Rocket MultiValue

Jonathan Smith January 18, 2018 UNIDATA REPLICATION UniDataData Replication is increasingly important in today’s business environments. The enhancements we’ve added to UniData 8.2 are all driven to ensure UniData Data Replication works better and faster in your environment. We’ve enhanced several areas and we will cover a couple in today’s post and more in future posts: Field Level Replication – Only the changed fields in a record are sent to the subscriber – this post Intelligent Write Queue – Enhances the speed of repeated updating of the same record on the subscriber – this post Delayed Standby Replication – Allows a hot-standby system to be a specified time behind the publisher – future post Asynchronous Transactional Updates – Cross Group Transactions can now be handled in an asynchronous or synchronous mode – future post Replication Pacing (introduced in UniData 8.1.2) – Allows the graceful slowdown of UniData Replication to avoid Replication Disablement – future post FIELD LE

Paul Chang February 20, 2019 If you use the U2 ODBC and/or JDBC client with UniData v8.2.1, you need to ensure that all accounts use schema v6.0 files. If they do not, the applications will not work with your UniData account. This blog post shows you how to create new UniData accounts with schema v6.0 files, delete corrupt files and recreate v6.0 schema files, and create new schema v6.0 files or upgrade older versions of these files. Creating new UniData accounts with schema v6.0 files To create new accounts in UniData v8.2.1, use the newacct command or the XAdmin tool to automatically create new accounts. Newly created UniData accounts contain the necessary default system files and schema v6.0 files, as shown in the following example: Directory of C:U2ud82 est_newacct Directory of C:U2ud82 est_newacct [.] [..] [BP] [CTLG] D_BP D_CTLG D_DV_SQLColumns D_DV_SQLSpecialColumns D_D

Jonathan Smith October 16, 2019 What changed at UniData 8: Memory Allocation Prior to UniData 8.1.0, UniBasic variable space was allocated via shared memory from a system wide shared pool (some of these go back to the original design in the 1990s). Why? It was done to reduce total system wide memory consumption and to ensure that UniData had enough memory available for a user application to function. This memory allocation reserved the base memory requirement, as defined by the shared memory parameters, for use by UniData only. And, the shared memory segment was divided into smaller segments, allowing multiple processes to use the same memory area. Shared Memory Challenges prior to UniData 8 If a process overran its allocated shared memory buffer space and UniData did not detect this, the result was the process ran in another process’s working area, possibly causing corruption of the memory area with multiple processes aborting or producing abnormal results. There were constraints wit

Michael Rajkowski January 31, 2023 Starting at UniVerse 12.2.1 and UniData 8.2.4, you have additional control over how your Python environment is maintained during an upgrade. Previously, when you upgraded your Rocket U2 database, a new version of Python replaced the previous version requiring your System Admin/DBA to reinstall needed modules and/or to modify the .pth files (putting them back to the way they were before the upgrade). Now, during the upgrade you are presented with two questions: Do you want to preserve Python .pth files? Do you want to preserve Python module files? If you answer no, (or don’t select the check box on Windows upgrades), the U2 install process will replace the Python version, and you will need to create/modify your .pth files as necessary, and then pip install the modules you are using for the new version of Python. This is helpful when you have been working with Python for a while and would like to start with a clean slate. If you answer yes to both qu

July 12, 2022 I’m happy to introduce to you the Rocket MV BASIC for Visual Studio Code Extension Feature Review series! In this series, I will cover useful features related to editing, compiling, and debugging using the Rocket MV BASIC for Visual Studio Code Extension. I’ll start by covering the editing feature, specifically formatting. Background Reading legacy BASIC code can be challenging because different developers have different coding styles, and BASIC language grammar is so flexible. The formatting functionality can help you unify the BASIC program style and improve readability. Recommended Configuration The formatting functionality provides you with more than 20 configuration options to choose from. To make your BASIC programs more readable and concise, I recommend that you consider using the core format options shown below. Parameters Values Description “style.keywordCase” “uppercase” “lowercase” “titlecase” “keep” All keywords and statements should have the same

Kathy Larson August 21, 2019 MultiValue, Basic subroutines, Pick Systems, uuh, for a summer intern, all these terms were incredibly foreign. As a computer science student, I have some vague understanding (hopefully) of what a database, server, front/back end are supposed to do, but you could imagine my uneasy feelings when I was tasked with building a modern web app using trendy technologies and a legacy database service on the backend. Before I continue, let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew Gorovoy, and I am a 20-year-old student out of Columbia University in the greatest city in the world, New York (sorry Denver). This summer I was given the opportunity to intern as a product manager in the Denver office. Quickly into my internship, it was apparent that there’s a talent shortage in the MultiValue industry. Young engineers out of college are tooled with modern web frameworks, Python, and Java. Most like myself, have no idea how to write a line of Basic code or initialize an MV

Michael Rajkowski July 27, 2018 In “Python Data Science and the Rocket MultiValue Database ( Part 1 of 3 )“ I provided an introduction to Numpy, and showed how to convert a Numpy array to a u2py.DynArray. In this section I will go a bit further and show: How to write the numpy data to a Rocket MultiValue file How to read back the MultiValue data, and instantiate a Numpy array Introduce you to Pandas How to move a Numpy array to a Pandas Data Frame How to write the Numpy data to a Rocket MultiValue file Before we can begin, we need to create a Rocket MultiValue file, and create some dictionaries.  Note for brevity, I will copy dictionaries items into the account rather than creating them by hand.  ( In part three of the series, I complete our journey on creating a Python class for persisting your data science objects into the MultiValue Database ) UniData Example: CREATE.FILE U2DS 3 11 Create file D_U2DS, modulo/3,blocksize/1024 Hash type = 0 Create file U2DS, modulo/11,blo

Paul Chang May 24, 2017 If you use your U2 accounts to access SQL-based applications, then this blog is written for you. Here I’ll discuss Entity Framework, Visual Studio and provide some screen shots and sample code. Entity Framework 4.0 or 5.0 is part of old Visual Studio (VS) versions. When upgrading to VS 2013 or later versions, it creates a .NET Framework 4.5 application to work with the newer Entity Framework 6.1.x version. It requires the Manage NuGet Packages tool to install it and it also requires an additional registering process to recognize the Rocket U2 Toolkit driver. Before you can begin using your U2 accounts in SQL-based applications, you must make the U2 data accessible to those applications. It requires Visual Schema Generator (VSG) to create new sub-table or view schema on UniData accounts. On UniVerse, it needs to run the HS.ADMIN tool to activate a UniVerse account for dynamic normalization or to create a new schema on the account. The HS.SALES and HS.SERVICE acc

Michael Rajkowski August 26, 2020 Part 1 of 3 By storing your data in internal format in your MV database, you can easily convert the data to a desired display format. One of the most common uses for conversion codes is dealing with dates. In MV, the internal representation of the date is an integer. For example the internal format for “04 Dec 2014” is 17140. Those familiar with U2 BASIC know they can get the internal format to the display date format by using the OCONV function. I.e PRINT OCONV(17140, "D") The ‘D’ is the Date conversion code and it is used with both the ICONV function as well as the OCONV function.With the introduction of the u2py module, these functions have been exposed as methods of the u2py.DynArray object. python> test = u2py.DynArray(“04 Dec 2014”) python> itest = test.iconv(“D”) python> itest <u2py.DynArray value=b’17140′> Since the itest variable now has a date in internal format, you can use a different conversion code to get other display

Michael Rajkowski April 26, 2017 In part one of the series “Python for the Rocket MultiValue Developer – Part 1 of 3 – An Introduction” we discussed how the Rocket MultiValue application platforms ( UniData and UniVerse ) added Python as a programming language which sits at the same level as the other access methods. In part two of the series, we discussed the u2py module, and how the Python programmer could leverage MultiValue applications and data. See: “Python for the Rocket MultiValue Developer – Part 2 of 3 – Getting Started with the u2py module” In this final section of this series, I’ll cover how the MultiValue developer can leverage Python from ECL/TCL and new BASIC Python APIs. ACCESSING PYTHON FROM BASIC APIS AND ECL /TCL Rocket UniData and UniVerse developers have access to Python through the following: Two ECL/TCL commands RUNPY and PYTHON RUNPY runs a Python program from TCL. PYTHON launches Python’s interactive shell and can execute Python commands. Rocket MultiValue

Paul Chang May 15, 2019 Overview External Database Access (EDA) enables you to convert data stored in the Rocket U2 database to a 1NFdatabase, such as Microsoft SQL Server, then access that data using existing UniVerse BASIC programs, RetrieVe, or UniData/UniVerse SQL. There are a number of reasons to join EDA tables. When combining rows from multiple tables in one query, you need to use the JOIN command. There are several types of joins including inner join, outer join and full other join. The simplest join is called equal join. By default, the SQL Server database is set to the “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS” collation. The primary key of an EDA file is created by the “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS” collation. So, when you are trying to use an equal join on these two collation fields, you’ll get the following error “’cannot resolve collation conflict between “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS” and “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS” in the equal to operation’ #468’”. When you map the STATES file

Mary Schulz February 20, 2024 This is the third MVX: Performance release focused on improving replication as part of a MultiValue HA/DR strategy. We’ve added replication charts to provide you with more insights into the replication status and latency of your MV databases. You can now see four different charts showing you the subscriber latency trend, the estimated time to catch up, and the distribution of replication data for all groups or a selected group. This is a big improvement over using XAdmin, where you had to do the mental math to understand the estimated time to catch up. You can also use the Graphical Range drop-down menu in MVX: Performance to select a time range for viewing the data trends. Two of the replication charts now support aggregated group data, which means you can see the combined data for multiple groups in one chart. This can help you compare and contrast the replication performance of different groups. To learn more about these and other features, please refe

Ben Peach June 20, 2023 If you’ve ever configured a Rocket UniVerse or Rocket UniData (U2) product for SSL, you’ve likely come across the option to set ‘Authentication Strength’. The options are Strict and Generous. While that wording is descriptive enough to tell you that ‘Strict’ is probably better when it comes to security, what does it mean in real terms? First, it’s important to know that secure communication these days is mostly done using a protocol called TLS (this includes U2). TLS, or Transport Layer Security, was launched in 1999 as an upgrade to the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 3.0. TLS can be thought of as SSL 3.1 or 4.0. Some argue that the name was changed simply to avoid any legal issues with SSL’s original creator, Netscape. ‘SSL’ is still generally used to describe secure communications; the terms SSL and TLS are used interchangeably. This article is no exception. If the systems communicating with each other are all U2 databases, you can simply set them all to

Brian Cram November 14, 2024 The Rocket® D3® MVS Toolkit versions 2.2.3.121 and earlier required activation. We no longer have the ability to activate those versions. If you are running an older version, we highly recommend that you upgrade. If you decide to continue to run on the older version, at least make sure you have a current Web Service Export just in case your Toolkit installation breaks, and you are forced to upgrade. A Web Service Export is much like a Pick file-save: hopefully you never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad you have it! Upgrading the MVS Toolkit has more benefit that just removing the need for activation. The older Toolkit versions use Jetty and Java versions that have been deprecated because of security issues. If you have questions or need help upgrading, please contact Rocket D3 support.

August 8, 2018 Traditionally, U2 applications need to provide OS-based user credentials (namely, OS user account names and passwords) to establish a connection to U2 database servers, which then perform authentication based on the credential and set the identity of the U2 processes accordingly. With the proliferation of the Cloud, more and more users are moving their applications into the cloud where OS-based authentication schemes are increasingly getting harder to maintain and use. Some U2-based application vendors are beginning to adopt third-party Identity Management (IdM) products for their in-cloud applications. With such an approach, the end users are no longer issued or asked to provide OS-based credentials for logging into the applications. Instead, they authenticate to the third-party IdM where an access token is returned to the application after a successful validation. The application consumes the token and provides services according to the granted rights embodied in the

Christine Rizza November 13, 2024 D3 in 2024 In March 2024, we released D3 10.4 for Windows, delivering the value and supportability that D3 customers expect. With D3 10.4, Rocket MV engineers refactored the underlying code enabling them to align the Windows and Linux platforms and facilitate seamless releases in the future. D3 10.4 also includes upgrades to Python, along with over 25 enhancements and bug fixes, further improving performance and stability. D3 in 2025 In 2025, we’ll make additional enhancements to D3 10.4 to further align the Windows and Linux platforms making it easier for Rocket to release and maintain D3.  Additionally, we will include high-value, customer requested enhancements including an update to Python version 3.13. D3 in 2026 and beyond Future D3 10.4 releases will focus on delivering security compliance features and compatibility with third party tools such as Python and OpenSSL, along with addressing various enhancements and bug fixes. D3 Compatibility Acr

Jonathan Smith July 25, 2024 With the increasing use of containers and cloud environments, the demand for seamless, automated software installations and upgrades has grown. Manual authorization at the end of UniVerse and UniData installations or upgrades is no longer acceptable. To address this, Jonathan Smith, Rocket® Software Principal Technical Support Engineer, has developed the "Rocket U2 Auto License Python Script," which automates the license authorization step, complementing the 'silent' (aka no manual intervention) installation capabilities of UniVerse and UniData. Jonathan designed the Rocket U2 Auto License Python Script to work across all current GA releases of UniVerse and UniData. It is also compatible with older versions of UniData from 7.3 onwards and UniVerse from 10.2 on Unix and 10.3.6 on Windows. The script operates whether UniVerse and UniData are running or not. Notably, the script supports UniData's feature of licensing without restarting. The script retrieves

Hunter Holmes August 27, 2024 Feel free to authorize jBASE license keys on your own in RBC, rather than needing outside assistance from your Rocket partner. To learn about how you can self-serve, please see below for a step-by-step video walkthrough. Share

Kathy Larson October 1, 2024 Are you looking to test and refine your Rocket Software UniVerse applications without risking your production environment? Setting up a test server is the ideal solution for evaluating new features, troubleshooting issues, and ensuring smooth deployments. The good news is that creating a UniVerse test server is easier than you might think, thanks to the comprehensive resources provided by Rocket Software. To guide you through the setup process, we’ve developed a detailed seven-step tutorial designed to make the process straightforward and hassle-free. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or a newcomer to Rocket Software, our tutorial provides clear instructions and helpful tips to ensure a smooth setup. What’s Included in the Tutorial? Our step-by-step guide covers everything you need to know, from creating a virtual machine to licensing your UniVerse application server. Each step is accompanied by a short, easy-to-follow video that demonstrates the

Kathy Larson July 9, 2024 How to ensure improved performance, security, and scalability We’re happy to share a new paper where you’ll learn about best practices for deploying your MultiValue applications to the Cloud. The paper provides a broad overview of Cloud computing, including how moving your application to the Cloud could be part of a larger modernization strategy. It also covers: Choosing the right operating system Optimizing VM configurations Connectivity and security Deployment and backup strategies Security measures Read now

Paul Chang June 20, 2018 External Database Access (EDA) enables you to convert data stored in a Rocket UniVerse and UniData database to a first normal form (1NF) database, such as Microsoft SQL Server, then access that data using existing UniVerse BASIC programs, RetrieVe, or UniData/UniVerse SQL. For UniVerse running on a Linux platform, previously you had to purchase an ODBC driver to work with the EDA solution. Now, Microsoft provides you with ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server on all Linux platforms. It is free and easy to install and use. UniVerse supports it starting with UV 11.3.1.6018 or later. In this blog, you will learn how to work with the UniVerse EDA solution with Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server on Linux. I’ll cover the sample steps that will convert the UniVerse CUSTOMER file data into SQL Server tables. Note You must order an additional UniVerse EDA package license to work on this solution. You can verify the EDA license information using the “uvregen -z” command. R

Michael Rajkowski April 12, 2017 In part one of the series “Python for the Rocket MultiValue Developer – Part 1 of 3 – Introduction” we discussed the architecture of the Python / MultiValue solution including the fact that the MultiValue and Python code both run in the same process. In this section, you’ll learn how Python interacts with the MultiValue Application Platform, through the use of the u2py module. THE U2PY MODULE The u2py module for Python allows developers to interact with the MultiValue Application Platform in the following ways: run U2 ECL/TCL commands ** read/write U2 files ** handle U2 dynamic arrays manage U2 SELECT lists call U2BASIC catalogued subroutines control U2 transactions ** Introduced in this article GETTING STARTED WITH THE U2PY MODULE The installation of Rocket UniData and Rocket UniVerse includes Python (version 3.4.1). The initial install of Python sets up the needed “.pth” file to point to the u2py module. The u2py.py module provides the interaction

Emma Breslin April 30, 2024 The Rocket MV team is pleased to announce the release of Rocket UniData8.3.2 and Rocket MultiValue Performance Experience (MVX: Performance) 1.10. UniData 8.3.2 is the first UniData release certified with the Rocket MultiValue Performance Experience (MVX: Performance) 1.10, which is available for our customers on maintenance. MVX: Performance monitors the performance of your UniData server and provides DBAs or developers with a better way to track down issues. It determines the root cause of issues, including the server, the operating system, the hardware, or a combination. DBAs can easily receive alerts when over 40 performance monitoring events occur, so constant monitoring is not required. In addition, UniData 8.3.2 and MVX: Performance 1.10 provide you with an enhanced replication experience, bolstering High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) capabilities. UniData 8.3.2 extends the security features introduced in UniData 8.3.1, which included

Paul Chang September 18, 2019 Overview External Database Access (EDA) enables you to convert data stored in a Rocket UniVerse or UniData database to a first normal form (1NF) database, such as SQL Server, Oracle and DB2 Server. You can then access that data using existing UniVerseBASIC programs, RetrieVe, or UniData/UniVerse SQL. UniVerse 12.1.1 supports a new EDA solution against MySQL Server. In this blog, you will learn how to work with the UniVerse EDA solution on Windows or Linux against MySQL server 5.6. I will provide sample steps to install & configure the setting to connect to MySQL Server 5.6.Note: You must order an additional UniVerse EDA package license to work on this solution. You can verify the EDA license information using the “uvregen -z” command. Requirements   Version UniVerse 12.1.1 or later UniVerse EDA license Yes EDA Schema Manager 4.34.0   (U2 DB Tools – 4.4.0)   Database Version MySQL Server 5.6 or higher MySQL Server Environment with

Jonathan Smith February 6, 2019 Part 1 of 3 This blog post offers best practices related to implementing and using Replication, as part of a High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) strategy. In Part 1, I’ll focus on preparation. I make no apology for this: U2 Replication is NOT an administration free option. In the event of a failure, your organization will absolutely depend on Replication. This blog series will help you to: Avoid common pitfalls that can be encountered in U2 Replication Understand the methods and strategies that have worked well for others Understand the tools that are available for monitoring and tuning of replication Preparation HA/DR 101. The first thing to do when setting up your machines within Replication – primary and standby (the most common configuration) is make sure that both of these machines have fixed IP addresses – their IP addresses do not change. Then, setup a high-level name at the DNS level such as ‘live’- to connect to the current primary or