungspraesidien in Tuebingen ran extensive tests. They were especially looking for solutions that could migrate datatables and spreadsheets, as well as the CEO documents.

Several tests confirmed that CABINET CONVERTER from EAGLE Software was the best tool to handle their migration. Regierungsprae-sidien selected CABINET CONVERTER , because this tool could automate the conversion of their documents, and get them up and running on their new system quickly. In addition, CABINET CONVERTER brings not only the document itself to the target system, but it also migrates the document summaries to the new environment, an important feature for Regierungspraesidien.

During the evaluation phase, there was a strong team-up between Regierungspraesidien, the German reseller, PROSYS GmbH, and EAGLE. There was an initial problem with the German special characters used within the document summary to Excel 7, but the problem was fixed quickly by the excellent support team at EAGLE.

Finally, tests for the performance of CABINET CONVERTER showed that with this product Regierungspraesidien was able to convert up to 500 documents per hour.

IVERIFY, SLEUTH ensure corrupt files aren't backed up

It is important to make sure you are running on a sound INFOS file, so you don't wake up one morning to a very unpleasant, and costly, surprise.

Without a doubt, backups are a very important part of being able to recover from a corrupt INFOS file. If your INFOS file returns the message File Consistency Error when retrieving a key or data record, the internal structure of the file has problems and some action needs to be taken. The solution in most cases is to reload the file from your last backup. But backups are not enough to ensure that more problems aren't just around the corner.

In many cases, the INFOS file didn't recently become corrupt. Some event, days or even weeks ago, caused the problem. You have just discovered the problem because you ran the month-end report that will no longer complete without encountering an error. You think back and the disk drive you replaced last week is most likely the cause of the corruption. Backups to the rescue? WRONG!!

You have been doing your backups daily and thought you had things covered if such a problem arose. But you now find that you have been backing up a corrupted database for the last week and you are going to lose at least a week's work.

The solution is simple: run Data General's IVERIFY utility or EAGLE Software's SLEUTH utility after every backup to make sure you are backing up a consistent file. It is very important to run IVERIFY after the backup has completed because IVERIFY locks the INFOS file from access if it discovers problems in the file. Once the file is locked, you are limited to what you can do to recover the valid data within the file. By making the backup first, you can reload the backup you just made and not lose any work. Now you have a file that can be accessed for recovery procedures. EAGLE's SLEUTH is read-only, so the order of the backup is not as important.

If you can't run IVERIFY every day because of time issues, then run it every week. The larger the file, the longer it takes for IVERIFY to run. Running IVERIFY less frequently also means that problems can exist for longer periods of time without being detected. Make IVERIFY or SLEUTH a part of your backup process in the future to prevent these hidden problems from sneaking up on you.

Remember, if you do have an INFOS problem, give us a call at 913-823-7257. We may be able to help solve some problems with very simple steps.