Rocket® U2 | UniVerse & UniData®

Michael Rajkowski March 29, 2017 Rocket Software has added support for the Python development language to Rocket® UniVerse 11.3.1 and Rocket® UniData 8.2, on Linux and Windows only. Python will also be added to Rocket® D3 in the second half of 2017. Adding Python support gives experienced and new MultiValue developers the opportunity to code in one of the most popular development languages available today. To help developers get started Rocket created a Python community page that hosts links to code samples, documentation and lots more. PYTHON IN MULTIVALUE – THE BASICS Python now sits at the same level as the other access method used by the MultiValue developer. Our MultiValue Python module consists of two parts. The main access point for the Python developer is the u2py module, which is Python code. The u2py module calls a module written in C. Since both Python and the U2 databases are written in C, it is compatible and can be embedded into the database. The entire box represents

Your Rocket® MultiValue Modernization Journey Starts with MVISWhether you’re just mapping your modernization journey or already well underway, Rocket® MultiValue Integration Server (MVIS) is the bridge to take your Rocket® UniVerse– or Rocket® UniData®–based applications further, faster, and more efficiently.Top five things you may not know about MVISHow many of these facts surprise you?We released MVIS in June 2019 to empower MultiValue customers like you. MVIS is available for newer versions of Rocket UniVerse and Rocket UniData. Check the Product Availability Matrix (PAM) to see if it supports your environment. MVIS is included with your maintenance agreement. If your maintenance is current, you can order and download MVIS at no additional cost on RBC. Connection pools power MVIS in your production environment. See how connection pools deliver high performance in our short infographic. Your peers already use MVIS for modernization. MVIS is a proven way to bring existing MultiValue a

The Rocket MV team is pleased to announce the release of Rocket ® UniVerse 14.2.1 on 5th November 2025.Rocket® UniVerse 14.2.1 builds on a proven foundation to deliver even greater resilience, flexibility, and modernization. With enhanced high availability and disaster recovery features, this release ensures your business stays online and agile—no matter what.Built for Resilience: Uptime You Can Count OnProtect your system with the Shared Structure Recovery Framework RFSThe enhanced Recoverable File System (RFS) in UniVerse 14.2.1 gives you full control; configure it your way to align with your unique environment. Toggle RFS on or off using the RFS_MODE uvconfig parameter. Please note: UVRFS is an optional add-on feature that can be purchased through RBC.Secure your most critical files with Protected File ConfigurationOnce RFS_MODE is enabled, use a dedicated configuration file to define which files to protect, giving you more control over data protection.When RFS is enabled and files

As a valued Rocket MultiValue customer, your success is at the core of all we do. With technology evolving at a rapid pace—and security, reliability, and feature demands increasing—it’s more important than ever to keep your MultiValue Application Platform current. Upgrading is not just about getting new features; it’s an investment in your application’s future and your organization’s peace of mind.  Here are the top 10 reasons to upgrade your MultiValue Application Platform annually:  10. Reduce Third-Party Compatibility Surprises: Staying current minimizes the risk of unexpected issues as third-party vendors update their software. Rocket puts every major update through rigorous compatibility testing, ensuring support for contemporary platforms and documenting all changes.  9. Upgrade with Confidence in the Future: Incremental upgrades are simpler and less disruptive than major, infrequent leaps. By upgrading regularly, you minimize the gap between versions, allowing easier test

Paul Chang June 6, 2018 Overview Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a platform for building high performance data integration solutions, including extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) packages for data warehousing. It can transfer UniData or UniVerse data to SQL Server very easily. If you use a uci connection to access a UniData or UniVerse server, you must normalize your account first with proper schema and permission settings. The U2 Toolkit client also provides a native connection option that does not require normalization. However, the result data set is very different from a uci connection. The users might need to make some adjustment for SQL Server tables. In this blog post, you will learn how to use Visual Studio (VS) 2017 SSIS Designer using .NET Framework 4.6 to create a simple Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services package. The sample package will export UniData file data into a SQL Server table using a native connection. Note You need to register y

May 3, 2017 AUDIT LOGGING FOR ROCKET UNIVERSE 11.3.1 & UNIDATA8.2 WHY YOUR BUSINESS REQUIRES AUDIT LOGGING Hardly a day goes by without hearing headline news of IT security breaches. Since your business’s lifeline depends on computerized systems, IT system security has become increasingly vital to enterprises, big and small. Knowing what’s happened and what’s going on inside your enterprise information systems, as well as providing an audit trail to prove it, is not only required by internal operational procedures, but also, for some industries and businesses, is mandated by governmental or industry regulations and standards. In fact, in the US several regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, and industry standard PCI-DSS all have specific requirements for Audit Logging. In European and other countries there are similar standards and regulations. Audit Logging is an automated system that chronologically records who did what to which system resource and when. IT must spend the time up front

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

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

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

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

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