Patrick Townsend & Associates Inc. announces the release of R66, an application gateway for mainframe transaction processing. R66 lets PCs on TCP/IP networks exchange transactions with mainframe systems, such as CICS and IMS, that use APPC/LU 6.2. It provides rapid response, runs without operator intervention, and can support multiple concurrent connections to multiple host systems. R66 runs on an Windows NT Server. It has no client or mainframe component to install, license, or manage.

Product Description

R66 allows PC programmers to write business applications which use standard TCP Sockets. Transactions created by the PC are sent to the R66 server over the TCP/IP network. R66 forwards the transaction to the host process over an APPC connection, receives the response, and returns it to the client program on the PC over the TCP/IP Sockets connection.

PC programmers may use direct Sockets calls from HLL programs such as C/C++, or may use GUI front end tools such as Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Delphi, etc., which can make Sockets calls directly or through third party VBX/OCX controls. The application developer on the PC does not need to know anything about SNA communications technology.

Mainframe CICS programmers write standard CICS COBOL LU6.2 applications that receive the transactions, retrieve or update the mainframe database, and return the result. No TCP/IP communications knowledge is required to implement CICS applications using R66.

R66 provides optional transparent ASCII/EBCDIC data translation.

Intended Use

R66 allows LAN and Workstation developers familiar with GUI development tools and using existing TCP/IP networks to do Transaction Processing with legacy mainframe systems such as CICS. PC and CICS developers need only agree on transaction formats to begin exchanging data.

Supported Clients