editing .ini or registry files manually. (scary thought). Thank you, Microsoft, for making a single tool to do that for multiple users. And the idea of ...
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speeds, processors, d features make sense for you
MICRON TRANSPORT111 XKE
166MHz Mobile Intel ~ntium processor wilh MMX technology 64MB EDO RAM 3CB remmble hard driTe 13.3' TFT XCA display
STANDARD FEATURES Intel 430TX Mobile PCI chip set 512KB L2 pipeline burst cache PCI bus with 128·bit graphics accelerator, 2MB DRAM 20X modular CD-ROM driTe with AutoPlay" Pick·a·Point" dual pointing duices 16-bit stereo sound (supports surround and wmtable sound) Built-in stereo speakers and microphone Integrated 33.6 Kbps technology modem with full duplex
telephony and cellular capability CardBus· and zoomed video-ready 2 infrared ports, 1 front, 1 rear S·tidto and NTSC-video capability, USB, built-in game port Management Pak, Executive Travel Pak 2 modular expansion bays (hard drive, CD·ROM drive,
3.5" floppy drive, lithium-ion battery) Custom nylon carrying case Microsoft Windows 95 and MS · Plus! CD Microsoft Office 97 SBE CDs 5·year/ 3·year Micron Power
limited warranty
Micron backs you up.
Each system is custom configured and shipped directly, so it meets your needs, not someone else's. If you have any PC or networking questions, the answers are just a phone call away - thanks to our top-notch, 24 hour customer support. P.~J1'i~rJf
Buy Micron. And get the job done right
MICRON TRANSPORT Vu
133MHz Intel Pentium processor 16MB EDO RAM (40MB mat.) l.4CB bard drive 16X modular CD·ROM driTe 121' TFT SVCA, 800x600 display
STANDARD FEATURES Intel 430MX PCI chip set 256KB L2 pipeline burst cache PCI bus with 128-bit graphics accelmtor MPEC compatible Zoomed video-ready Toucbpad pointing device 16-bit stereo sound Built-in stereo speakers and microphone 2-way infrared port Li-Ion battery Modular floppy drive (flexible bay swappable with CD-ROM) Microsoft Windows 95 and MS Plus! 5-year/ l·year Micron limited warranty
$2,499
Bos. ~... 135/ mo.
MICRON POWER'"
W 5_-A y_ arR ~_ onR i_'A l.l. J.N ,. ._ ~TarY :_ dNGft~!0.Cllnlmlll''oJ1\U) 1-. 1- . ) yt.- ........... MAICt qetimll i. Yawl cdt:IO nl ..... ryi:ecs
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::i~. ~.'.,.,, .,. Micron Sales Hrs: Mon-Fri 6am-10pm, Sat 7am-5pm (MT) Technical Support Available 24 Hours A Day-7 Days A ~ ~-Week· Toll lrcelrom Mexico: 95-BOCl-708-1755 ·Toll free lrom Ganada: 80().708-1758· Toll free from Puerto Rico:80().708-1756
lnlernational Sales:208-893-8970 · International Fax: 208-893·7393
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MICRONTM VETIXTM Mxi
Intel· 200MHz Pentium· Pro processor 128MB ECC EDO RAM Three 4CB Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 hard drim (12GB total)
STANDARD FEATURES 256KB integrated l2 cache Oual Pentium Pro ZIF sockets Memory upgradable lo !GB (8 DIMM slots) 8 open expansion slots: 5 PCI, 2 ISA, 1 shared ISA/PCI Integrated Adaptec PCI Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 controller Integrated Intel EtherExpress" Pro 100 controller Integrated SVGA graphics 12X rariable speed SCSI CD-ROM drire 3.5" floppy drire 5 internal, hot-swappable, hard drire array bays (upgradable to 10) 3 external 5.25" media bays 1 (one) 330 watt power supply standard
(upgradable to 3 for added redundancy) Microsoft' Mouse, 104-key keyboard Microsoft Windows NT" Serrer 4.0 (10-user license) Intel LAHDesk" Semr Manager 2.52 Integrated hardware instrumentalion Dedicated serrer technical support, 7124 5-year/ 3-year Micron Power" limited warranty I-year next-business-day on-site senice· NOS Supporl (3 incident resolulions/ 1st year), 7124
MICRON CLIENTPRO® XLU
Intel 233MHz Pentium It processor (features MMX" technology )
32MB EDO RAM
2.lCB SMART EIDE hard drire
U' Micron 700FGx, .26dp (16.0" display)
STANDARD FEATURES 512KB internal L2 secondary cache, DMI support 16X EIDE variable speed CD-ROM drire 3.5" floppy drive 3Com PCI 10/100 ethernet NIC PCI 64·bit 30 video, MPEG, 4MB EDO RAM Upgradable waretable audio with speakers Microsoft lnlellimouse", 104-key keyboard Microsoft Windows NT Workstation Intel LANDesk Client Manager 5-year/ 3-year Micron Power limited warranty
MICRON VETIX lx1
Intel 200MHz Pent ium Pro processor 64MB ECC EDD RAM 4CB Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 hard drire 15' Micron 500FCx, .28dp (13.7" display)
STANDARD FEATURES Dual Pentium Pro ZIF sockets 256KB integraled L2 cache Memory upgradable lo !GB (8 OIMM slots) 8 open expansion slots: 5 PCI, 2 ISA, 1 shared ISA/PCI Integrated Adaptec PCI Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 controller Integrated Intel Etherhprm Pro 100 controller Integrated SVGA graphics l2X SCSl-2 CO-ROM drire 3.5" floppy drire 9 drive bays: 6 internal 3.5,' 3 external 5.25" Microsoft Mouse, 104-key keyboard Microsoft Windows NT Serrer 4.0 (10-user license) Intel LANDesk· Server Manager 2.52 Integrated hardware instrumentation Dedicated serrer technical support, 7124 5-year/ 3-year Micron Power limited warranty I-year next-business-day on-site serrice· NOS Support (3 incident resolutions/
Isl year), 7124
MICRON CLIENTPRO Mn
Intel 166MHz Penlium processor with MMX technology 16MB EDD RAM 21CB SMART EIDE hard drire 15" Micron 500FCx, .28dp (13.7' display)
STANDARD FEATURES 512KB pipeline burst cache, flash BIOS, DMI Support 3.5" floppy drive 3Com 3C905 network adapter Integrated SJ ViRCE/ DX graphics
accelerator, 2MB EDD RAM Integrated wavetable sound Tool·free minitower or desktop Microsoft lntellimouse, 104-key keyboard Microsoft Windows' 95 Intel LANDesk Client Manager 5·year/ l·year Micron Power limited warranty
rr f IE
MADJE
OUR COMIPUTIERS
ANY EASITER
10 MANAGE
OUT Of A JOBt
PENTIUM. PRO ~ROCISS O A
At Micron, we build computer systems that make everyone's work easier. We pack our hardy MicronTM VetixTM Mx1full of features like redundant power supplies and the latest high-degree, fault-tolerant components, including hot-swappable hard drives and more. And we make our entry level Lx1models expandable, reliable and tough. Complement our servers with a Micron ClientPro®desktop. We've designed it to be easy to set up, easy to upgrade and easy to network, so you reduce potential downtime and increase productivity. For the employee on the go, try our TransPortTMX KE notebook. A true desktop replacement, we've loaded the XKE with a high-performance graphics accelerator, active matrix screen, upgraded CD-ROM, tons of memory and more. And, our TransPort VLX offers flexibil ity and sleek styling for an impressive price.
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·8oo·362·73 o~
www.micronpc.com
Circle 14 7 on Inquiry C ard.
By David Chappell and David S. Linthicum
56
It's invasive. It's ubiquitous. But what, exactly, is ActiveX? Here's the truth about Microsoft's core technologies.
Plug and Play . for Manufacturers
92E Fiber optics, programmable
motors, and an open stan dard slash hours off inti;gra
riol! projects.
Thinking SmallCer) with SAP
92K
New reseller programs put R/3 into the hands of smaller
companies.
NETWQ K INHCUllON
Publish or Perish 65
By Richard Hackathorn Publish and Subscribe can de liver the information you need as it happens.
MANAGING OATA The Universa l lnbox
75 By Mike H1mvicz Get all your e-mail, faxes, and phone messages with a single interface.
2 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
MANAGING DATA
OLAP byWeb 81
By Udo Flohr Web-based applications can si mplify access to OLAP data.
EDITORIAL
LAB REPORT
WHAT'S NEW
The NetPC Blues 10
INBOX
13
BITS
Faster Notebooks
with a Better Vi ew
18
BYTE's Best of PC Expo 19
Smarter Peripherals
22
Dueling Dynamic HTMLs 23
Sharper Tiny Displ ays
24
Unix or NT? Both!
26
Java Cyberschool
30
Storage Foreca st
32
EVAL
HIGH-PERFORMANCE PCs
Th e Pentium II Soars t o 300MHz
33 We rest the fastest Plls.
WEB SERVER llS 4 .0 Scales New Heights
37 Microsoft adds mo re value to NT Se rver with its Web server.
WEBTOP CLIENT Th e Webt op Rolls Out on Net Caster
38 Push, pull, and browse with N etscape's new cl ie nt.
DATABASES M anag ing Mission-Crit ical Text
43 By Ann O 'Leary Integrating text and relational data with Oracle's ConText.
OPERATING SYSTEMS M anaging Devices with t he Web
45 By M ichael H oward and Chris Sontag N ew interface techno logy lets
HARDWARE Power Platforms: 233 and 266 MHz Pentium lls Compared
94 By Michelle Campa11ale
Faster faster faster. We test 17 Pentium lls-and one K6-that really rip.
SOFTWARE See and Be Seen Over IP
104
By David Seachrist We test two programs that help people work together: White Pine's CU-SeeMe and Microsoft's NetMeering.
143 A blazing Alpha wo rkstation, Gateway's latest laptop, the new cc: M ail, and a wearable computer you can talk to.
REVIEWS
HTML+ NNTP = Groupware 85
By j on Udell Think the Web has changed th e world ? Get ready fo r another revo lu tio n .
Vi be Jive 89
By Rick Crehan Feeling that cross-platfo rm Vibe is one thing; dep loying it is so mething else.
DATABASE MANAGEMENT Ora cl e8: Wort h t he Wait?
111 Oracle's new database tools.
IP ROUTER Software-Only Routing for NT
114 Microsoft's "Steelhcad" (Rout ing and Rem ote Access Service).
MOBILE NETWORK COMPUTER Wireless Wond er
115 Wyse's Wi nterm 293 0.
Th e End oflnfoglut 148
An amazing solution to all that clutter on your hard disk... uh , if it works.
SERVICE
Reader Service Inquiry Repl y Cards 140A- B
Index to Advertisers
Alphabetical Order
140
Edi torial Index
~ Co mpm y
142
New Synergies for Computing
117 By j erry Poumel/e Writable CD-ROMs and new image technologies could bring in a new age of computer use.
CORE
you co ntro l and monitor devices with a browse r.
NETWORKING Routing and Swit ching in ATM Networks
47 By Jeffrey Fritz A hierarchy imp roves ATM routing.
CPU s Th e Pentium II Revealed
51 By Clive Maxfield It combines the Pentium Pro's
TELEPHONY SERVER Mixed-Media M aven
116 Lucent's MMCX Server.
architecture and MMX instructions into a package fo r low-cost systems.
PROGRAMMING Using ODBCDirect's Advanced Features
53 By Rick Dobson
ODBCDirecr offers a more fl exible client/server interface that works with a variery o f d a t a b a ses .
THE BYTE WEBSITE and THE VIRTUAL PRESS ROOM http://www.byte.com
PROGRAM LISTINGS FTP: ftp .byte.com
From BOC: Join "listings/
fro mbyte97" and select the appropri
ate subarea (i.e., "scp97").
BYTE (ISSN 0360·5280) is publoahed monthly by Tho Mc Graw-Hill Companies. Inc. U.S. subscriber r111 h!1 $ 2 4 05 per year. In C anada and Moxico, $3 4.95 por ycnr. European surface mail subscrip tions $60. airmail $85.Non- EurOpean aubscriptlons, $8 0 surface mAlt Of $85~. AH foreign subscnphon1 are payabk!n U.S . funds Ihat can be drawn on a U.S . bank.. Sing'e cop.cs $3.QS;,, the U.S.. $4.QS "Cenada. E>ocutro-e, EeitonaJ. CrcuL11ion. and Advertising Offices: 29 Hartwc1 A ve.. Lexington,MA 02173. Pcriodic.als postage paid 11 Now Yor\. NY, and additional mailing office._ Postage pM1 al Win111peg. Manitoba. Canada Po:it lnternattonaf Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 2484 92. Regi storod for GST ne The McGraw ·Hill Companies. Inc., GST # 123075673. Postm11t er: Sondaddressct,.,_andhafilmont questions to BYTE Subscnptions, P.O. Boi; 552. Hights:own. NJ0 0520.
Printed inthe United States of America
w w.byte.com
SEPTE M B ER 1997 BYTE 3
CONTENTS BY PLATFORM
IND EX
WINDOWS
More Power, Bigger Screens
to Go . . . .... . ............ lS
New high-end notebooks will
have 14-inch scree ns and 233 MHz Pentium power.
The Pentium Soars to 300
MHz.... . . . . ..... . ....... 33
Burn, baby, burn.
The Pentium II Revealed .. 51
L-irger caches, MMX instruc
tions give the Pentium II a n
edge over th e Pentium Pro.
And its new housing simplifies
board design.
Using ODBCDirect's Advanced
Features..... . . . . ... .. ... 53
A more flexible client/server
interface works with a variety
of databases. Connectio ns to
Excel a nd batched se rver
updates are demonstrated.
ActiveX Demystified .. .... 56
If you plan to keep worki ng in
Windows, you need to under
stand Microsoft's core
technologies.
Power Platforms: 233 and 266-MHz Pentium lls
Compared ... . . .. . . . ..... 94
We test the speeding bleeding
edge of th e Wintel pla tfor m.
See and Be Seen Over IP . . 104
We check out rwo Windows 95
vid eoconferencing progra ms:
White Pine's CU-SeeMe and
Microsoft's NetMeeting.
Oracles: Worth the Wait? 111
Oracle8 adds suppo rt for large
objects and new data types, and
th e new NT versio n supports
clustering.
Software-Only Routing
forNT .. ..... .. .. ... . .. . 114
Microsoft's Routi ng and
Remote Access Se rvice brings
sofrwarc-o nly routi ng to
Windows NT.
Wireless Wonder.... .... 115
Wyse's Winrerm mobile com
puter uses radio links and Cit
rix Win Fra me to !er Windo ws
users roam yet stay connected.
UNIX
Unix or Windows NT?
Both!. . . . .. ... . . . . .. . . . . . 26
Sofrway's OpenNT 2.0 which puts a native Unix sub
system on top of an NT ker
nel-bridges the two operating
systems.
Oracles: Worth the Wait? 111
The much-delayed Oraclc8
adds performance enhance
ments and new support for
large data types.
NETWORKING
Managing Mission-Critical
Text.. ... .... .. . . . . . ... .. 43
By enabling text to be stored as
a relatio nal data type, and thus
usable by SQL applications,
Oracle's ConText helps search
through tons of in formatio n.
Routing and Switching
in ATM Networks... . . .. .. 47
H ere 's how a hierarchy can
speed up your network.
Using ODBCDirect's Advanced
Features. . . . ........ .. .. . 53
A flexible clie nt/server inter
face works with a variety of
databases.
ActiveX Demystified...... 56
H ow Microsoft's core tech
nologies could change the
world of clients, se rvers,
objects, and componenrs.
Publish or Perish .. . . . .... 65
Solutions to overworked net
works and unruly sofovare dis
tribution are just part of Pub
lish and Subscribe.
The Universal lnbox .. . . . . 75
Yo ur dream can come tru e: all
e-mail, faxes, a nd phone mes
sages with only one interface.
Software-Only Routing
for NT .. .. ... .. ... ...... 114
RRAS ("Steelhead ") turns NT
Server into a dial-up server or
an Internet router.
Wireless Wonder.. .. . ... 115
Wi th its radio link and Citrix
\'V'inFrame, Wyse 's Winterm
mobile unit is truly a thin client.
Mixed-Media Maven ... . 116
Now w ith PC endpo ints and
new ITU standards compatibil
ity, Lucent's MMCX Server
shoots vo ice, data, and video
across nerwork bounda ries.
INTERNET/WEB
Developers Like DHTML
but Many Wait. . .... . . . . . 23
Microso ft's and Netscape's
incompatible Dynamic HTML
implcmentarions let developers
add inreracrivity to thei r si tes.
llS 4.0 Scales New Heights
... ..... . . .. ......... .... 37
Microso fr ad ds scalabi li ty,
robustness, and securi ty
feanires for e-co mmerce.
The Webtop Rolls Out on Netcaster.. . .. . . .. . .. . 3S Push, pull, and browse with Netscape's snappy d esktop.
Managing Devices
with the Web .. . .... . .. . . 45
New ime rface techn o logy lets
you control and monitor
dev ices with a Web browser.
ActiveX Demystified ... .. . 56
ActivcX is an umbrella label
that covers many things, but
some of the technology defi
nitely has to do with the Net.
The Universal lnbox .. . ... 75
Someday you might be abl e to
use just your browser t0 get at
all your e-mail, voice mai l, and
fa.xcs.
OLAP by Web ....... . . ... Sl Using Web applications tO access OLAP data uses the strengths of both technologies.
HTML+ NNTP = Groupware ... . .. .. .. .. . . . . ... ... .... S5 The Web has changed the world. But here comes another big change.
See and Be Seen Over IP.. 104
We check out two programs
that de li ver voice and face
across th e Interne t.
ATM . . ............ ...... 47
ActiveX . .. .. .. . .. 37, 56, Sl
Application sharing 104, 116
COM, DCOM . .. . . . . .. . . . . 56
CPUs .. .... .. . 1S, 33 , 51, 94
Cameras (digital)... 117, 143
Client/server .. . . 53, 56, 114
Components ... .... ... . .. 56
Conferencing.. . S5, 104, 116
Database technology . .. . 43,
53,Sl , 111
Desktop PCs .. .. . . . .. 33, 94,
117, 143
Display technology . . .. . .. 1S
Dynamic HTML .. .. . . . .. . 23
E-mail .. ........ 75, S5, 143
Embedded technology.. .. 45
Groupware .. .... 75, S5, 104
H.323 .. ........ .. ..... . 104
HTML. ... . .. . .. .. . . . . 23, S5
Internet/Web . . .. 23, 37, 3S,
45, 56, 75,S1,S5, 104, 143
Java .... .. .. .. 30, 56, Sl, S9
LAN emulation ... . . . .. .. . 47
MMX ...... .. .. .. lS , 51,94
Mobile computing ... .... 1S,
115, 143
Monikers...... .. ... .. ... 56
Networking .. 47, 56, 65, 75,
104, 115, 116, 143
News servers. .. ....... .. . S5
Objects ... . .. .... 45, 56, 111
OLAP .... .. . .. ... . . . ... . . Sl
Operating systems .. . 1O, 1S,
45, 56, 114
Programming . . .. 18, 53, 56,
89, 111, 143
Publish and Subscribe ... . 65
Remote access .. . .. .. ... 114
Routing....... ... .. . 47, 114
SEC cartridge . ..... .. .... 94
Security... . .. ... 56, S9, 143
Telephony.... .. .... . 75, 116
Text searching. . . . ... . 43, SS
Universal inbox .. . . . . .... 75
Videoconfe rencing . . .. . . 19,
104. 116, 143
4 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byt .com
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C ircle 142 on Inquiry Card .
~RAINBOW 50 TECHNOLOGY ORIVE, IRVINE, CA 92618 · TEL: (7 14) 450-7300 · FAX: (7 14) 450-7450 ·WEB: www.rainbow.com ·EMAIL: sentinel@rai nbow.com
( 19
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T E C H N 0 l 0 D I E I 0 1997 Rainbow Tec.hnologies, Inc. Sentlnel Is a r~isterrd u ;,dem.:1rk of R.:iinbow Technologies. ' Offtf good for sohw.ue ~ti~ in 1he U.S. ·l'ld C·nadd only. b.pim 9/l0/ 97
ALGERIA : AFA K (2 13) 3 41 2 2 36 ARGENTINt.: Agn-Ad. 5.A. (~I I 80J05J6 AUSTilAUt.: lOAOPtAN (61) l 9690 1).155 BELGl\JM/lUX:EMBURG; E2S 13219 121 0343 BAAZIL: WJl'S ~!IT.ai Udl (SS) 11 S74 5686 CHILE: TOPsoft (562) 235 44 56 CHIN.A (hst): Shdnghai Pudong Saltw.>rt
)Q"°' P,u\: El«l'oim. Comp.111"f fS6) 21 6417 8626
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EGYPT: ZEDAN·ADS (202) 248 8994 GRUCt.: !f.t (OTIPJttf S A. UOl) 92.! 17 33 GUATtMAlk 5of: C"IX>'OC<ln (SOI) 2 »:006 HONG KONG: Alfalmk Techna'ogy Compa ny (852 ) 2333 0626 HUNGARY: Poto,ware Kft (36} 76 .::s · 236 INDIA: AN( lng~.ng Co (91) 11 4615580
tHOONESIA: PI ~L'-- ~lo5c¥1(61121J7S166 IRAN: GAAi UectronJC:i. (98) 21 87 44 001
ITALY: en rBEXSA SPA (39) 23 36 23 1
ITA LY: S10Stst cml (39) 30 2 4 41 1 JAPAN: G:ifn Sl'.::p C.o·. t:d (81} S2 972 ES4-:
JORDAN: COG !.n<}nttf"'J (962168 63 061 KOREA: Get-~ ~(8}} 2 S7.3 1528
L£!ANON: ,a!O'Wl~CC1lS 1961) l l.9"l] l 7
MALAYSIA: Easte rn Systems Design (M ) Sdn Bhd (60) 3 2 4 1 1 18 8 MEXICO: h«t(ct"'O.SA6'C VMl 66l 10191
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SOUTH .\fRICA: SOfTSlCURE (27) 11 U7 394) SPAIN: MECC O (34) 3 422 7700 SW1TZ£RLAND: IBV AG (4 1) 1 7~5 92 92 l'MT?IIW<D: IN Ccn>ld IA µ1114.:)5 !lS6 TArWAN: Em1h:ne T«n. {886) 2 !ZC692~ T HAILAND : Busmess Computer Systefl'ti. Co. ltd 1nr 1(66) 2 3 194451 TUNISIA: Softln!c !ednqJe(116) 17194!6 TURKEY: BlM E~5. Ltd. (902116 J4 Bl 508 VENEZUELA: HR T·M (Mn (58) 2 25 1 ·1282
EDITOR IN CHIEF Mark Sch lack Lexington, MA, 617-860-6827 ms ch lack @b ix.co m
VICE PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER Kevin McPherson Lexington, MA, 617-860-6020 kmcphers@mcgraw-hill.com
EditoriolAssistont: Chrystie Kilbourn-Terry Lexington. MA,617-860-6294, christie_torry@mg h.com
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITORS International: Rich Friedman PetNhnrough, NH,603 -924-2523 rfr iedman@bix.com
New Media: Jon Udell Peterborough, NH, 603-924-2622 judell@bix.com
MANAGING EDITOR Jenny Donelan Peterborough, NH. 603-924-2511 jdonela n@bix.com
WEST COAST Bureau Chief/Features Editor: John Montgomery San Mateo, CA, 415-5 13-6809 jmontgomery@bix.com
NEWS News Editor: David L Andrews Lexington, MA, 617-860-6296 dave.news@bix.com
Senior Editor: Rainer Mauth Frankfurt, Germany, +49 69 5801 123 rmauth@bix.com
Associate News Editor: Jason Krause San Mateo, CA, 415-513-6931 jkrause@bix.com
REVIEWS Director: David Essex Lexington, MA, 617-860-6299 dessex@bix.com
Technical Manager, BYTE Lab: Al Gallant Lexi ngton, MA, 617-860-6389 aga ll ant@bix.com
Technical Editor: Michelle Campana le San Mateo, CA. 415-513-6810 mcampanale@b ix.com
Technical Editor: Russell Kay Lexington. MA, 617-860-6207 ru ssellk@bix.com
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The NetPC Blues
The PC architecture is just too cranky. And the technology touted to help-Zero
Admin and a cheap computer with no floppy-is not much help at all.
would have had this edirori this whole cost-of-ownership controver
al written an hour ago, but sy that one size does not, will not, and
my computer crashed. Hon should not fit all, and this NetPC solution
est. I was running Word, will fit only some needs. I' ll even concede
Ecco, cc: Mail, and Netscape when Word it's something of a step forward, but too
seized up. Persistent attempts to restart small a step to fix the fundamental prob
Windows 95 failed. rundocked my com lems experienced by PC users and admin
puter, unhooked it from the net, and now istrators daily.
it works.
The same can be said of Microsoft's
What really bums me out is that the ZAK. Much of it has been available as util
very latest technology touted ro solve ities from other vendors since Windows
such problems-a NetPC admini tered 3.1. Lacking those, you've long been able
by Zero Administration Kit (ZAK) for to turn off certain menu functions by
Windows-would do absolutely nothing editing .ini or registry files manually
to prevent or remedy this siniation, or the (scary thought). Thank you, Microsoft,
millions of events like it that occur every for making a single tool to do that for self-heali ng and self-updating capabili
day on corporate networks. Ir might even multiple users. And the idea of policies ties for applications, the ability to store
have happened with a network comput and roles, ultimately tied to directory ser machine state on a server, inrelligent local
er; no one today can guarantee that net vices, is spoton. Butler's not mistake that caching, and, finally, forbiddingapp ven
work transmissions will succeed.
for a so lution to the underlying com dors from installing OS components willy
I didn't mess up my system running plexity of PC management.
nilly. Good ideas all, and in many ways
shareware, installing unauthorized soft Intel and Microsoft have created an more generallyapplicable than the pure
ware, or anything of the kind. I was run
ning a configuration that's approved and Intel and Microsoft have created an environment that is
stab le 98 percent of the time-and inscrutably, catastrophically troublesome
wonderfully flexible and horribly cantankerous.
the rest of the time. This isn't a function environment that is wonderfully flexibl e network computer. In any event, those
of the apps I use, the computer I use, or and horribly cantankerous. Maybe that's technologies ure sound a lot more like
what I do with the system. It's a function the way it had to be, but it's too big a what we need than ZAK does. Serious
of an architecture that has grown too trade-off now. Instead of addressing the inroads into Windows admin costs will
complex with too little self-management. environment issues, !vlicrosofr and Intel depend on their success.
Right now, my PC is sick. When you are essentially blaming the user for expe
Gee, I've gotten to the end of this piece
have a cold, a box of tissues (ZAK or the riences like mine. Physician, heal thyself. without another crash. Maybe it was just
NetPC) is nice. But it's no cure, and a cure In 1992, Microsoft had a vision of an that quirky keyboard connector-I'll
is what I want. So I respond to this sum architecture that would address the ad never know for sure. Certainly thousands
mer's "reduced cost of ownership" drum hoc nature of its burgeoning environ of engineers at Microsoft and Intel can
ro ll s out of Microsoft and Inte l with a ment and put it all on a solid, object-based do something to find out besides mak
::?
sniffle and a yawn.
footing. While the code name persists, ing a computer dumber.
Q 0
First, the NetPC. Can we get past the Cairo has become a much more prag trendy moniker and just admit it's a cheap matic and evolutionary (andsrill worthy)
C>
~
computer with no Aoppy (or one that can project. As far as ease of management,
E"m
be disabled by software)? Okay, it has a what remains of the original grand vision
m
few cool things-LAN wake-up, remote are some promising technology piece
boot-that will be available in most PCs that will begin to appear in Memphis and Mark Schlack, Editor in Chief
in 1998. We've said many times during reach full fruition with NT 5.0: limited mschlack@bix.com
10 BYT E SEPTE M BER 1997
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GUI, NUI, and CUE
I agree that we're approach ing a revolution in the des ign of the GIB ("Good-Bye, GUI -Hello, NU!," July). What it is and where it needs to go are being redefined, beyond the desktop metaphor. You used the term network user interface, or NUI, for the new interfaces that are emerging. I would say, however, that even the term interface needs ro evolve. Think of the term environment . People con struct environments all around them in the physical world. Why not carry it into the virtual world? The other term, network, seems more about the technology- the pipe- than about what's really occurring there, which is collaboration. The net work is the next level of pipe that we can collaborate in.
I propose rhat a more appropriate rerm would be collaborative user e11viro11ment, or CUE. The next step, of course, is defining the optimum for such an envi ronment. Rich Kilmer Roku Technologies Chantilly, VA rich@rok11tech.com
I was pleased ro see your arricle on NUis. You cover commercial desktop ideas, whic h is appropriate, but I think your readers might also be intere ted in more advanced research ideas. You might want ro look into our work on Elastic Windows, which support multiple win dow operations in a wa y that
enables more effective screen management. For more information, check out h t t p : / / www.cs.umd.edu/ projects/hcil/ Research/1996/ elastic-windows.html. The text of several papers plus images are ava ilable there. Ben Slmeiderman H11111a11-Co111p11ter Interaction Laboratory
U11iversity ofMaryland,
College Park be11 @cs.u111d.edu
Why Claudia Schiffer Doesn't Do Data Modeling
I always look forward to your magazine because I can learn a lor from rhe articles.
So I wa disappointed by J.
L. Weldon 's "A Career in Dara Modeling" (June). The treatment of data modeling
wa shallow and facile. If
data modeling is so simple, why do so many poor data models cause so much trou ble for those companies try ing ro imp lement data ware houses? If data modeling is so simple, why do people's eyes glaze over during dis cussions of data models?
Data modeling is a com plex and difficult process fraught with pitfalls. I've been doing data modeling for many years and think rhar Weldon has done rhe subject a grave disservice. Rainer Schoe11ra11k Data Warehouse l'ractice Coopers & Lybrand Sa 11 Fra11cisco rainer-schoe11ra11k @ world11et.a tt.11 et
able systems that met requirements.Just look at the Un ified Modeling Lan guage (UML) spec ro see why. Neville Haggerty Com pedia, Inc. l'ortsmo11th, NH
No Code, No Coin
Slay by the Rules
"Play by the Rule " (June) was an excellent overview of business rules. l work with clients applying business rules to system specification and design, and I've found rhar this approach works for developing new systems as well as for addressing dara quality problems in data marts/warehouses.
Business rules will be next in the series of ideas of how ro slay rhe software dragon. This idea will succeed because it can put business people in the driver's seat, shifting the focus away from technologists. Previous ideas, such as object orienta tion, didn't deliver change-
After reading about the ben efits of gening a digital ID and cybermoney ("Who Goes There?," June), I downloaded the CyberCash wallet. OK, I thought, now I'll go and spend ome CyberCoins. First I had to load some coins into the wallet. Uh-oh! An error code back from the bank. The card was all right; there was plenty of credit still valid. So what was rhe problem? I found out that CyberCash accepts credit loads only fro m a credit card used by a U.S. resident or from a credit card issued by a U.S. bank. Bur 15 years ago l was able ro use a U.K.-issued credit card ro buy goods in the States with no problem.
The obstacle I enco un tered is typical of many com mercial ventures with a Web
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 13
presence: If you don't have a Zip Code, you don't exist. Wake up, U.S.A.! Charles Smith Lo11do11
Don't Worry About the Government?
Re: Mark Schlack's editori al, " RIP: Anonymous User" (June): I've been working in the computer-security indus try for about 13 yea rs, and I, too, believe that the govern ment needs to resist mandat ing additional requirements on Internet transactions. Pri vacy is something that most people in the industry are overlooking. More are con cerned with integrity+ availability = acceptable stare. Having served in the military for 12 years and worked as a government contractor for seven years, I'm aware of the govern ment's needs to view all traf fic, or ar least have the ability to do so. But I firmly believe that anonymity has its place in cyberspace. Eric W'. RatliffSr. eratli((@kpm g.co 111
I enjoyed the editorial on personal liberties and anonymity on the Net. We need more people to speak up against government intrusion into every aspect of our daily lives. Do11ald]olmso11 akgoose@hotmail.com
56-Kbps Modem Problems
Although Robert L. Hum mel's conclusions were sound, his " How Fast Is a 56-Kbps Modem?" (June) contained a number of prob lems and errors:
· " Informal" testing (to use the term in the article)
over a single phone line is nor a fair general rest of 56K technology, because impairments vary widely on different phone lines, and even on different con nections from the same phone line, even when that line passes the (imperfect) x2 LineTest. Many people are seeing consistently high speeds (typically in the high 40s); others are not able ro make 56K connections at all. Furthermore, K56flex modems mighr have pro duced different results. · x2 upload speeds are actu ally limited to 31.2 Kbps (not 33.6 Kbps) because the 3429 symbol rare is nor used (currently, ar least) on x2 connections. · x2 modems do not "drop down to 33.3 Kbps and then renegoriare back up"; they directly speed shifr up or down (in small steps) from the initial con nect speed as line condi tions warrant, just as V.34 modems do. Jo/Jn Navas P11blishero(the Navas 28800 56KModem FAQ http://www.ai11111et.com/ - j11avas/modem/(aq.htm I
I disagree that my i11fonnal testing was 1111fair to 56K tech11ology. U.S. lfobotics' documentation clearly implies that ifmy phone li11e passes the USR LineTest diag 11ostic, which it did, it will support x2. I conducted sup plemental tests at several locations to incorporate both long and short local loops, different telco central offices, and a variety oflong-dis tance carriers. I also surveyed other x2 users, who reported ge11erally mediocre perfor mance. And, as the article states, K56f/ex modems ivere 11ot yet available for testing.
Regarding x2 's upload speed limits, I was referring
to the theoretica l capability of the technology. The USR FAQ states that "x2 down loads (receives data) at up to 56 Kbps. It uploads (sends data) at up to 33.6 Kbps."
As for the issue of"drop ping down," a USR product manager says we both make valid points: x2 servers ini tially connect at 33.3 Kbps a11d then, within a couple of seconds, establish the "initial connect speed"; it's part of the protocol negotiation. x2 clients report only this sec ond, usually higher, speed. There 's no dropping down from the initial connect speed to 33.3 Kbps. But the negotiation starts at 33.3 Kbps.-Robert L. Hummel
Creative Mapping Tricks
In July's Inbox, Satyam Bheemarasetti says rhat "mosr Windows programs must install some files under C:\WINDOWS. If this bottle neck is fixed, sofrware instal lation (i.e., distribution) on Microsoft platforms can be as good as it is on Unix and truly capitalize on the Dis tributed File System (Dfs)."
With a few minor map ping tricks, we run Windows and Windows software on completely diskless comput ers. Our 160 + desktop PCs boor via boot PROMs to our Novell network. The user then types\~ i nd01·1 s after logging in. Windows runs just fine.
We have one group that holds new software-installa
tion scripts. The user, upon seeing a new install icon, double-clicks on it: The pro gram is installed into his or he r user space on the net work. Again, no hard, flop py, CD, or other rype of drive is needed for this to work.
Our system has been run ning this way for over a yea r and is as bulletproof as you can make Windows 3.1 I. Users can even customize their screen colors, back grounds, and so forth, just as if \Vindows were running on a local disk . The funny thing is that, wirh lOBase-T on a PCI 3Com card, Windows loads faster than it does from my IDE hard drive! Overall performance for memory hogs like WordPerfect is slightly slower, but this is almost undetectable. Todd Crenshaw Computer systems management analyst, State of Nevada todd@i1111orth.reno.11v.11s
Help for the Year
2000
Nice article on the year-2000 problem (" Double Zero," July). I'll share with you some notes on how I hand le the problem in my own com mercial programs:
1. Pivot points for interpret ing two-digit years: I put in a floating pivor point, which is (ThisYear -50), so the date is interpreted as being within + /- 50 years of the current year. For many applications, rhi s is a permanently work able way to allow the input of a two-digit yea r. 2. Internal representation: I had originally defined a date structure allowing a byre for the day, a byre for the month, a byte for the year, and a wasted byre. By redefining the year byre and the wasted byre as a signed integer that is an offset from
1 4 BYTE SEP TEM BER 1997
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C ircle 161 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 162).
Share In ,,,. expedent:s:
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Highlights:
· TN3270 Emulation-Models 2.3.4and 5(for IBM Mainframes)
· 31796 Vector Graphics & 3279S3G
· TN5250 (24x80. 27xl 32) (for AS/400)
· VT52. VTlOO. VT220. VT320 &VT420
emulation (for DEC and UNIX Systems)
~ Free
Evaluation Copy
Available at···
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· VBA"' Advanced Scripting Language
dl1lfsf:l1f nct
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Fastfacts:
408.366.2t01
1900, I avoided any conver sion of existing databases. A variant on this trick will work for many internal rep resentations, but of course nor for all. 3. Operator input: In a 10
characrer date fi eld, rall ow
date entry with a four-digit year (taken literally) or a two-digit year (inrerpreted using the pivot point) . In an eight-character fie ld, I always require a two-digit year and always use the piv ot point.
Jose{J/J Mansfield
Te1111Sof1, Inc. Chattanooga, TN
FIXES
Co ntrary to what was said in "Web App licatio ns at Your Service" (July), Lotus Domi no Server 4.5a provides POP3 services.
The system pictured in "tvlMX Power for Desktop PCs" (Ju ly) is a Dell Dimen ion and not, as the caprion says, a Gateway 2000 1'5-200.
--
-- - -
- -
COMING UP IN OCTOBER
BUILDING NETWORKAPPLICATIONS
Five Problems You Can ; Solve with Java Today
You've hea rd the promises. But what's the reality? Our report from the field will tell you about developers who
have implemented real solutions using Java.
MANAGING DATA
Object-Relational vs.
Object-Oriented Databases
Askeptic's view of object-oriented and object-relational databases.
Embedded Systems
Thanks .to embedded in telligence, hardware components can now tell you when something's about to go wrong. We
look into the brains inside this new technology.
SPECIALREPORT
Extending the
Enterprise: Bandwidth
We look at the technologies, the products, and the implementation strategies that will give you faster LANs,
faster WANs,and faster remote access.
High Bandwidth Modems
This blockbusterroundup of leading-edge modem technologies tests the performance of 56K, !SON,
and ADSL modems.
REVIEWS
300-MHz Power Macs
PowerPCMacs are rewing up. BYTE looks at th ree of the first systems based on the Motorola 603e chi p.
Thin Servers
We test the ea rly entries in the emerging category of thin servers designed to speed the performance of thin clients
and network computers.
1 6 BYTE SE PTEMBER 199 7
Circle 152 on Inquiry Card.
www.byte.com
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News & Views
More Power, Bigger Screens to Go
Thanks to bigger screens and 200- and 233-MHz Pentium processors, the newest notebooks are better desktop replacements.
et read y for a new wave of more capable PC portables, as vendors prepare to unleas h
lliliiiililill new notebooks with big (14
inch) screens and the larest mobile Pen tium processors with multimedia exten sions (MMX) technology, running at 200 and 233 MHz.
Notebooks still lack the more pow erful processors (e.g. , the Pentium II) that their desktop co unterparts enjoy, and a mobile version of the Pentium II isn' t expected until the first half of 1998. But thanks to new mobile Pentiums (code- named Tilla mook)-rhe first processors to be built using Intel's 0.25 micron CMOS techno l ogy-notebook ven dors don 't have to settl e for 166-MHz mobil e Pentium power. The new processors, coupled with fast CD-ROM drives, huge hard drives, and big screens, mean tharrhe next crop of notebooks will be even better suited as full desktop replacements.
Vendors are backing these systems in al most all cases with screens that support 1024- by 768 -pixel resolution, 32 MB or more of RAM, 3-GB or more hard drives, and, in man y cases, a 20x CD-ROM drive. Multimedia capabilities are grea tl y en hanced, with an emphasis on quality sound, full-motion video, and 3-Dgraph ics support. In fact, as notebook designs mature, it may get harder for vendors to differentiate their products.
" It is getting harder and ha rder for companies to come up with bust-our, whizbang features," says Bruce Stephen, an analyst with JDC (Framingham, MA).
Hitachi's $4999 VisionBook Elite has a 13.3-inch screen and weighs just over 5 pounds.
" We are seeing <l
lot more of the ' cup-holder phase,'
where peo ple make sm all design ch anges
to try and differentiate themselves."
One point of differenti ation will be in screens. rBM and Digital Equipment are rumored robe preparing new ThinkPads a nd HiNote notebooks with 14- inch screens, but both compani es declined to comment on unannounced produ cts. Unless they use radical new materials to hold the d is play, a new noteb ook for mat-one that's about an inch wider than current notebooks-will be req uired.
AST's Ascenria M series will offer up to a 233-MHz Pentium with MMX. Also, AST will pack in a 20x CD- ROM drive, up to a 4-GB hard drive, a 13.3-inch display, and a 56-Kbpsmodem. Prices will range from
$2499 to 55499 d e pending o n the con figuratio n.
NEC's new Versa 6220 series will show a large ly simila r fea tures li st. NEC will use e ith er a 200- or 233 MHz Pe ntium with MMX processor with a 256-KBL2cache,32 MB of RAM (128 MB maxi mum), a 3.2-or 5.2-GB hard dri ve, a 20x CD ROM drive, 3- Dstereo gra phics w ith 16-bir so und, a 56-Kbps cellular ready modem, 2 MB o fvideo memory, and video our ports. NEC opted fo rth e LS-120 fl oppy drive, which rakes either standard 1.44-MB disks or the high- capaciry 120 MB LS-120 disks. Prices for the Versa 6220, which ships in October, will be $5 199 to $5999. You can expect roughly compara bl e offerings and prices from the remain der of the established companies as well as newer player such as Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Sony. In addi tion co thei r faster clock speeds, Intel's newest mobi le Penriums consume less power: less rh an 5 W compared to 7.7 W for the 166- Ml-lz chip. Bur the po tential savings on battery co nsumption will probably be eaten by bigger screens and fas ter drives. In fact, many use rs may opt fo r notebooks with th e sma ller 13.3 inch ac tive-mat ri x thin-film tra nsistor (TFT) screens because th ey will be less
1 8 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
expensive and consume less battery power. But the good news is that users who want maximum screen real estate shou ld soon have their wishes granted.
On the other side of the spectrum, Toshiba's Libretto has shown there is interest in a return to t he subnotebook size o r ultraportable, as it is ometimes called. NEC and IBM may join Toshiba in manufacturing these tiny machines.
The new ultraportables may be either souped-up versions of Windows CE de vices (s lightly larger t han the cur rent models and with better keyboards) or Libretto-style-smaller notebooks wi th small screens but running Windows 95. We may even see a new class emerge this year: ultrathin (about 0.7-inch thick) notebooks t hat use the Ti llamook and new battery technologies such as lithium polymer.
The ultimate winners may be those who are interested in machines that don't push either extreme. At the $2500 price point, users will fin d the so-called value lines with a good mix of equipment and often all -in-one (floppy and CD-ROM drives available simultaneously) styling.
-Jon Pepper
MeetingPoint Wins at PC Expo
White Pine's MeetingPoinr videoconfer encing software won BYfE's Best ofShow award at PC Expo. The award recognizes producrs that are innovative and will have an impact on information technology.
Toshiba's Portege puts the portability back into
MeetingPoint finally brings standards based H.323 technology to videoconfer encing server , which will vastly simplify videocon fe rencing deployment in cor porate intranets and tlirough Internet ser vice providers. MeetingPoint also won in the Web/Internet products category.
O ther Web/ Internet finali ts were In
Coming: Info Tech Labor Shortage
Good news, bad news. A recent report from the Meta Group (Stamford, CT), the informa tion-technology (IT) research and analysis firm, says salaries for U.S. IT workers are rising faster than those for work-
ers in other fields, but rt forecasts a labor
shortage ofskilled information workers. The problem is that increased demands for
new info rmation systems and new Internet and electronic-commerce applications are coming at the same time that companies are racing to find and fix all their potential year
2000 problems. Companies can satisfy some of these needs through outsourcing, but many IT departments will still be stretched thin. The Meta Group advises organizations to combat any overcommitments with strict project prioritization, triage, and selective outsourcing.
The good news is that IT salaries are rising at an annual increase of 20 percent, com pared to 4 percent in other fields. And the job-growth rate for IT is accelerating: 1987 to 1994 at 9.6 percent per year, 1994 to 1995 at 11.7 percent per year, and 1995 to 1996 at 13.8 percent per year. The Meta Group estimates th at about 200,000jobs in the IT field are not filled.
terworks Systems' PipeLive, software tliat offers support agents and customers the ability to interact live, person-to-per son, over the Internet, and Lotus's Instant Teamroom, which lets workgroups quickly establish a private workspace out side a corporate firewall on the Web.
Chi li Soft's Chi li ASP, whjch allows Acti veServe~ applications to ru n on We b servers other than Microsoft Internet Information Server {US), won as Best Development Software. Finalist was Micro Focus's SoftFactory/2000, a year 2000 tool se t and methodology.
T he winner of Best Applications and UtiJities Software was Etak's SkyMap, a complete GPS-gu ided (GlobaJ Position ing System) map and satellite navigation system designed for IBM-compatib le hand-held and la ptop PCs. The finalists were Visio Maps, a desktop mappin g pro gram for Windows 95, and Meta Cre ations' Kai's Photo Soap, a photo-manip ulation program for Windows 95 .
Toshiba's 3.8-pound Portege 300CT (starts at $3499 ) fea t u res a 133-MHz Pentium chip and a panoramic 10.4-inch screen. Finalists were Gateway 2000's Solo 9100, a high-end 8.5-pou nd note book packed with just about everything you need at prices starting at $4200, and Hitachi 's VisionBook Elite, a notebook that has a good balance of power and portability. The Elite costs about $4999, has a 13.3-inch screen, and weighs 5.15 pounds.
The Systems winner was DeskSration Tec hno logy's Ru ffian RPX Worksta tion/Server (starts at $5995), an Alpha based system that incorporates some of
The Revolution 30 offers
the hottest technology available, includ ing a 600-MHz Alpha 21164 processor. Acer'sAcerPower Gra phics Workstation Series, a power-packed Pentium Usystem, and Unisy 's Aquanra XR/6 Server, which extends Windows NT to as many as 10 processors, were finalists. continued
DHTML: Two ths Converge
3
Mini Dlsplays Get S arper
UnixorWindows NT? Botlll
26
More Powerful and Flexible Storage
3
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 19
_ _ t·1rt4___________
Number Nine Visual Technology's Revolution 3D grap hics acce lerator ($349) won as Best Multimedia Hardware for its groundbreaking combination of no-compromise performance and afford ability. Finalist was Elms Systems' Digi tal Versatile Library and Panorama, which offers on-line digital videodi sc (DVD) storage and provides a solution for video on-demand applications.
Best Peripheral was NEC Technologies' MultiSync LCD2000, a 20.1-inch flat panel monitor with a world-class image display. Finalists were Mitsubishi's DJ 1000 digitalcamera, which features a slim body and a compact flash-memory card, and Sony's CPJ-0500 LCD Dara Projec tor, a laptop-size portable unit.
Best Printer was Epson's Stylus Color 3000, which lets profession al grap hic artists and digital photographers produce color proofs and presentations for less than $2000. Finalists were Xerox's Doc ument Centre Series, a family of copiers that you can upgrade for networked printing, scanning, and faxi ng, and Xerox's DocuPrinr C55 Color Laser Printer, a low-cost, full-fearured desktop printer for about $3500.
Multimedia Software winner was MeraCreations' Ray Dream Studio 5, a 3-D design-and-animation tool. Multi media Software finalists were In fo Value Computing's QuickVideo Suite, a com plete software platform to video-enable the corporate network, and Noise Can cellation Technologies' ClearSpeech PC/COM software, which reduces noise
and echo in PC-based applications. Best Connectivity Solution went to
RighrFax's Enterprise 5.0, a distributed fax solution that harnesses the Internet and intranet to save long-distance phone
charges. Finalists were TenFour's TFS Gateway release 3, which provides secu rity and connectivity to e-mail adminis trators and use rs, and River Run Soft ware's M ail on the Run, a provider of
of
Best of Show: White Pine (603-886-9050; http:// www.wpine.com) .
Best Web/Internet Product: White Pine.
Finalists : Interworks
Systems (914-993-0900; http://www.iworksys.com) ; Lotus (617-577-8500; http://www.lotus.com).
Best Development Software: Chili Soft (717-290-8346; http:// www.versicom.com/
chilisoft). Finalist:Micro
Focus (415-856-4161 ; http ://www.microfocus .co m) .
Best Application or Utility: Etak (415-328-3825; http://www.etak.com) .
Finalists:Visio (800-248·
4746; http://www.visio .com/solutions/maps) ; MetaCreations (805-566· 6200; http://www .metatools.com) .
Best Portable: Toshiba (800-457-7777 ; http://
www.computers
.toshiba.com) . Finalists:
Gateway 2000 (800 846·2000; http://www .gw2k.com); Hitachi (BOO· 448-2244; http://www .hitachipc.com).
Best System: DeskStation Technology (913-599 -1900; http:// www.deskstation.com).
Finalists:Acer (800-551 ·
2237 ; http://www.acer .com/aac/) ; Unisys (408· 434-2700; http://www .unisys.com).
Best Multimedia Hardware: Number Nine Visual Technology (617· 674-0009 ; http://www .nine.com) . Finalist: Elms Systems (714-461 -3200 ; h t t p : / / w w w.elms.com) .
Best Peripheral: NEC Technologies (800-632· 4636; http://www
.nee.com). Finalists:
Mitsubishi ( 714-220· 2500; http://www .mitsubishi-display.com) ;
Sony ( 800-352-7669; http://www.sony.com I technology) .
Best Printer: Epson (800 -463-7766 ; http :/ / w w w.e pson.com) .
Finalist:Xerox (800-349·
3769; http://www.xerox .networkprinters.com) .
Multimedia Software: MetaCreations (800-297· 2665; http://www .metacreations.com).
Finalists:Info Value
Computing ( 914-328· 1359; http://www .infovalue.com) ; Noise Cancellation Technologies (203-961 -0500 ; http:// www.nct·act ive .com) .
Best Connectivity Solutions: Rightfax (520-320-7000 ; http:// www.rightfax.com .
Finalists: Tenfour (703·
716-8364 ; http://www .tenfour.com); River Run Software (http://www .riverrun.com) .
~etterWayfor
·.:oevices to. ~:~share info
Hewlett-Packard is promotin~ a new communica tions protocol called JetSend, which will lettwo devices directly negotiate-with out user intervention-the best way to share data. The goal is to e,nable a new generation of de vices that are easier to use and automatically generate tile high
est-quality output possibfe, g~n, coliir}. A negotiation takes place, share data with a wide range of
the capabilities of two or more·· and·data is output in the forll)af other devices. At press time, ·HP
.
.
·
p
~
.
device~ .·
~
"··,,,th'af)s most:a~propriat~.· ·
. was discussing·,with. Mi~.rosoft.
ver- 'de' Wvicneesncotwmo'mJu'entiScea'ntedi-t'hineayb. iw~i;l.l(
'
..:
With
. ·.~·
.J.r~..t..s..~h.d,.
each
mfonifationappliance,
device, .or is embed-
putting JetSend in a future
l;
sion of Windows. HP says illi firSt
not need an intermediary, such' 'ited.~ithdevice firmwareorsoft JetSend-enabled products will
asa network server, device.driver, ware that contains information likely ship within ayear.
or even two people, to.transl at~ abouthow it works. The JetSend HP says it wants to make Jet
and process the information ex approach doesrl'trequire a device Send openly available to the in
change. Each device can com that wants to share data with dustry. It has released the spcd
municate illi capabilities to other peripherals to have a different fication at http://www.jetsenil
devices regarding the range of software driver for each periph .hp.com to allow companies to
options it supports. The sending eral it talks to, which isone rea build their own JetSend devices.
device initiates a conversation son why HP thinks JetSend is a Or, companies can buy a kit from
and informs the receiver of its good fitfor future lntemet-con HP for a onetime cost of about
capabilities (e.g., resolution or nected ;ipplianccs that need to $15,000.
-Dave Andrews
2 2 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 9 7
access to e-mail for mobile Windows CE users.
Developers Like DHTML, but Many Wait
New-and-improved versions o f HTML promise more d ynamic Web sires with o ut requiring expert ise in w ritin g Java applets or ActiveX controls, bur incom patibilities are causing developers to wait for a uniform standard. Both Netscape and Microsoft call the improved versions Dynamic HTML (DHTML). But des pite sharing the same name, the two imple mentations differ substantia ll y.
DHTML represents the combination of HTML, cascading style sheets (CSS), a nd scripting languages. How do th e three di ffer? Basically, HTML speci fies elements such as a heading or a paragr:iph. CSS gives content authors precise control over th e pr ese nta ti o n of that e leme nt. DHTML, th rough rh e Document Object M odel (DOM), providt:sa model and API
Bug ofthe Month
Empty Nest
Two Webmasters wrote
" " '"'ow....1 .·11··, 11.1...
~ '
~
' .\
~ ,· ::
' .ll · ButWord'sSave
I · qrllllUi,"* J.' as HTML doesn't --~ · __..'.:: preserve the nests.
'"ilil·fi#rr::=:-:=::----1 ·_"""",._ _ to us to complain that ,
Word 97 destroys nest-
_......,.
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ed bullets when you HerelnWord 97,
· Mooi...itlloa~~....
use the Save as HTML bulleted Items are · w.. w.J 1,..,. ,..
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\ a f t ! l ) ! a. . . ~!4fo
option. BYTE re- nested.
· w .. 1.ovd2 .... -<n<,.,dB""'l and</UL>around
produced the prob
' BWiL<Yd 2 " ...... Crw...di...a..> the nested items.
lem. In the first screen, you can see the "This is easy to fix if you know HTML," said
nested bullets in Word. The second screen one Webmaster, who wished to remain anon
shows the same bullets (without the nest ymous. "But we were hoping to use this fea
ing) after being saved in HTML formal using ture throughout our company, and I don't
Word 97's Save as HTML
have time to proofread everyone's bullets all
Apparently, Word forgot to insert a <UL> the time."
Send yours to jkrause@mgh.com!
to let an a uthor manipulate the HTML a nd CSS.
Netsc:ipe su pports DHT~1IL in Co m munic:itor 4.0 I , which is ava ilable fo r the Mac, Windows, and Unix. Microsoft's support wi ll a rrive with rhe im min ent
release of Internet Explorer4.0, bur Unix supp o rt w ill follow Windows and Mac supp ort by :ibout ISO days . For more informatio n on the diffe re nces between the two DHTMLs, see the table below.
L:iun::n Wood, chair of the World Wide
Dynamic HTML Comparisons
Features
Netscape Communlcator4.01
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 Preview
Cascading style sheets (CSS) Level 1
recommendations (CSS gives authors
cont~ol over document style [e.g,. which
fonts and colors to use]) .
·Can change style with an on-load evenl Netscape's implementation allows
style changes only as a page loads.
·Can change style during and after an on·load
event Microsoft's approach pennits dynamic
styles during and after the loading of a page,
CSS positioning (lets authors code drag and-drop behavior for objects on a page and enables object movement in 3-D) .
·Positions HTML elements with CSS. ·Also enables positioning through
Layers tag.
Document Object Model (a DOM interface ·Permitted for a subset of HTML tags
lets programs or scripts dynamically access and attributes accessible through aod update a document's content, structure, Netscape JavaScript object model. ar)d style).
·Positions HTML elements with CSS.
·Permitted for all HTML tags and
attributes-even characters associated with tags.
Language support (scripts, in any
language, manipulate object properties
and methods fo produce dynamic
content in response to user-generated
events}.
Event bubbling (can reduce code length when you need to manipulate many objects the same way [e.g ., drag and drop multiple items]).
· DOM accessible by European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) standard JavaScript only,
· No event bubbling.
·DOM accessible by ECMAJavaScript and VB Script.
· Event bubbling supported.
Data binding (enables faster data-based
Web experiences by reducing the need
to refresh data from a server).
·No implementation.
· Cache server-based data locally. · Sort and filter data without server. ·Supports ODBC, JDBC, and comma·
delimited data.
www.oyle.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 23
r-------------~------------, packages enabfe high-quality displays for
Survey
portable devices of the future. A variety of products, including hand-held per
sonal-information devices, fax/e-mail
Many Companies Just Starting to Address Y2K Problem
Ifyou haven'fyet com
pleted testing on your
ManyDevelopers Still baliJating Y2K:sollitions
year 2000 revisions, you're
not alone.A recent survey
of 150 BYTE readers con
Sii mappic eut strategy
ducted by BYTE's research
E~ pro!Jlems.
department indicates that
just over halfof the survey
respondents have com
So&dting proposals llpdatirg code intemaly
pleted testing their revi
Conlract8rs ~code sions that solve the noto
rious year 2000 problem.
Testing converted code
.. ·;
Over 30 percent are still
Completed teslilg
either evaluating possible
problems or a strategy or
Pa:cent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
soliciting proposals from
consultants on how to fix
the ir problems.
Soutee:BYlfResearch.
Base:Among those aware of potential prolifems. Num~rs wo~~ adil up IQ'
100 percent re.spondenrs could answer.~~ ro moo/!l!an Oflf1 S1!/ecoon.;. ':'·.
·. ..-;.·;.:·
L--------------------------~
viewers, digital cameras, and personal digital videodisc (DVD) players, could soon use these new displays, which all measure less than 0.5-inch diagonal.
Miniature displays are not new. Most of them today are fabricated using poly silicon processing, which offers better quality images than the amorphous sili con used in most direct-view LCDs that you see today in notebooks. The polysil icon process can produce pixel densities of about 600 dots per inch . For example, Sony already offers a 1.3-inch VGA mono chrome display and by this fa ll is expected to introduce a 1.8-inch XGA mono chrome display, primarily for use in pro jection products. Sony and Seiko Epson offer smaller-size displays, too, such as 0.7- or 0.55-inch diagonal for camcorders or virtual-reality goggles, but the current technology delivers image quality that
Web Consortium's DOM working group, experience with DHTML by experi isn't especially sharp at this resolution
says pre liminary specifications for key menting with one version or the other in and size.
elements of the W3C's DOM, a standard anticipation of the release of the final
However, the new display technolo
for how programs and scripts w ill dy specification.
-Rick Dobson gies, just now maturing, could dramati
namically access and update documen ts, will be available in August. Those ele ments include functionality for document navigation and manipulation, and pos sibly style manipul ation. However, Wood estimates that the W3C wo n't issue its final recommendation until sometime in
Mini Displays Get Sharper Focus
cally change the miniature-display land scape. These devices significantly advance pixel density, in some cases up to 2500 dpi. Consequently, they are being considered for dozens of new applications. Almost all these new displays will be used for vir tual displays: displays that are viewed
1998.
New display technologies that feature within a few inches of the eye. Virtual dis
"DHTML will permit Web-site devel very high pixel densities in miniature plays can be hand-held, head-mounted,
opment with richer multimedia effects
and more interactivity," says Sal Arora, technical products manager at NetOb
New Mini Displays at a Glance
jects. NetObjects markets Fusion, a Web development tool for those who want to
Company
Pi xels/color
Diagonal Type size (Inches)
Delivery
spend more time developing content than writing HTML. NetObjects says it is working with ·Netscape and Microsoft
800 x 600/color 0.36
Polymer dispersed
Sampling LCD on silicon now
DHTML versions.
However, others are waiting. Ed Fore man, marketing manager at Elemental Software, which markets the Drumbeat dynamic Web-site authoring program, says he is "taking a wait-and-see stance on DHTML" and is recommending the same for his clients. Like many bleeding-edge
640 x 480/color
0.24 <
0.40
Twisted·nemaflc, -· sampling no~
,LCD on glass with
lift-off silicon e l ec\~on ics . ,
Ferro electric LCD on silicon
Sampling now
technologies, DHTML offers significant
innovation. Developers who can't resist
the call of the wild may find it best suited
for small intranets or extranets, where it
is possible to mandate the use of a single
browser type. Others may want to gain
2 4 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byte.com
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1"'4)(0)19'3 211su.8
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or body-worn. Although they are riny, magnification optics produce a high-res olution virtua l image that is simil ar to viewing a desktop monitor.
Ko pin Corp . (Taunton, MA) recentl y introduced a quarter-inch VGA, mo no chro me LCD that is just 0.24 inch diago nal. The CyberDisplay has an impressive 1700-dpi pitch, and the compan y plans to improve that to 2500 dpi by the end o f the year. In Kopin's approach, electro n ics are fa bricated on silicon, transferred to glass, and assembled using traditi onal crystal materials.
H aviland Wright, CEO o f DisplayTech (Lo ngmo nt, CO) , says persona l-i nfo r
mation devices w ill have to be VGA reso lution or better, because this will redu ce the amo un t of scrolli ng people have to do when viewing in fo rmation in a vi rtual display. " Peop le d o n' t wa ne t o scro ll through info rmatio n," says Wright. Dis playTech is now sampling a VGA-resolu tion display that has about 2000 dpi.
Silisca pe (Pa lo Al to, CA), a Si licon Va ll ey start-up, wi ll soon begin sa m pling its new miniature display. The SYGA device will feature a 2500-dpi resoluti on and is packaged with a compound opti cal system tharmeasuresonly 1.18 by 1.56 by 0.43 inches. " We have no prob lem showing IO-point rest on our displays,'
boasts Alfred Hi ldebrand, the president and CEO o f Siliscape.
Both Silisca pe an d DisplayTec h p ro duce color images using fie ld-sequential techniques. With th is method, red, green, and blue LEDs are used to sequentially illu minate the display at app roximately 180 frames per second. Both companies also feature a silicon elecrronics substrate on which a reflective layer and liq uid crystal
I.
ost everyone is screaming for ways to make Unix and Windows NT work tog ether
easily and effectively. Softway Systems' easy solution puts them on the sam e plat·
fonn. In integrating the two OSes, Softway's OpenNT does more than simply provide inte·
gration between Unix and NT: OpenNT provides a complete, native Unix subsystem on
top of an NT kernel. OpenNT is so much like Unix that it conforms to Posix.2 standards,
and Softwayexpects that by the end of the year, it will achieve the Open Group's XPG Unix
95 branding. When that hap·
pens, OpenNT can be truly called Unix.
OpenNT is more than inter· operability software.Other inter· operability-software products take one of several strategies, such as cross-platform APls , Windows emulation for Unix (e.g ., Bristol and Mainsoft) ,or Unix emulation for Windows (such as MKS toolkit or Cyg· nus's GNU Win32) . These other solutions usually have a price, such as reduced perfor mance, limited functionality and compatibility,or high cost. Soft· way's prod uct solves these problems by running Unix and NT natively together. OpenNT also lets Windows and Unix applications run side by side on a single desktop, making it a strong choice for users who need applications from both systems. Mary Hubley, principal analy st, Datapro In forma tion Services Group, analyzes the N T and Unix
OpenNT 2.0's \!1ltp:t /www.soft. ~ay. cam)
"JJr ~.;r f ci i c ii c;tudc·
Posix.1, Posix.2, and ANSI C interfaces BSD sockets mapped to Winsock SVID IPC (message queues, semaphores) shared memory, memory·mapped files · ability to execute Win32 applications from OpenNT full tty semantics mapped to console windows pseudoterminal support X11 R5 Windowing System clients and libraries X11 R6 Windowing System display server X11 R6 fonts and font management OpenNTiF (OSF/Motif 1.2.4 window manager, libraries, development kit) telnet daemon service (multiuser log·in support) file-link support, true case-sensitive filenames over 200 Unix and X11 R5 commands and utilities Unix shells: KornShell, Bourne shell, C shell Unix scripting languages: awk, Perl, sed, Tcl/Tk full shell job control full integration with Windows NT security model full integration with Windows NT file systems cron service, system service, daemon support Internet clients : FTP, telnet, ping, rsh integrated tape·device support Unix development tools: make, res, yacc, lex, cc , c89, nm, ar, strip
marke ts. Hu bley is manager of
Datapro An alyst : Reports on W indows NT, which focuses on the Windows N T market and re lated
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ag ement strategies. For more information on Datapro reports, ca/1609 ·764·0100; fax: 609-764 -281 4;
http://www.datapro.com.
Kopin's CyberDisplay offers high resolution in a small package.
material are add ed. T herefore, rhe display operates in reflective mode. DisplayTech uses a ferroe lectric liquid crystal, where as Siliscape uses a polymer-dispersed liq uid crysta l.
Planar America (Beaverton, OR) is cur rentlysampling a miniature display based on electro lum inescent tec hn o logy. Here, yellow-green phosphors are deposited on top of the active matrix, which is fa bri cated in silicon. Ap plying voltage causes the phospors to emi t their own light. Den siti es of up to 1000 d pi are possible today, w ith 2000 dp i promised by the end of the yea r.
An ex pl osion of new wi re less hand held personal-in fo rmation devices could be in the o ffin g. By the end of the year, several wireless networks are ex pected to support data rares of 28.8 Kbps, enough bandwidth fo r many applications. Glen Kephart, Ko pin 's vice president of mar keting fo r displ ay p ro ducts, says, "We think our displ ays have the visual quali ty, low power, and price points (u nder $30 each in vo lum e) that will wor k for this market."
DisplayTech's Wright sees even bigger uph eava ls com ing. "We may be at the beginning of a new phase, where conver gence and hardware, like mi niarure dis pl ays, wi ll drive p rod uct in novati o n." Many urge caution, however. Products that used earli er-generati on mini displays have not fa red well. Perh aps the higher densi ties offered by t his new crop will make the difference. -Chris Chinnock
2 6 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byte.com
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Visionoor Papo1Port Strobe scanner... 299.00
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1-<nodem ISDN V.34 laxmodem external ·. 2Ge.02
DalaBurst ISON U Interlace eJCtemal .· 205.49
Dall' Bu rsi ISDN SIT in1orface oa:tomal . 231.28
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Colof Jetprinler 1020 ............ .. 141.91
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Optra s 2450 .. .. .... .. .. . ...... 2175.09
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12.1 dual1 0X CD .··.. . .. . · . . . . . . 1959.45 430CDT 51120 16MB 1.2GB 11.3' active 10X CD · ..·.. . ·.. ..·. 2279.16 440CDX 51133 MMX 16MB 1.34GB 12.1· dual 10X CD .····.· .· .. . . . · 2449.73 440CDT 51133 MMX 1GMB l.34GB 12.1· activo 10X CD ·...·....... . . 3149.69 460CDT 51166 MMX 32MB 2.02GB 12. 1' active IOX CD .··. . .....·. .. 3837.78
~¥~~~·:.a:kMB l.51 GB
10.-r active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . 3C~4 . 18 660CDT 51150 1GMB 1.2GB
11.3" actNe 10X CD . . . .·.....·... 4237.92 Tecra Notebook.I 510CDT 51133 16MB 2. IGB 12. 1" activo 10X CD ·. . .... . .. ..·. 2196.80 520CDT 51166 MMX 32MB 2.02GB 12.1' activo SVGA 10X CD . . · . ·· .. · 4297.29 530C DT 51 166 MMX 32MB 2.02GB 12.1· active XGA 1OX CD . .. ·· . · .. . 4696.39 730XC DT 51150 MMX 16MB 2GB 12.1' active 10X CD .·.. . · .. .····. 4179. 11 740CDT 51166 MMX 16MB 2GB 13.3" active 10X CD ··· .. .·. .. . . . . 5589.75 740CDT 51166 MMX 16MB 3GB 13.3' ac1ivo 10X CD .· . . . . . .· .··. · 5866.02
mm lnllnle Mlnl·towua
~~i1,~~~~~Jf2~co :
~~'Si1~1~~~~2.1GB 12XCD . 1649.47
52000 !>.!00 MMX 32MB 2.SGB 12X CD . 1847.45 6200D 6/200 32MB 3GB 12X CD ·· . . 2234.52 Equlum Mlnl·towera 6200M 6/200 32MB 4.3GB 12X CD .. 3099.92
AST
AscanUa Noleboot1a
A60 Plus 511 50 i &:t.B 1,44GB
12. 1· active 1ox c u ··.. . . . · . · · . . . 2658.65
A60 Plus 511 SO 16MB 2. 1GB
12.1" activo 10X CO . . . · . . . . . .. ... 2979.63
A70 Plus 51150 MMX 1GMB 1.44GB
12.1" adivo 10X CD ······ · .··.··· 3075.711
A70 Plus 51150 MMX 16MB 2. IGB
12.1· active 10X CD · ···.· · ··..·· . 3445.14
P70 51150 MMX 32MB 2.1GB
12.I' active 10X CD . . · . · .· ·· ·· . · . 3899.64
P60 51166 MMX 32MB 3GB
12.1· active 10X CD . . ······.· . ··. 4389.43
Bravo LC 6233 Se~H Desktops
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·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
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76 "
51 166 16MB 2GB·· . .. . ··... . · ·· .. 1245.76
51 166 32MB 2GB 16X CD ..·..· . . . . 1487.26
51 51
166 1GO
32MB 3GB MM)( 32MD
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5/200 32MB 3GB 16X CD .... . ·..·. 1487.28
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COMPAQ
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n:nr 51120 16MB 1.00GB 10.4" """"'· .. 1199.00 1510DM 51120 16MB 1GB 11.3· dual 10X CD ..·.. . ....·.··.. 1799.30 1520DM 51133 1GMB 1GB 11.3 dual 10X CD ....·....·· . ...· 1989.47 1530DM 51 133 MMX 16MB 1.4GB 12.1" dual 10X CD ... . · . . ·· . 2899.00 1550DMT 51133 16MB 1.4GB 12.1" active1 0XCD ·· ·... . . ·· . · · . 3199.00 15SODMT 51150 MMX 16MB 2.1GB 12.1' activo 10X CD ..·.. . . . ·. . ... 3699.00 4120 51 120 16MB 1.08GB 11 .3" dual .· 1299.00 41:nT 51133 16M8 UlOOB 11.ll" adive.. 2497.23 4131T !>'13316M81.4GB 12.1" 8CIM! ··· 2649.00 415051150MMX 16MB 1.tlGB 12.l"<Ull .. 2999.00
f l'lijii Mf
COMPAQ
Armada Notebooks 4100T51166MMX 16MB2GB 12.1"8C!Ml . 3999.00 7710MT 51 150 MMX 16MB 1.0GB t 2. 1· active . . ... .... .. . . . ·.. .. · . 4399 .00 7730MT 51166 MMX 32MB 2.1GB 12.1· ac1ivo .. . ... . . ...... . . ..... 4999.00 n50MT 51166 MMX 32MB 2.1GB
12.1 " active .. . . . . .. . · . ·...··.··· 5799.00
~J/:%J'm~1'~°rJ'T.2GB . .···.. 989.oo
513312500 51133 1GMB 2.5GB ···... 1089.00 616CY1200al&'1BO ISMS 1.2GBBXCD . 1669.00 61BQl2SOCl'Cll &'!BO 32MB 2.5GB BX CD . 1859.00 621Xl'2500CD &200 16MB 2.5GB BX CD · 1999.00
~:~&i'1;n!~°.8~exro .. 1199.00
516&'2500'CD 51166 3'totB 2.5GB BX CD.· . 1549.00 6200'2500a> &200 32MB 2.5GB BX CD. . ·2109.00
~~4m~11~°Ef~.62GB.... . . 1119.00
51 66/1620 51166 16MB 1.62GB..···. 1249.00 516612500/LS 51166 16MB 2.SGB ·· .. 1299.00 618Gl1620/CDS 61180 32MB 1.62GB ex CD .. . . .. . .... . . . ·. . · 2039.00 6180/2500/CDS/LS 61 180 32MB 2.SGB ex CD ...· .. . ··· . ..··.··. 1979.00
6200J2500/LS/CD56l20032MB 2.SGB ex CD . . . . ....···..·.· . . . 2149.00 6233X/2500/COS 233MHz Pentium II 32MB 2.SGB . ..·· ...·...... . · · . 2319.00
~~!;J!~~o~/~1~2'JB"1.62GB ·.. 1199.0o ~~\i~~8s0i~lmMa
2. 15GB PD-CD ... ... . · .. . . . . .·. . 1839.00 616ot.!150/CDS 61160 32MB 2.15GB ex CD . .. ....··.·.··.·· . 2299.00 6200/2150/CDS 6/200 32MB 2. I SGB ex CD . . . . . . . · . · . . . . .. 2459.00 6200/4200/CDS 6/200 32MB 4.2GB PD-CD · .... ..····..····. . 2719.00 6233xtZ1SOIPOS 233MHz Penllum II 32MB 2. 15GB . .. . .... ... ....· ..· 2629.00 6266X/4200/CDS 266MHz Ponllum 11 32MB 4.2GB . · . · . ·······..····. 3179.00
~~:OsMJt"iJsow:J~B
2.15GB 6X CD .··.·...·... .. .··· 1819.00
5166Xl2150/PDS 51166 MMX 32MB
2.1GB PD-CD ·· . ·... . . ·...··· .. · 1649.00
5200X/4200/PDS 5/200 MMX 32MB
4.2GB PD-CD ·.·. · . ...... ·. ·.··. 2579.00
6200/4200/PDS 6/200 64MB
4.2GB PD·CD · · .. ··. .. .·.... . ··. 30119.00
~~~f~4~0d'~Ge ex cD· . ···· · · 999.oo
Presario Mlnl·towers
4a11!>.!00MMX32MB 4.3GB 24X CD · . 1999.00 4614 51233 MMX 32MB 6.5GB 24X CD
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IBM
ThlnkPod Notebooks
380 51150 16MB 1.06GB 12.1' dual. .. 1739.e9
3900&1601GVB 1.35G812.1.d.Gt8XO).. 19".50 380D 51150 MMX 16MB 2.1GB
12.1· active ax co ............. .· 3287.43
560 51100 6MB e10MB 11 .3" duol .... 1399.00
560 51 133 eMB 2.1GB 11.3" dual ··. . 1936.33
560 51133 eMB 2.1GB 12. 1' octivo ·.. 3789.45
500E 51150MMX 16M82.1GB 11.3'<Ull . . 2599.86
500E51166""1X 16M82.1GB 12.l"ac!Ml · .4188.26
760ED 51133 16MB 2.1GB
12.1" activo6X co .... . ....... . . . Jan.se
760E 51150 16MB 2. 1GB 12.1· active . 3578.40
78lXL5'1661.'l'AX 161J82.1GB l ot l"acM> .· 3869.88
760XL 51 166 MMX 32MB 2.1GB
12.1· activo .. . · . ..... . .·..···· ·. 4064~04
760XD 51 166 MMX 32MB 3GB
12. 1· active 8X CO .. . ..· . . . . . .. .. 4829.3&
765L51166 MMX 3'totB 3GB 13.3" - . i . . 5999.71
765D 13.3"
51 166 oct lv o
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.
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6659.22
PC300GL Serles Des ktops
51166 16MB l.2GB .. . .·. .. . .. .. . . . 999.63
51166 1GMB 2.5GB ... . .·.·...·. .. 1129.68
51166 16MB 2.5GB 16X CD.....· . . · 1369.68
51166 MMX 32MB 2.5GB ··. . ··· .. . 1426 .68
IBM
="~"i'~~ lfiXCD ··· 2296.SO
233MHz Pentium II 32MB 2.5GB . . ·· 1999.38 266MHz PoolJm 11 32MB4.2GB 16X CD · ·2659.12 266MHz Ptll11Un II 32MB 4.3GB 16X CD .· 2997.69
NEC
Versa Notebook·
253051133 IGMB 1.08GB 12.l"dual.. 1699.00 2630CD 51133 16MB 1.44GB 12.1" dual 10X CD ·.··. · . ····· . .· 1999.00 2650CD 51150 MMX 16MB 1.44GB 12. 1" dual 10X CD . ··...·· 2499.00 2650CDT 51 150 MMX 16MB 1.44GB 12.1· active 10X CD .. ···. .. 3199.00 6050MH 51150 MMX 16MB 1A4GB 12.1" adM! 10X CD ······.· 3799.00 6050/.IX 51150 MMX 16MB 2. 1GB 12.1· adive 1OX CD ·············· 43119.00 6050NT 51150 MMX 16MB 2.1GB 12. 1· active 10X CD ··.· · ... ·.···· 4599.00 6200MX 51166 MMX 32MB 2. IGB 13.3" active 10X CD . . ...· .······· 8899.00 6200NT 51166 MMX 32MB 2. 1GB 13.3' active 10X CD · .. · . ·.···.··· 5899.00
=~·,t~ernaav1~~r.1.~~~~ .· . . 999.oo ~~rM~t~v~~~a°:~~i~1co ... . . 1352.00
PowerMale Value Mini-towers V2133 51133 16MB 1.6GB·· · · · ·· . ·· 1058.00 V2133 51 133 16MB 2GB ex CD . . .·· 1175.00
='~~i~=~:iruc0~ .. 101s.oo
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Aceff ... ~ENTS
Extensa Notebooks 610CD 51150 16MB 1.4GB 11.3' dual 10X CD . . . .. .. . .·.·.··. 1964.87 610CDT 51150 16MB 1.4GB 11 .3" actNe 10X CD ··.·..··.··.. · 25'9.84 660CD 51166 MMX 16MB 1.35GB 12.1" dual 10X CD ......·..··· . ·. 2699.55 660CDT 51166 MMX 16MB 2.1 GB
11.Y actMt 10X CO . . .. .·........ 3179.04
TravelMate Notebooks TIA6160 51166 MMX 32MB 2. 1GB 12. 1· active 10X CD · . . . .. ·. . ···.. 4699.26 TM7060 51166 MMX 32MB 2GB
12. 1· active 10X CO .. .. ... . . ... , . 4289.59 TM7063NT 51 166 MMX 32MB 3GB
12.1" active !OX CD · . . . . ·.··.·.·. 4949.69
(6,] ~~.::.:;
HP OmnlBook 800 5erfea Notebooka
SOOCT 51166 MMX 16MB 2GB
10.4" active .
. ..... .. . , . . . . . 4145.18
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51150 MMX 16MB 1.66GB 12. 1" active .. 4496.09
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51166 MMX 1GMB 1.B6GB 12.1" llCli\-o ·· 5139.51
51166 MMX 32MB 2.79GB 12. 1" 0Cli\1l . . 5759.35
HP Vectra VL PC Sartcs 5 Oe1ktop1
51166 16MB 1.6GB ···.··.····..· 11159.30
51166 MMX 16MB 2.5GB.·..··..·· 13n.09
51200 16MB 2.5GB · ... .....·. · .·. 1449.60
5/200 MMX 32MB 2.5GB .. . ·...· · 1598.63
51233 MMX 16MB 2.SGB. . . . . · . . .· 1598.12
HP Vectra YL PC Serles 5 Mlnl·lowers
5f133 16MB l.6GB ·.. .. ··.·.·... 1219.4'
51166 16MB 2.5GB . .. .·..···.··.· 12.29.50
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51166 32MB 2.5GB . . . . . .. . ..·... . 1519.54
5/200 16MB 2.5GB ... . . ....·..... 1395.28
51233 MMX 32MB 2.5GB .·...·...· 1889.78
HP Veetra VE PC Serles 3 Oes ktopa
51133 16MB 1GB··· . ·. · · . ····.··· 1037.03
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51166 16MB 1.6GB · · ·.·.·. ·. ·.. . · 1038.97
5/200 16MB 1.6GB .· . .· .. .··.· . .. 1048.60
3'1t'41·t:a 1f
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HP Yectra 520 Serlea Desktops
520 51133 16MB 1.2GB... . . .. .. .··· 988.20
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16MB 1.6GB 16X CD.. 1327.84
HP Vectra series Mlnl·towers
525MCx
16MB 1.6GB 16X CD.. 1336.84
525CD 51166 16MB 1.6GB 16X CD.. . 1234.78
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16X CD . ..· . ...... . . .. ... . . . .·. 1489.85
525MCx 51166 MMX 24MB 2.SGB
16X CD · . . . . . ... ·· . .. . . .. . · .·· 1549.85
525CD 5/200 MMX 24MB 2.SGB
16X CD . . ... ... .. . ..· . . . . . · · . ·· 1588.65
no- 525MCx 5/200 MMX 32MB 2.5GB
16XCD . ... ..... ..... .. . . . . . . . .· . .. ···· 1938.70
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BX CD
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10/100 Ethernet .·. . · . . . . . ·. ... .. 2314.03
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10/100 Elheme1. . . .... . . .· . . . ..·· 2889.39
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_ _Int
Buried in Data
integrated data resource that will·survive and support changing hardware, system
Ju:stwhen y,ou thought you·were safe from
software, applications, and business activ viruses, hackers·, and the year 2.000 cri
ities. Other topics covered include cleans
sis, another computer disasterhas popped ing, transforming, and distributing data.
up to menace your orgar:iization: data dis
Brackett employs copious examples, fig
parity. It stands between you and the rapid, ures, and boxed notes. As he introduces
effective, and profitable use of your data. each new topic, definition, or key design
What's worse, you might not even kriow thatyou suffer from it.
The Data
point, he reinforces it with a practical
Warehouse a If you don't have cohesive,
organized collection of data from
example. Each of the 15 chapters
which you can retrieve current, accurate, and integrated informa
Challenge
ends with a com prehensive sum
tion, you can't support the opera
mary ar\d. a list of
tion of your business or organiza
review questions,
tion. Disparate data won't let you
making the book
draw conclusions from
valuable for initial
different sets of data.
implementation and
Also, .it won1t accom"
ongoing reference.
·moCl?te a.dY,n?miq bu~i~ 1ness environment. Ana
Divided. into six
parts, D~t~·~ware"
it won't.let you plan for
house: Practical Advice from
the future.
the Experts discusses the
Teaching you to rec
major phases of a data-ware
ognize and manage this
house project. It comprises
latest crisis is the goal of
28 essays by 20 well-cre
The Data Warehouse
dentialed authors, each of
Challenge: Taming
whom bring their ow1\experi
Daia Chaos by Michaef
ence, style, and perspective
Br ackett and Data
to bear on the topic of data
Warehouse: Practical
warehousing. Bu.twhile this
Advice from the Exp,eds.byJoyce Bischoff and Ted·Alexander. ·Both books extol the
.
app-roach provides a.fascinating depth of
'opinion and scope of experienc~. it also
virtues of the data warehouse-a single inte robs the book of coherency.
grated data resource that supports your
Evaluated individually, several of the
organization's business needs. The two essays are exceptional. "Real-World Data
books approach the topic of data ware Warehousing: The Management Chal
housing from different angles, but both pur lenge" by Howard Fosdick, for example,
port to save you from the pitfalls of being delves into the reasons why data:ware
i:fata-rich and information-poor.
house projects fail and how information
In. The Data 'Warehouse Challenge, technology management can recqgnize and
Brackett provides a 579-page compre head off these problems. "Data Quality" by
hensive and understanpable guide for plan Sid Adelman stands out as welifor-its point
. ning, designing, and imµ,lementing an oper by·point evaluation of data qualify, itsl mpact
ational data warehouse. He explains the on practical syste.ms, and its cost
dilemma ofdisparate data and points to the
Overall, this book makes clear the au
business data cycle that creates and per thors' belief in data-warehousing technol
petuates the problem. He addresses data ogy, but, despite its title, the bookis some
architecture, taxonomy,and quality, culmi what light on practical advice for thpse new
nating in guidelines for creation of the meta'
to the topic. Newcomers to the topic would
data that-powers the data warehouse.
be better served·by Brackett's l:ir:>~,~· ,,
In simple, logical steps1Brackett guides Rob Hummel is a frequent contributor to BYTE you through the construc tion of a stable, He can be reached at rhummel@cheshire.net.
Tbe Dita Warehouse Challenge: 1'amlng Data Cfiaos,by Michael H. 13rackett, Wiley Computer Publishing, ISBN 0-471 -12744-2, $44.95
Data Warehouse: Practical Advice
from the Experts, by Joyce Bi&Ghoff.
and Ted Ale~der, Prentice-Hilll,
ISBN 0·13-577?:3'70-9, $50
3 0 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
JavaCyber Class
Java multimedia study hall
Java Mu ltimedia Cyber Classroo m lacks the whizbang technical so phistry ro do ics buzzword-laden tirle credit, but the CD makes up for its lack of piz zazz with solid information on Java progra mming, a thou ghtful teaching approac h, and plenty of exce llent code sam p l es.
Cyber Classroom seems a throwback ro early multimedia books on CD-ROM. Yes, there i a scand-alone introducrory video, pop-up coding tips, and audio clips, buc the CD lacks enhancements such as ri ch Web links and auromated application macros. Given the incerac tive nature ofjava itself, such modern flourishes are conspicuously absent. A new editio n of the cirle, slated fo r Sep tember release, is updated ro cover the Java 1.1 event model and will be rewrit
ren from che gro und up in Java. The new ve rsion of this CD-ROM wi ll be more interactive and will run on multiple OSes.
The current tide's best fearure, live code, is a srorehouse of usefu l pro gra ms (nocjust code snippers) chat you can view, paste into o ther app lications, or launch direccly co witness che code in actio n. This CD seems more like a cyber srudy hall than an inreracrive multime dia classroom, bur the authors have done their homework. -Stan Diehl
·1ww.byte.com
····
You were expecting a new version.] But you weren 't expecting this.
[ www.microsoft.com/ ie4/ prevlew/
Where do you want to go today?®
www.mlcrosoft.com/le/
0 1997 M ltr~ft Corporation. A.II nghts resef\'Cd . Microsoft and Where do you w<1nt to go today? are registered traaemar'!(S aoo the Microsoft Internet E.xpJorer logo ls o tmdemar1< of Microsoft Corporatk>n.
BYTE
More Powerful,
Flexible Storage
Anders Lofgren, a senior analyst for Giga Information
Group, discusses trends in high-end storage.
We wonde.red if Unix were dead. Obviously, it wasn't, and isn't. But Win·
dows NT continues to ~!iJ~!1E~ infiltrate Unix shops.
Also: more ecologi· callysound PCs, pho tonics, and 386 and 486 notebooks. The status of pen comput ing wasaptly summa· ~=~~--.J rized by Nick Baran:
ma11y, riv~'rs to oross. ·:., ~~..~{: .
We looked at OS/2 and how to program for·(then) Microsoft's (then) up·arld·com·
Ing os~ Emerging printer teehnol0gie&
were.also covered in depth. A Kaypro 386
based·Pc cost $4495-without a hard
drive (add $1300 for the 40-MB hard drive).
In an article on computers aridthe disabled, we sai<i! computers should, in addition to providing speciaJ assistance, provide · access to standard software. And that's still an issue today. Awealth of products provide.the disabled with access, but it's still o.ften too hard to get these products
suoh as,!!cre,en readers to wo~with off·
the· sh~0!fapplication13. Maybe someei~~'.
E
The first,J9$ue in BYTE's third yeardfpub llcatlonfeatured many articles on comput ersand musie. Carl Helmera predicted that appliance computers (ones that were pre assembled and tested, such as the "high end" Apf.:/le.IO would dominate in the gen· eral-puf159se personal-computing field.
.;
BYTE: What are the most important
trends in high-end PC server storage? Lofgren: Fibre Channel technologies are th e most significant development occurring over the next six months to 24 months. The connection between the server and storage devices is, for th e most part, SCSI-based today, although some sites have Serial Storage Architec ture (SSA) products such as IBM's 7133 SSA disk subsystem. But SCSI has perfor mance and connectivity limitatio ns. For example, Ultra SCSI's performance is up to 40 MBps wirh a connectivity distance [between server and storage] of about 25 meters. Fibre Channel offers max i mum performance of 100 MBps and a distance of 10 kilometers. We' re not going to ger the 10-kilometer distance initially. You can expect initial products to suppo rt up to 500 meters, which will be followed closely after that by 2 kilo meters. But I think that just going past that 25 meters is a great advantage for users. Going beyond 25 meters lets you get more of a distributed-storage arch i tecture than you've had in the past, especially in a campus environment, where you can run from one end of the campus to the other.
BYTE: What are the advantages of that
type ofarchitecture? Lofgren: The advantages of Fibre Channel a re in performance, distance, connectivity, and flexibility. A simple example is physical configu rati on. If
you have multiple servers and multiple storage devices, you need space to store all those systems. There's a physical footprint issue here. If the server can be only up to 25 meters away from th e storage device, that rea ll y limits where you are physically locating these sys tems. Because Fibre Channel increases the distance between servers and stor· age, you can, for example, now put all your storage in one central area. Or, if you're in a campus environment and you want to have some type of fai lover or backup capability from one part of th e campus to the other, Fibre Channel will let you do that.
BYTE: What is Fibre Channel network
ing, and how does it make things better? Lofgren: Many Fibre Channel discus sions revolve around the interconnect and replacing SCSI to give you the per formance and connectivity that we just discussed. But I look at that as the first phase. The next big step is going with the networking phil osoph y. The Fibre Channel interconnect is a point-to-point interconnect (from a server to a storage node). But what happens when you have multiple servers and multiple storage devices? You want to find a way to give one server access to multiple sto rage devices. You could do that over yo ur I.AN, but then the network becomes the 1/0 bottleneck. But if we put traditional netwo rking components, like switches and hubs, into our storage infrastruc ture, that lets you connect to multiple serve rs with multiple storage devices. This will have somewhat the same look that you have in you r LJ\N and WAN envi ronment, except now it's part of your storage infrastrucmre, your servers and storage devices. A very important point here is the fl exibility. One of the things it lets you do is move toward application-specific storage devices. Fibre Channel 's fl exi bility lets you intro duce a much more modular building block type of architectu re. We can run e it more toward specific applications.
3 2 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
WW\-V.t)yte . c-om
New systems built around Intel's 300-MHz Pentium II push high performance solutions in two directions. By Robert L. Hummel
The Pentium II Soars to 300 MHz
n the never-ending race for speed, Imel has pumped the Pentium II CPU up roan awe inspiring300 MHz. However, when we challenged PC vendors to pro vide systems, only nvo big-name vendors, Compaq and NEC, stepped up to the plate with 300-MHz systems based on the current 440FX chip set. Most were unable to ship hardware in time for our deadline. We surmised that the majoriry of manufacturers are sav ing their 300-MHz chips for Intel's new high-performance chip set, dubbed the 440LX. The 440LX will add support for the performance-enhancing features, such as synchronous DRAM (SD RAM), Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), and 33 MBps disk-drive access, that will truly showcase the 300-MHz Pentium !l's power. LX-based systems are expected in the fourth quarter.
Graphics Diva
Compared to the NEC PowerMate Pro fessional, the Compaq Professiona l Workstation 6300 is unabashedly a high end screamer. This dual-CPU-capable workstation is ruggedly built and fast.
Our test unit was packed with 128 MB of RAM, a 4-GB SCSI hard drive, and a 16x CD-ROM drive. It came with Windows NT 4.0 and Service Pack 1. User-service able componenrs, such as the CPU and memory, are installed in slide-out mod ules. The entire expansion-card cage comes out as a single unit, making shuf fling expansion cards a delight. The chas sis design is ex.-rremely user-friendly. You can open the case, remove modules, and install expansion cards and CPUs without using a single tool.
In our BYTEmark tests (which are CPU specific), the Compaq 6300 scored 4.25 on the integer tests and 4.99 on the FPU tests-exactly what we've measured on other FX-based 300-MHz Pentium II sys-
PERFORMANCE
terns (see "First 300-MHz Pentium fl Results," July BYTE). The Bapco and Viewperf benchmark results, however, were mixed compared to those of the NEC PowerMate.
Bapco's Sysmark for Windows NT 4.0 loads the system with a mix of applica tions rypical of office PCs and light-duty workstations. In Sysmark / NT 4, the Compaq 6300's scores were lower than either the NEC PowerMate or compara ble 266-MHz systems in all but the pre sentation-graph ics category. The 6300 is clearly not optimized for word process ing. But when we pushed it to produce high-end 3-D graphics, it truly shined.
We also ran the DX 3.0 and CDRS 3.0 viewsets under Viewperf 5.0, an indus try-standard OpenGL graphics perfor mance benchmark (available at http:// www.specbench.org). On DX, the 6300 turned in an impressive frames-per-sec ond score of 5.80. Using the CDRS view-
set, the system returned a 36.54 rating. These scores handily beat comparably priced systems reviewed in the Decem ber 1996 BITE and lntergraph'sdual-Pen itium II 266-MHz TD225 (see "3-D Price Breakthrough," June BYTE). The 6300 is simply the fastest x86 graphics system we've tested to date.
The secret to its stunning performance is Diamond Mulrimedia's latest high-end graphics card, the Fire GL 4000. With 15 MB of RAM for frames and z-buffering and another 16 MB for texture buffering, combining the Fire GL4000 with the 300 MHz Pentium II is akin tosrrappinga mis sile to a rocker.
At $12,600, the 6300 is pricey and clearly in a different category than the PowerMate. More than a third of the cost is due to the Fire GL 4000 board and the 21-inch monitor. But if uncompromised high-performance 3-D graphics is your goal, the 6300 is a bargain. co11ti1111ed
**** * Outstanding
** * ****Very Good ***Good
Fair
Poor
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 33
Eval The Pentium 11 Soars to 300 MHz
·payjgJ~r Performance
COippiq
.6300
NEC
lnterll:aph
TD225· 1266. Miil) ....__,___,___,____ _____,
· lnlllcer · FPU
0 DX I CDRS
~nsurp~SJ~~J·. our CllU-lsola~ng BYfEmarks turned out neanyldentlcai.tor t11e,1Wq ~·.J·niorus a pricey office ~em, bested tile graphlcs·onented 6300 on B~pco Sysmark
300-MHz syste!J\~1 ifhe 6300'scSUperfast Diamond Multimedl a Are Gb4000 boalil \l{··BPP,lf!J8tlon tests..(Note: Vlewperf 5.0 tests were run at .1024- by 768-plxel resolutlori
· tlelps iface lhti Vlewperf graphic tests, While the PowerMate, wtilch Is positioned . ; wit!Hrue color.)
Office Champ
NEC set out to demonstrate that you can inject a 300-MHz Pentium II into a serious business PC without breaking the bud get-and it succeeded. The test Power M ate came with 64 MB of RAM, a 3.2-GB IDE hard drive, a 16x CD -ROM drive, and Windows NT 4.0 w ith Service Pack 3. The
machine had an integrated sound system but no netwo rk interface. Still, it pushes practical offic e workstation s abo ut as far as they can go today.
Scoring 4. 25 on the BITEmark integer tests (4.95 o n the FPU tests), the Powe r Mate fin ished in a virtual dead heat wi th the 63 00 , w hich is n' t su rp r is ing co n
lldlll·MlllBOARD DES I G N
Designing at Light Speed
As clock speeds increase, designers are having an increasingly difficult ~ime crafting meth ods to exchange signals reliably between the processor, the chip set, and other components on the System board.
Atypical signal on a printed circuit board travels at over 118,000 miles per second-64 percent of the speed of light Although that's fast enough to circle the earth in about 200 milliseconds, the same signal in a 300-MHz system requires a full CPU clock cycle to cross a 12-inch circuit board. Signal timing becomes the overriding concern during board design.
To ensure that signals arrive attheir intended location atthe righttime, board layout must take into consideration trace lengths, component placement, and even the delay in routing the clock trace from the processor edge fingers, through the substrate, and to the proccs.sor core.
As bus speeds climb into the UHF RF spectrum, digital design techniques merge with ana log, because the copper traces on the circuit board begin to act like wave guides and anten nas. Each pulse rings and overshoots, and is subject to cross talk and interference from adja cent signals.
When the processor sends out a signal into an ideal load, the si~nal voltage ramps up smoothly from its low value to its high value. When the signal is pumped into a real load, specifically a socket,circuit- board trace, and receiving component, the timing changes rad ically. Bythetime the signal arrives at the target component, it has been mutated by reflec tions, cross talk. and propagation effects.
To make a bad situation worse, the Pentium ll's GTL+ (Gunning Transceiver Logic) bus uses low-voltage-swing 1/0 buffers. Although using a lower-voltage swing enables higher signal speeds, it also creates correspondingly tighter noise and timing tolerances than in older PC technologies.
Finally, due to the large number of transistors and high internal clock speeds, the Pentium 11 generates large average current swings between low and full power states. This can cause the supply voltages on the circuit board to sag below their nominal value. Failure to antici pate these swings during board design can change the signal timing and fatally damage the components.
sid erin g th at at the CPU level, both ma chines are essentially the same.
Bapco and Viewperfbenchmark results, however, differed markedly. The Power M a te's video ch o res were ha ndl ed by N umber Ni ne's Revolutio n 3D gra ph ics card ($449), which came loaded with 8 MB of RAM. T his card is well tuned and appro priately priced for business or low-end 2-D or 3-D graphics applications.
Th e Powe rMa t e adroitl y ex ecutes mainstream office applications. indeed, it beat the 6300 in all Sysma rk/NT 4 cate gories except prese ntatio n graphics. But, as indicated by the low Vie wperf CDRS and DX benchmarks, the Revolution card
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Compaq
NEC PowerMate
.Pr,0f~ional .
~rofes~jonal · '
W,or~ation 6300 $4625 (estimated wtcc)'
$12,000
NEC:Gomputcr Systems·
Compaq Computer Division ·
Corp.
Moun~in View, CA
Houston, TX
800-632-4565
800- 345-1518
508-264-8000
281·-514-0484
fax:508-63s..4666
fax: 281-5l4-1740
ttp:l/www
http://www.compaq.com . nec,-computers.com
Enter 1020 :-:§. ·'
Ente~ 102~ '
' on·ln1£Ulcy,C~J'.
01) IJ1'1juiey'Ca1:ik ·~ ·J?. · A
J
is nothing you'd wantto design your next animated feature film on.
The PowerM ate is a powerful business machin e w ith enough horse powe r to pinch-hit as a low-end graphics wo rksta tio n. With an estimated price of $4625, including a 17-inch monitor, it gets yo u to the 300-MHz arena without breakin g yo ur budget. liJ
Robert L. Hummel isan electrical engineer, pro grammer, and consultant. You can reach him at
rhummel @cheshlre.net.
3 4 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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Circle 163 qnlhquify.C.::ard .(RESELLERS : 164).
Scalability and reliability are the watchwords for Microsoft's newest Web server. By Steve Gillmor
115 4.0 Scales New Heights
icrosoft's Internet Informa
tion Server (US) started out as
a strategic partner for Inter
· · ·· net Explorer. Their mission: put Microsoft back in the Internet game. llS 4.0, shipping as a feature of Windows NT Server, integrates key transactional and management technologies from the forthcoming NT 5.0. The resulting serv er provides scalable Web-based applica tions for Internet service providers (ISPs); and for organizations, enhanced securi ty features simplify entry to the emerg ing e-commerce marketplace.
For scalable Web application services, US can fold application invocation and scripting logic into a Microsoft Transac tion Server (MTS) app lication. Now, Active Server Pages (ASP) scripts can run inside a transaction, so if any portion fails, the entire transaction is rolled back. Applications can also run in a separate memory space from the Web server, pro tecting the server, the site, and other applications from an isolated application crash. When I triggered an ActiveX com ponent that generated an illegal divide by-zero, US 4.0 kept everything else run ning and automatically restarted the crashed component on the next request.
Out-of-process components can be dynamically loaded and unloaded with-
TECH FOCUS
Transaction Services
llS creates one Web Application Manager (WAM) for each app configured on the server. Each WAM runs in a upackage," which can be-either in or out of process; clients share in-process apps. but the serv er cre'ates an instance of the application every time a browser requests an out-of process app. Microsoft Transaction Server manages processes as well as threads and database connection pools.
Internet Information Server 4.0 uses Microsoft Management
Console to configure global Web site properties.
out bringing down the Web server. NT Server Enterprise Edition 4.0 administra tors can use its clu stering se rvices to offer failover service between Web sites on different servers. IIS 4.0 uses the Microsoft Script Debugger, so you can set breakpoints; run server-side scripts a line at a time; locate and fix run-time, syn ta.x, and logical errors; and view variables, prop erties, or array element values.
The new Microsoft Management Console (MMC) administers llS, MTS, Index Server, and very limited mail and newsgroup tools from supplied snap-ins that can be packaged, saved, and e-mailed to delegate tasks. IIS does SMTP mail , though it's a far cry from a functional e mail server. Likewise, though you can create NNTP discussion groups, IIS won't replace a real news server.
Certificate Server manages X.509 dig ital certificates, now emerging as a requirement for Internet commerce, and maps these (or other third-party certifi cates) to NT accounts for secure access without a user name and password.
A browser-independent implementa-
tion of host headers allows ISP adminis trators to run multiple Web and FTP sites, with different host names and domains, from a single IP address. Support for HTTP 1.1 lets any client improve perfor mance by exploiting pipelining and per sistent connections. Adntinistrators can allocate bandwidth so that popular sites don't throttle less-visited sites.
It appears Microsoft has done it again
with ns 4.0, packing in lots of must-have
services thatgive you more reasons to buy
RATINGS
NT. If they don t mind selling their souls to Microsoft, organizations deploying traditional client/server applications on the Web can now robustly and securely exploit Microsoft's ActiveX-based rapid
m application development tools.
Steve Gillmor isa consultant for Southern Dig ital. You can send e-mail to him at sglllmor @southerndlgltal.com.
***** Outslanding **** Very Good ***Good **Fair *Poor
SE PTEMBER 19 97 BYTE 3 7
Netscape's stab at a Web/desktop GUI is a snappy comeback to Microsoft's preemptive IE 4 strike. By Pete Loshin
The Webtop Rolls Out on Netcaster
f you go around picking fights with bullies, you'd bet ter have a secret weapon. Netscape may have the chops to beat any other lnter/intra/extranet software vendor, but with Netcaster the company is trying to beat Microsoft at the operating system game- and no one beats Billion Dollar Bill on the Win dows desktop. Netcaster is Netscape's first pass at turning Constellation, a dazzling, high concept technology demoed at Comdex last fall, into a product. The idea: make every Internet (and intranet and e>..'tTanet) resource look local. Integrate Web objects with the desktop, pour data from Web sites into banners and boxes and all other kinds of cool desktop containers, set up a portable persistent desktop that can follow yo u from one computer to another. And do it a ll with a GUI that moves beyond hierarchical folders and too many windows. It's the same idea behind Microsoft's new Internet Explor er 4.0, which lets yo u manipulate Web objects on your IE 4.0 desktop, thus turn ing Windows itself into a real Webtop with a uniform look and feel throughout. The Netcaster realiry is slightly disap pointing, if only because I expected so
much more. Subscribing to push content with new Netscape channels, with Marimba channe ls, or even just simp le HTML pages is much easier than with IE 4.0, and it works well for off-line brows ing. The Netcaster tab sits on the edge of your desktop and pulls out a selection panel, with standard channels displayed atthe top and a pull-up panel that yo u can use to store your personal channels.
However, once yo u set up a channel as
Money Manager Netscape Channel
Wired same game
Netcaster channels have a handful of properties, most notably the option to turn a Web page into a Webtop.
your Webtop, the result is like throwing a plank of plywood over your desktop: Direct access to desktop icons, as with IE 4.0, is denied, and you've got to shuf fle open application windows up to the top of the Webtop to make them visible and accessible.
Netcaster's channel selector panel can be configured to pull out from either the right or the left of the screen, but th e tab itself won't go away; there's also a small toolbar with browser control icons for navigating through \Vebtop content (or back to the normal desktop). Adding channels is easy: Click on one of the pre set ones shipp ed with Netcaster or choose the "more channels" option to go to Netscape's updated Channel Finder Web page.
Depending on what you put on the Webtop, clicking on a link on it may open yet another Navigator window, or it may simply rewrite or modify the Webtop. And though you can subscribe to as many
channels as you like, only one Webtop can be active at any given time, and each non-Webtop channel takes up at least one more window and lots of system resources. After three or four channels, I got lost in all the open windows.
With a little coding, you can create neat intranet Webtop channels, putting in tick ers and other objects and letting users acti vate these as their desktops. Communi cator is still one of the two best Internet client su ites, and Netcaster adds very impressive and easy-to-use Web page sub scription. While slightly less ambitious than lE 4.0, the Netcaster beta I used was more robust than the Microsoft com petitor, and the Netscape product was expected to be available sooner. Net caster is a nice addi tion to an already fea ture-rich Communicator. Ill
PeteLoshin (ploshln@mgh.com) is technicaledi tor for software reviews andauthorofExtraner Design and Implementation (Sybe.x, 1997).
3 8 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
** * *-* Outstanding
****Very Good ***Good **Fair *Poor
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You can integrate text searches and relational data with ConText Cartridge and Oracle universal data server. By Ann O'Leary
Managing Mission-Critical Text
ver the past decade, organiza
0
tions have invested heavily in systems that enable rapid ac
cess to structured data stored
in relational database management sys
tems (RDBMSes). Surprisingly, this in
formation represents only about 10 per
cent of a firm's data, while the other 90
percent exists as text in documents, man
uals, reports, e-mai l, Web pages, faxes,
and presentations. Until recenrly this tex
tual data couldn't be accessed with the
same ease and efficiency as structured
data could be accessed.
Traditionally, organizati ons that need
ed access to both of these types of data
used SQL-based relational databases to
access structu red data, while text was
stored in flat file systems and accessed
through customized search / retrieval en
gines. Bur such engines typically lacked
key data-management functions found
in major relational databases, such as se
curity and transaction integrity. Another
problem with this scheme was that any
text stored in relational databases could
not be searched natively usingSQL. Such
dual-system solutions are expensive,
often requiring custom middleware to
coordinate data changes and queries be
tween the rexr-search engine and the
database system.
Oracle resolved this dilemma with its
ConText technology, which makes text
a native data type of an Oracle RDBMS.
This eliminates the cosrly dual-system ap
proach , since the same scalab le and se
cure relational database houses both the
structured data and the texr. It also pro
vides a unified interface where rexrual in
formation can be rapidly searched and
retrieved through SQL queries, often com
bined with associated relational data.
Getting Therefrom Here
Oracle's ConText Cartridge enables full text retrieval within Oracle's universal
data server. ConText accomplishes this by processing text into a format usab le by an RDBMS and accessibl e via SQL (see the figure below). It also provides linguistic capabilities that deal with the ambigui ties and language dependencies of text. The term Cartridge indicates that the ConText engine is a soft\vare module that
raining hundreds of thous:mds of pages. Another storage method involves
keeping rhe documenrs in a file system or anywhere on the Web. In this type of sit uation, the text column stores only the file-system or URL pointers to those doc uments. ConText searches and retrieves the text contents at the end of these point
ATale of Two Architectures
·
..
·
f ~'
Dlial-system solution
Mkldleware synchronizes queries
and changes between text and structured data
Different Interfaces must be supported
Database with structured data
table$
ConText eliminates the dual-system design often used to integrate a text search with relational data.
extends a database's capabilities to man age the new text data type.
The ConText Cartridge supports sev eral different document-storage methods. The simplest one is rh e direct data store, which enables rexr sto rage in a text col u11111 of a database, with one document or any logical body of text-per row. De pending on rhe column types chosen, each row can con rain a rexr string as brief as a few names or as long as a book con-
ers . While storing text in the database provides more robust data integri t y, keeping files on the Web or in rhe file sys tem may be more expedient. This feanire is especiall y useful for constructing in rraner search applications without hav ing to copy existing Web pages to a cen tral location.
As the database stores the text docu ment, ConText builds a text index that contains critical information about the
www. byl e.c;om
S EPTEMBER 1 9 97 BYTE 43
Core Mana g ing Missi on -C riti c al Text
docum ent's content , as illustrated in the figure at right. Multi pie ConText servers can run in para llel to reduce th e index generation time for large documents. The index is stored a nd managed as a set of re lati o nal tables in rhe database, which en ables ConText to search and retrieve text information as rapidly as ircan retrieve re lational data.
The index's relatio nal tab le contain information about every word contained in the doc uments, such as whic h docu ment a certain word comes from, how many times it occur in each document, what other wo rds it's near, a nd by how much . Beca use tex t sea rche s execute against these indexes (rather than direct ly against the full tex t}, th ey can be as rap id as relational queries.
The ge neration of a teln: index is gov erned by a user-designa ted or defa ult text policy supp lied with ConText. The policy tells ConText how to index the text. A group of user prefe rences defines the characteristics of a given ind ex. For example, there are preferenc es for lan guages (e.g., English or Japanese), docu ment format (e.g.,Word or WordPerfect), document-location information (e.g., in the llDBMS or pointed to by a URL), and so on. The defaults are usual ly suffici ent, but you can create highly customized pol icies for special search requirements.
Becau se ConText Cartridge is inte grated into the Oracle universal data serv er, all development and administration tasks can be acco mplished through the use of straightforward SQL a nd PL/SQL cal ls. Oracle's SQL engi ne ha ndles Con Text queries, while ConText background processes automaticall y update text in dexes and handle other admini strative tasks. Developers don't need to use spe cial API ca lls to man age text, an d they can take advantage of the data server' capa biliti es, such as sca labiliry and security.
Using ConText
The primary method of accessing Con Text is through the CO NTAI NS function , which e nables SQL to query th e co ntents of a document. Thi function can be in cluded in a \·!HERE cl a use that also in cludes conditions th at are ba ed o n struc tured fields. H ere's a samp le SQLcall that uses this function:
SELECT title FROM docs _ t bl WH ERE org a nizatio n - ' Support '
Turning Text into aNative Data Type
SQL
commands
As directed by the policy, ConText creates a text Index for documents stored in the database.
Incoming
text
The policy governs production of a
document Index for
any special search requirements.
Text Ior pointers to
external files or Web pages) is stored In a "text'' column of the database.
Remote file system or Web site
Text itself (or file/URL pointers to text files) can be stored in database columns.
ANO CONTAINS ( docs tbl .text .
' WebS e rver ' ) > 0 :
The column docs tbl . text holds the documents that you wish to search. Based on the text-query ex pression , th e CO NTA I NS functio n return s a nume r ic "score" th at indicates the degree to which a given document marches the expres sio n. In this examp le, th e ex pression re quests an exact match on the word Web Server; t he score wi II be higher for those documents in which WebServer a ppears the most times.
The SQL call above simply rerurns the title of ev ery d o cwn ent in which the tar get word WebServer appear at least o nce, given that the document also meets the structured fi eld conditio n (or ga ni z a tion = ' Support ') . Whenthe user chooses from the title Ii t, th e applica tio n then retrieves a nd displays the specified document.
To rank the resu lts of a qu ery accord ing to the core, the SCORE function can be used, as in th e following exam ple:
SE LECT SCORE<Ol . title FROMdocs _ tb l
WHERE o rganization - ' Support ' AND CONTAJNS(docs_tbl. te xt .
'H e bSe r ve r ' . 0) > 0
ORDER BY SCORE ( Ol
This call rerurns a n ordered Iist of doc u ments. (The argum ent to SCORE is sim pl y an index, wh ic h is included as th e th ird argu me nt to the CONT A I NS func tion. It places no restriction on the rows re tu rned .) For more comp lex ConText searches, the text-query exp ression can get more complicated, and the SQ L call might have multipl e CONT AI NS clauses.
ConTex t has bee n design ed ro easil y upgrad e ex isting Oracl e-based applica tions w ith text-search capa bili ry, thus offering users direct access ro text that's already stored in Oracle databases. Elec tronic-commerce application that man age qu anti ties prices, and product-ID numbers can be upgraded to include searches on text descriptions o f co ntent or to offer the text data itself for sale. liJ
Ann O'Leary, a senior manager at Oracle, is responsible fo rmarketing the Oracle 1111i11ersal data seroerand the ConText Cartridge. She can be reached at aoleary@us.oracle.com.
44 B YTE SEPTE MB ER 19 97
www.byte.com
Operating Systems
An inter(ace from emWare lets you control and monitor devices with a Web browser. By Michael Howard and Chris Sontag
Managing Devices with the Web
he In ternet is a n id ea l me dium fo r device control. Its ubiquity and protocol stan dards make low-level device communications easy to implement and inexpensive. However, the Internet's real advantage lies in its well-known graphi cal interface that's delivered by Web browsers. Using a Web-based front end simplifies the programming job, and ii: lets anyone-from any platform-man age a device through a familiar interface. Having said that, operating devices this way can prove to be a n expensive proposition. This is because device man ufacturers have frequently used a skin ny client/fat server paradigm. The Web browserclienthad limited functions. The embedded device had to house not only its own intelligence, but also Web-server software that includes a file system a TCP/ TP stack, and interface components. Thi generally precludes the use of pop ul ar low-cost microcontrollers that have only 1 to 4 KB of ROM and less than 100 bytes of on-chip RAM. The company emWare, a developer of embedded device , rook a hard look at the problem, discarding rhe traditional as sumptions about the client/server mech anism. The resulting Embedded Micro Interface Technology (EMJT) can poten tia ll y make Web-based device control pracrical and inexpensive.
Role Reversal
instead of the device incorporating all the necessary hardware and oftware re sources, EMIT pushes as many rasks as possible o nto a Windows- or Unix-based host machine-a ski nn y server/fat client design. The device gains access to the resource-intensive tasks on the client through a lightweight distributed-com pu ting architecture implemented by em Ware.
Thus, EMIT's device-resident Web
server requires onl y 30 bytes of RAM and 750 bytes of ROM to operate, which let it run on a host of low-cost embed ded microconrrollers all the way up to rhe largest microprocessors. Because of the server's tiny me mory footprint, EMJT can
EMIT's Architecture
EMlT provides the following services: We storage and retrieval, device subroutine invocation, securiry, device variable access, and device events. The first three
Pbysieal device nehlalt (llS-232, 115-424,US8, etc.)
An embedded device uses HTML files and compressed data tags to communicate with a Web browser.
use o n-board EPROM to manage add i tional device data (e.g., logging informa tion) or store JavaScrip t cl ass files and HTML document .
On theclientside, the hostsy rem uses a lib rary of preprogrammed functions . The e functions minimize the device's use of resources by asse mbling the de vice's graphical interface in the browser and help ing ma nage comm unica ti ons with device-specific function s. For ex ample, the embedded device stores com pressed information as special tags in HTML files, and the desktop computer handles all the data expansion of the tags.
services are normal Web-server features. For example, yo u implement device secu rity through the us~ of well-estab lished Web protocol .
The last two service EMIT handles. Variables are data objecrs on rhe device. Access to them is accomplished through a secondary ocket-server process. Java applets launched on the client can cre ate a conn ecrion to the vari abl e server and read and write variables through thi s service. Events are messages the device passes to the clie nt. The receipt of an event message can trigger an executable function on the host workstation. Tbese
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 4 5
C ore O perating Systems
functions can then log data to a database, send e-mail, or communicate with other devices.
You create the client's Java-based user interface (Ul) through an HTML fi le that invokes a container applet. The file spec ifies which generic interface components are part of the Web page, what they look like, where they go, and to which embed ded variables or functions they are con nected. The dara on the device controls the interface and its operation but is not burdened with the cost of storing these large interface components.
EMIT provides five modular software components, as shown in the figure "EMIT's Architecture." Starring on the client side, they are:
ports, there is a table of name/attribute information. (Typical device services are functions, variables, events, static docu ments, and dynamic documents.) Com mands the client sends are processed by a command interpreter that looks up function addresses or variables through these tables. Sample commands are Get -
Va ri ab l ~GetSta ti c D o c ument , Set
Byte Va r ,and Invo keF unc tion .
· Microtags are small (1 byte or more) packets of highly condensed information that define device controls (e.g., switches, buttons, and LEDs). Microtags are em bedded in the HTML page that represents
manufacturers are adding EMIT-enabled devices to monitor all kinds of farming equipment, such as tractors, combines, and irrigation systems. Weiser Lock is adding EMIT to its electronic door lock to monitor the lock via an exact replica tion ofa lock's touch pad, as shown in the screen below. Not only does EMIT let you change a lock's status, such as unlock at 8:00 in the morning and lock at 5:00 in the afternoon, it also provides the abil ity to view historical data, such as how often a lock was enabled and disabled.
EMIT can provide a means for medical professionals to monitor all types of med ical equipment remotely, such as feral and
· The emObjects are a function library composed of JPEG/GlF graphics or Java applets. The Java container applets im plement the client's UL Such objects include standard Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) components, as well as device-specific components such as an LED bar graph, a seven-segment display, and an analog meter. There are even transparent buttons that can overlay an actual image of the device. Certain em Objects also execute in response to events the device returns.
· The emManager coordinates the cli ent's locally stored GUI components with items on the device, thus providing a coherent view of the device's operation in the browser. The emManager also han dles the privilege and validity checks of all requests. A polling mechanism (used for the simplest devices) or a token-pass ing mechanism maintain the status of device variables. A socket-server process makes this data available ro Java applets.
When the status of the device changes, it returns an HTML page that contains microtags (described below) ro the client. The emManager substitutes each micro tag with its corresponding emObjecr, and the browser creates the interface from this combination of HTML and emOb jects. Because emObjects can be Java applets, you can use the interface to issue commands back to the device.
· The emMicro is the device's small, spe cial-purpose Web server. It works in con junction with the emManager to provide file, variable, and function acce son the device. You access all device resources via tables. For each service the device sup
17·04-97 10:13- Loe 17-04-97 10:14 - Password 17-04-97 10:14 - Unlocked (R) 17·04-97 10:15- Locked (L) 17· 05-97 23:32 · Bad PW (L)
EMIT enablesyou t o obtain logging information from a device.
the device interface. It's relatively easy for manufacturers to create custom mi crotags to match the capabilities of any particular device.
· The emNet is an efficient, adaptable serial protocol that lets deve lopers use a lightweight communications protocol for building small applications. The em Net is a message-based master/slave protocol that uses a combination of pack ets and stream data. All data is sent as binary values with prefix-encoded com mands. The emManager and emMicro operate on top of any network transport that can deliver emNet's small packets.
Applications for EMIT
Companies are currently developing a number of applications that exploit EMIT. For example, agricultural equipment
heart monitors, and intravenous infusion systems. This technology can signifi cantly reduce medical costs, while at the same time providing a more efficient way ro manage such systems. Further ex amp les of EMIT-enab led d evices are available at http://www.emware.com.
These are only a few sample applica tions that companies are developing that can use EMIT. Until now, applications such as these have been very difficult because of the resource requirements at the device. This technology will sim plify the development of the next gener ation of remote-controll able networked embedded electronic devices. liJ
Michael Howard is the architect ofEMIT. Chris Sontag is president ofemWare, Inc. You can reach them at en g @emw are.com.
46 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 97
www.byte.com
Networks
Organizing your AIM network into a hierarchy will make for efficient routing and allow for expansion. By Jeffrey Fritz
Routing and Switching in ATM Networks
ike the mona rchi es of old, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switc hes can run under hierarchica l relation ships. A hierarchical relationship means that some ATM switches are placed in address positions subord inate co other switches in the network. This differs from a flat approach, in which every swi tch is aran eq ual level with everyother switch. You assign the address hierarchy of the devices during th e initial network design, but you should plan fo r it to change over time- because invariably ir will. There fore, consistency in address numbering while ordering (m oving up an d down) the hierarchy is important. So is leavi ng room in the hierarchy for growth: When you add switches to the network, there will be ava il able address ra nges for addi tional hierarchie . In a se nse, this is like assigning subnets in an IP network, where you want co leave room tO add subn ets and add hosts co current subnets.
It'sin the Address
An ATM hierarchy is created through the ass ignm ent of th e Netwo rk Services Access Point (NSAP) address. The NSAP address is 20 byte long. Ir includes a 13 byte (104-bit) prefix, a 6-byte media access control (MAC) address, also call ed an end system identifier, and a se lector byte chat serves as a subaddress . Th e network uses the information in the 13 byte prefix tO create the hierarchy. At 1 bit per level, chi means rhe system ad ministrator can create as many as I 04 hierarchical levels. Practicall y, most net works wi ll do just fine wi th three co five hierarchical levels.
It is also im portant co give each switch a unique address prefix, different from the address prefixes assigned to ocher switch es and devices in the same network. Fur thermore all subordinate switches and ATM devices connected to a particular
ww v.by e.com
switch should be based on the address of the primary switch in the hierarchy.
The figure "ATM Hierarchy" shows how a section of an ATM network hier archy might be configured. Notice chat
the Colso n core switch. In simple ATM networks, establishing
a hierarchy may not be necessary. How ever, in larger networks, a hierarchy becomes essential. Besides creating a log-
· · 39l0.0A If.ff.FF
tStewart HaU switch
39l0.0A.01 FF.FF.FF.FF
Colson switch
39l0.0A.02 FF.FF.FF.FF
39l0.0A.03 fF.fFJF.fF
Bursar swildt
39l0.0A.01.0l FFSF.FF.FF.ff
A hierarchical arrang ement of ATM switches directs a packet through the network fabric.
in this hyporherical camp us nerwork ar ra nge ment, the NSAJ> address 39.10.0A is assigned to th e Colson building core switch, with a mask of FF.FF.FF. The inrer mediare switches (Stewart H all, Colson, and Business and Eco no mi cs) are assigned NSAP addresses chat are sub or dinate to rhe re lat ed core swi tch . For exa mpl e, the Stewart H a ll switch is assigned as 39.10.0A.01, wirh a mask of FF.FF.FF.FF. T hat makes the switch sub ordinate co rh e Colso n co re switc h. Sim ilarl y, the Bursar edge switch is assigned 39. l O.OA.01.01, with a mask of FF.FF .FF.FF.FF. Th ar makes ir subo rdin ate to both theS rewarr intermediareswirch and
ical ATM addressing structure, the hier archy makes ATM call routing simpler and more efficient by providing a logi cal add ress path through the ATM net work. Hi erarchical add ressing also posi tions rhe ATM network ro participate in the Private Network-co-Network Inter face Phase 1 (PNNI-1) when it becomes ava il ab le. Th e PNN l-1 protocol sup ports the concept of pee r groups. Each peer group co nsists of multiple ATM switches o perating in the same hierar chical level. They communicate through a peer group leader with switches in other hierarchies. All of this is based on hierarchical address structure.
continued
SEPTEMBER 19 9 7 BYTE 4 7
Core Rou ting an d S witchi ng in ATM Networks
Until the hi ll implemenration of PNN! 1 ap pears, there is no standard way in which ATM ·witche can auromatically learn the network ropology. Thi means that the hierarchy must point the way through the ATM witching maze. Using hierarchica lcall routi ng, cells on the back bone intend ed for a device located in the Bursar's LAN will be directed through rhe Colson core the Stewart intermediate a nd, finally, the Bursar edge switch.
Switching Issues
·1·he best place-perhaps th e only place ro locate the core swi tches is in the back bone. Core switche are responsible for the heaviest traffic flow and the largest number of call setups. Conseq uenrly the core swi tches sho uld never be oversub scribed. Oversub cription occurs when more bandwidth head ro the switch than it has capability t0 handle. Thi is not much of a problem in edge switches; in fact, it can be adva ntageo us. Statistical multiplexi ng techniq ues operating in the edge switch can easily handle rhe exrra traffic load. However, oversubscription is deadly in the core switches becau e th ey must switch al I the network traffic across the backbone. They are al o the easiest ro bog down if they are required to run addi tional ervices. For example while it is possible t0 provide upport for legacy networks, such as Ethernet or Token Ring, via LAN Emu lation (LANE) ervices in the core, it is usuall y be t to run them in the edge or the inrermediate switches. This a llows the core switches ro concen trate on backbone call routing.
Intermediate and edge switches are located between the user a nd the back bone. An edge swi tch is at the end of an AT I network. Ty pica ll y it is an AT 1 swi tch feeding legacy nerwork · via LANE ervice . [n th e figure on the prev ious page, the Bursa r swirch is a n edge switch. For sma ller network , an inre rmediare sw itch may nor be necessary. In that case, the edge switch can connect directly to the core. As its nam e imp lie , an inrer mediate switch lies between the back bone and an edge switch. Fo r example, the Stewart H all switch, located between the Co lson core a nd the Bursar edge switch, is an inrermediate switch.
The decision as tO where LANE i run nin g dep e nd s n the pa rticular ATM implementation and on how the indi vidual ATM devices handle the LA E processes. For networks that have highly
One-Arm Router
~- ..:: 41
~I
Ill u
~~
~
.!! ~
~i"1:1.;:
.s.:
·a,-i=i
Routes multiple emdated lAHs together on the same interface (ATM).
Ornoue-tearrm·"'"!
Stewart HaD
»Au te-l.AN
Ff.Ff.ff.Ff
·c~;.:t;.:·
tS· · ··· switch
·······
ColSG!I e-LAN
D~~ t Ff.ff.ff.ff
Business and :
Economics !
e-LAN ··
1 ~- Ff.Ff.ff.Ff
Tebalilg T1 111111W lAlls ~ DD ldp swftdm
A router manages the Layer 3 protocols for multiple emu lated LANs through one point on the ATM network.
departmenta lized infrastructures, the LA 1 Emu lation Server/Broadcast and Unknown Server (LES/ BUS} services should be run in the edge witches. This gets the LANE serv ice physically close to the deparrmenrs that arc connecting t0 t he various e mulated LANs (e-LANs). There needs robe on ly o ne LAN Emul::i rion Configura tion Server (LE ) per ATM network, so it can run in whichever intermediate or edge swircb you choose.
Once and Future Routing
LA E 1.0 operates strictly in a bridged environment. This begs the question of why we need t0 route at all in LA.i'IT 1.0. The answer is that ro uting i not neces sa ry in a single e-LAN e nvironment. However, it is nor a good idea to design an enrerpri e network with on ly a single e-LAN. Doing so creates a large broadcast domain that can overload LANE service . Therefore, just as routed networks have multiple s ubn e ts, most ATM networks have mu ltip le e-LANs.
Every e-LAN function a a separate group using its own LES/ BUS. intercon necting multipl e e-LANs requires a router typica ll y ca ll ed a one-arm roiiter. It is called rl1is because there is only one phy ica l interface (usua ll y 155-Mbps OC3 fiber) from the ATM switch to the router. As rhc figu re above shows, in read of routing berwecn multiple ph ysical inrer faces, rhe one-ar m rourer simply routes the Layer 3 protocols onro multiple c LANs connected through the same inrer-
face. The ro ute r can be a card that is inse rted into an ATM switch or it can be a stand-alone router.
T hi cenario will change dramatically when LANE 2.0 and Multi-Protocol Over ATM (MPOA) 1.0 arrive. Routing i accom plished thro ugh MPOA using a technique known as virtual routing. To do this, MPOA u cs the exi: Hop Resolurion Pro rocol ( HRP}. HRP allows ad dr ess queries to be passed between di ffere nr sub nets without requiring physical rou ters. While LANE LOrequires a router tO con nect different e-LANs, with LANE 2.0 a router will be necessary only tO span dif ferent ATM networks.
Designing for the Future
Ir i alway a good idea to design for roday with an eye toward tomorrow. Estab Lishingswitching hi era rchies rhat are well th ough rout and paying carefu l arrenrion ro routing in your ATM nerworks wi ll pay big di vidends now and in the future. Attenrivc network design will result in solid nerwork performance and pave a good migration path toward MPOA and PNNI-1. Bui lding networks that funcrion efficiently roday but also link to t11e tech nology of tomorrow should be every net work admin istraror's goal. llJ
Jeffrey Fritz (jfritz@wvu.edu) is responsible for advanced network technology at \\'lest Vir ginia Un iversity. He's author of Remote LAN Acee s: A Guide fo r erworker and rhe Rest of Us (Ma1111ing/Prentice-I-Jall PTR).
48 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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CPUs
It combines the Pentium Pro's architecture and MMX instructions into a package for low-cost systems. By Clive Maxfield
The Pentium II Revealed
first star ted playing with mi croprocessors back when 1 MHz was consid ered state of the arr. Today, a 200-MHz Pentium Pro doesn' t raise any eyebrows, and Intel's Pentium LI is available in 233-, 266-, and 300-MHz flavors. In additi on to its high frequencies, the Pentium II features a dramatic new pack aging style. While this is primar ily of in terest to circuit-board desi gners, its im pact on desktop-system designs and costs can make you think twice about purchas ing a Pentium Pro system . For program mers and users, the Pentium !I offers the MMX instruction set, which is of use in multimedia, digital-video, content-cre ation, and games applications. This arti cle examines the differences between the Pentium Pro and the Pentium II .
ing x86 applications th is branch-pre dictio n logic improves th e Pentium Pro's performance over the Pentium's.
The Pentium II inherits the Pentium Pro's superpipeline and DIB architecture. However, the biggest change is in its in
ternal logic: the Pentium n has larger L1
caches and supports Inrel 'sf.IL\i1X instruc tions. These 57 new instructions enab le 64-bitdata words to be treated as two 32
Pentium II Interior
er, a 266-M Hz Pentium II with a 512-KB cache burns 37.0 \YI.
Processor Packaging
The Pentium Pro consists of a multichip module containing two dies: the proces sor core and the L2 cache. This module is upplied in a pin-grid array (PGA) pack age .This is inserted into a zero-inserrion force (ZIF) socket, known as Socket 8 on
Architectural Differences
When the Pentium Pro firsr became avail able it sported a number of significant enhancements over its predecessor, the Pentium. For example, the Pentium Pro featured a concept called rhe Dual Inde pendent Bus (D!B) architecrure, which addressed existing system-bandwidth limitations. It did this with two buses: a processor-to-main-memory bus and a processor-to-L2-cache bus. The proces sor cou ld access both buses si mu ltane ously for better throughput.
The Pentium Pro can execute up ro four instructions per clock cycle. It also features dynamic execution, which incor porates the concepts of out-of-order and speculative execution. The Pentium Pro has a 12- tage superpipeline, as compared to the Pentium's five-stage counterpart (or six stages for a Pentium with multi media extensions [MMX] technology).
It employs multiple branch prediction based on both past history and knowl edge as to how each op code is typ ically used. While still compatible with exist-
The Pe nt ium II uses industry-standard L2-cache pa rt s.
bit, four 16-bit, or eight 8-bitchunks. This permits the same operation to be per formed on each chunk simu ltaneously, thereby facilitating features such as full scree n video. (See "x86 Enters the Multi media Era," Ju ly 1996 BYTE, for more in formation.)
Also, unlike the Pentium Pro, which op erates at 3.3 V, the Pentium II operates at 2.8 V, thereby allowing Intel to run it at higher frequencies without unduly in creasing its power requirements. While a 200-MHz Pentium Pro with a 512-KB cache consumes about 37.9 watts of pow-
the circuit board; the pin attributes were defined by Intel.
Ar first glance, the Pentium II appears to be radically different from the Pentium Pro, but it is conceptuall y very similar. From the outside the Pentium II appears to be huge because it' packaged in what Imel refer to a a single-edge-connect (SEC) cartridge. It plug into a connec tor called Slot 1 on the motherboard .
Tn fact, the Pentium LI is a cross betvveen a mulrichip module and a hybrid using an FR4 (printed circuit board) substrate, as shown in the figure above . Intel dou-
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 51
Core The Pent ium 11 Re veale d
ble d th e processor ' o n-ch ip LJ cache (two separate 16-KB cache fo r data and insrrucrio ns, fo r a 32-K Brota!) . T he co m pan y a lso se parated th e processor core from rh e l2 cache. The res ult is six indi vidually packaged devices on th e SEC cartridge su bstrate. These devices consist of rh e processor, fo ur industry-standard (i. e., I w-co t) burst-static-cache RAivls, and one t:ig RAM which wa previous ly integ rate d on the L2 cache die. The L2 cache chi ps and t he tag RAM arc pr e se nted in co nve nti o nal quad flat packages (QFPs) while the core proces or is pack aged as a leadle s grid array (LGA).
Th e SEC carrridge conveys further de sig n advantages. Th e Pentium Pro's PGA package requires 387 pins, while the SEC cartridge uses on ly 242. T hi one-thi rd red uction in th e pin count is due to the fac t th at the SEC ca rtridge conta ins di s crete components, uc h as terminatio n resistors and capacitors. These items pro vide signal decoupling which mea ns that far fewer power pins a re required .
Furthermore, la ying dow n th e sysrem bu traces between multiple Pentium Pro proce sor using th e ocket 8 ryle is ex tr e m el y ard uous a nd t yp ica ll y forces board de igners to increase a board's lay er count. The SE carrriclge's in-l ine pin arrangement dramatica ll y improves cir cu it ro utin g, whi ch lets designe rs employ less-expe nsive fo ur-layer boards.
Supporting Cast
As the figu re above shows, th e Pentium II emp loys a gunnin g- tra nsceiver-logic (GT L+) host bu t haroffers glu elesssup porr for two proce or . Th.is provides a cost-effective, mini ma!ist two-processo r design rhar a ll ows ymm etric mult ipro cessi ng (SMP) .
The rwo-proces or Ii mi ration i not im posed by th e Pentium U; rath er, it's dic tated by th e supp orting chip se t. H ow eve r, by initia ll y lim iting th e chi p ·er to a du al-processor co nfiguration, this a l lows Imel and workstation ve nd o rs to o ffer du a l-p rocesso r syste ms in a tim ely and econom ical m;inner. Power users de manding the ultim ate in perfo rmance can expect a q uacl -p roce or ver io n of the Pentium II chip etto appear in rhe futu re.
Jn th e figu re a bove, nore th e PMC a nd DBX chips, which a re collectively refe rr ed to as the 440FX chip e r. The 450 K,X (lo w-end) a nd 450GX (hi gh-e nd) chip se ts u eel by the Pentiu m Pro sup port only fa ·r-page-mode (FPM) memory d e
Dual-Processor System
Pentium II processor
Pentium II processor
66-MHz GTL+ host bus
Address Control
Main memory ( 8MB tol CB)
Data Data parity
Private data bus
Control
I u
Support for two processors and EDO DRAM reduces system costs.
vices, o th ese c hip e rs are o bliged ro provide memory inrerleavi ng to reduce memo ry cycles. The problem wirh inrer leaving is th at a ll the memo ry slots have to be occu pied, which increases th e co t to the user for memory upgrade . The 440FX ch ip set doesn't offer memory in te rl eav ing, bur it does su pport ex tend ed data o ur (EDO) DllAJ\11, w hi ch improves memory performance by reducing clock latencies.
System Issues and Performance
Man y Pentium 11- ba ed ysrem offer o nl y X-3-3-3 memo ry rimin g. T his means t hat, whe n a block of data is read fr m memory, the first access requiresX clock cycles to set up the initial access. X for the 440FX chip se t eq uals seven, nin e, or 12 cycles, depe ndin g o n wh ether th e system get a page h it, page hit/ row miss, or page miss, respecti ely. Subsequent acce ses rake o nl y three clocks per access, as im pli ed by th e 3-3 -3 mo n iker.
Access in rhi co ntext refe rs ro read ing a 64-bir c hunk of da ta, known as a q11adword. But ve nd ors who pay atten tio n to signal-integri ry iss ue a nd empl oy hi gh-qual iry components, such as bu ff er and re rmin arors, can ac tu a lly wring a fasrerX -2-2-2 timi ng our ofrhe proces so r. lnrergra ph 's 440FX -basecl TD and TDZ Pentium II systems, for examp le, are b uil t to delive r rhi memoq1 timing.
Also, Intergraph' designers have built a n SEC look-alike "gen der-bender" car tridge th at sport a Pentium Pro. Thu , users ca n buy a Pe ntium Pro-based sys tem a nd th en upgrade the gend er-be nder carr:riclge(s) ro full-fl edged Pentium ll EC cartridge in rhe future. The only require ment is ro exc han ge a co uple of jumpers th at modify the frequency and vol tage level of the sys tem clock.
At 266 MHz, rhe Pentium ll de livers a SPE int95 of 10.8 and a SPECfp95 of 6.89 . For rho e who don ' t run exotic bench mark for a livi ng how d oes this reali ti cally measure up? In rergraph's internal eva lu ations reveal that a 266-Ml-l z Pemi um ll run s rea l-world applications any where between 5 percent and 30 percent faster th an a 200- !Hz Pentium Pro (both with 5l2- KB caches). For a large number of th ese np plicari o ns, rhe perfor m:rnce improvement fall in the20percenrro2 percenr range.
Con iclering thi s pe r formance im pro ve m ent a nd th e po tentia l of syste m vendors pas ing rhe Pentium ll 'scosrsav ing on to rh eir customers, I d say that l nre l has done u proud. liJ
Clive Maxfield is 011 tlie tee/mica/ staff at 111 tergmph Co111p111erSyste111s (H1111tsvi/le, AL). He is the coauthor of Bebop BYTEs B ~ck (An Unconvenrional Guide to Computers) (Doone P11blications, 1997) . You can contact him at
http://ro.com/-bebopbb.
52 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
om
Programming
A look at back-end database access for Office 9 7 applications and batched server updates. By Rick Dobson
Using ODBCDirect's Advanced Features
la unch ed a dis cuss io n las t month of ODBCDirect, a client/se rver technology that es peci all y targe ts Office 97 developers. It provides at least three ben efits to corporate developers. First, it delivers more remote data-pro cessing flexibiliry in a smaller footprint than going throu gh Access's database engine, Je t. Second, ODBCDirect's tight integration with the Office 97 applica tions enha nces the worth of Data Access Objects (DAO) and Visual Basic for Appli cations (VBA) programmer by letting them serve up back-end data to corpo rate desktops like never before. Third, the licensing of VBA to dozens of third party firms broaden s th e selection of routes fo r rapping ODBCDirect's power. This article bui lds on last month 's Pro gramming column by going beyond the bas ics to showcase a co ll ection of ad vanced ODBCDi rect features. How does ODBCDirect contrast with other back-end database-con nectivity options? ODBCDirect links to ODBC data more quick!)' and with fewer resources than going through Jet. H oweve r,J et has its own special benefits, including het erogeneous database joins, bound forms, and control . Developers mu st choose which projec ts will bene fit mos t from ODBCDirect's speed and fin er-grained functions versus j et's traditio nal and easy route of ODBC access.
From Back End into Excel
My first sa mple application drops data from a SQL Serve r data ser into an Excel spreadsheet. This show how to drop back-end data into friendly environments and illustrates interestin g ODBCD irect development issues . While this exa mple works with Excel, it sets up the ODBCDi rect workspace and connects ro the Pubs database w ith the same code I used last month for Access. This sharing of com-
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mon code among Office 97 applicatio ns shows VBA's ability to drama tica lly re duce development time.
Two additional po ints merit attention besides the actual code. The on ly way to derive the benefitofODBCDirect's small footprint is to use it ourside Access. Thi is because Access loads Jet, even when yo u use ODBCDirect workspace excl u sively. For Excel or orher applications
You must explici tly reference DAO 3.5 t o use ODBCDirect outside of Access.
that rely on ODB Direct to avoid using Acces inadverrenrly, you must refe rence the DAO 3.5 Object Lib rary explicitly. In Excel, choose the Tools menu and select References.Then scroll ro M icrosoft DAO 3.5 Object Libraryand select its check box before closing the References dialog box, as shown in the screen above.
The listing "From th e Back End ro Excel" on page 54 begin s by creating a string, st SOL, that contains the SQL for the data that it will download. A query def, qdfYTD, relies on this st ring. The OpenRecordset method for the query def returns the rows from SQL Server to the workstation's local recordset, rs YTD . After some spreadsheet maintenance, a \~hi 1e ...Wend loop copie the values from rhe DAO recordset to Sheerl, the active
sheet. Offset methods move the active cell to the proper spreadsheet location before a simple ass ignment statement performs the copy.
Cached, Batched Updating
One of ODBCDirect's more advanced features is its ability to perform cached, local updating of server-base d data. ODBCDirect introduces batch optimistic updating. This facilitates the download ing ofa recordsettbat' used to cache the local updates and the sub equent batch updating of those records on the server.
Other database users can edit records benveen the time you download your records for local processi ng and upload them back to the server. When the edits ofothers conflict with you rs, the two ver sio ns collide on the server. ODBCDirect includes several bui lt-in mechanisms for facilitating co llision reconciliation.
Fi r ·t, batch optimistic updar.ing auto matically detects, counts, and marks co l lisions. Second, ODBCDirect provid es simple techniq ues for overriding other changes with your own. Third, proper ties perm it )' OU to compare and contrast the various values of a coll id ed field on a record. The example ill ustrates how to get started coding this capability.
Batch optimistic updati ng requ ires a minimum of six steps. First, you create an ODBCDirect workspace. Second, set the workspace's Defaul tCu rsorDri ver properry to obU s eC 1i en tBa tchCu rso r . Third, forge a link to a server database via an ODBCDirect con nection or database object. Fourth , crea te a local recordset based o n server-based data with th e Open Recordse t method. You must spec ify dbOpt i mi st i c Ba tch for th e 1ock ed it s argument. Fifth, perform edits as necessa ry to the local recordset cach e. Last, use the recordset's Update method with a dbUpda t eBa tch rype argument.
cont inued
SE PTEMBER 1997 BYTE 53
C ore P rogramming
ODBCDirect Features
From the Back End to Excel
'Create row-returning recordset from server stSQL = "SELECT titles.title_ id, titles " & _
" . title, tit l es.ytd_sales FROM titles " Set qdfYTD = conPu os . Crea eOueryDef ( '"'. _
s tSO U Set rsYTO = qdfYTD . OpenRecordset ' Insert co l umn headings Sheets("Sheetl " l.Cells(l . ll . Value = "Title" Sheets( "Sheetl " l.Cell s (l. 21.Value
" YTD_Sal es" Sheets {"Sheetl " ) . Cells( 2, 1) .Activate 'Copy rows Wh i le Not rsYTD . EOF
Act l veCell . Val~e - rsYTD!Title ActiveCell.Off>etCO . l) . Activate ActiveCell.Value - rsYTD !ytd_sales Act i veCe 11 . Offset{ 1 . -1 l . Activate rsYTD . MoveNext Wend
Cached, Batched Updating
'Make connection Set wspPubs=CreateWorkspace( "PubsSession" .
"admfn ". " ", dbUseODBCl wspPubs . DefaultCursorDriver _
- dbUseClientBatchCursor
stConnect = "ODBC;DSN=Pubs:UID- sa;PWD= :" &_
"DATABASE- Pubs " Set conPubs = wspPubs . OpenConnect i on
( "", . . stConnect ) 'Create cached recordset
stSOL - "SELECT Stor_id . Ord_num , " &_
"title_id . qty FROM Sales " Set rsSales = conPubs . OpenRecordset(stSOL ,
dbOpenDynaset, 0 . dbOpt1misticBatchl 'Mod i fy local cache and attempt 'to update server While Not rsSales . EOF
rsSales.Edit rsSales!qty = rsSales!qty + 3 rsSales . Update rsSales . MoveNext Wend r sSales.Update dbUpdateBatch ' Force in changes even if there ' a re conflicts int!terations- rsSales . BatchCollisionCount -1
For j - 0 To intiterations rsSales.Bookmark = _ rsSales.BatchCollisions ( j )
Next j rsSales . Update dbUpdateBatch, True
The second, fo urth, and ix thstepsare cririca l ones. Batch optimi tic updating req uires that you set the Defaul tCur sorDri ver prope rryto dbUseCl ie nt BatchCursor . Th e useo f dbOpti mi sti cBatch fo r the l ockedits argumenr in step four enables batch opti mi sti c upd ating. T he dbUpda teBa tc h para meter fo r the ty pe argument in step six instructs ODBC Direct to send the local cache to the server as a batch of records.
M y co de excerpt "Cac hed, Batch ed Updating" has fo ur code blocks. First, it make th e back-end se rver conn ection. I show thi s code so you can see precisely how and wh ere to specify th e De f ault CursorDri ver workspace pro perry.
T he second bl ock creates a recordset, r s Sal es . and completes the i1wocation of ba tch op timi sti c upd ating by refe r encin g dbOpt i mist i cBatch in an OpenRecordset merhod . You also need a recordset type th at is not read-o nl y, as the co de shows usin g th e dbOpen Dy na se argum ent.
The third code bl ock perfo rmsa seri es of edits ro t he cac hed da ta in its l~hi le ...\·lend loop. The Update merhod inside the loop caches the change locally.
T he Update method outsid e th e loop se nds rhese updates from the loca lcache to rh e server.
The fo urth code block illustrate a sim ple collision-reconciliation rul e. Ir ove r writes all colli sions on th e se rver with those from the local cache. After the ini tial batch update at the end of th e third block ODBCDirect marks those records in th e local cache th at collide with th e se rve r. It also retri eves th e co nfl icring server va lues. Th e code shows how ro co py data fr o m the local cac he to th e server and th en update them en mas e. The last line uses a dbUpda t eBa tch argu ment th ar se nds all th e clrnn ge to the serve r. The True parameter forces those change over th e server data.
Asynchronous Operations
ODB CDirect can o pen asy nchr o nous connections querydefs, and recordsets. ODB CDir ec t also lets you move asy n chrn nou ·ly to the last record in a record ser. Eac h o f th ese functi ons can rake a whil e: Co n id er mo vi ng to th e las t o f 2,000,000 records- on a re mote server.
ODBCDirect's asynch ro nous ca pabi l ities let you use this rime locall ywhile you
are waiting fo r a remote server ro respond to a command. H oweve r, yo u will have to write code th at check when the asy n chronou ac tivity concludes. An object's st i 11 Executing pro perry permits yo u ro run tasks while yo u wait for the prop erty to turn fa lse or cancel the operation if it takes too long.
Always wrap yo ur updating code state ments in a tra nsactio n wh en runnin g tasks that ca n mod ify a re mote database. This permits your progra m to "roll back" an y compl eted upd ates if the tas k gets canceled, o r if it didn ' t compl ete the operati on within a specified maximum duration .
ODBCDi recr offer powerful way to add value to back-end database . VBAand DAO developers have new opportuni ties to serve up back-end data ro use rs in fam iliar, fri endl y environments. I hope Microso ft sees fi t to upgrade ODBCDi rect with events, so that it's easierto man age asynchronous functions. liJ
Rick Dobson, Ph.D., is president ofCAB, Inc., a database and lntem et development consul ta n cy. Yo u ca11 sen d e-ma il t o him at Rick_Dobson @ms n.com .
54 BYTE S EPTEMB ER 1997
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ActiveX
DEMYSTIFIED
It's invasive. It's ubiquitous. But what, exactly) is ActiveX? By David Chappell
and David S. Linthicum
I In-Process Server
If the component is local and designed to be
an in-process server (e.g., an ActiveX control),
the client instantiates it and communicates with it using COM.
f you use a computer, Microsoft's ActiveX is prob ably part of your life. Whether you like it or nor, the AcriveX technologi es have become an essential part of Microsoft applicarions and tools; they are even finding their way into Microsoft operating systems. What impact is ActiveX having? How does it affect the millions of Microsoft-oriented deve lopers and the tens of millions of Microsoft users? Answering rhese questions first requires ad dressing another question, one that turns out to be surprising ly hard to answer: Just what exactly is ActiveX? First of all, get rid of rhe idea char rhe lab el "ActiveX" refers to some well-defined technology or group of rechnologies it doesn 't. Instead, ActiveX is a brand name, like Ca lvin Kle in or Ford. As with other brand names, what it's applied to can vary over rime. Still, the technologies grouped under the Act.iveX umbrella aren 'tcomplecely random . Many of them (bur by no means all) are somehow related to the Inrernetand the Web. More impor tam, a ll AcriveX technologies are built using Microsoft's Com ponent Object Model (COM). Burtheobviou nexrsrep--defin ing AcciveX to encompass all COM-based techno logies-is wrong. COM has fo und its way into almost everything Micro soft does these days, including Microsoft Office and Windows itself, and clearly these products aren'tparr of the AcriveX fam ily. Annoying though it may be, we have to learn ro live with this fuzzy, marketing-oriented notion of ActiveX- it's the only one chat's accurate. But didn't ActiveX grow out of Object Linking and Embed ding (OLE), Microsoft's compound-document technology? In fact, wasn' t ActiveX just a new name for what was once call ed OLE? The answer to both questions is, "Well, sore of."
5 6 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Remote system
£1. In-Process Remote Server
If the remote component has been written to take advantage of Microsoft Transaction Server, it can run in-process to the transaction server but still use DCOM to talk to the client.
started the same way: The tllent calls CoCreatelnstance. Unless the call specifies a particular remote machine, the call checks with the local reglsby database to locate the called
component.
Local ystem
COM Server
2Out-of-Process Server
If the component is local and designed to be a local, out-of-process server (e.g., Excel), the
client instantiates it and also communicates
with it using COM.
Remote system
Registry
3 Out-of-Process Remote Server
If the component is remote, but the client didn't specify a remote system, the client's registry will contain the name of the machine on which the component should be created. COM system code examines that machine's registry to learn the name of the executable to run. If the client explicitly specifies a remote system, the client's registry is bypassed, and COM directly accesses the registry on the specified system to detennine which executable
to run. In either event, the client and the component will communicate using DCOM.
W\W b " l .c I
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 5 7
Cover Story ActiveX Demystified
The story begins with OLE, a technolo gy for creating compound documents. While OLE's first release was focused sole ly on compound documents, the next release, OLE 2, introduced COM. COM grew our of the OLE architects' desire to provide a more general mechanism for allowing one piece of soft\vare to provide services to another. Accordingly, while OLE 2 was the first technology to use it, COM isn' t really tied to compound docu ments in any significant way. Very quick ly, then, COM began to be used in tech nologies that had nothing whatsoever to do with compound documents.
So now Microsoft had a nice, general infrastructure technology-but it's not a product-and needed a brand name. The company's marketing wizards, perhaps unfortunately, chose to u e "OLE" as that brand name. Deciding that the term should no longer be viewed as an acronym, Microsoft began adding the "OLE" rag to every technology that used COM. Most of these technologies, of course, had nothing at all to do with compound documents, so the company spent several years trying to convince a ll of us that "OLE" no longer referred to just compound documents.
Then, in the spring of 1996, the com pany changed its collective mind one more time. A new brand name, ActiveX, was chosen, and "OLE" was again deemed to refer only to compound documents. And while OLE had once been a common brand name for nearly all COM-based technolo gies, COM had by now become so widely used that it was no longer possib le to apply one name to everything. The result is today's undeniably confusing situation: ActiveX refers to a loosely defined set of COM-based technologies. OLE once again refers only to compound documents. And COM, which was always the most impor tant thing anyway, gets used more and more in the Microsoft world.
An important point to make here is that although rhe marketing label appl.ied to many COM-based technologies has changed, COM itself has not. "The core spec for COM has been stable since 1993," according to Joe Maloney, COM group manager at Microsoft. "We've added addi tional functionality, bur rhe definition of what COM is has remained consistent. " Applications written against COM's initial release still work unchanged today.
The idea of an object model that's divorced from a programming language can seem odd . We understand what an
object is in C++ orJava, but what's a COM object? A straightforward way to think about COM is as a packaging technology, a group of conventions and supporting libraries that allows interaction bet\veen different pieces of software in a consistent, object-oriented way. COM objects can be written in all sorts of languages, includ ing C++,Java, Visual Basic, and more, and they can be implemented in DLLs or in their own executables, running as dis-
be usefully applied to a host of software problems.
Persistence
Creating a COM object by loading the right code is all very well, but is it enough? For some objects, the code is all that's really needed, but many objects also need the correct data loaded into them. These objects need to load their persistent data.
COM supports a number of persistence
Transactions and Components
Atraditional transactional application tells a transaction server that it should begin a transaction, makes changes, then tells the transaction server to commit or abort all of those changes. But this traditional approach doesn't work when the transactions are being performed by components. Why? Remem· ber that the primary goal of component-based development is to allow building applications from independently created parts. If each component were always used alone, the Ira· ditional "Begin Transaction, Do Work, Com· mit or Abort" stnucture would work just fine. But if you want to combine multiple compo· nents into a single transaction, each compo· nent cannot contain its own Begin Transac· lion request.
Microsoft Transaction Server's solution is to disallow acomponent to determine when a
transaction begins. Instead, each compo
nent can be administratively configured to
require a transaction. When a client creates a
transaction-required component, MTS auto
matically starts a transaction. If that compo·
nent then commits or aborts the transaction,
MTS carries out the component's request. If
the component creates another component,
and the new component also requ ires a
transaction,MTS can automatically includethe
changes made by the new component in the
transaction. When this second component
commits or aborts its work, MTS takes note but
doesn't end the transaction. Not until the par·
ent component commits or aborts does MTS
end the transaction.This approach allows the
same component binary to be used in its own
transaction or combined with others into asin
gle transaction.
-David Chappell
tin ct processes. A client using a COM object need not be aware of either what language the object is written in or whether it's running in a DLL or a separate process. To the client, it all looks the same.
Having such a general approach for packaging sofMare turns out to be sur prisingly useful. Two applications coop erating to give the user the illusion of a compound document, for example, can implement that cooperation as interac tions bet\'leen COM objects (which, of course, is exactly what happens with OLE compound documents today). Code that's downloaded from a Web server to run inside a browser can appear as a COM object to the browser, providing a standard way to package downloadable code (which is what ActiveX controls do).
Even the way an application interacts with its local operating system can be spec ified using COM (and new APis for Win dows and Windows NT are now often defined as COM objects). Despite its ori gin in compound documents, COM can
mechanisms. The simp lest is file-based persistence, where an object just loads irs persistent data from an ordinary file. For more complex si tuations, there's also a COM-based solution called structuredstor age. Witl1 structured storage, somethi ng analogous to a file system is bui lt inside every file. Made up of storages, which are l.ike directories, and streams, which are like files, structured storage allows many COM objects (possibl y running inside many dif ferent applications) to share a sin gle file .
When a client program creates a COM object, it's the client's responsibility to tell that object where ro find its persistent data (if it has any). For COM objects that need to load persistent data, then, clients musr do two things: Create the object itself, th en rell it where to find the per istent data. COM supports other kinds of persistence, too, but ordinary files and structured stor age are among the most commonly used.
Monikers
For many client , creating and initializing
58 BYTE SEPTEMBER 199 7
Activ eX Demystifie d C over Story
Active Platform
built into Microsoft Explorer 3 and 4, and it can be part of yourclientlserv· er application through ActiveX.
For Windows shops, Ac tive Platform provides a sound and scalable
Ac tive Platform is Microsoft's view of t he w orld. It uses ActiveX con· serve r-side ap pl ication d evelopment platfo rm . S ince Active S erve r t rols as a mech anism to interact w ith users and to automate leverages commodity tools and technologies even with high·end prod·
everything from COM-enabled transaction processing (TP) monitors ucts such as TP monitors, small workgroup or intranet ap plications
to W eb servers. It has two parts: Active Server and Active Client.
won't exceed the capacity of Active Server. While Active Platform tar·
Active S erver is really the middle tier, providing the location for gets different environments, it's too dependent on Internet Explorer to
business logic and primary application p rocessing using compo drive the client. Explorer is appearing on some non-Windows platforms,
nents or Active Server Pages (ASP) . The core technologies of Active but Windows is receiving the best support and the latest versions.
Server include NT Server, Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), data
- David S. Linthicum
management services,directory services,
Web services, and network services. MTS combines t raditional T P monitor fea tures, such as thread pooling and data· base multiplexing,w ith the Microsoft com· ponent·based programming model.
Other components of Active Platform, such as data management services,
The ActiveX World
Active Client le.g., Internet Explorer!
Active Server (e.g., llS, MTSI
HTML
leverage OLE DB and ODB C to access d ata so u rce s like DB 2, O racle, and SOL S erver. Active Directory provides the directory services layer aro und Dis tributed COM (DCOM), allowing remote
HTML Scripting Components
Scripting
Components
System services
objects to find each other on the network. The Web services are built around Inter net Information Server (llS) , providing scripting mechanisms through ASP for serve r-side Web application develop ment. Network services are built around
Services
Standard protocols: HTIP, TCP/IP, IPX/SPX
Active Directory
'E..E..
~""="°''
Component services
Security
g:,
r!
;0n
DCOM, allowing the controls to connect over the network through the synchro
Network
nous MS·RPC. The Active Client is cross-platform.
Microsoft is hoping to deliver technology
Standard protocols: HTIP, TCP/IP, IPX/SPX
to a broad range of operating systems,
albeit on its own terms. The plan is to use
standard HTML, Microsoft's flavor of the
Java virtual machine (JVM), and a scripting engine usi ng Microsoft's VBSc ript and JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript).
Active Platform's para ll el architectures enable high component mobility from client to server.
So where do you find the Active client? It's
a particular object instance i a perfectly acceptab le thing ro Jo. In some cases, though, it's just too much ro expect a client to do this. An object might require very complex initialization, for example, or a cli ent might need to use many different kinds of COM objects, each of which has its own idiosyncratic requirements for cre ation and/or initialization. To hide this kind of complexity, COM defines the notion of a moniker.
A moniker is a COM object like any oth er, but it has a special function: Each instance of a moniker object knows how to create and initialize exactly one other specific COM object instance. Monikers do wharclienrscould do forthemselves objecr creation and initialization-but they hide the details from their clients.
But wait- monikers are them selves COM objects, and they have their own per sistent data (if they didn't, they'd have no idea what object they referred to}. To use a mo niker, then, a client must first create and initialize that moniker, then ask it to create and initialize the object it refer to. This seems patently stupid. Why can't the client just create the ultimate ta rget object itself? What benefit do es the moniker provide?
In many cases, the answer is " Notl1ing." Clients of COM objects often create and initialize those objects themselves, eschew ing monikers entirely. Bur there are rimes when creating and initializing a COM object is so complex, so idiosyncratic or just so painful that relying on a moniker can simplify a client's life. One exa mple
is connecting to a linked document in OLE, which wa rh e first use of moniker , bur rhere are many others. Microsoft's Inter net Explorer, for example, re lie on monikers every rime a user accesses a URL.
Automation
Like other kinds of object , COM object provide methods that their clients can call. Those methods are provided through interfaces tliatgroup metl1ods into unique ly named collections. COM objects today can choose to expose the ir methods thro ugh rwo different kinds of interfaces. The first option, called vtable interfaces, works very well when the clients that will caU rhose methods are written in C++. The second choice, called dispatch inter faces (usually shortened ro dispi11terfaces),
www.byte.com
SE PTEMBER 1 99 7 BYTE 5 9
Cover Story ActiveX Demystified
ActiveX Security
Downloading executable con· tent from unknown Web sites might be risky. Who knows what this little application is going to do once it's on your system? Two main security concepts have emerged to combat malicious exe· cutables : code signing and the sandbox model.
ActiveX uses code signing, specifically the Microsoft Authen· ticode technology. Authenticode allows you to verify the origin of a control and thus assess its relia bility and safety. If a control destroys your system, at least you'll know whom to beat up. Inde pendent certificate authorities (CAs) like VeriSign issue the dig ital signatures to mark the code. Developers have to pay for the cer tificates, and in order to be con sidered for a certificate you must pass through a screening pro cess.The digital signature is 1024 bits and thus essentially impossi ble to reverse engineer.
Authenticode is based on Microsoft's code-signing propos· al now being evaluated by the World Wide Web Consortium.
AuthenticO'ie uses X.509 v3 cryp· tography certificates as well as the PKCS #7 and #10 signature standards. The digital signature uses both a public key and a pri vate key, known as a key pair.Only the private key owner knows the private key, while the public key is available to the world . The private key is used to generate the signa ture, and the public key is used to validate it.
The Java sandbox, in contrast , provides highly restrictive securi
ty. An applet can 't perform unau·
thorized system functions (e.g., allocate memory) or read and write from disks or other devices. Because some developers have found the sandbox too restrictive, recent versions of the Java Devel opment Kit also support code signing and different degrees of protection. Consequently, if an applet is signed and trusted, it might be able to exit the sandbox into another protection domain where it may be able to do file I/O, for example.
Cost is also an issue. If you're going to add a signature to your
Authenhcnde(tm) Secuuty Technnln11y
lill£J
Authenticode warns you that you're about to install some bit of software, but it doesn't protect you after you click Yes.
code, you have to pay the CA. While larger software develop· ment shops won 't feel the pain, those that create shareware in
their basement might not be able to afford the certification or pass the CA's background check.
-David S. Linthicum
works very well when clients are written in simpler languages such as Vi ual Basic
(although they' re also u able from c+ +
clients). For reasons related again to mar keting, exposing methods using dispinter faces has become known as automation.
The name 'auromation" was applied because of how clispinterfaces were first used. Deve lopers of desktop applications wanted ro allow other software ro make use of their app lications' functions. This is a situation tailor-made for COM, since its raison d'etre is to allow one piece of software to ex pose its services to another. Because most of the code that wou ld make use of those a pplications' serv ices was ex pected to be written in Visua l Basic, the appli catio ns' developers cho se to expose their methods using dispinterfaces rather than vtable interfaces. And since doing this allowed writin g programs th at could automatically carry out, say, repet itive spreadsheet tasks that wou ld other wise have been done by hand, using dispin terface methods ca me to be known as automation.
Today, dispinterfaces are used in all kinds of situations many of which have nothing to do wi th automating the use of a deskro p application. Still, the name has stuck, addi ng one more confusing term to an area that already has more than its share.
Distributed Computing
COM's first in carnation assumed COM objects and their clients were running on the same machine (although they could still be in the same process or in different processes) . From th e beginning, however, COM's designers intended to add the capa bility for clients to create and access objects on other machines. Although CO 1 fir t made its way imo the world in 1993, Dis tributed COM (DCOM) didn' t appearuntil the re lease of Windows NT 4.0 in mid 1996. Unquestionably an important part of th e ActiveX family, DCOM is now avail able for Windows 95 as well (bur don't ho ld your breath waiting for a Windows 3. 1 ve rsio n-Microsoft says that's not going to happen).
DCOM rea ll y do es n ' r ch a nge much
about how a client creates and interacts w ith a COM object. In fact, it might no t change anything at all-a client can use exactly th e same code to access local and remote objects. In many cases, though, a cli ent might choose to use a few DCOM extras (al though th e e extras also work fo r local objects- COM' d esign ers have worked hard to let clients remain unaware of where their objects are running). DCOM also includes a distributed security mech anism, providing auth entication and data encryptio n. Windows NT 5.0, sched uled for release next year, will add support for Kerbero and other ecuriry proto cols to DCOM. And to locate COM objects on other machin es, DCOM today can make u e of si mple directory services such as the Domain Name System (DNS). Again, NT 5.0 will broaden the choices, adding sup port for Microsoft's Active Directory, which is based on D S and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) .
DCOM's traditional nemesis has been the Object Management Group's Com mon Object Reque t Broker Architecture
60 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 97
ActiveX Demyst ified Cover Story
(CORBA), which is embodied in many commercially available product , such as Iona's Orbix and Visigenic's VisiBroker. More recently, Java's Remote Method Invocatio n (RMI) has emerged as another choice for supporting distributed objects. Unlike CORBAand DCOM, both of which allow communication between objects written in various languages, RMI is focused on communication between objects implemented in Java. This limita tion certainly adds some constraints, but it also makes RM1 very simpl e to use. Fur thermore, RM.I's developers had the lux ury of designing their protocol pecifical ly for Java, allowing them to make it an excellent match for the language' fea tures. (COM, on the other hand, must deal with translations among the type systems of var ious languages, something that's almost never pleasant.)
Writing a DCOM server that can han dle only a couple of clients is relatively straightforward. However, building a DCOM server that can effectively handle a couple hundred clients, or a couple thou sand, is much more complex.
To make writing scalable DCOM servers easier, Microsoft has released the Micro soft Transaction Server (MTS). While MTS does provide support for rransacrions, ir also provides services such as automatic threading and intelligent object reuse. Even applications that don't need trans actions can benefit from using MTS since it makes writing scalable servers much eas ier; in fact, Microsoft encourages devel opers to write their MTS applications in Vi ua l Basic, hardly a tradition al choice for people creating indu trial-strength servers. Every MTS application must be written as one or more COM objects, implemented in DLL.s. To a client, MTS i typically invisible-the client just creates and uses COM objects as always.
Standards for Components
Component-based application develop ment hold the promise of building appli cations the sa me way we assemble elec tronics: out of prebuilr component parts. COM-based components for the desktop are known as ActiveX controls. (A very common terminological mistake is to con fuse "ActiveX," a label for a broad family of technologies, with "ActiveX controls," a specific technology in that family.) An ActiveX control is just a COM object that follows certain standards in how it inter acts with its client. For example, an
Java and ActiveX
The debate rages on: Java versus ActiveX. To understand the debate, though , it's important to remember that both "Java" and "Act iveX" are labels applied to a broad range of technologies.
ActiveX controls and JavaBeans are defi· nitely competitors, however, and develop· ers must make a choice when creating a com· ponent. But they're not mutually exclusive: Each is suited to particular situations.
B oth ActiveX controls and Java applets and Beans support the "download once run many times' architecture. In the case of Java applets, the Java virtual machine (JVM) inter prets the bytecode and controls access to system resources. Th e JVM removes the applets from the details of the host OS, and thus applets can run on any platform that sup· ports the JVM. Most do. ActiveX controls, by contrast, have to register themselves with the Windows registry and execute as native Win· dews applications.
The trade-off is portability versus native look and performance. Any version of Java code is cross-platform as long as the JVM supports that platform. But Java's perfor· mance is less than stellar, and by default the security subsystem of Java does not allow access to native features such as file 1/0 and devices. Thus, Java is the best bet for those
shops that have to support a hodgepodge of operating systems and processors and don't mind having to write an application around the security features.
While Java is the jack·of·afl·trades,ActiveX is the master of one: Win32. ActiveX controls function exactly like native Windows appfi· cations and thus have access to all native lea· lures such as print queues, file 1/0, and even memory. For security, ActiveX depends on Microsoft's Authenticode system (see "ActiveX S ecurity; page 60). The use of the native features of Windows means that Act iveX controls run at native speed, typi· cally faster than their Java counterparts. More over, most popular clienUserver tools, such as Visual Basic, Delphi, and PowerBuilder, now support ActiveX control development using the native languages of the tools. Final· ly, many Windows tool s and applications can make use of ActiveX controls, so they aren't confined to your browser.
Which is for you? Consider them both for their strengths and their weaknesses.It's okay to leverage Act iveX controls for homogenous
Windows applications, while Java is a finer fit
for cross-platform situations. It's better than force-fitting applications in the name of a stan· dard, or worse, a religious crusade.
-David S. Linthicum
ActiveX control must expose its methods via auto mation, i.e., using dispinterfaces. Th.is standardized interaction allow the same control to be used in many different contexts. Behind its standard interfaces, an ActiveX control can do virtually any thing, and controls implementing all kinds of functions are available from various sofrware companies today.
ActiveX controls are written as DLL , and so they must be loaded into some kind ofconrniner-they can't run on their own. The arc hetypalcontainer for ActiveX con trols was Visual Basic (why do you think contro ls were required to use dispinrer faces?), but today there are many more choices. An especially important example ofa control container today is Microsoft's Web browser, lnternet Explorer. In fact, the realization that a Web browser cou ld be a control conta in er (and recognition that Java appl ets might otherwise come to own this marker) caused Microsoft to significantly change both the technology and the name applied to COM-based desk top components.
What are now known as ActiveX con-
rrols were originally called OLE control , and th ey were required to implement a large number of methods. This made them big, but so what? They were loaded off a machine 's loca l ha rd drive into a contain er such as Visua l Ba ic. Whether a control was a few hundred kilobytes or a couple megabytes made no significanrdifference, went the logic. But ifa control were loaded into a Web browser there was an excellent chance that that control would first be transferred across a slow phone connec tion to the Internet. Now, a control's size mattered crucially, and to require its cre ator to imp lement any more than the required minimum would needle sly increase its download time. Accordingly, at about the same time it changed the name, Microsoft decreed that what were now cal led ActiveX controls could imple ment o nl y those features that were absolutely necessary for that control no more needless obesity was required.
For several years, the primary com petitor to ActiveX controls was OpenDoc, promoted by Apple and IBM. Today, how ever, both of OpenDoc's sponsoring orga-
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 61
C over S t o ry A cti ve X D em ys t if ie d
nizations have officially declared it dead. Instead, most ofthe anti-Microsoft forces have lined up behind javaBeans, a Java based componentarchitecn1re. Unl ike con trols, which are largely tied ro \Vmdows and distributed as machine-specific binaries, a JavaBean can run anywhere. The trade-of~ of course, is that a Bean can't take full advan tage of it local environmenrwirhourcom promisingtharporrabi lity. For many appli cations, such as writing a component that can be downloaded from the public Inter net,]avaBeans is an excellent choice.
Today, there is a large and rapidly grow ing marker for desktop components, near
lyall ofwhich are builrasActiveX controls (relative ly few JavaBeans are available now). Standards for server components have been slower to arrive, however. On the de krop, We b browsers and program ming environments such as VB and Power Builder are obvious choices for contain ers, but what should a server container be? Well, one excellent choice for a server-side component container is a transaction serv er- and Microsoft is touring its own, MTS.
Microsoft's competitors are loath ro see MTS a nd NT gai n substantial ground. The most promising of their efforts to cre ate a standard fo r server-side components
is an e;...'tension ofJavaBeans called Enter prise JavaBeans. This specification defines interface ro a transaction server, not unli ke MTS, and its sup porters hope ro convince independent software vendors to write their server componenrs as Beans rather than COM components. Microsoft is ahead in this market-MTS shipped in late 1996, while the Enterpri e JavaBeans specification i quire new, and products supporting ir aren't yer avai lable.
The Future of ActiveX
Ir's fair to say that rhe AcriveX technolo gies will always be most ar home in rhe
Tools for Building Controls
····· ······ ·· ·········· ·· ········· ········ ······· ···· ··· ······ ········· ············· ··· ······ ·
As ActiveX becomes more popular, more ActiveX control development tools are appearing. Since ActiveX is language·inde· pendent, almost any tradit ional development tool can bu ild and deploy ActiveX controls.The most popular tools include Borland's Delphi, Powersoft's PowerBuilder, and the arsenal from Microsoft, featuring Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual J++.
Frameworks There are several w ays to create ActiveX controls using 3Gls, including : X Using the Microsoft
Foundation Classes (MFC) X Using the ActiveX Template
Library (ATL) X The BaseCtrl Framework
Most current ActiveX develop· ment uses M FC because M FC has been around the longest and many C++ developers know it. Also, unlike the other techniques, MFG enables developers to con· centrate on the behavior of the object rather than the interface. The downside (especially for Inter· net distribution) is the size of the controls and the need for a n.m·time DLL to exist with the container.
ATL is able to generate c ode each time you need it using tern· plates. Thus, you don't need libraries or DLLs that have to ship along with the control. ATL re· quires that you derive a class from several base classes existing as templates. Typically, developers will use the ATL wizard to create the classes automatically. ATL also
has drawbacks. It's much more dif· ficult to deal with interfaces using ATL since you must create each interface you need for your appli· cation.Also, ATL does not support the Class W izard that's able to automatically keep the Object Descri ption Language and inter· face definition language files in synch with your code.The wizards leave a lot to be desired.
BaseCtrl is a lightweight library, very much like ATL, but without the templates . BaseCtrl is so light· weight,in fact, that Microsoft does not support it. S everal skeleton controls come w ith BaseCtrl. While BaseCtrl provides an easy· to·understand ActiveX control development model, it's not that much easier than ATL, and it does not provide as much flexibility. For now, it's a poor choice for ActiveX control developers.
Tools Microsoft's Visual C++ was the first tool to provide capabilities for creating ActiveX controls. Today it provides the most control for ActiveX developers. Visual J++ can also create ActiveX controls. This keeps many Java purists up at night, and it's a good comeback for Microsoft wh en arguing the ActiveX·versus·Java issue.
Although two of B oriand's devel opment tools-JBuilder and Intra· Builder-get much attention,Delphi 3.0 and c++ Builder are the only Borland tools able to create ActiveXcomponents.Borland calls Delphi's ActiveX development fea tures Active Inside. The idea is to
The Tools
Developer tools Visual Basic Delph i Visual C++ PowerSu ilder Visual J++ others . ..
Scripting tools VBScript JavaSc ript JScript others ...
ActiveX controls
Desktop Apps Word Excel WordPerfect Other OLE-compliant apps
Java
applets
Java virtual machine
Unix
(to come)
Part of ActiveX's flexibility is the number of ways you can develop with it.
turn any Delphi Window into an ActiveX form . Active Inside pre· pares your new control for deploy· ment on the Web. Delphi is also able to link your control to COM or DCOM for links to other objects.
PowerBuilder 5.0 is a client/ server development tool redone for use as an Act iveX facto ry. PowerBuilder is able to deploy Data W indows (the core of PowerBuilder application devel· opment) as ActiveX controls, and
it allows current PowerBuilder developers to use familiar features such as the PowerScript pro· gramming language.
Microsoft has probably the best tools for creating ActiveX controls. Visual Basic 5.0, for example, allows developers to use the friendly visual programming envi· ronment of VB and the native Visu· al Basic for Applications language to create controls.
- David S. Linthicum
62 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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Cover Story Act iveX Dem ystified
world of Windows and Windows NT. But
no matter how much Microsoft pushes its operating systems, most organizations will
Who OwnsActiveX?
always have some diversity-single-ven dor environments just aren't in the cards.
Accordingly, Microsoft is working co make
COM, DCOM, and some other parrs of the ActiveX family available on other operat
A key factor in the move to make ActiveX a multi pla tfo rm technology is Microsoft's much·publicized dealings with the Open
the industry in an open man ner and ensure that there is an efficient, open process for the future."
In the October, 1996, an
will, as Microsoft has stated, make use of the Open Group's services where rel evant or needed, but they will not be under its thumb. For
ing systems. Microsoft already provides
Group. Formed from the nouncement reporting the example, the Open Group
ActiveX support for the Macintosh, includ ing support for ActiveX controls (since Microsoft Office now depends heavily on COM, Microsoft had li ttle choi ce but to support COM in that envi ronment). Soft ware AG is porting these reclrnologies to various flavors of Unix and to IBM's OS/390 (the current name for the venerable MYS operatingsystem). Digital and HP have also
committed co providing these technologies
merger of X/Open and the Open Software Foundation, the Open Group is one of the last remaining organizations from the heyday of open sys tems. It's been widely report ed that Microsoft was giving control of core ActiveX tech nologies to the Open Group. But a careful reading of what Microsoft has actually said on
results of a vote taken by potential participants in the ActiveX standardization pro cess, Microsoft states, "The Open Group has been selected by Microsoft ActiveX stakeholders to pro vide leadership in the evolu tion and deployment of ActiveX core technologies ~ Note again that the word
has a mechanism in place for licensing software on an equal basis to all comers, and Microsoft has allowed them to license the code for COM and DCOM to other vendors. But the Active Group's pri mary purpose will be prolifer ation and promotion, not pro· vid ing a formal venue for defining the future of ActiveX.
on their systems, again by porting Micro
the subject makes clear that "control" is never used. The This arrangement is remi
soft's code. COM has become a crucial part of the
software infrasrructure in the Wmdows 95 and Windows NT environmen ts. But there are still plenty of uncertainties about the future. Wi ll Microsoft succeed, for exam ple, in making COM a viable multi platform technology? Fitting Windows NT servers
this isn't the case. The initial Microsoft press
release on this topic, dating from July 1996, begins, "Microsoft Corp. today an nounced plans for fulfilling its vision of openness for ActiveX by transitioning specifications and appropri
announcement goes on to say, "The Active Group, to be formed under the auspices of The Open Group, will man age the evolution of ActiveX technolog ies. It will take advantage of The Open Group services .. ."
What seems most likely
niscent of the Java world, where a single vendor (Java Soft , i.e., Sun) takes input from other vendors and users, then determines tech nology directions based on that input and on its own desires. Both leading object technologies-ActiveX/COM
into existing enterprises will all but require
ate technology to an industry here is that the future direc and the Java environment
that DCOM and other distributed ser
standards body." This is not tion of COM and ActiveX are now controlled by single
vices be ava ilable o n non-Microsoft plat forms. The process has taken longer than expected, and while many organizations have made promises in this area, not muc h code is actually shipping. Meanwhile, both CORBA-based products and Java's RMI are successfully running in multi-OS envi
quite the same thing as giv ing control. Later that year, Microsoft group vice presi dent Paul Maritz stated that the goal of the process was to "make sure that the tech nology is made available to
technologies will still be determined by Microsoft.The Active Group will be com posed of companies that want to promote and prolif erate COM and DCOM tech nologies. The Active Group
vendors. Our industry has finally learned a crucial les son: Technologies controlled by slow-moving standards bodies can't keep up with rapidly changing markets.
-David Chappell
ronments today. Th e more time passes
before multiplatform DCOM becomes a developme nt, whether that software runs to avoid monopoly, JavaBean s w ill very
reality, the larger CORBA and RM l's lead in a Web browser or so mewhere e lse . likely acq uire some market share.
wi ll become.
ActiveX controls are ahead today, but \vi th COM has grown to play a key role in
What abo ut the contest between the demise of OpenDoc, all of Microsoft's Microsoft's Internet strategy, its applica
ActiveX controls and JavaBeans? Compo opponents have rall ied behind a si ngle tions, and even its operati ng systems. And
nentware is the ne:x-t great wave in software competitor. Ifonly because of users' desires as with all living software technologies,
WHERE TO FIND
enhancements to COM are on th e way. But whatever label is applied to the coreCOM
Borland International Scotts Valley, CA
800-467-9527 408-431 - 1000 http:f/www.borland.com
Bristol Technologies Ridgefield, CT
203-438-6969 http://www.bristol.com
Java Soft Moun.lain View, CA
800-518-1763 512-434-1591 http://www.javasoft.com
Mainsoft Sunnyv'alc, CA
408-774-3400 http://www.mainsoft.com
Microsoft Redmond, WA
800-426-9400 206-882-8080 http:l/www.microsoft.com
Object Management Group Framingham, MA
508-820-4300 http:l/www.omg.org
Powe.rsoft (a division ofSybase) Concord, MA
800-395-3525 508-287-1 500 http://www.powersoft.com
SoftWareAG Darmstadt. Germany (international headquarters) +49-6151 -92-31-00 Rcston, VA (U.S. headquarters) 703-860-5050 http://www.sagus.com
Symantec Cupertino, CA
0
408-2539600 http://www.symantec.com
VeriSign Mountain View, CA
415'-961-7500 http://www.verisign.com
based technologies- originally OLE, now ActiveX, and tomorrow perhaps some thing else-COM's importance shows no signs of declining. As long as Windows and Windows NT are important operating sys tems, the ActiveX teclrnologies will play a significant role in our lives. liJ
David Chappell (david@chappellassoc.com) is principal of Chappell & Associates, an educa tio11 and consulting firm in Minneapolis. David S. Linthicum {llnthlcum@worldnelatt.net) is a senior manager with Ernst and Young 's Center
for Technology E11ableme11t, in Vie1111a, Virginia.
64 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 97
www.byte.com
Publish or Perish
Solutions to overworked networks and unruly software distribution are just part of P&S. By Richard Hackathorn
. .- - · large stock-brokerage firm on Wall Street has diffi
A culry getting the right data to its traders. It imple ments a publish and subscrib e (P&S) trading system . ._ _. . to distribute genera l news and srock information. A successful software vendor of CAD tools has a big problem with handling cusromer su pport. It designs a P&S problem-tracking system to manage the dail y flow of thousands of customer requests. A global manufac turer ofoil-dri II ing equipmenr has a messy siruation tracking material and finished goods on its shop floor. It installs a P&S materials-handling sys tem that tracks jobs at each step in th e manufacturing process. Notice a pattern? All these involve complex business processes with ever-changing objectives. Sounds a bit like your busin ess? lfso, P&S may solve your problems.
No MoreR&R
For 30 yea rs, the basic para digm of compuring has been request and reply (R&R). An application requests specific data or services, and a sub routine replies with it.
But the R&R paradigm is running out of ga . In the dynamic and uncontrolled environments of present-day enterprise systems, an app li cation no longer has the lu,x ury of knowing w hen and wh at to request.
P&S coordinates the componen ts of di stributed appl ica tions. The concept started hundreds of years ago with newspa per publi bing. Recently, it has been applied to a variety of prod uct that coordinate complex distributed applications or replicate diverse information content. P&S is a connectivity paradigm that separates the role of producer from consumer via an intermedi a ry, caJled the broker (see the figure " R&R vs. P&S" on page 66). The broker manages the interactions so that neither the pro ducer nor consumer need know much abour the other. The archi tecture is decoupled or loo ely coupled.
With P&S, a relationship is maintained by the broker to cou
1-1ww.by e.com
pie producers with consumers, as contrasted with a mom entary interaction of R&R. This relationship is called a channel (or sub scription, subject, or buffer). By reversing the ordering from R&R, the producer initiates the interaction by publishing a message to the broker.
The traditional way of linking data producers with data con sumers i to design the system so that those links are static-hard
wired into module Linkages and procedural calls. As we move into increasingly dy namic and complex envi ronments, we no longer have the luxury of hard wiring those links. Produc ers and consumers often appear and vanish. We need a mechanism to efficiently march producers with con sumers in a dyna mic fash ion. Adding flexibility and adaptation to system archi tectures is the role that P&S is fulfilling.
Three Business Problems
Because the P&S arena is emerging from several com plex technologies, it is very confusing. The terminology is nonstandard, and every one uses the terms message, channel, and event with sub tle variations in meanings.
To understand the tech no logies and terminology better, you must understand the business problems that P&S aims to solve: coordinate processes, replicate content, and inform people (see the table " P&S Solves Business Problems" on page 67). Coordinate processes. Typically, thi s means tracking a busi nes activity. Cutting quire deep, P&S has become an alternative to traditional application-development methodologies-a dif fere nt way of thinking about system architectures. Rather than catering ro a logically centralized database, P&S is used as the event-driven coordination of applications through the distri bution of messages. The focus is on significant changes rharoccur in bu si ness processes, such as a customer ordering a product.
continued SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 65
Managing Data Publish or Perish
Once the message flows from the pro ducer to the consumer, it is treated as non persisrent (i.e., thrown away).
Replicate content. Somewhere there exists a persistent data store, such as a rela tional database or Web si re. The infor mation stream is closely linked to some part of that persistent store and represents the changes that are occurring within it.
Inform people. This is the essence of newspaper publishing, bur P&S shifts the activity into a global scope and customiz able context.
These three areas are simi lar in many respects. "We distinguish between con tent-push ve rsus process-pu h," says Mike Kennedy of the Meta Group.
Coordinating processes often assumes that a database is part of the system. Ful filling a customer order as umes a data base of customers and inventory. Repli cating content is driven by events that change the database. The inventory data base changes because customer orders are being fulfilled. And informing people assumes a common knowledge base and a world that is constantly changing.
Coordinating processes usually re quires a strongl y typed message structure and may or may not be closely associated with a common database. Replicating content usually assumes a trong linkage to a database of some sort. Ir can vary greatly in the degree of message structure (from SQL I SERT statements to re freshed Web pages). Finally, informing people usually has a low mes age struc ture, which mayor may not req uire a com mon database to understand messages.
The Emerging Architecture
P&S is a coordination mechanism that marches and links producers with con sumers mediated by a broker. Producers are sometimes called providers or pub lishers, and consumers are so metimes called subscribers.
"The role of broker is critica l with P&S," stares Mitch Kramer of the Patricia Seybold Group. "It decouples producers from consumers so that they don't need to know about each other."
The broker establishes a channel to manage a stream of similar messages. Channels relieve the burden fo r the pro ducer or consumer to maintain currency (see the figure" Free Subscription" on page 67). The broker maintains a channel as long as a producer publishes or a con sumer subscribes. This duration may last
from a few seconds up to a few years. By decoupling the producer-consumer
relationship, the security of both parries can be enhanced, allowing either one to p a rticipate a nonymous ly. Producers could also share or transfer subscrip tions to balance loads or specia li ze in certain areas. Further, the P&S mecha nism could form multilevel value-added chains in which a consumer can add value ro the data and republish the result to another group of consumers.
A message is usually divid ed into a
R&R vs. P&S
Request
Reply
Instead of forcing the client to ask whenever it needs
something, P&S enables it to ask once and keep receiving.
header-structured data common to all message types-and a body-variable data specific to a certai n message type. The body may contain free-form text, HTML Web pages, attribute-value pairs, and such.
Finally, a marker is formed when a high level of activity occurs among a group of producers and consumers over one or more channels. Like the dynamics of nor mal markers, the dynamics of markers in P&S systems are a major indicator for directions ro evolve these systems.
Basic Interactions
Here's how it works (see the figure "The Publish and Subscribe Architecture" on page 68) . A producer registers with the broker for a specific channel. This action may cause the broker to create the chan nel and establish its characteri tics. Con sumers inquire about available channels. If a desired one is found, the consumer subscribes to it. Later, the producer pub
lishes a message to a channel. The broker delivers the message to the proper set of consumers subscribing to the channel.
In some situations, direct interaction between a producer-consumer pair is desirable. Such a direct link is required for highly volatile or massive data, along with app lications requiring efficient high volume rransacrional semantics.
A final aspect of the above interac tions is the possible monetary exchange amo ng producers, consumers, and the broker. As critical systems extend beyond the boundaries of a company, an explicit financial incentive must be established to ensure stable operations. Although elec tronic commerce is rapidly increasing in various areas, no examples of monetary exchange with P&S have occurred.
Practical P&S
There are several key issues to resolve in any practical ap plication ofP&S. How do you define channels? Ser level of service? Privileges?
Channels and namespace. The first issue is defining channels, especially the namespace. Achannel represents a stream of important busi ness events or informa tion resources. Defining your channels implies defining your business processes. Likewise, nami ng (or addressi ng) yo ur channels implies how the P&S applica tions will support your business processes. Most argue that the naming should be fed erated, so that there is a shared responsi bility among producers and the broker, similar to domain names in the Internet.
The message header usually contains a structured field for a subject (or object type name). If the naming of messages uses this subject field, the P&S mechanism is subject-based. ln contrast, if the nam ing is dependent on the content of the message body, it is content-based. Subject based is more efficient, wh il e content based enables more flexibility for the con sumer to specify which messages are processed. Content-based naming may also imply that the message body has some self-defining format so that the broker can filter on various equivalence operators in addition to simple string matches.
QoS. The second issue is the level (or quality) of service, usually dependent on the re liability of message delivery. The typical levels of se rvice are best-effort, reliable, guaranteed, and transactional. Best-effort implies that the broker uses an efficient (but without error correction)
66 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Publish or Perish Managing Data
transport, such as UDP. Reliable implies that the broker uses a less efficient (but with error correction) transport, such as TCP. Guaranteed implies that the broker queues the mes age on permanent stor age until it is ensured that the consumer has received the message.
Finally, transactional implies that the broker manages a transaction among the producers and con umers, so that any actions by all parties are committed or aborted in unison. Among the various products, the scope of the transaction boundary is confusing and depends on whether the perspective is from the pro ducer or consumer viewpoint.
Pull vs. push. The topic of push proto cols has received much industry visibility recently as the preferred alternative. The problem occurs when the broker sends a message to the consumers that have sub sc ribed to that message. If the number of consumers is small, each one can pull its message from the broker via periodic polling, or the broker can send the mes sage multiple times, once for each con sumer. As the number of consumers rises to millions, both approaches rapidly de grade network performance. In other words, approac he using pull and also simp le push do not sca le. Mark Bowles of TlBCO notes, "Scalability is poor for sim ple point-to-point solutions."
The essence of true pu h for P&S is rwofold. First, the consumer receives its message asynchronou ly. An interrupt occurs at some level to switch the con sumer's attention to the new message; there is no background polling by the con sumer. Second, the message is multicast by the broker to many consumers. The broker initiates a message that is effi ciently distributed to the proper con sumers. Effic ient multicasting implies hardware ass istance buried in network routers, hence limiting networks to ho-
Free Subscription
Channels or subscriptions are logical groupings of similar
messages kept current by the broker.
mogeneous equipment. Atthe heart ofthe debate over efficient multicasting is IP multicasting forTCP/ lP (see "Multicast to the Masses, " June BITE).
Privileges. The fourth issue is specify ing and managing privileges for produc ers and consumers. Like thatofa database system, it is necessary to have a secured enviro nment in which all parties are authenticated and then assume a set of privileges that limit their actions.
Configuration. The final issue is the configuration for the P&S architecture. Vendors typically describe their imple mentations in terms of bus, hub and spoke, and snowflake (see the figure "Lay of rhe Land" on page 70) .
Key Players
P&S is emerging from many diverse prod uct categories (see the figure "Where They Fit" on page 70) . There is a rapid blurring among categories caused by nor mal market pressures. As P&S matures, these categories may become useful on ly for 11istorical background.
Messaging. Messaging rransporrs (also called message-oriented middleware, or MOM) start with sim pl e protocols for sending a message packet from point A to
point B in a reliable and efficient man ner. The inherent srore-and-forward mechanism of message transports has been extended in numerous ways, one of which is P&S. As an outgrowth of sending one message from point A to many point Bs, the idea of shared buffers and sub scribers emerged.
Some products are TlB/ Rendezvous, from Tll3CO; Velociti, from Vitria; Smart Sockets, from Talarian; NEONet, from New Era of Net\Vorks; and ActiveWeb, from Active Soft\Vare.
Since 1986, TIBCO (form erl y Tekne kron, now part of Reuters) has established a client base in the trading systems of Wall Street with its The information Bus (TIB) middleware. U ing a subject-based nam ing scheme, TIB/ Rendezvous multicasts packets so that only selected destina tions receive the packet, usually by the hardware-assisted IP multicasting.
Vitria's Velociti i a newcomer that takes a direct aim at TIBCO. It broadens protocol support beyond IP multicasting by adding support for Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) IIOP. "The key is ues are defining the channel an d eve nt sche me, along with specifying the required quality of service,"
P&S Solves Bu$lness Problems
Information stream Producers Subscribers Level of reliability Level of~ecurity
Coordinate Processes
Messages representing significant business events Applications that detect and capture business events Applications that should react to business events
Low to high
Medium in an intranet environment
Replicate Content
Change statements to synchronize persistent data stores Log manager for updated database
Inform People
Information items having a common subject or topic Content provider
Replication agent for database copies Knowledge worker
High (transactional) Low
Low Low to high
w r.-w.bytc.com
SEPTEMBER 19 9 7 BYTE 6 7
Manag ing Data Publ ish or Per ish
states Dale Skeen, cofounder and ch ief technologist.
SmartSockets, from Talarian, an indus try veteran since 1989, emphasizes its abil ity to provide fault tolerance and unlim ited scalabi li ty in traditional mainframe and Unix environments, along with NT. Tom Laffey, cofounder and CTO ofTalar ian, says, "For load balancing, Smart Sockets can push messages to the sub scriber that is least busy."
NEONet has a message broker con trolled by a rule-driven engi ne that trans forms the message flow. Consumers cre ate subscriptions that are based on message content, rather than predefined naming or categorization by the publisher.
At the fringes of messaging is Active Web, which adopts a strong Web fl avor with Java-based tools. Rafael Bracho of Active Software says, "The focus ofActive Web is on attacking the heterogeneity problem by integrating diverse legacy sys tems and looselycoupled information re sources." The configuration is hub and spoke, with the spokes as a variety of adapters into information resources.
As Evan Bauer of Giga notes, "The
most frequent implementation of P&S a
la messaging is t he homegrown varie ty using IBM MQ." Apopular alternative for many knowledgeable customers is to take a mature messagi ng product and add P&S functionality inyour application . IBM rec ognizes this situ ation and is increasing the P&S services in MQ.
Distributed objects. The concept of a broker achieved industry visi bility with the Object Management Group's (OMG) specificat ion for CORBA, which built on the classical remote procedure call (RPC). T he OMG extended CORBA to include a large set of object services, two of which are relevant to P&S: Object Event Noti fication Service (push/pull events to/from channels) and Object Nam ing Service (bind IDL- li ke [interface definition lan guage] names to a context simi lar to a Unix directory tree). The OMG is con sidering seve ral proposals to flesh out these service for full P&S support.
Examples of object request brokers (ORBs) include Orbix, from Iona Tech nologies; Entera, from Borland Open Environment; and DataBroker, from I Ki ne tics. Several have ex te nd ed the Object Event Notification Service with in CORBA to support P&S, such as Open Horizon's Ambrosia.
Nicholas Za ldastani, CEO of Op en
68 BYTE SE PTEMBER 1997
The Publish and Subscribe Architecture
Data producer
0
Publish @)
Refresh
0
Interact
f) Inquire and subscribe
0
Deliver
Data
consumer
0 The producer publishes data to the
broker. f) The consumer asks about specific
data and then subscribes to the producer through the broker. @) The producer notifies the broker of refreshed data.
0 The broker delivers the refreshed data
to the co1sumer.
0 An interact link will deliver volatile or
large amounts of data directly to the
consumer.
In a six-step process, a consumer can find out what a producer offers and start receiving it.
Horizon, emphasizes that irs focus is on hand ling significant events tha t affect your business. "Deve lopers must learn to exploit event-based infrastructures and properly design the namespace for event routing," he remarks.
Another contender for distributed objects is Microso ft's Distributed Com pon ent Obj ect Model (DCOM), w hich forms the foundat ion for the ActiveX tech nology. Currently, there is no indica tion th at ActiveX is adopting the P&S approach, although Microsoft's MSMQ (forme rl y Falcon), SQL Server Replica tion , an d CDF-based Webcas ting (d e scribed below) are close.
Transaction monitors. Transaction monitors evolved from database and large tra nsaction-processing systems, such as IBM's IMS and Custo mer Inform ation Control System (CICS) suites. The focus is on distributed transactions across mul tip le si tes based on two -phase commit protocols (2PCs).
Tuxedo, now from BEA Sys tems, is a classic example of th is category. In a way similar to COR BA object service , th e event management of Tuxedo has been extended. "The 2PC is integrated into P&S and can coordinate among a variety of reso urces," states Ed Felt of BEA. "The provider can post a message to a broker that acts as a consensus taker. If all sub cribers agree, the provider is allowed to commit its tran actio n. " ln addition, BEA has partnered with Digital Equipment to in corpo rate MessageQ, Obj ectBroker, and SAP R/3 Wrapper into its product line.
Application Integration Server from
Intermezzo Systems has a message broker driven by a transaction-processi ng mon itor th at coordin ates several appl ica tions to accomplish a business activity.
Newsgroups. Lest we forget, good old e-mail has had P&S elements for a long time. Via group mailing lists, a producer (sender) can multicast a message to multi ple consumers (recipients), who receive the message asynchronously. Add to that the concept of a BBS, a nd we have the Internet newsgro ups, which are alive and healthy amid Web frenzy. Newsgroup cre ation and threaded messages are impor tant concepts to be absorbed into P&S .
Work flow. Work-flow (or groupware) systems rrack a work item as it flows through the functional units of an orga nization. Through some combination of a centralized control database and struc tured e-mail messages, the responsibil ity for a work item passes from one person to another. There is now a strong con vergence of tradition al work-flow sys tems with messaging and distributed objects, thus solving the problem of imple menting large-scale work-flow systems in an adaptive and incremental fashion.
As a P&S pioneer, Apple designed its lnterapplication Communication (!AC) around a P&S variation for document management. A publisher shares a section of a document (e.g., a spreadsheet). Asub scriber obtains this content for another document. The Edition Manager main tains the shared section within an edi tion container. Thus, users can change a document, and the changes are propa gated to subscriber documents.
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C ircle 144- o~ lnquicy Card.
M an ag i ng Data Publ ish or Perish
Another product is NewsStand from
Lotus. Ir extends Notes onto the Web by publishing Notes templates and manag ing t he security and approva l of sub script.ions . Several publications, such as
Where They Fit
, '
High Messaging
Transaction
-
monitors
BNS'sBankingReport, use NewsStand for their electronic distribution.
Webcasting. This category has been "pushed" into the industry's limelight recently. Webcasring (or Web publishing)
Software dlstribution
Distributed objects
Database replication Progams
as COl1SllllelS
is using Web technology to deliver recur ring information through a push proto
Messlce
sbucbn
Work flow
Data warehousing
col. Products are Po intCast, Mari mba's
Castanet, BackWeb, I-Fusion, and Data Manager.
DataManager, from DataChannel is adopting TIBCO's technology and empha
Webcasting
Electronic commerce
Persons as COllSlll1el$
sizes its abiliry to efficiently multicastTCP packers, thus allowing scalabiliry within large intranetenvironmenrs. David Pool, preside nt of DataCha nnel, says, "But
Low Newsgroups Low
Database liWge
.... ....
lfigh
what is very elegant arch itecture is the way that TIBCO sends out one packer and everybody listens for ir. lr is very light
P&S software is described by how structured its messages are and how tight its database integration is.
weight and economical."
Recognizing the importance in stan CDF allows an author to optimize, per
Software distribution. This category is
dardizing Webcasting, Microsoft has sub onalize, and fu ll y contro l how a site is a major thorn in t he side for network
mitted a proposal to the W\Y/W Consor Webcast." To Webcast a site, the content and PC managers. As the number of work
tiu m (W3C) for its C hannel Definit ion provider wou ld create a CDF fi le at the station softwa re suites soa rs, the need
Format (CDF) techn ology that uses the root Web directory to sketch a road map for effective software distribution enter
Extensible Mark'llp Lan guage (XML).T he to key topics at the site.
p rise-wi de also soars. P&S seems to be an
proposal separates Webcasting into three
Database replication. Distributed data appropriate paradigm for software dis
leve ls: basic, managed, and true. Basic is base sy terns that need to synchronize t ribution, because a channel is a specific
simply the periodic probing (crawling) of with a primary version req uire a replica package while a consumer would sub
specific sites of interest. Ma naged and tion scheme that reliably distributes a mi.x scribe to the software operating on its
true Webcasting use a CDF file, so that a nire of full-image and de lta-image copies. workstation. One Webcast prod uct, Cas
consumer has a road map to the si te as Prod ucts are Data Pro pagator, from IBM; tanet, handl es software distribution li ke
defi ned by the content provider. As stated Replication Serve r, fro m Sybase; and SQL Web co ntent. A tu ner at a workstati o n
in the Microsoft CDF white paper, "The Server Replication, from Microsoft.
polls the transmitter server for differen
tial updates to software modules (even
Lay of the Land
to the tuner software itself). Data warehousing. P&S has a big poten
tial with information delivery in data
warehousing. The issue goes beyond
delive ri ng the proper information to the
right people. T he issue is how to sustai n
a fl ow of the pro per informatio n and let
any consumer add value and republish the
information . Applying P&S to data ware
housing will move us into a whole new
market-driven dynamic for information
Bus
The broker acts as a universal backplane Into which anyone can plug and which Is lightweight and efficient.
Hub and Spoke
The hub-and-spoke configuration Implies that the broker Is in the center, controlling all Interactions.
Snowflake
The snowflake configuration Implies that the broker Is distributed at various points In the network.
dissemination. Products are delivery Manager, from VIT; Tapestry, from D2K; and Aclue, from Decision·ism .
VIT s deliveryManager reac hes beyond the data warehouse tO any information source in the enterprise. "The focus must
P&S architectures come in three main flavors.
be on the consumer," remarks Subhash Chowdary, founder and CEO ofVIT. "The
consumer creates the demand and drives
7 0 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 97
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Circle 158 on Inquiry C ard.
Managing Data Publish or Pe ri sh
the content from any persistent store, like
that of an informati on supply chain."
Tapestry has a Subscriber Interface with
which anal ysts can examine the meta-cat
alog and place subscriptions via th e Web.
Content can be delivered in a va riety of
fo rma ts (e.g., Excel, Word, lotus 1-2-3,
and Java chart) and cheduled periodi
cally (see rhe screen ro the right).
Tapestry has a unique separation in rhe
producer roles. A supplier acts as a data admini st rator a nd maps ava il able data so urces in to o ne or more data marts. A
s...i ~ N...: ii=""""'"'l"-:31~__,
F""'""'
publi sher acts as a busin ess a nalyst and
specifies vario us views ro wh ich people ca n subscr ibe. For example, a supplier could build data marts from host data
EIMilAddrea: Rfui#M!§ I 8 o... -
- ~ll~;O;I;E:;::;;;;;;;~
ba es, while the publ isher wou ld publish
views from those data marrs.
Aclue focuses on th e Arbor Essbase
co mmunity, using P&S to distribute cubes
D2K's Tapestry has a Web interface for scheduling
co nsistentl y across the enterpri e. Electronic commerce. Ar first ana lysis,
delivery of subscription information.
it may see m rhar electronic commerce has
little to do with P&S; however, both share consta ntly changing, P&S may provide weakness is the lack of system manage
common technology (e.g., reliab le and the ferti le ground on which to grow those ment across the enterprise. " It's easy to
secure messaging) and common objec systems. Also, the standardi za tion and add a little ar a time, but who is going to
tives (e.g., matching producer with con commercialization of P&S technology have watch over it [the P&S system]," remarks
sumers). P&S can benefit from the expe the potential to create global marke ts for Ian MacFadyen, vice president of tech
riences with easy and reliable monetary information exchange and commerce, far nology management for Chase Reta il
exchange, and electronic commerce can beyond what we can presently imagi ne. Banking Systems. "There is no place in the
benefit from the m echanisms fo r recur
P&S, however, needs a few yea rs to organization responsible, since P&S inter
ring transactions to similar interest groups mature. First, the OMG and oth er stan mingles the host, servers, network, and
(like thatof the Book of the Month Club). dards groups must get serious at defining who knows what else."
Whereto Now?
what it is. Second, the infras rrucrure of
Even when mature, P&S of itself is not
P&S i nor all there yet. We still need to a turnkey solution. There is still the diffi
As a coordination mechanism for distrib put into place the supporting techno lo cult work of understanding yo ur business
uted syste ms a nd peop le, P&S has th e gies for reliable messaging outside rhe lim processes, specify ing an effective repre
tremendous potential for fl exibility, adap ited intraner context, efficient mu lricast sentatio n for events, and designing the.
tation, and evolution . In complex, large ing transport protocols, and universal proper database schemes. P&S wi ll only
scale siruarions where requirements are monetary exchange. Third, rh e critica l provide more powerful tools and enlarge
the set of possible options. "There is nor
Active SoftWare
Santa Clara, CA 408-988-0414 http://www.activesw.com
BEA Systems, Inc.
Sunnyvale, CA 408-743-4000 http://www.beasys.com
Borland Open Environment
Boston, MA 617-562-0900 http://www.openenv.com
Decision·ism, Inc.
Boulder, CO 303-938-8805 http://www.decisionism.com
D2K, Inc.
San Jose, CA 408-451-2010
WHERE TO FIND
http://www.d2k.com
I-Kinetics, Inc.
Burlington, MA 617-270-1300 http://www.i-kinetics.com
Intermezzo Systems, Inc.
Boulder, CO 303-440-5410
Iona Technologies, Inc.
Cambridge, MA 617-949-9000 http://www.iona.com
Lotus Development Corp.
Cambridge, MA 617-577-8500 http://www.lotus.com
New Era of Networks, Inc.
Englewood, CO 800-815-6366
http://www.nconsoft.com
Talarian Corp.
MQuntain Vjcw, CA
. 415-965-8050' ,,
http://ww.;,.talarian.com
TIBCO, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA
415-846-5000
http://www.tibco.com
VIT Cupe.rtino, CA
408-342-0882
http://www.vit.com
Vltria Technology, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
415-'237-6900
http:/lwww.vitria.com
a lot of experience with this sruff; it will probably take 10 years to absorb, like the batch to on-line transition," predicts Roy Schulte of the Gartner Group. "The big vendors will start to play [in theP&S mar ketplace] in rwo years. n
Any P&S solution still requires ski lled professio na ls w ho can a pprop riate ly apply ir. For many years to come, the edu cation of these professionals will be the
limiting factor in the adoption of P&S. Iii
Richard Hackathorn (richardh@bolder.com) is president and f01mder ofBolderTech110/ogy, Inc. (Boulder, CO), a company specializing in enterprise co1111ecti11ity and data warehousing. ¥011 can get a copy ofthe complete teclmology report 011 P&S via http://www.bolder.com.
7 2 BYT E SEPTEMBER 1997
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istorian is the single solution for recording, auditing, and reporting computer use. Historian tracks a nwnber of activities independently of each other. Historian can, at administrator's discretion, record application usage, file access, internet web page access, user activity and job costing information, and pages sent to the printer.
Historian consists of two separate functional comp onents, a recorder and a reporter. The recording component runs as a system service. It starts invisibly as soon as the machine starts and continues silently in the background. The recording component is a very efficient optimized service which does all intensive processing only when the machine is idle. No decrease in performance should be noticed while the recorder is running. The reporter is a multiple docwnent application which allows the
usage information to be displayed in a variety of ways. Additionally, the reporter has export capabilities to place usage information in standard data formats for custom queries and aggregation with third party data manipulation tools.
Historian makes it easy to see who modified files, ran applications, accessed web pages, and printed pages, and when the operation was performed. Historian's collection of usage information will fascinate you.
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Circle 170 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 171 ).
The Universal lnbox
Get all your e-mail, faxes, and phone
messages with a single inter(ace.
By Mike Hurwicz
he average person in a large corporation receives 178 messages each day, according to the Gallup Organi [ [ ) zation. Plus, iris common to get messages via multi ple e-mai l accounts, fax machines, a voice-mail sys tem, and a pager. And you're probably above average. To users assaulted from all sides by messages, a "universal inbox" sound like a life-saver. A universal inbox is a single user interface, usually based one mail client sofrv,rare, that lists all incoming messages. These messages can include e-mail, voice ma il, fax mail (faxes that come through a fax serv er and arrive as e-mail), and more. From the universal inbox interface, the user can read, delete, or file all types of messages. (You "read" voice mail by playing it over the phone or on a multime dia PC.) The same interface inevitably contains functions for responding to messages, too-although outbound messaging is nor an in box function. The universal inbox sim plifies life by defragmenting the messaging environment. Ir's faster to check one inbox than multiple e-mail accounts, fax machines, and voice-mail systems. Training requirements also diminish since you le a rn only one interface. The universal inbox may also eliminate delays in message reception that are due to the user's not checking a particular source (such as an e-mail account where you seldom receive any mail) fre quently enough. Funhermore, the universal inbox lets you orga nize fax and voice-mail messages in the same way-in fact, in the same folders-that you organize your e-mail. Nor on ly is there value in unifying multiple filing systems, but e-mail folders may offer a better filing system than those rhar come with voice mail and fax-mail products. Also, the universal inbox could offer mulrimode retrieval. For instance, through text-to-speech con version, it could "read" your e-mail over the phone, so you don't need to find a telephone wall jack for your modem.
The universal i.nbox can certainly simplify life-butnor for all
users. And although vendors have been working on universal
inboxes for years, the technology is still maturing, so products
might lack features yo u want. Moreover, while the universal
in box prov ides a si ngle front end for disparate message types, it
may do littl e to integrate administration, directories, or data
stores on the back end. In addirion , yo u must con ider what
you need and anticipate
needing. Ir's best to go for a
single package that has
everything you are likely to
need. You don't want to be
in a position of patching
together disparate ystems,
each providing a little of
what you want, to get all rhe
capabilities you need. Heck,
that's what you're doing
now. On the other hand, you
don'twam functionality that
you won't use, either.
With rhe tampede to rhe
Internet, brow er vendors
imagine using their products
as universal inboxes. Today,
however, browsers simply
provide an interface to mul
ri ple functions, including,
perhaps, e-mail and fax. Pop
ula r browsers, such as
Netscape's and Microsoft's,
do not provide a single inbox
for all messages. In fact, stan
dard are only now emerging
to support a universal inbox.
F R II S : R
Conceptually, the univer sa l in box is simply a client
capable of receiving mes
sages from multiple sources in multiple formats. Most com
monly, the fundamental building block of the universal inbox is
an e-mail/groupware client. To the e-mail/groupware client soft
ware, yo u add software that allows the client to receive faxes
from a fax server and voice mail &om a voice-mail server.
Generally, companies want universal inbox functionality based
on their current or an ticipated strategic e-mail products. Shared
file e-mail systems, such as MS Mail, eldom have the message
store performance or capabilities to upport heavy voice-mail
and fax-mail access. So the back end is usually a high-perfor
mance e-mail/groupwareserver, such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft
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Exchange, o r N ovell Gro upWise. Here, the vendor of the fax serve r or voice-mail server often provides unified messaging.
Products fr om Lucent Tec hn o logi es and Octel Communications (the for mer of which made a $1.8 billi on bid fo r the latter in July) are amo ng th e po pular exa mpl es of this approac h. Octel Co m munica ti ons is primarily a voice- ma il comp any. Octel's Uni fied M essenge r, whi ch adds vo ice mail to Mi crosoft Exchange Server, runs on a new NT-based Octel voice-mail se rver. Fax will be part of the next versio n of Unified Messenger. Octel has anno unced that Unified Mes senger will suppo rt Lotus Notes, proba bly aro und mid-1998.
Simila rl y, Luce nt Techno logies, fo r merly the communicati o ns systems and techn ology unit of AT&T, is (n ot surpris ingly) prima rily a telepho ny com pa ny. Lucent's Inruiry is a voice-mail system that uses Lotus N o tes to create a unified mes saging solutio n_lnrui ty provid es bo th
voice mail and fax . Plus, lnruity's M ulti
med ia M essaging Serve r (MMS) has its own e-mail. L1ter this year, lntuity will add supp o rt for M ic rosoft Excha nge a nd Internet mail products such as Eudora. T hrou gh Inte rnet mail, lntui ty wi ll also suppo rt Lo tu s cc: M a il. Suppo rt for GroupWise is still an unknown, al though
Unified Messaging ls Outgoing
The univers al inboxaddresses only inbound communications. Integrat ed messaging also deals with outbound communicat ions. By applying the e mail paradigm to other forms of out bound communications, un ified mes saging canmake iteasy lo do things that were difficult or impossible before:voice mail,for a dramatic example.
Suppose you get a voice-mail mes sage and must inform many people of its contents.Today,youhave to make many calls,orsend ane-mail message to a dis tribution list. With unified messaging,you can forward the voice mail itself to the distribution list. The same applies tooth er types of messages. Fax files coming in through a fax server can be forward ed as fax mail. Received fax mail can be "printed"directly to a local fax machine. Youcan forward e-mail as e-mail,as a fax, or (through text-to-speech conversion) even as voice mail.
Circle 133 on Inqu iry C ard.
The Un iversa l lnBox Managing Data
Unified Messaging Architecture \
Conununication may be digital or llnugh DTMF.
The PC voice card converts analog
I
DTMF data into digital infonnalion
PC client nm
for Unified Messenger.
Exchange client
software.
Urified Messenger uses cireclorY
APls to maldt user and ertension,
and database APls lo store and
rebie'le messages.
PBX
the Unified Messenger Seiver talks with the PBX I/rough DTMF, RS-232, or proprietary codes. It can tel the sener the caller's ID and the caled extension.
Octe!Nel
PBX
Tell lo
integration speedi
-
'
Message transport' ~
Message
II
database Direclory
(mailboxes)
Software lets users caD in and play and erase messages usire DTMF.
lrlldows HT
llllicnsaft Exdlqe Semr softnn
the Inrerner mailsupport might do the job. Luce nt and Octel are now both focus
ing increas ingly on co mputer telephony integration (CTI). Voice mail is pa rt of such CTI solutions, bur by no means the prim a ry focus. Fax and e-mail are still furth er removed . CTI vendors offering uni fied messaging so lutions include Applied Voice Technology (AVT), Tobit Software, and Ca llWare Technologies. AVT' Ca ll -XPressNT srands out with its feature that facilitate picking up e-mail and faxe over the pho ne. Tobit's David is rh e operating system of a multifunc ti on messaging server and runs as a Net Ware loadable modul e (NLM) under Net Wa r e 3 .11 a nd la t e r. Ir m a n ages and controls data bases th at can co ntai n dif feren r object types (e.g., e-mail, fax, voice, files, and li nk s). Thi informa tion ca n be accessed in var ious wa ys, including via LAN, phon e, fa."<, or Web.
Cal!Ware, from Cal!Ware Technolo gies, is a CTI product designed specifical 'ly for th e NetWare environm ent. For in ranee, it i an LM and integrates tight ly with ovell Directory Service ( DS).
Octel and Lucent provide both vo ice mail and fax ervice . By bolting these products to an e-mail system, you get the three major functions of unified messag ing: e-mail, voice mail, and fax. AVT pro vides voice mail and fax as se parate prod uct . Cal!Ware, on the other hand, does not provide fa."< services. Thu , users must integrate a separate fax erver, such as ZetaFax from Equisy or FaxServe from th e Cheyenne division of Compurer Asso
ciates, to use fax with CaUWare. Although the trend is toward offerin g
univer al inbox functionality based on ex isting e-mail/group,.vare cli ents, th ere are also e-mail clients thatspecificall ya im at universal in box functionality. That's the case, for instance, with EMail Con nection, from the company of the sa me name. Introduced in 1992, EMail Connection has an installed base of hundred of thousands of sear , the ve nd o r says. EMail Connec tion is billed as rh e first e-mail client that supported every major messaging inter face, including nor onl y Microsoft's Mes saging AP! (MAP!) bur Novell 's Message Handling Service (MHS), Lotu s's Vendor Independenr Messaging (VIM) , and Inter net standards. Ir can be a client to a vari ety of o n-l ine se rvices, including AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, and MCI. MAPI compatible fax serve rs can send faxes, using e-mail addressing.
EMail Connection does not currently integrate voice mail, thus it fa lls shorr of full uni versal inbox function ali ty. How ever, EMail Connection 3.1 is compliant \.Vith Mulripurpo e Internet Mail Exten sion (MIME), which will provide a basi for voice mail in the future, and voice-mail integration i currently under way in rhe EMail Co nnecti o n developm ent gro up.
The Urge to Merge
So me e-mail, fax, and vo ice-mail ve nd ors have agreed roger th ei r products to work together. For instance, one co mmon uni versal inbox solution consists of Notes Mai l and Lnrui ry Mul timed ia Messaging
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Serve r (MMS), linked by th e Lo tus Tele phony One-Stop.
Novell has lo ng promoted Computer Associate's FaxServe (fro m CA's Cheyenne division) as rhe reco mmended fax solution fo r GroupWise. FaxServe integrates tight ly with the N ovell Directory Service, and you can manage it as an NDS object under NWAdmin. lmportingusersfromNetWare to GroupWi e a nd FaxServe is quire straightforward, eliminating the need to manually add users in multipl e pl aces. Togeth e r, G ro up Wi se, CallWar e, a nd FaxServe make one o f the more manage able uni fied mes agi ng solutions, largely because DS ries them all together. A fur ther level o f manage ment integration is possible through N ovell's Man ageWise. Novell and CJ\ have also announced enter prise-level manage ment fo r GroupWise, lntranet\Vare, NetWare, and integration with N ovell's ManageWise. This integra tion would use CA's Unicenrer TNG (The Next Generati on), CA's end-to-end man agement solution, which also offers man age ment of NT servers. Eldon Greenwood, Novell senior di rector ofproduct strategy, says customers can expect "major leaps" in management integration. "NDS will be avail able on NT around th e end of the year," he said. "Then NDS will be available o n th e three majo r pl a tfo r ms where G roupWise runs: NetWare, NT, and Unix.
Microsoft Exchange, however, seems to be the envi ronment most unified mes saging vendo rs are eager to support, or to increase sup port fo r. Thus, fo r instance, Octel started upporring Exchange only, while Lucent is adding Exchange support. Although Notes/cc:Mail continue to be the e-mail market leaders, many observers see more growth potentialwith Exchange.
Drawbacks
The uni versal in box does notsuit all users. In particular, if all you are doing is com bining multiple mailboxes, you might want to think abour what the advan tages are. If each ma ilbox goes with a different job function , fo r instance, it could be ben er to keep rhem separate organizationally.
The universal in box might be even less suited to the user who is nor e-mail-cen tric. For exa mpl e, "an accountant who 'li ves' in Excel might prefer the ability to send e-mail and faxes directly from Excel, and might be content to pick up voice mail the old-fashioned way, " says David Mar shak, a senior consultant with the Patricia Seybold Gro up, in Boston. Al o, if receiv
Standard APls and Protocols
The universal inbox begs for standards to
I knit together e-mail, fax, and voice-mail
products from different vendors. Microsoft's Messaging API (MAPI) has emerged as the dominant API in the Windows environment, allowing fax and voice-mail vendors to place messages into any MAPl-compatible inbox. Other APls , such as Common Mail Calls (CMC) or Vendor-Independent Messaging (VIM), find use in non-Windows environ ments, as well as under Windows.
MAPI enables client/server communica tions through the MAPI subsystem, a stan dard part of Windows.The subsystem trans· fers requests between the client and a MAPI service provider: a small software module, also running on the client machine,that is pro vided by the service's vendor (for e-mail,fax, or voice mail). The service provider, in tum, talks to the service: In a client/server envi· ronment this runs on the e·mail,fax, or voice· mail server machine. Multiple service providers may be running on·a single client machine, with MAPI acting as a multiplex er/demultiplexer fo rthe service providers.
From the user's perspective,MAPI lets the client talk to an e·mail service. But MAPI actu ally describes only the way a client talks to a subsystem and the way a service provider talks to a subsystem. MAPI does not define the protocols used for client/server commu· nications, nor does it address server/server communications. Internet standards are evolving to address this void.
One common Internet standard to imple ment a universal in box is Multipurpose Inter net Mail Extension (MIME), which can send various types ofcontentwith the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). Work on voice mail that started in 1994 has culminated in Voice Profile for Internet Mail (\;PIM), which is currently a draft standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) . IETF will probably adopt VPIM version 2 as a full stan dard sometime this summer. Although VPIM began just for voice, the standard now embraces fax as well. Plus,it is astandard not just for voice-mailor telephony servers but for fax and e·mailservers as well. The VPIM working group is also developing directory services to translate phone numbers into Internet e-mail addresses.
In a typical use of VPI M, a user connects to a voice·mail system, records a m~sage, and enters the recipient's phone number. The voice-mail system sees that the numberdoes not belong to a local user. A non·VPIM sys tem would typically give up here.VPIM,hqw ever, uses the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to look up the e-mail address that receives voice messages for that phone number. Then the system sends the voice mail over the network as a MIME/ SMTP message. On the receiving end, the message could go to a VPIM voice-mail sys· tern or to any SMTP/MIME e·mail system.
Since VPIM uses the Internet oran intranet to transfervoice and fax,it could reduce long distance charges dramatically, fina lly enabling cost-effective color faxing , for instance. It also lays a solid groundwork for "intentional voice mail"(as opposed to a mes sage that a caller left only because the callee did not answer the phone).
Vendors such as Lucent, Nortel,Octel, and Siemens Rolm demonstrated VPIM v. 1 prod ucts at the 1996 EMA show,proving that the concept worked. But the public never saw the products themselves. VPIM v. 2 products, mostly in beta at the 1997 EMA show, are expected this year from these same vendors.
Theoretically, you can use Internet stan dards besides or instead of MAPI or similar APls. MAPI today can successfully receive VPIM content but not send it, according to Greg Vaudreuil, Octel's systems architectfor messagingandauthorofVPIMv. 1and coau thor of VPIM v. 2.
VPIM is strictly a server-to-server protocol, addressing only message transport. For client/server interactions, Internet Message Access Protocol version 4 (I MAP4) will also be important for universal inboxes. IMAP4 lets you view a list of message headers before selecting what to access. An attractive fea ture with ordinary e-mail and fax mail, this is even more desirable for voice mail, where playing every message is more time-con suming. IMAP4 also lets you download selected parts of a message-again, very desirable ifmessages contain large amounts of data like voice and fax. IMAP4, not yet widely implemented, will probably replace POP3,the current favorite,overthe long haul.
ing spreadsheets regularl y, using a par ti cul a r directory mi ght be better rh a n usi ng e-mail to ge t them.
N etwork managers should also be aware that many universal inbox solutions suffer from fragmented administration and mes sage stores. For instance, you may have to
add a new user to the operating system fo r basic network log-in, to the PBX, to the voice-mail system, and to rhe e-mail sys tem, each as a separate manual operation.
All the vendo rs mentioned other than Octel also implement separate message stores rather than storing voice mail in rhe
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Managing Data The Un iversal lnbox
e-ma il message store. Onl y O ctel uses the e- mail mes age store (Exchange, in this case) to store all types of me ages, a mo re manageab le and effic ientarchitecrure. (It does create a single point of fai lure and mi ght not be desi rable if th e vo ice-m ail se rve r w o uld oth erwi e be sign ificantl y mo re reli abl e th an the e- mail se rve r.) As Ro bert Wo hno utka, Octelsenior pro d uct
manage r for unified messaging, de cribe : " In ma ny oth e r system , if yo u de lete a message, and it is ro red in two place , the system has to coo rdinate those two places. Some can't do it in rea l ti me. With a sin gle store, th ere a re fewe r delays and few er oppo rtuniti es for problems."
O th er potential d rawbacks include co t and supp o rt. Uni versa l inbox fu ncti on-
WHERE TO FIND
Applied Voice Technology (AVT)
Kirkland, WA 206-820-6000 http://www .appliedvo i ce. com
RightFAX (subsidiary ofAVij
Tucson, Al. 520-320-7000 http://www.rightfax .com
CallWare Technologies
Sandy, UT 800-888-4226 801-486-9922 h t t p :l/www.ca llware .com
Computer Associates Lotus Development
Islandia, NY
Cambridge. MA
516-342-5224
800-346-1305
h t t p ://www.cai.com
617-577-8500
Cheyenne division: http ://www.lot us
800-243-9462
.com
h t t p ://www.cheycnnc .com
Lucent Technologies
Murray Hill, NJ.
EMail Connection
800-325-7466
Redmond, WA
908-582-8500
800-889-3499
http:l/www.lucent
http://www
.com
.email-connection.com Microsoft
Equisys (Zetafax
Redmond, WA
USA)
800-426-9400
Atlanta, GA
206-882-8080
770-622- 2810
http://www.mierosoft
U.K.: +44 171 403 2227 .com
http://www.equisys.com
Novell
Orem, UT 801 - 222-6000 http://www.novell.com GroupWise: 800-638-9273
Octel
Communications
Milpitas, CA
800-444-5590
408-324-2000
http://www.octcl.com
Tobit Software
Montreal, Quebec
800-444-5590
514-392-9220
http:l/na.tobit.com
aliry it elf ca n cost as little as $40 a sear be yo nd the price of hardwa re a nd e-ma il, vo ice mail, and fax mail. However, " it' often difficult to prove a return on invest ment for the univer al inbox," ay Michael Durr,c hief ana ly twithMichael Durr an d Associates (Ca pe Coral, FL), a ma rketing research a nd co n ·ulting firm.
Furt her, he says, vendors typically have experti e in ei th e r e-mail or te lepho ny; few are trul y expert in both. " If you have to choo e," say Durr '"traditional wis dom says it's easier for a telep hony ven dor to lea rn e- mail th an vice ve rsa."
Fo r these rea o n the un ive rsa l inbox, though appealing, ha not been widely implemented . H owever unified adm in istrati on sho uld become more common, parti cul arl y as Microso ft evo lves its direc tory tec hno logy. Un ified message sto res, roo, will become more available. Co t will co me down , and ,·endo r will gai n expertise. Thu s th ere i hope fo r users
su ffer ing fro m messaging ma nia. 111
Mike Htmvicz (mhu rwicz@attma ll.com) is a 111ritera11d co11s11/ta11t in Brookly11, Ne111 York.
Unclogging the
PC Bottlenecks
Major changes coming to Wintel PCs over the next 18 months will help relieve internal bottlenecks and radically improve graphics performance.
By Tom R. Halfhill
omputers evolve in fits and starts. After a period of five years of relative stasis, Wintel PCs are about to get their first major improvements since the appear ance of the PC! bus and 66-MHz motherboards in 1992. These changes will significantly affect buying decisions for anyone purchasing new systems over the next 18 months. Why is this happening now? Because without an overhaul, the bottlenecks in today's system architectures would greatly cripple the performance of new microprocessors that are soaring to 300 MHz and be yond. In addition, new tech nologies such as digital vid eodisc (DVD) and the growing use of video and 3-Dgraphics are overwhelming the abil ity of main memory and the PCI bus to keep up. The coming changes will also a lter the PC industry. They'll probably strengthen Intel's influence, weaken Intel's rivals, reduce the num ber of component vendors, and replace some open stan dards with proprietary solu tions. Here's what to expect:
· CPU 1/0 buses, now limited to 66 or 75 MHz, wil l acce lerate to 83 and 100 MHz by early next year.
· To match the higher bus frequencies, memory such as fast -p age DRAM and extended data out (EDO) DRAM will giv e way to sy nchronous DRAM (SDRAM). Starting in 1999, SDRAM will yield to even faster memories, such as Synclink DRAM (SLDRAM) or Rambus DRAM (RDRAM).
· New systems that wi ll be introduced late this year will move the graphics controller off the PC! bus to a private channel called the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). This will imme diately double or quadruple the graphics throughput.
· The 32-bit, 33.3-MHz PC! bus will gradually migrate to a 64
bit bus that wi ll be running at 66 .6 MHz, especially in high end PCs. · All new Intel CPUs will ad dress their L2 caches over a private bus to keep traffic off the main 1/0 bus. lntel will also phase out the industry-standard Socket 7 in favor of its proprietary Slot 1 and Single-Edge Connect (SEC) cartridges. In response, Intel's rivals may resort to in-line caches or an entirely new
CPU interface.
Driving Faster Buses
Modern CPUs usual ly oper ate at two clock frequencies. The core (which contains the execution units and the L1 cache) runs at one speed, whi le the 1/ 0 bus (which interfaces the core to mem ory and peripherals) runs at a slower speed. Users tend to focus on high core speeds without grasping the impor tance of bus speeds. In the latest microprocessors, the buses lag far behind the cores, seriously impairing the flow of data.
CPU bus frequencies have been stuck at 66 MHz since Intel introduced the Pen tium processor back in 1992. Cyrix's 6x86 and 6x86MX processors can drive their buses at 75 MHz, but only a few systems can support that frequency. However, now there's an industrywide push to speeds of 83 and 100 MHz. Industrywide is the key word here, because faster buses require much more than faster CPUs. Virtually the entire system has to change- including the core-logic system chip set, the mother board, and the DRAM. The system chip set consists of two chips that regulate traffic among the CPU, main memory, the L2 cache, the PCI bus, and other peripheral buses-ISA, SCSI, PC Card, universal serial bus
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE SONA 1
Managing Data Unclogging the PC Bottlenecks
{USB), and 1394. Vendors of these chip sets must redesign their components ro ac commodate these higher frequencies.
Some chip sets already support 75 and 83 MHz. AMO favors 83 MHz as an interim step. "There's no reason why we have to leap directly from 66 to I00 MHz," says Vi nod Dham, vice president of AMD's computation products group. "We favor a staircase approach that goes from 66 to 83to100 MHz. This will make it easier for third-party suppliers and still will yield a significant performance advantage."
Still, Intel thinks 100 MHz is the next logical step. And it commands about 90 percent of the market for CPUs and 80 to 90 percent of the system-chip-set mar ket-and it's the leading motherboard manufacturer, as well. Early next year, Intel plans to re lease a chip set called the 440BX. It will support bus speeds of 100 MHz w ith the Pentium II. The 440BX will accompany Intel's introduction of a Pentium II-class processor code-named Deschutes, which will debut at a core frequency of about 350 MHz.
One reason Intel prefers 100 MHz is the impact on the PC! bus. PCI normally runs at a synchronous clock frequency of 33.3 MHz. If the CPU bus rises to 100 MHz, PCI can continue to run synchronouslyat 33.3 MHz with an even clock multiple of 3x.
When the CPU bus runs at 75 MHz, PCI either slows down to 25 MHz {3x) or 30 MHz {2.5x ) to maintain a synchronous clock rate or runs asynchronously at33.3 MHz. All those options hurt performance. Some Cyrix 6x86 systems drive the CPU bus at 75 MHz and the PCI bus at a syn chronous 2x frequency of 37.5 MHz, but that's too fast for reliable operation with some PCI cards. If the CPU bus runs at 83 MHz, PCI can run synchronously at a 2.SX multipl e of 33.2 MHz. Bur current Pen tium chip sets do nor support that multiple.
Intel also argues that 100 MHz is inevi table anyway, so the i.ndustry might as well take one big step instead of two smaller steps. "From the performance standpoint, we think 100 MHz makes more sense than 83 MHz because it ha more headroom," says Jag Bolaria, the marketing director of Intel's platform components division.
Intel's jump to 100 MHz wi ll force the industry to go alo ng, but it wi ll also leave some companies behi nd. There are for midable challenges to making reliable 100-MHz motherboards. They need bet ter power supplies, voltage regulators, and fans to keep the high-wanage CPUs
running smoothly. (A 300-MHz Pentium II dissipates 42 W, compared to 17 W for a Penrium-233 .) They need shorter rraces between critical components to avoid tim ing delays. Also, they require many im provements to keep internal and external noise from interfering with data signals.
To reduce noise, for example, circuit designers must add more capacitors and run their traces in zigzag panerns to avoid
it.There is already a migration to SD RAMs, which need wider 168-pin slots on mother boards for dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) instead of the fam ili ar SIMMs. With today's EDO DRAMs on a 66-MHz, 64-bit bus, peak memory bandwidth is 533 MBps. WithSDRAMs runningatlOO MHz, memory bandwidth will ri e to 800 MBps- a healthy boost of 50 percent.
Memories will get even faster by 1999.
Five Ways to Faster PCs
1Boost the CPU's system VO bU5 from 66 MHz to
83-100 MHL
2 Some PCs relocate the L2 cache from the <:PU's VO bus to a private backside bus.
L2 cache (new)
Main memory
5 Reloi:ate the graphics Ciimroller from the PCI bui; to.a new direct connection called the Accelerated
Grallhics Port
3 lircrease memory speed by replacing regular DRAM with
SDRAM and later with RDRAM.
PCI device PCI device Grlpldcs
controlw
(old)
4Ooldlle the width of the Pel bus to 64 bits and dQuble the speed to 66 MHz,
boosting bandwidth to 533 MBps.
New PCs introduced in coming months will relieve five internal bottlenecks.
long parallel lines that would act as anten nas . In th e U.S., the 100-MHz bus fre quency falls within the FM radio band. A CPU wou ld be confused if ir requested some data from memory and instead received a song by Smashing Pumpkins.
" It's going to be much harder for the schlocky clone guys to design mother boards ar this speed," says Larry Barber, president of Tyan Computer. To squelch noise, Tyan's latest motherboards, and others like chem, are sprouting elec trolytic capacitors like mushrooms.
Jogging Memory
Memory has to keep up with fa ter bus fre quencies, as well. Regular DRAMscan'tcut
The two most likely successors to SDRAM are SLDRAM and RDRAM. Intel may be the deciding factor here, too, because it has thrown its support behind RD RAM by forging an alliance with Rambus and in vesting in the company. Rambus doe not actually manufacture any RAM; instead, it design and licenses a propri etary high speed memory interface to nine leading RAM vendors.
Rambus can drive its special 16-bit memory bus at speeds of up to 600 MHz and is addi ng about 100 MHz per year. By the time RDRAM enters the mainsrream, peak bandwidth on a 16-bit bus hould be L6 GBps-rwice as fast as SDRAM at 100 MHz. On a 32-bitbus, bandwidth doubles
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Managing Data Unclogging the PC Bottlenecks
again to 3.2 GBps. Rambus says its mem ory bus will eve ntu ally run at 1000 MHz (1 GHz), yielding 4 GBps of raw bandwidth.
SLDRAM is a proposed open standard backed by 22 companies, includingApple, Hewlerr-Packard, IBM, Motorola, NEC, and Texas Instruments (bu t, so far, not Intel). Although the standard isn't final, SLDRAM will be capable ofgigabyte trans fer rates, too.
Ultimately, however, Intel's position as the leading CPU, chip-set, a nd mother board supplier will probably determine which one ofthe memories rules. "If! were betting money, I'd bet on SLDRAM from the technical standpoint and on RDRAM from the political standpoint," says Dean H ays, marketing director at VIA, a chip set maker.
Graphics Detour
Another borrleneck in today's PCs is the PCI bus, which lntel introduced in 1992 to relieve the borrleneck that was caused by the lSA bus. PCI isn' t keeping up with the growing traffic betwee n the CPU, the gra phics controller, and mai n memory. Users are runn ing higher-resolution screens with more colors, full-motion video, and 3-D grap hics, saturating the 133-MBps PCI bus. It doesn't help that the graphics controll er must shar e the bus with other PCI cards.
One so lution is to widen PC! fro m its current32-bitpathwayto 64 bits. Another is to double the PC! clock frequency fro m 33.3 to 66.6 MHz. Each improvement would double the bandwidth, and each is inevitable, but right now they are too costly for most PCs. Doubling t he bus width is particularly expensive, because it req uires more pins on system chip sets, more traces on motherboards, and more complexity on PCl cards. The 66.6-MHz clock freq uency is more economical and wi ll restore some balance to systems with superspeed CPUs.
However, In tel is pushing a th ird alter nat ive : AGP. This so lut ion moves the graphics off the PCI bus altogether and detours the traffic onto a dedicated poinr to-poinr channel between the graphics contro ller and the system chip set. AGP isn ' t a bus, because it's not shared by anything but the grap hics controller. The co ntroller will have th e whole 32-bit channe l to itself.
The downside is th at AGP requires changes to the entire system architecrure of Wintel PCs: motherboards, system chip
SONA 4 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Conventional Graphics Architecture
'fhe system's core logic cblp set can't queue PCt memory requests from the graphics controller.
·
PCI transfers data on
each full clock cycfet
not eaeti clock phase, reducing
potential t11rougbput.
Main memory
3-D program 3-D textures
The frame buffer contains
redundant a>ptes of 3.0
textures.
PCI device
PCI device
PCI lu general-purpose bus abated by 111llttlple device$, whldt all must
contand for lmited bus bandwidth.
There are several problems with the graphics architectures of today's PCs.
How Accelerated Graphics Port Works
AGP Is a singte.devlce flCllnt· to-point conn~n, not a bus,
so th11 graphl_ps ccmtroller · doesn't bave.to contlind'wlth other devices.
·11/C0PbUus ·
The core kJgic chip set can
queue nimierous memory requests from the graphles
controller without walth1g for responses.
AGP
. . .Ml. 32 bits wide, 66 MHz
(533 MBps)
II
Main memory 3-D program 3-D textures
contains wme 3·0 data but not the textures.
PCI device PCI device
AGP transh!rs ~ on each
clocik phase, doubling effective banclwldth.
34> programs store textures in a reslzabfe portion of main memQIY, not in the
frame buffer.
AGP bypasses the PCI bus. Thus, the graphics controller can access memory four times faster.
www.byte.com
Managing Data Unclogging the PC Bottlenecks
The Synchronous DRAM Advantage
SD RAM is faster than EDO DRAM, especially when transferring bursts of data in a two-bank configuration. (Source: Texas Instruments)
Bits transferred per page access
EDO
ORAM
SDRAM (one bank)
SDRAM (two banks)
1 bit 2bits 4bits Bbits 16 bits
1.0x
1.1x
1.1x
1.2x
1.2x
1.6x
1.4x
2.2x
1.5x
2.7x
1.Bx 2.4x 3.2x 4.0x 4.4x
sets, graph ics controllers, and graphics cards. Motherboards need a special AGP slot for the new cards, chip sets need a new 32-bit-wide 1/0 port for the new slot, and graphics controllers and cards need to switch fromPCltoAGPprotocols. Today's PCs-even the latest multimedia exten sions (MMX) systems- aren'tupgradable. AGP also needs OS-level support that will not be com ing from Microsoft until the next version of Windows (Memphis), which appears to be delayed until 1998.
One bright spot is that AGP's proto cols are similar to PCI's, somewhat sim plifying the design of new chip sets and graphics cards. It's safe to say the hard ware will be in place when the software arrives. For instance, Intel will support AGP with its new 440LX chip set, which shou ld debuttbis fall. Unfortunately, the 440LX works with only Socke t 8 (Pentium Pro) and Slot 1 (Pentium II) processors. Intel says it has no plans to support AGP for Socket 7 (Pentium-pin-out) proces sors-not even the newest MMX Pen tiums. Fortunately, other companies (e.g., AMD and VIA) will supportAG!' on Socket 7 motherboards by releasing new chip sets late this year.
Intel's definition of AGP is rather loose, leaving so me room for differentiation among chip-set vendors. So-called base line AGP (or AGP-1x) doubles the graph ics bandwidth to 266 MBps (compared to 133 MBps for regular PCI) by doubling the data channel's clock frequency to 66.6 MHz. This minimal implementation will appear in some of the first AGP chip sets and graphics controllers, such as 53 's ViRGE/GX2.
In 1998, newer graphics controllers and chip sets will implement full AGP (or AGP 2x). This version will quadruple the effec tive bandwidth to 533 MBps by transfer ring 32 bits of data on both the rising an d falling edges of a 66.6-MHz clock signal,
a teclmique that's known as double pump ing. In 1999, AGP-4x will increase the effective bandwidth to more than l GBps (eight rimes faster than regul a r PCI) by cranking up the AGP clock frequency to 133 MHz.
Maximizing AGP
But there's much more toAGP than faster clocks and double pumping. One option is sideband signa li11g, which transmit control signals on separate lines instead of on the data channel. This free up the entire 32-bi t channel for graphics- an improvement over PCI, which mixes con trol signals with data on its 32-bit bus. Not all AG!' implementations will have side band signaling so this will let vendors dif ferentiate th eir products.
Another AGP option is memory pipe lining. Thi allows the system to handle multiple memory requests from the graph ics controller. PCI forces graphics con trollers to suspend memory requests if an earl ier request is pending-a delay that lengrhens the already-long latencies for memory accesses. AG P's pipelining mini mizes tho e d elays by queuing th e re quests. The depth of the queue will be another variable feature in system chjp sets; a typical queue might handle possi bly a dozen requests.
The ability to queue memory requests is particularly important, becau e AGP graphics controllers can store some data, such as 3- D textures, in main memory instead of in video memory. This might seem illogical, because th e specialized memory chips on graphics cards are much faster than ordinary DRAMs. However, some highl y detailed 3-D textures are out growing video memory, and adding mem ory ro a graphics card is expensive. So AGP lets the graphics controller tore the tex tures in main memory and retrieve them at AGP speeds.
When the graphics controller needs to retri eve this data, it sends a requestto the system chip et. To ave rime, the chip set can cac he fr equently accessed memory addresses in a translation look-aside buffer (TLB), which is similar to the TLBs in microprocessors. If the chip set finds the memory address in the TLB, it quickly jumps to th a t address and fetches the data-thu req uiring only one memory access.
If the chip set can't find the requested address in th e TLB, it refers to anoth er resource called the graphics address trans lation tab le (GAIT), also known as the graphics address relocation table (GART). Unlike the TLB, the GART is in main mem ory, not on the chip set. So it will take one memory access to fetch the address from the ART and another to fetch the data. Obviou ly, chip sets with largerTLBs are better, because they will hit the cache more often and avoid unnecessary mem ory fetches.
Ofcourse, storing graphics data in main memory means you will have less RAM for progra ms. But RAM is relatively cheap, and AGP makes the most of it by stori ng the graphics in mall (4 KB), noncontigu ous blocks allocated at run time. A single grap hi cs object, such as a large 3-D tex ture, might span several blocks.
It remai ns to be seen how much graph ics data AGP controllers actually store in
Quadrupling Graphics
Bandwidth
Bits per transfer
Transfers per clock cyc le
Clock cycles per second
Bandwidth
PCI 32 One
33.3 million 133 MBps
AGP 32 Two
66.6 million 533 MBps
main memory. For one thing, even the specialized memory chips on graphic cards are getti ng cheaper. Also, graphics controllers are adoptingwider and wider 1/0 interfaces to their dedicated frame buffers. As these interfaces grow from 64 to 128 to 256 ports, the controller chips must grow in size to accommodate the additional pin s. They probably won't need all the extra die area for logic, so they could use th e leftover space for local memory to cache textures. Still, AGP's
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Managing Data Unclogging the PC Bottl enecks
ability to store graphics in main memory
is a useful option. AGP can also extend the life of the PCI
Two Buses Are Better than One
bus. By detouring the graphics onto a ded icated pathway, AGP removes the biggest
IntersSocket 8and SEC Slot 1
Socket7
hog of PCI bandwidth. Intel's BoIaria says the application that demands the most bandwidth is video capturing-it con
II=
sumes 40 to 50 MBps all by itself. That's
backside bus
more than a third of the bandwidth avail able on PC!. When AGP shoulders that load , PCI will have mo re capacity for
(64 bits wide)
CPU
1/0 bus
(64 bits wide)
other things.
Slots vs. Sockets
Intel's move to a proprietary CPU inter face is the fina l big change coming to Wm
·- II
tel PCs over th e nex t 18 month s. The Penti um II and future Intel x86 processors abandon the industry- tandard Socket 7 in favor of the Imel-parented Slot 1 and SEC cartridges. (The Pentium Pro fits
PCI bus
l
PCI device
1
PCI device
l
PCI device
PClbus
l
PCI device
1
PCI device
l
PCI device
Socket 8, which is also proprietary to
Imel.) Intel's Penriums and all other x86 compatible processors still use Socket 7,
Socket 8 and Slot 1 have two independent 64-bit buses,
but Intel wants to phase it out as soon as
improving cache access bandwidth over Socket 7.
pos ible.
Motherboard manufacturers can license come more apparent. One al ternative is boardat40MHz. WintelPCscoulddoeven
Socket 8 and Slot 1 from Intel; CPU mak to compensate by expanding the CPU's L1 better, clocking the motherboard at 83 or
ers cann ot. The chances of reverse-engi cache, but that en larges the die and the 100 MHz and the in-line cache at perhaps
neering those interfaces without provok manufacturing cost. Another option is for half the CPU's core frequency.
ing legal actio n from Intel are almost nil, Intel's rivals to devise their own next-gen
These issues probably won't become
and engineers say it' not practical to put eration CPU interface. Even if they can critical until 1999. For at least the next
both on the same motherboard. Therefore, overcome their own political differences, year, Socker 7 motherboards will continue
motherboard makers must choose be they will still have to rally support from to dominate the market, and Socket? pro
tween Intel as their sole CPU supplier or motherboard and component vendors. cessors will still offer competitive perfor
Intel's rivals: AMD, Cyrix, and Centaur.
A likely stopgap solution is an in-line L2 mance for their target app lications.
It's not much of a choice. With Intel controlling about 90 percent of the CPU
cache. In this scheme, a daughterboard containing the CPU, L2 cache, and cache
Tidal Wave
marker, few companies can afford to bet controller would plug into Socket 7. Ex Major changes come in waves, and Win
everything on the competition. Also, Slot ternal oscillators would overclock the CPU tel PCs face a tidal wave. Even more inno
l and Socket 8 have a technical advantage: bus for the L2 cache while synchronizing vation are coming, too : NLX mother
They can add ress an L2 cache over a pri with the motherboard at the usual clock boards (a I-millimeter-pitch, 340-pin
vate bus that runs much faster than the speed. Apple and some Mac-clone ven card-edge device), device-bay expansion
CPU's regular 1/0 bus. Socket 7 does not dors are already resorting to this solution slots, and the long-awai ted eclipse of
have a private cache bus.
to overcome the Mac's slow system bus. ISA, ro name just a few. But those changes
AMD and Cyrix downplay that differ The latest Mac clone from Umax run s a are mostly for the sake of convenience.
ence, but as CPU freq uencies esca late, PowerPC 603e proces or at 300 MHz, an
The technologies that are outlined
the advantages of a faster L2 cache will be- in-line L2 cache at 80 MHz, and the mother- here-faster CPU buses, faster memory
chips, faster/wider PCI, AGP, and new CPU
WHERE TO FIND
interfaces-will significantly improve
AMO Sunnyvale, CA
408-732-2400 http://www.amd.com/
AGP Implementors Forum http://agpforum.o11J/
Cyrix Richardson, TX
972-968- 8388 http ://www.c:yrix.co m/
Intel Santa Clara. CA 408-765-8080 http://www.intcl.com/
Rambus Mountain View, CA 415-903-3800
http://www.rambus .com/
SJ Santa Clara, CA
408-588-8000 http://www.sJ.com/
SLDRAM Consortium http://www.scinl.com/
Pl 596.7/
Tyan Computer
Milpitas.CA
408-956-8000
http ://www.tyan .wm/
VIA Technologies
Fremont. CA
510-683-3300
http://www.via.com.tw/
system performance to match the capa bilities of superfast microprocessors. They're long overdue, and they'll restore some balance to the overtaxed architec tures of today 's PCs. Iii
Tom R. Halfhill is a BYTE senior editor based in San Mateo, Califomia. You can reach him on the lntemet at thalfhlll@blx.com.
BONA 8 BYTE SEPTEMB ER 1997
www.byte.com
OLAPbyWeb
Using Web-based applications to perform on-line analytical
processing builds on the strengths of both technologies.
By Udo Flohr
n-line analytical processing (OLAP) may be the most important new computing paradigm of the decade next to the Web. Joining the two makes for a power ful technology. A data warehouse is a cenual, consolidated database reposi tory for all the data in an organization. It rypically allows access to this information by presenting it in a metaphorical data cube, a multidimensional storage model that allows many dif ferent views and combina tio ns of the data. After cor relating arbitrary parts of a corporation's data, managers should then be able to see previously hidden emerging patterns-the trees in the forest, as it were. OLAP programs make up a category ofbusiness software that lets users manipulate a data cube. Typical OLAP op erations include consolidate, drill-down (i.e., query refine ment), slice, dice, and pivot. Results can be reported intra ditional or tabular database formats, as well as in graphi cal charts. Although this out put might be in a fixed for mat, it often allows the user to directly manipulate the data for further analysis, such as identifying trends, corre lations, or time series.
AMarriage Made in Cyberspace
Most OLAP and data-ware housing packages either already do or shortly will have a Web interface, allowing users to access an organization's data via an inrranet or the Internet. In a recent report, Wayne Eckerson, a senior consultant at the Pauicia Seybold Group (Boston, MA), concluded that by 1998 a Web browser will be driving half of all OLAP and decision-support applications. Despite a number of related problems, Eckerson believes that "the Web is a perfect medium for business-intelligence activities." Here he applies what's called the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of all users have simple query and reporting requirements that Web applications can sat isfy. The remaining 20 percent either need high-performance,
interactive access to large data sets, or they're developers who req uire authoring capabilities. This 20 percent segment wi ll , for the time being, continue to use dedicated tools.
One major benefit of deploying OLAP systems using a Web interface is the cost savings. Traditional OLAP packages rypica.1 ly start from $10,000. Web browsers, on the other hand, are ubiq ufrous. Furthermore, most organizations are at least starring
to get some kind of intranet structure, complete with servers, in place. Thus, Web OLAP shoul d all ow almost all users in an organization access to at least some analy sis functionality. Thanks to the Net, the universa l ac cess might also extend to outside users. For example, customers or suppliers could have access to some compa ny information.
The universal Web-brows er interface may also help reduce training costs. Most users are already familiar with the process of pointing and clicking on links, and the OLAP query-and-manip ulation process is similar.
Another advantage is that the Web is a cross-platform environment for users and developers alike. Users find a fami liar environment re gardless of their OS, and de velopers are able to port Web applications.
Thanks to its centra lized architecture, the Web helps reduce the cost for client-side disuibution and support. The lat est version of the client software-the browser-can be put on all desktops in an enterprise, and components, such asJava applets or ActiveX controls, take care of their own downloading.
Snags in the Web
A number of drawbacks balance these advantages, however. For example, the Web was originally a medium for the distribution of static files. Therefore, its main problem is that it treats each interaction as a new, anonymous connection. It does not intrin sically remember who you are or what query you were just refin
www. yte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 8 1
I Manag ing Da t a OLAP by Web
ing. Furthermore, HTTP, the main Web protocol, does not maintain the state of a session. Program mers have to use tricks to help a server remember users' identities and how far they've progressed in their process. Initiatives are under way to remedy this problem in a standardized fash ion.
Another often-cited problem is securiry. The Net is open to virtually anyone, and Nettraffic in its ba sic form is not encrypted. Companies have there fore been reluctant to put sensitive information on the Net. Since a data warehouse contains the crown jewels of a company's information about its busi ness, there's understandable hesitation about mak ing such data available on the Net.
But that's about to change with the introduction of secure communication tunne ls across the Net. These tunnels will enable users to gain secure access to remote data. Firewalls and other authentication systems can also help cordon off internal intranets by restricting access to certain sites.
The Web consists of a number of protocols that make it open and easy to integrate. However, for some OLAP applications, this simple arc hitecture may be too simple. For example, using a dedicated OLAP application to perform a drill-down opera tion leaves staggered windows on a user's screen that correspond to the stages of the stepwise refine ment of the query. T hese are useful, since the user migh t want to zoom out again and focus elsewhere. But a simple Web browser does not lend itself eas il y to such a multiple-document app roach: Each new page contains HTML code that is disp layed, rypically wiping out what was already there.
Web Generations
Some Web sites lend themselves to OLAP better than others. For instance, from the point of view of on line query-and-analysis too ls, Eckerson's study dis tinguishes four generations of Web architectures: fi le d istribution, dynamic HTML publishing, Java assisted publishing, and dynamic Java publishing. Most business-intelligence tools currently support first- and second-generation architectures.
First-generation Web sites (see the figure "First Generation Web Sites" at rig ht) use a rwo-tier archi tecture to provide basic fi le distribution. Dedicat ed off-line OLAP tools create reports and store them as HTML files, which might contain text and bit mapped images, on the Web server. From their stan dard browsers, users can view or print these static documents, bur no interaction is possible. For an updated view, someone has to generate a new re port. Hype rlinks might simulate a certain degree of interactiviry. For example, by clicking on a link labeled "Northeast Region," a user could navigate to a report providing data for that particular geo graphical area.
Eventually, t hough, the growing co ll ection of fi les will lead to the admin istrative headaches ryp icall y associated with large Web sites. The main
8 2 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Four Generations of Web Access
First-Generation Web Sites
Web browser
-I
TCP/IP
Users see static, predefined data.
Hllll lies
Second-Generation Web Sites
Apjlicalioa
Websener
sener
Web-semr
Web browser
interfaces
Cleal/
D HTTP -1
CGI
NSAPI/ Pnpm/
ISAPI
sQts
Dynamic HTML provides data on the fly.
Third-Generation Web Sites
Appication
Websener
sener
Web-semr
Cient
irterfaces
Cleal/
~ HTTP
CGI
TCP/IP
-1
NSAPI/ Pnpm/
ISAPI
sQts
Plug-in applications provide more interactivity.
Fourth-Generation Web Sites
Javasemr
JDBC or naliYedriY!IS
Java-mediated interactions access data directly.
www.byte.com
I OLAP by Web Managing Data
Vendors and Products
Application Consulting Group's OLAPSuite This package uses ActiveX to de liver OLAP functionality, including drill-down, rotation, and advanced dataselection.Users can create live OLAPdatabase reports and graphs from the browser. It uses the Ora cle Express metadata standards. (http://www.acgi.com)
Comshare's Commander DecisionWeb A multidimensional OLAP server, this package's four-tier architec ture provides direct OLAPcontrols using Java applets for drill-down and rotation . Output can be in HTML or Excel format. It requires Arbor's Essbase engine and uses Microsoft's ISAPI standard. (http:// www.comshare.com)
Applix's TM1
This third-generation, four-tier-ar chitecture, OLAP server solution features a Java-based spread sheet. TM1 Anywhere allows dy namic query access to TM1 Serv er, the multidimensional database engine. The package's spread sheet imports ODBC data. (http:/I www.applix.com)
Dimensional Insight's DataFountain and CrossTarget DataFountain creates multidimen sional data models (MDMs) on the Web server. CrossTarget uses them to get RDBMS information when a browser user requests a report. The reports are generated in HTML. (http://www.dimins.com)
Arbor Software's EssbaseWeb Gateway This second-generation OLAP server product uses a multidimen sional OLAP database. Its four tier architecture uses CGI to inter face to NT or Unix programs. Users request reports by selecting pa rameters in an HTML form ; out put is also in HTML. VariousOLAP operations , as well as data entry, are supported through HTML. This package also has the ability to use lnfospace's charting applet. (http:// www.arborsoft.com)
Brio Technology's Web.Ware-House The product's scheduler generates static HTML reports. A browser plug-in supports its decision-sup port package, BrioQuery Enter prise. Users interactively query the relational database server. (http:// www.brio.com)
Business Objects A first-generation desktop OLAP tool that allows dynamic viewing of native (non-HTML) business-ob jects reports with helper applica tions. The server works with rela tional databases; its tools create reports interactively, or Document Agent schedules reports. (http:// www.businessobjects.com)
Information Advantage's WebOLAP This is the four-tier, CG I-gateway Web interface for Information Ad vantage's DecisionSuite Server. Query-parameter input and out put are via HTML; users perform drill-down using hyperlinks. (http:// www.infoadvan.com)
Information Builders' Web Focus This four-tier, third-generation ar chitecture accesses Unix, Win dows NT, or MVS report engines with a CGI gateway. Users create reports and charts with Java ap plets. Output formats are HTML and Excel. The package is com patible with over 60 databases. (http://www.ibi.com)
Informix Software's MetaCube This is a family of decision-support software for large-scale data ware houses. The Web version current ly generates HTML reports off. line. AJava interface is in the works. The package supports drill-down, charts, and Excel export. (http :// www.informix.com)
lnfospace The first genuine Java-based fourth generation query-and-analysis tool uses a three-tier architecture, with
d isadvantages o f this approach are that users can see only predefin ed reports, which age qui ckly, and th at all opera tions have to be predefined.
Second-generatio n Web sites (see the figure "Second-Gen eration Web Sites" o n page 82) employ dynamic HfML pub lishing: Applications create HTML documents on the fly in response to user requests. The en vironment is actually a four tier architecture, co nsisting o f Web browsers, Web se rvers, application servers, and d atabases.
To qu ery databases a nd other resources, users fill out HTML forms that their browsers then submit to the Web server. The result is a dynamically generated, but still static, HTML fil e. Use rs get the latest data through reports execut ed live. T h ey can customize th e results to a certain ex tent by changing the values of parameters, which the site d esigner sets up for them. The Web server itself holds only templates and metadata. The metadata parameters tell the server which information to se nd to th e browser. However, the m etadata can also generate HTML tag inform ation that, a mong other thin gs, helps to ma inta in state and authentication d ata over a sessio n.
The Web server submits the user's request to the applica tion server through a gateway. This translates the HTML re quests into SQLstatements or other d atabase calls. The appli cation serve r also fo rmats the result for the Web server. For linking such external programs to the Web server, most archi tectures use CG!.
This app roach d oes not always yield the desired perfor mance, esp ecially in large installati o ns where scalability is an issue. For this reason, native Web-server interfaces, such as Netscape Server API (NSAPI) o r Microsoft' s Internet Serv er AP! (ISAPI), are beco ming popular. As opposed to CGI, w hich fo rks o ff a new process for each call, NSAPI and ISAPI use lightweight threads. The downside is that a n application w ritten for o ne o f these APis w ill not w ork with the other (o r with o ther servers). CG!, on the other hand, is portable. A mo re p o rtable alternative is FastCGI, w hich h as many of the adva ntages of CG! bur, as its name impli es, improves p er formance b y cutting d own on invocatio n time.
Thi rd-generation Web architectures, according to the Pat rici a Seybo ld G roup m o d e l, follow the "J ava-assisted publish ing" approach (see the fi gure "Third-Gene ra ti o n Web Architectures" on page 82) . These architectures sup plement second-generatio n fr am eworks with J ava applets, ActiveX controls, plug-ins, or other client-side programs. These can provide a better, m ore interactive user ex perience that might suppo rt local processing of the downloaded d ata.
This architecture is able to communicate m o re user-inter fa ce events to the application servers on the other end, alle viating many of the shortcomings o f HTTP and HTML. The suppl ementary client-side software can also be a helper ap plicatio n, such as a spreadsheet. The result should resemble a traditional client/server applicatio n more closely while re tai ning the thin-client, Web-based philosophy.
The jury is still o ut o n whether ActiveX controls or Java applets ar e the right strategy to enhance a browser with more functi o na lity and interactivity. Some pe rceive Java as slow. Active X co mponents, w hich correspond to the basic build ing blocks o f a Window s applicati o n used by hundreds of thousands of Visual Bas ic programme rs, provide a richer
w w w . b y t e .com
S E PTE M B E R 1 997 BYTE 8 3
I Manag ing Data OLAP by Web
and perhaps mo re matu re development environment. Being currently confined to Microsoft clients and se rv
ers, however, ActiveX components are not as portable as Java applets, since they are closely tied to the \Vmdows (and specifically the Win32) architectu re. ActiveX components are also heavier than Java because they may bri ng their own run-time envi ro nment of DLLs. At the moment, Java still seems to have th e upper hand in this competition.
Finally, fo urth-generation sites use a full-blown Java ap proach. They employ a standard three-tier architecture, di viding processing among a Java application server, Java ap plets downloaded to the client, and a database or resource manager (see the figure "Fourth-Generation Web Sites" on page 82). T he Web server's remaining task is to supplyJava applets.After a download, these communicate with theJava server directly, mostly using remote procedure calls (RPCs). The Java server commu nicates with the back-end resources usingJava-clad native database drivers orJava Database Con nectivity (JDBC).
Since this type of application is entirely for and on the Web, it circumvents the constraints of HTTP and HTML. The Java server might generate HTML, but it typically outputs data in a proprietary for mat for direct viewing with the client side Java browser. Using the latter approach, it has the abil ity to encrypt communications to improve security.
Points to Consider
Rich Carickhoff of the Application Consulting Group, an organization that specializes in custom OLAP solutions, sug gests t hat when evaluating syste ms to move to the Web, you should check the application type. "Infor mation-cen tric appl ications migrate nicely to the Web and stand to gain much value from its architecture," he explai ns. "Systems that present info rmation with a low level of fu nctionality, in multiple for mats, and to a broad audience are the suc cess stories."
But he advises against using the Web to deploy fu nction intensive applications for specialized users. T he re's too much additional software to admi nister on the server, too much data has to travel over the various servers to the brows er, and there might still be too little interactivity.
In his recent report, Eckerson also concludes that inter activity, pote ntially includi ng support for tables, charts, maps, and other visual output, is most important when spec ifying requirements for Web-based OLAP tools. Nearly as important are perfor mance and the number of fu nctions the Web-enabled version includes. M ost tools, he says, cur rently don't all ow browser users to appl y new calculations to a result set. Other aspects to consider include scalability (which may require load-balancing) and support for a wide variety of back-end databases.
A final aspect to consider is the pricing model: Does the vendor charge per seat, or does it take the number o f con current users into consideration? Eckerson concludes that the fourth-generation business intelligence tools to succeed will be the o nes that simulate a client/serve r arc hitecture over the Web. Ill
Udo Flohr is a BYTE contributing editor based in Hannover, Ger many. You can reach him by sending e-mail to flohr@dfn.de.
84 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Java applets communicating with a
third-party SOL databases. The
Java server. It fully maintains a ses
package uses HTML, but it sup
sion's state for the back-end data
ports charts and Javaapplets. (http://
base.The Java server (AIX, H P-UX,
www.gentia.com)
NT, and Solaris) caches data for
improved performance. It outputs
Platinum Technology's
Excel, HTML, Java,VRM L, and oth
IntoBeacon Web
er formats. Users can create multi
This is a second-generation ISAPI
page presentations with interactive
interface to Platinum's relational
multimedia elements. (http://www
OLAP server, lnfoBeacon. Users
.infospace-inc.com)
get live access to the NT-based
server. Operations such as drill
IQ Software's IQ/LiveWeb
down and pivot are supported
This second-gen eration four-tier
using HTML forms. (http://www
reporting tool employs CGI to ac
.platinum.com)
cess Unix or NT servers. Users view
static HTML reports that the IQ/
Seagate Software
Objects and 10/SmartServertools
The Crystal Reports and Crystal
generate using a Web interface.
Info reporting tools use ISAPI or
Hyperlinks implement operations
NSAPI interfaces to NT programs.
such as drill-down. (http ://www
Crystal Reports uses ActiveX
.iqsc.com)
controls to view and manipulate.
Holos accesses the Holos multidi
MlcroStrategy's DSS Web
mensional database server, using
This is a second-generation, four
HTML input and output for drilling
tier CGI Web interface for Micro
and pivoting in the browser. (http://
Strategy's decision-support sys
www.img.seagatesoftware.com)
tem , DSS Server. The product
supports parameter queries and
Speedware's Media/Web
static viewing, including hyperlink
This is an OLAP decision-support
based drill-down operations. Input
tool for data access and analysis
and output are via HTML. The pack
over the Web . The Media OLAP
age uses the relational OLAP mod
server stores in a multidimensional
el. (http://www.strategy.com)
database and delivers query results
to the Media/Web server, convert
Oracle's Express
ing results to HTML. Users get pa
Web Agent
rameterized queries and OLAP
This interface for the Oracle Ex
functions,such as drill·down. (http://
press Server multidimensional
www.speedware.com)
database is a second-generation,
four-tier OLAP server w ith a CGI
Syntell's
gateway. It creates HTML output.
Perspectives·Web
Hyperlinks implement features such
This HTML server is the Web inter
as rotation and drilling. The pack
face to Perspectives-Zoom. The
age also graphs using VRML. The
package interfaces to Syntell's Per
development kit uses stored pro
spectives multid imensional back
cedure code. Using Oracle's Web
end as well as to lnformix, Oracle,
Publisher, it can also use Java or Ac
Sybase, and other ODBC-com
tiveX. (http://www.oracle.com)
pliant relational databases. (http://
www.syntell.com)
Pilot Software's Pilot
Internet Publisher
Xense's DB Publisher
This is a Web interface for Pilot's
DB Publisher accesses databases
decision-support suite. It access
on any platform and location. The
es multidimensional Pilot Analysis
client supports any Java platform.
Server using ActiveX, HTML, or
The server requires Win 95 or NT.
Java. (http://www.pilotsw.com)
It accesses Oracle and Sybase
databases with native drivers, In·
Planning Sciences
formi x, and others using ODBC.
lnternational's Gentia
Users define queri es and reports in
Web Suite
the browser. A custom izable Java
A third-generation, CGl-based in
form pops up values and validates
terface to the Gentia relational
inputs. Load balancing improves
OLAP server package and many
scalability. (http://www.xense.com)
www.byle.com
Jon Ude ll
HTML-enabled e-mail and
HTML+NNTP=
NNTP conferencing will make hypertext authoring Groupware
and collaborative data management a routine way of life for everyone.
ince 1985, BYTE staffers have
used BIX, a terminal-based conferencing system, to share
Full-Text Search with Netscape Collabra
news, contacts, story ideas, and manuscripts in progress. A few months ago, that long tradition ended.
F'*MiiiiiEMi . , s~rch for lelnS>n ~ staffnews
The successor to BIX is NNTP confer encing, deployed mostly behind a fire
lhe any teict
conlaint
wall on a private IP network that links
our three primary locations. Version 2 of Navigator, the standard
si:iiiiOCt
~ XML
I Date 1il Locmon
''Tom A. Hlllhl' <thalhl... Too 19:18 N. bytestall.issueplc
Internet client (what we call a browser), was rea lly a suite of applications: brows er, mai ler, and newsreader. Living in the shadow of the famous browser, the mail
~ Re:ArborTe!llADEPT 7.0 Mark Schlack <mscHack... 6/11/971... N. bytestall.demot
~ AiborTextADEPT 7.0
Jon Udell <jon_u@dev5.by... 6/10/971... N. bytestall.demos
Ste1 l ~en. J1m IA1borTe~:t IS.. Jon Udell <ion_ll@dev5 by 6/10/971 . N byte:taff corot<icl
~ dynalric HTML
Jon Udell <jon_u@dev5.by... Thu 12:41 N. bytestalf.muepll
er and newsreader failed to attract much attention. But even then, these messag ing apps were doing something extraor
We're using Collabra as a free·form contact manager. Careful use of message headers lends structure to the newsgroup.Full-text indexing of attachments makes the newsgroup a powerful tool for information storage and retrieval.
dinary: They could render, transmit, and,
to a limited extent, compose HTML.
In version 3 of both Navigator and net, where millions of people exchange propagate around the world by way of
Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), the billions ofwords every day. But while the replication. It's 1997, not 1977. News
messaging apps became slightly more latest newsreaders can compose and view servers, like Web servers, are now direct
HTML-aware. In version 4, they are dra HTML, the Usenet's vast ocean of text ly accessible from all points on the Inter
matically more so. You can easily con will for some rime retain its plain-ASCII net. News clients can hop instantly from
struct a mail message that uses rich text, look. Post an HTML message to rec.crafts server to server, just as Web clients can.
tables, images, and hyperlinks. And yet .rubberstamping, and you ' ll likely get News servers, like Web servers, can house
when I show people how I use these capa flamed. Usenet credo demands universal deep, richly structured, densely inter
bilities to collaborate with my team, with access to content. True, messages can woven, searchable collections of docu
the whole BYTE staff, and with partici contain both plain text and HTML. But ments. And everyone-not just desig
pants in our public conferences, they're legacy newsreaders display these hybrid nated producers of content-can help
invariably surprised.
messages awkward ly, naysayers com build those collections.
Why? The context in which NNTP dis plain, and the extra bulk saps bandwidth. This scenario may or may not ultimate
cussion and HTML messaging become I'm all for universal access. As it is ly prevail on the Usenet. Either way, you
compellingly useful isn't yet apparent to currently constituted, the Usenet quite can create an alternative public or private
..s many people. So let's spell it out.
properly takes a conservative stance to version of the Usenet using a stand-alone
An NNTP Server Is a
ward HTML messaging. But there's ter news server. When I started doing this rible irony in the bandwidth argument. 18 months ago, I had to climb the admit
Read/Write Web Server
The inside-out architecture of the Use tedly steep learning curve associated with
Thanks to the Web, millions of people net, whereby tens of thousands of news INND, the server app that powers most
have become consumers of hypertext. groups rep licate to tens of thousands of of the Usenet.
Relatively few produce it, though, be servers every day, is a far more egregious Today it's much easier. In addition to
cause the Web is primarily read-only. The abuse of bandwidth.
JNND, I'm running the latest news servers
writable equivalent of the Web is the Use- Discussion data no longer needs to from Netscape (Collabora Server 3.0) and
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 85
Web Project HTML + N NTP = Groupware
Microsoft (Internet News Serve r). Both vastly simplify the process of setting up and using NNTP conferences. Both, in conjunction with the new generation of HTML-aware newsreaders, propel NNTP technology into the space formerly owned by proprietary groupware platforms, such as Lotus Notes.
NNTP Newsgroups Are Simple Document Databases
A newsgroup is really just a directory with a bunch of text files in it. Each file starts with headers (Newsgroup:, Subject:, Date:, and Sender:) and continues with the stream ofASCil text that is the message.
Newsreaders can order your view of a newsgroup by the primary headers: sub ject, date, and sender. But that's not too useful if you're pointing your newsread er at alt.rec.rubberstamping. Why order by date, for example, when there's noth ing newer than last night's feed?
In a private newsgroup, though, these ordered views become very useful. When I finish the first draft of this column, for example, I'll post it to an internal news server. Weeks later, when the final proof reaches my desk, I may want to refer back to the original copy. No problem. I'll select the newsgroup, order by date, scan for mid-June, and look for postings from me.
With a bit of group discipline, you can make these views of shared data even more useful. Here's a simple but powerful idea: Treat the subject header as a row in a data base. For example, we use several news groups as simple contact managers. I in vite staffers to post subject headers to this group in the following form:
John Davidson sent me by way of e-mail. I know I'll be able to find that document three months hence by searching our news group for the term vpn. What's more, I know that any other BYTE staffer looking for contacts or material on that subject will also be able to find it.
Direct e·mail integration. To enter this record into our contacts database, I for warded John's e-mail message into the newsgroup, rewriting the Subject: header as I've shown. Data entry doesn't get any easier than this.
I've built and used a few multiuser con-
as well as by name. It's straightforward. I've wrirren before about transformers (MHonArc and Hypermail) that convert mail or news archives into Web archives. Given such a Web archive, you need on ly scan for Subject: headers, parse out the implied fie lds, sort them, and emit one or more Web pages that serve as indexes on those fields.
NNTP newsgroups are rich file systems. Following the headers, a news message can contain just a simple message body or a set of message parts, each encapsulated between MlMEboundary-markers. These
HTML-Enriched NNTP Conferencing
l!1 Sterken. Jim I ArborText I SGML. XML · bytettaff.contach.authors · Netscape Category ~
· John Montgc>me1J1 · Jon Udel
Mon 20:50 Tue 0:04
512819713:00
ij-____________-------- - ---- --...------ _____________----_____________-------------------- --------i~------- ----- -----------------1:
::
ArborText
::
::
"j:
Ann Arbor, l\fi
http://\Y\Y\V.arh o1te:\."t.com/
" Jim Sterken "
j: president !1
;i:::::::::~g~~~~~~~?~Jif~~~~~1f::::::::.t-_-________________________)j
Ji.a says detininq
Xs ellLv.e rWa lhefnovl kesdoi na hsi st o cr oyapoen.nXyIIIs...i tveonotuhgeht¥3tCo
collittee that is check Ile.ck vith
tbea. Here are soae XllL resources :
· XMLFAO
· Draft XML Specification (DXS)
~Hy'rune____________
The latest Netscape and Microsoft newsreaders make HTML composition simple enough for casual use. The table formatting shown here was done by Netscape Composer. The hyperlinks were dragged from a browser window and dropped into the message.
Dav i dson. John I Network Telesys tems I TCP II P. VPN
The idea here is that records in this con tact database are categorized in three ways: by name, by company, and by key word. Orderrhe newsb>roup by its Subject: headers, and you've ordered the data base by name. Yes, I realize this isn't per fect. You can't order by company or by keyword, as you would with the equiva lent Lotus Notes database. But here are some points to consider.
Full-text search. There isn' t yet an NNTP standard for the full-text search of newsgroups, but Netscape implemented one in its new Collabra server and client.
The body of the message is a white paper on virtual private networking that
tact databases over the years. Dara entry is always the bottleneck. Like all so-called knowledge workers, I process a flood of information at top speed all day long. If I have to fire up a data-entry screen and fill out a set of fields to log each event, I just won't, nor will my colleagues, and it's no use pretending otherwise.
The data-entry threshold has robe very low, and now it is. A lot of informa tion comes to me byway of e-mail that will matter to me or my team, bur nor today or next week. It takes literally 2 seconds to tag these messages and forward them to a shared-document database where they will be seen once and can be found later.
Optional value-added Web integration. Suppose you wanted to construct views of this database by company and keyword,
attachments can be MlME-encoded bina ries, such as images, executable programs, PDF files, and spreadsheets. They can also be HTML files. Listed below are some of the consequences that flow from cre ative use of the text/ HTML MIME type.
No external viewers are needed. If post ers convert files to HTML, readers won't have to launch external viewers because newsreaders can now render HTML at tachments nativel y. Some applications al ready implement "Save as HTML," a nd many more will.
Contentcan be full-text-indexed. If you post a Word document as an attachment, I can search for th e texrrhat you write only in the primary part of the message. Con vert the attachment to HTML, and I can search that, too. That's just what I did
8 6 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byte.com
Taking technology to new heights Realtek's RTL8139 Single-Chip Fast Ethernet Controller
It's no wonder BYTE magazine awarded Realtek
its prestigious "Best Component" and overall "Best of Show" awards at Computex Taipei
'97 for the development of the pioneering new RTL8139 Single-Chip Fast Ethernet Controller. This innovative solution integrates the Fast Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC),
physical chip and transceiver all in a single
chip-providing unprecedented cost effectiveness and greatly facilitating the network card design process.
Offering networking speeds of 1OMb/s and 1OOMb/s, this unique system-on-a-chip also provides 32-bit performance, PCI bus compatability and full compliance with IEEE802.3u 1OOBase-T specifications.
http://www.realtek.com.tw
Besides its groundbreaking developments in
the networking field, Realtek offers a broad
range of similar system-on-a-chip solutions
including graphics and video accelerators,
audio, caller ID and speech ICs.
Specializing in complete system development
rather than simple chip design, Realtek is
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computer and multimedia, communications
networks and consumer electronics fields.
~REALTEK
Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
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Circle 175 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 176).
Web Proje ct HTML + N NTP = G roupware
when I received and posted john David son's white paper.
Attachments can be live applicat ions. Everyone gets e-mail like this: "Re: Com pany picnic: Please choose preferred dare [7-18/7-25] and activity [volleyball/soft ball] . Reply to Pat at [phone #/e-mail ad dress]." If we're using HTML-enriched mail tied to a Web-based application, Pat need not collect, tabulate, and disseminate this data . She can package her survey as an HTML message and broadcast it to the staff. An application such as my Polls serv let (see "Java Servlets," June BYTE) doesn't know or care if its HTML client is a Web page or a mail or news message.
Message Threading Creates Document Hierarchy
Suppose that, two months after I enter the John Davidson record in our contacts newsgroup, another BYTE editor inter views John for an article on VPN. Two months after that, a fact-checker calls John to verify some information in the article. The Contacts newsgroup is the obvious place to record these interactions. If the editor and fact-checker add their notes as replies to the original message I post ed, they'll create what we normally think of as a conversational thread.
But in this context, the newsreader be haves more like a kind of shared outline processor. When I launch the newsread er, the Contacts newsgroup appears in unexpanded form as a list of names. To ex plore all our interactions with John David son, I can expand that thread.
How well does this work? To be honest, you won't find many examples of this tech nique in our internal newsgroups today. It's tempting to blame the NNTP tools, which weren't designed for this purpose. You can't, for example, rename or move messages, and if you cancel a message you' ll orphan the hierarchy beneath it. What's more, nothing prevents you from posting a top- level message that violates
the style (e.g., NAME I COMPANY I KEYWORD)
that creates the illusion of a database. But neither of these limitations is crip
pling, in my view. The real obstacle, as al ways with groupware, is cultural. I know people who exploit the rich capabilities of Lotus Notes less effectively than we ex ploit our relatively primitive NNTP-based tools. Most people, even some who are highly software literate, are not yet attuned to this mode of collaboration. We'll all get there, but it's going to take rime.
Win32 ::Internet
Aldo Calpini (<dada@divinf.it>) http://www.divinf.it/dada/perl/internet An essential tool for every NT Perl hacker. Win32 ::Internet creates a Perl 5 interface to WININET.DLL. the Win32 Internet sup port library that manages HTTP and FTP connections. It's a great way to make your Win32-based Perl scripts URL-aware.
BOOKNOTE .
The Data Model Resource Book
$49.99 by Len Silverston, W.H. Inmon, and Kent Graziano Wiley Computer Publishing http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/ If you look at enough information systems, patterns will emerge. These authors have done just that. Here are data-modeling recipes that include all the basic ingredi ents: people, organizations, products, units of work, and orders.
NNTP Messages Are Link Sources and Link Targets
By link sources, I mean that NNTP mes sages can contain live hyperlinks. Since Navigator 2, we've been able to compose hyperlinks merely by spelling URLs cor rectly. Ifl type http : //www .byte.com/ in a message, the news (or mail ) client will automatically recognize and activate that link.
This primitive form of hypertext au thoring can deliver extraordinary bene fits. When Usene t posters refer to Web documents, readers can access them with a single click. Using the HTML composers in the version 4 clients, you can refine the appearance of the hyperlink. If you are writing for an audience of HTML-aware newsreaders, you can wrap an ugly URL, such as http://www. byte.com/art/9706/ sec5/artl.htm, in a descriptive phrase such as my Jun e col umn .
By link targets, I mean that hyperlinks (on a Web page or in a news message) can lead to news messages. This hardly mat ters on the Usenet, because messages there don't survive more than a few days.
But on a private NNTP server, it's a dif ferent story. You don't ever have to expire messages; they can be as permanent as Web documents typically are. Suddenly it makes sense to create links to these per manent news messages. As I pointed out in "Dual-Mode Conferencing" (Decem ber 1996 BYTE), we've long been able to form such links using message IDs. But it was awkward to do so, and the result ing URLs were nasty-looking strings, such as news://staffnews.byte.com/33 01F45C .482E@byte.com. I'm delighted to report that, with Communicator's Collabra cli ent, which just shipped, you can achieve this result by dragging a message icon into the message-composition window.
Why is linking to news messages a big deal? It means that the number and qual ity of documents that you've collected in a newsgroup are not the only measures of its value. Density of interconnection be comes another key measure. References can be a concise and elegant alternative to quoting huge chunks of prior messages.
Even more ambitious, messages with links to messages can summarize discus sions and create alternate views of data bases. It's true that these meta-messages are still part of the flow of the newsgroup. Like all messages, they' ll be seen once and then fade into the archive. But if they're composed in HTML, they can also func tion as Web pages.
The "discussion high lights" section of our home page, which calls out interesting threads in our public conferences, illus trates this technique. Think of an HTML based NNTP discussion as a bunch of rough drafts, some of which will merit promo tion to the status of finished Web pages.
What's the Catch?
If this NNTP stuff is so handy, why aren't more people using it? Not many folks, oth er than Internet service providers and net work administrators, have ever mastered NNTP servers. The de facto choice, INND, is a mythologically scary beast.
But times change. The latest incarna tions of INND from Netscape and Micro soft go a long way toward taming the mon ster. Most would find it straightforward to deploy these GUI-driven news servers for internal use. Next month I'll show how that's done. lil
]011 Udell is BYTE's executive editor for new media. Yo11 can reach him by sending e-mail to jon _u@devS.byte. co m.
8 8 BYTE SE PTEMBER 1997
www b;rte.com
Rick Grehan
Feeling that cross
Vibe Jive
platform Vibe is one thing; deploying it
is something else.
ometimes in the Java world, you have to choose between big, slow, and standard versus faster, smaller, and nonstan dard. A case in point is Vibe ($49.95), which opts for the latter approach. Vibe comes from Visix, creator of the Galaxy multi platform development system (see ''AWhole Other Galaxy," July 1995 BYTE). You'd think the Visix technology and Java would be a perfect match: Galaxy's forte is cross-platform GUI development, which isa bigpartof theJavastory. How ever, several aspects of Vibe might make programmers think twice before using it.
Springs and Struts
The hallmark of Galaxy's GUI develop ment system is its intelligent geometry management, which allows for smarter interfaces and is based on the concepts of springs and struts. Springs and struts, which in Vibe are a rype of"connection," are logical entities that define orientation physics so that on-screen objects reposi tion themselves appropriately when the screen is resized or when an application designed on one platform is run on an other platform.
During the development of the GUI portion of your application, when you place objects such as buttons or scroll bars on-screen, you can define a connec tion between the edge of an object and the edge of the frame or between oppo site edges of an object. Connections be tween an object and the frame control the object's position. Connections between opposite edges of an object control the object's size.
Each ofVibe's four connection rypes struts, springs, spring/strut, and naniral length-has a specific behavior. A strut specifies a fixed value. If you put a strut
Vibe brings Galaxy's springs and struts to Java.
between opposite edges of, say, a but ton, the hutton size remains fixed re gardless of what happens on the screen. A spring expands and contracts as the user resizes the window, thus allowing objects to move while maintaining rela tive positioning. Aspring/strut is a spring with a fixed minimum length. The nat ural-length connection enables an object to resize itself based on its contents. (For example, if you change the font size in a button at run time, the button resizes it self appropriately.)
Visix could have coded the intelligence of its scroll bars and buttons inside huge
class files written entirely inJava, but then applications would be big and slow. In stead, Visix moved some of that intelli gence into native classes that are actual ly part of the Vibe virtual machine (VM). Because they're native, they run faster. But they also require a nonstandard VM.
AProfundity of Files
A Vibe application has more than just a set of class files running inside a Java VM (JVM). Vibe has class files, .vibe files, a special Vibe JVM, and a "vibe runner" file. Every Vibe application you build creates an associated .vibe file, which is
www.byt .com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 8 9
Javatalk Vibe Jive
roughly analogous to the resource fork of a Mac application. In particular, the .vibe file carries the geometric informa tion associated with the GUl portion of the application-that is, inside the .vibe file is persistent data that describes not only what objects (e.g., buttons and scroll bars) are on-screen, but their position, too.
The .vibe file also contains the com plete compiled version of the application. Hence, you can set up a Vibe application so that users can double-dick on the. vibe file and launch the application as though it were a stand-alone executable.
This is where the runner file comes in. The Vibe runner, which must be installed on end users' desktops, consists of the Vibe JVM and native class files bundled into a single package. In the above scenar io, when the user double-clicks on the .vibe file containing the application, it's actually the Vibe runner file that wakes up and begins execution. Note that the Vibe runner file is most useful for appli cations deployed through the enterprise. It's less useful for applications run on the lnternet, where you can't be sure that a cli ent will have the Vibe runner file.
Visix's use of the runner file offers some benefits. I've seen Java GUI-development systems that attempt to embed informa tion about the visual components of an ap plication directly in the Java source code, surrounded by comments and messages such as, "Don't edit this!" This informa tion is embedded in the file because the in tegrated development environment (IDE) itself needs that data to create a design time view of the application's GUl.
Vibe's approach, because it doesn't in sert information into your source code, eliminates worries of accidentally editing a forbidden portion of source code. But, with all these special files to keep straight, distributing a Vibe application can be problematic: You can't just bundle an ap plication into a class file and ship that to a client.
Fortunately, Vibe comes with Install Shield, plus InstallShield scripts. These tools will help you by automating the con struction of a distributable application bundle.
WHERE TO FIND
ObjectSpace, Inc.
Dallas, TX
972-934-2496 http://www .objcctspatt.com
Visix Software, Inc.
Rc:ston, VA
703-758-8230 fax: 703-758-0233 http://www.visix.com
Visix Gives Java a Jump-Start
·············-;········································00··00·00·0000..........................................
If you're serious about Java, the Java De· veloper's Kit (JDK) leave!! much to be de· sired, including a need for more containers and generic algorithms to help you more quickly develop and deploy applications. ObjectSpace's Java Generic Library (JGL) is a collection otcontainers and algorithms
that's the Java equivalent to the C++ stan·
dard template library (STL). JGL is bundled with Visix's Vi!>e and is also free for the down· loading from http://www.objectspace.com.
JGL consists of over 100 classes and in· terfaces that define data types and asso· ciated algorithms. All the data types in JGL descend from a parent abstract data class that's known as "contaioers." Fcve different kinds of "bas.e" containers exist in JGL: maps, queues, sequences, sets, and stacks.
Each type of container, has its own char·
acteristics of ·access and element storage.
For example, a queue implements a linked· list structure; a stack implements a first-in/ last-out structure, and so on,,(l'm using the ~ base" classes designation loosely. The map class is an abstra~t ~lass, queue and stack are concrete classes, and sequence and set are interfaces. Thinkof.them as the five main branches of tfie :JGCcentainer·class tree.)
But the container classes are only part of
the JGL fabric. Algorithm classes provide the necessary mechanics for operatlon s.on con· tainers.JGL includes algorithmsfor sorting, searching, counting, replacing, applying, and more. In addition, JGL defines a set of itera· tor classes for each container class so 1hat you can easily program tight loops that pro· cess elements within a container.
But the real power of JGL is unleashed when containers, ite~ators, and algorithms are combined. The combination allows you to tum an algorithm loose on a container with just a few statements. For example, the fol· lowing code shows how you might sort the first 10 elements of an array container:
Ar r ay! ter11tor first array. beg1 n() :
Arr ay l terator last ar ra y. begin() :
l ast.advanceClO) : Sor ting.sort(first,lastJ :
The f i rs t iterator is set to theiront of the array. Then the l as t iterator is created and
moved to just past the tenth element. Finally, the sort method is called to sort the subset of the array. Note that, with little modification, you could easily sort subsets within the array, as well as the entire array itself.
Bad Vibes About Safety
On the darker side, some ofVibe's ad mitted security holes are a wee bit dis turbing. I am aware of two of them . First,
the Vibe JVM does not perform all the ver ifications done by a standard JVM when a Java class file is loaded. The JVM spec
ification describes four passes that take place when a class file is loaded. One pass verifies (among other things) that no local variables are accessed prior to being stored
with valid values. The Vibe JVM doesn't
do this check; it must depend on the com
piler to do it. If the compiler hasn 't done this check,
then the Vibe JVM is susceptible to what
ever maladies might occur if the program attempts to manipulate an unorthodox value. (I should point out that the Vibe compiler does do these checks. Still, that's little help if someone tries to bring in an application from the outside.)
Second, the Vibe JVM does not include
a security manager that restricts access to the network or file system. That means
that if you have installed the Vibe JVM in
your browser, a Vibe application (applet, really) downloaded over the network has
full access to your machine.The Vibe doc umentation is succinct about this: " Basi cally, a Vibe application can do anything on your computer which a native applica tion can do." Ouch.
Good Vibes
Vibe's springs-and-struts paradigm is a welcome mechanism for managing the GUl portion of an application. The .vibe file, while somewhat nonstandard, is cer tainly a step in the right direction for han dling the sticky problem of where to put resource information.
However, too much of Vibe is nonstan dard. The .vibe file is nonstandard. The
Vibe JVM is nonstandard. The runner file
is nonstandard. The reasons for all these nonstandard entities are easy to see, but Vibe sacrifices portability to bring them about. Perhaps these problems will be ad dressed in future releases. liJ
Rick Greha11 is a senior editor at Compurer Design magazine and coa11thor of The Cli enr/ Server Toolkir (NobleNet, 1996). ¥011 can contact him by sending e-mail to rlckg @ p e n n w e l l .com.
9 0 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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A fiber-optic inter(ace standard and programmable motors help build precise motion-control systems quicke1: By Alan ]och
Plug and Play
for Manufacturers
n cavernous aircraft hangars across the country, industrial versions of R2D2 quietly motor around the fuselage sections of next-generation military and commercial aircraft. The robots pause frequently to shine lasers that take 3-D measurements to assure that they place the sec tions precisely. Dozens of motors and precision actuators buzz as the robots perform the calculations and smoothly lift the outer skins into place. To resellers and systems integrators that create motion-control systems, robots such as these are poetry in motion. Unfortunately, for decades, proprietary motion control hardware has made interoperability among system components almost impossible in systems such as this. Fortunately, this is changing for integrators that build pack aging and printing machines, material-handling systems, and robots. Change comes courtesy of standard-issue Windows PCs, CIC+ + development tools, and a maturing standard serial real-time communications system (SERCOS)-that first caught on in Europe and in the last two years has begun to establish itself in North America. SERCOS's raison d'etre is to establish communications between controllers and the digital-motor drives that perform complex multiaxis movements. SERCOS defines a standard way for integrators to plug as many as 254 programmable drives into a 4-Mbps fiber-optic ring that becomes the medium for controls and drives to pass data serially to each other. Unlike analog interfaces, SERCOS allows for n:vo-way communica tion between controls and programmable drives. Basically, it's a Plug and Play bus for manufacturing systems. "SERCOS helps us speed integration," says Ed Chalupa, pres ident of Advanced Integration Technology (AIT), the Plano, Texas, systems integrator that built the aerospace robotic units. Chalupa adds that his company's manufacturing systems have to be constructed at his customer's site-without benefit of debugging in an AIT quality-assurance lab. SERCOS eliminates bugs that were common in the wiring between the controller and the programmable motors, he says. SERCOS alone wouldn't open architectures for motion-con trol systems. Openness results from teaming the SERCOS stan dard with PCs and standard development tools. PCs are more
www.byte.com
uwe do the final installation, wiring,
and programming in the field.
SERCOS reduced bugs from wiring
errors to zero."
-Ed Chalupa
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 9 2 E
Plug and Play for Manufacturers
economica l than programm able logic controllers (PLCs) , th e lik ely a ltern a tive. Standard development rool let inre grarors draw on the same programming expertise from project to project. To gether, these standard resources help all e viate the frustration of resellers and inre grarors about proprietary systems, says
C harles F. Carter Jr. , vice president of
techno logy for th e As ociarion fo r Man ufactu ri ng Technology.
H oweve r, SERCOS is sti ll evo lving, and so me integration issues remain unre solved . Add ro that th e competitive pres sures of the marketplace, which induce component vendors ro interpret the stan dard in different way ro give th eir prod ucts a performance edge. The result is th at SERCOS is what john Odenthal, vice presiden t of systems integra tor Morion Design, calls "an integrator 's night mare- a nonstand a rd stan d a rd." Yet Odemhal says the benefits of SE RCOS ounveigh its annoyances, if you know how to work around the rough spots. Here's how to avoid integration problems.
Why SERCOS Now?
Although SERCOS may be un fa miliar to many rese llers, it's not new. Its develop ment began in the 1980s, spurred by Ger man manufacturers that wanted a non propri eta ry interface for machine-tool systems. Why is SERCOS suddenly impor tant? Two reasons: big endorsements a nd digital programmable d rives .
The biggest endorsement came in 1995, when GM told suppliers to its Power train and European manufacturing divi sions that all futur e equi pment must sup port SERCOS.
Another recent catalyst for a better and faster interface, beyo nd interoperabi li ty, is th e motio n-control indu rry 's move from ana log ro digital components, par ticularly digital programmable dri ves.
Digital drives are faste r and more pre cise than analog drives. It's not unusual for them to go from 0 ro 3000 rpm in 20 milliseconds or come to a sto p w ith in 1/8000 of a revolution, says J eff Pinegar, spokespe rso n for Auromation Inte lli gence a Duluth, Geo rgia, sy terns inte graror that was one of the fir st U.S. co m panies to work with th e standard in 1992.
Also, a nalog drive are elect ri ca ll y noisy. Because the motors are almost con stantly starring and topping, they be come esse ntiall y a se ri es of antennas fo r electrical interference. Electrical noise
Wireless Integration
Old Way
Dozens of wires linking analog-motor drives to a programmable logic controller increase the chance for Installation problems.
Prouamnaf>le logic controller
Each analog-motor drive has 16 wires that need to be Individually connected to the programmable logic controller.
New Way
A simple 4-Mbps fiber-optic networfl connects digital-motor drives to a standard PC running Windows or DOS.
Up to 254 SERCOS-based programmable motor drives are supported In each SERCOS loop.
Integrators building large systems may complete hundreds of connections. SERCOS replaces them with one fiber-optic ring.
is nor a probl e m with SERCOS's fiber optics.
Obviously, SERCOS isn't the only inter face choice for motion-co ntrol systems. Many ve ndo rs have proprietary so lu tions. There are also o ther alternatives, from Fieldbus ro ProfiBus, CANbus, lnter Bus-S, and DeviceN et, th at are often best suited to low- level components, such as motor starters, rather than for more so phisticated multiax is mori on-contro l com ponents.
Fieldbus, for example, establishe a commu nications link for 1/0 data to trave l to a number of field device . Some inte grators say th at they use Dev iceN et and SERCOS side by side, the fo rm er for 1/0 co ntro l, th e latter for motion control. H owever, Pinegar ays hi co mp any ofte n uses SERCOS for both 1/0 a nd morion contro l, elimin ating the ne ed for a separate 51000- $2000 1/0 card.
Most integrato rs give SE RCOS h ig h mark for lesse ning wiring woes (see the figure above). A typical analog-motor drive might have 16 wires coming out of
it that lead to a mori on controller. A large automa ted packaging system might have 15 drives, which means an integraror for such a system wou ld have to complete 240 electrical connections . SERCOS re duces this to one fiber-optic ring.
Easy connections mean a fas ter erup time . " In the past, we would put a card in the PC doing motion control and hav e n vo or three 100-pin ribbo n cable fan our to 100 terminal blocks," Pinegar says. " With SERCOS, th e ne twork goes o ut from one transmitter to each dri ve in one clean fiber-optic ring. In terms of systems in tegration, th is implified wiring is a tremendous adva ntage." For C halupa, simpl ified wiring is important because the systems AIT bui lds for th e aircraft industry ar e so large . " We do the final installation, wiring and progra mming in the fie ld . SERCOS reduced bugs from wiring error ro zero " Chalupa say .
Who's Behind It?
Thanks ro GM's endorsement and th e rise of digital drives, the number of products
9 2 F BYTE SEPTE M BER 199 7
www.byte.com
Plug and Play for Manufacturers
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Plug and Play for Manufacturers
that support the standard has finally made it a universal interface. Who's sup porting SERCOS?
According to SERCOS N.A., a trade association, the protocol's capability to ease systems-integration tasks especially benefits machine builders. "Networking drives and controls through the SERCOS interface is a straightforward maner of systems integration," says Tom Lauter back, the association's managing direc tor. "With the ability to manipulate every variable in a drive system, SERCOS-com pliant digital drives have brought drive setup and optimization to a new level. Today, such tasks are being performed in graphical environments such as Win dows," he adds.
Lauterback estimates that more than 27 companies offer SERCOS products and systems-integration services. This in cludes leading suppliers of motion-con trol cards and equipment, such as Indra mat, Motion Engineering, and Pacific Scientific.
But Wait: There's Less!
SERCOS has advantages, but resellers aren't oblivious to its shortcomings, which range from slow speed for some applications to poor documentation that leads to inconsistency in how the stan dard is implemented.
Over the past 11 years, SERCOS's cre ators have tried to address speed con cerns. The original specification, which called for a 2-Mbps dara transfer rate, has been boosted to 4 Mbps. New SERCOS ASICs are capable of 10-Mbps rates. But until 10 Mbps is widely avai lable in pro grammable drives and SERCOS cards, some integrators will hunger for more speed. "We'd like SERCOS to be faster," Pinegar says. "The more drives you add, the slower the network becomes."
Part of the speed problem comes from
WHERE TO FIND
ANSI 212-642-4900 http://www.ansi.com
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Division of Rcxroth Hoffman Estates, IL 847-645-3600
Lutze, Inc. Charlotte, NC 800-447-2371 704-357-8835
Motion Engineering, Inc. Santa Barbara, CA 805-681-3300
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Help for the SERCOS-Challenged
If you want to knowmore about SERCOS, you're not alone. Its creators are credited with producing a generally effective protocol but receive criticism for user-community sup port. Here's help. For a good technical overview of the standard, including an explanation of design strategies, contact SERCOS N.A. The association also sells a drive/control devel oper's kit,which includes alisting of sources of infonnation and support,for $50.The group also compiles infonnation about SEROOS-compatible products available in North America
You can obtain theformal specification from ANSI. Request IEC 1491 , "System Interface~ Also, take the advice of integrators and resellers who are SERCOS pioneers. Don't rely just on official documentation to answer all your technical questions. Bolster that informa tion with technical bulletins from programmable-drive vendors, such as lndramat, Lutze, Motion Engineering, and Pacific Scientific.
the fact that, although the standard calls for a maximum of 254 programmable drive connections in each fiber-optic ring, the actual drive limit may be less depend ing on the communications cycle time, how much data is being passed, and the speed requirements of the application. Consequently, applications that require both high speeds and a large volume of data may need multiple SERCOS rings.
Officials at SERCOS N.A. advise inte grators to be sure that they factor in the time req uired to exchange all command data across the SERCOS ring. Integra tors must take cycle times and data vol ume into account, not just the bus-trans mission rate, to decide if the system they are building is fast enough for a given applicati on. Exact riming in the software interrupt routine is more important than speed, they say, because even the fastest software routine isn'ruseful if timing isn't consistent.
SERCOS was designed with synchro nous operation in mind so that tra ns mission-signal jitter is minimized. It was also designed so that actual values are detected and commanded values acted on by all drives simultaneously. Because drives work synchronously, "beat" fre quencies or harmonics appearing in the motion-control system are eliminated . Feedback acquisi tion and commanded value executions are performed in every drive atthe same instant, making an effec tive snapshot for control purposes, ac cording to SERCOS N.A.
The second drawback-lack of inter operability among SERCOS-compliant hardware-stems from two reasons: an attempt by the standard's designers to write flexibiliry into the protocol and documentation that generally receives poor grades from integrators who have tried to comprehend it. Many integrators
say the best information comes from pro grammable-drive vendors rather than from official SERCOS publications.
Pinegar says interoperability among la rge programmable-drive vendors is common; problems usually crop up among smaller vendors or those new to the market.
Community Needed
The real problem, say resellers, is that no central repository exists to help integra tors exchange solutions. "We need more support for the user community," Cha lupa says. Anomalies are "an annoyance" rather than an insurmountable techni cal problem, adds Odenthal. He would like to see SERCOS documentation avai l able via the Internet, so changes to the standard could be updated regularly and there could be a forum for resellers.
Chalupa also confesses to mild irrita tion over the fact that the type of fiber specified for SERCOS is a nonstandard diameter. Also, the fiber must have a screw-on connector rather than the more conventional bayonet clasp. "All the drive manufacturers sell the fiber, but we like to buy it from a local source in case we break fiber in the fie ld," he explains.
In the end, however, motion-control integrators say SERCOS is becoming a regular part of their work. Digital tech nology means motion-control systems can be more precise and easier to build, and SERCOS represents progress away from the frustrating days of proprietary prisons. If dynamic, real-time forums spring up to let integrators share design experiences, SERCOS may become an open standard in the truest sense. [lJ
Alan joch is a freelance ivriterand fonner BYTE senior editor who covers emerging technolo gies. You can reach him at ajoch@monad.net.
9 2 H BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byte.com
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New reseller programs put R/3 into the hands of smaller companies. By Jason Krause
Thinking Small(er)
with SAP
· · · ith only 20 resellers in the U.S., and an image as a For tune 500-class business product, R/3 might seem like something that's out of your league. Think again. SAP
is introducing new programs for rolling R/3 into smaller cor porations, and this is creating new opportunities for certified resellers to hook up with other resellers to gain expertise in hardware, databases, and networking.
SAP's R/3 is a do-everything product, integrating back-office functions, such as financials and human resources, with front office functions, such as sales and marketing. Yet, outside the Fortune 1000, R/3 is a well-kept secret. Since many resellers per ceive it as a big-ticket product that only large consulting firms and SAP itself could hope to successfully implement and sell, they overlook the opportunity it presents. However, with SAP opening new reseller channels, that's about to change.
The R/3 System
R/3 is an application suite that manages and integrates the spec
trum of business needs for a company by linking such disparate
functions as financials, sales and distribution, logistics, and manufacturing. To do this, R/3 uses a typical client/server, three
tiered architecture consisting of a database, an application lay er, and a presentation layer. The latest release, 3.1, is Web-en
abled, adding what SAP calls an Internet Transaction Server to the architecture.
To work with R/3, you need to understand what SAP calls the Business Framework. This includes two main technologies: Business APis (BAPis) and Application Linking and Embedding (ALE) . Also part of the Business Framework are the SAP Business Objects, an effort to strueture R/3 in an object-oriented way, and the O pen Information Warehouse (OIW), a collection of R/3 's data-warehousing features.
BAPis use Microsoft's COM to create an object-oriented in terface to the business-application logic within R/3. They allow R/3 to pull identifiable content from non-SAP applications into R/3, extending the functionality of the product to other, unre lated corporate systems. ''A BAPI is business content," explains Peter Graf, technical marketing manager with SAP. "BAPis change slower than content, which means you can achieve inde
www. yte.com
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SEPTE M BER 19 9 7 BYTE 9 2 K
Thinking Small(er) with SAP
pendence from technical issues and just worry about keeping your content up to date."
R/3 introduced ALE with version 3.0. This feature loosely synchronizes physi cally separate R/3 systems as well as R/2 and non-SAP systems.
The Business Objects feature, SAP's ap proach to the object-oriented movement of data, uses Microsoft's COM/DCOM to allow business objects to coexist in loose ly coupled, multiplatform, multistandard environments. A Business Object consists of a core business-logic layer, or business object kernel; a second layer for rules and constraints, which ensures data integ rity; and a third layer, which consists of methods, attributes, and event controls. The fourth level is the access layer, where object-oriented standards, such as COM/ DCOM and CORBA, reside.
The OIW is a data-warehouse solution within the R/3 system. It's an extensible on-line analytical processing (OLAP) serv er with information models for business management that are derived from the R/3 system. The Business Explorer is an integrated analysis tool, based on Excel and Internet technology, with ready-to go reporting libraries for corporate data analysis.
Also important to R/3 are Internet links for conducting Web transactions and running business functions through the Internet. New Internet features include bank data transfer, order entry, order status requests, human-resources (HR) employee self-service applications, and graphicalon-line product catalogs. With a transaction server, this architecture
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Because R/3 ties into a company's Web site, it eliminates the need to invest in new Web-enabling technology. "We're stay ing competitive because we can show our products on our Web site and tie our busi-
ness into the site without changing our business model in any way," says Jean Fulchino, MIS director of Polyfibron Technologies, a printing firm in Billeri ca, Massachusetts.
The New R/3
This year, SAP plans to introduce R/3 4.0. With this release, SAP adds new fea tures that take an object-oriented ap proach to business applications, which will provide more functionality. .
cont11111ed
R/3ASAP
R/3 has been criticized for poor time to implementa· lion. A response to this is the Accelerated SAP (ASAPY sys tem, a streamlined, consistent approach to implementation.
The ASAP program organizes and plans the implementation of R/3 using a six-point system that begins with the gathering and as sessing of resources and ends with the final "go live" and sup port phase. This program keeps the learning curve down and puts the right people in place ahead of time , ensu ri ng that everyone
involved is on the same page. For the CBS market, the pro
cess is abbreviated. The CBS version combines some steps to provide a shorter, less-labor-in tensive preliminary process for firms that must conserve work er-hours spent on the job. The CBS implementation program assumes customers are too busy for a full system analysis.
But this does not mean that the CBS version is incomplete. ASAP can speed implementa tion, but no one should expect it to come without effort. "We in-
elude a questionnaire in the plan ning process," says Kay Ander son, SAP's director of field ser vices. "With it we discovered that people were not defining their project requirements before they began. Without that, the whole project is shot~
One of the benefits of this pro gram is that it not only plots a course before implementation, but it leaves customers with doc umentation of how their system works after they've gone live with the product. SAP's Bryan Plug believes six months is the aver
age time to implementation, but he's seen one executed in 67 days. Jean Fulchino saw her com pany's implementation come off effectively. "I think some teams don't have the knowledge of how a business works," she explains. "We've managed the implemen tation well because we under stand our own business needs:'
This program is not a universal fix for implementation. It doesn't address reengineering issues, so companies coming from legacy systems need to address issues that this plan doesn't cover.
9 2 l BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.byte.com
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SYNNEX INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (U.S.A .)
Tel: 1(510)6563333 Fax: 1(510)4403777
E-mall: market @smlplink.mic.com.tw
(URL): http://mitac.mic.eom.tw/
But that in no way means compromising on computer power. The ESSENTIA comes with a full-sized keyboard, 13.8" to 15" LCD panels, a slim 310*250*75m.rn chassis and supports a slew of hot technologies among which are Intel's®MMXTM technology enabled processor doing a fast 233 MHz spin, a RAM of up to 512 MB, a HDD of up to 2.1 MB, a speedy CD ROM drive, plus 3D graphics & sound.
What's more, it's LAN/video conferencing'n' network ready, meets PC97 requirements and qualifies as a NetPC.
MITAC ESSENTIA
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Circle 358 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 359) .
Thin ki ng S ma ll (er) wit h SAP
I With release 4.0, HR functions will be
I a separate component. Bur these func
tions won't be isolated from other busi ness functions; R/3 Human Resources will be easy to integrate into R/3 Finan cials and Logistics applications because the HR applications are part of BAPI. This approach makes back-office HR infor mation available to the front office for better management of HR. The new HR functions include a number of country specific versions, as well as modules for employee self-service through Internet or intranet applications.
With the new release, what SAP calls an Availability-to-Promise, or ATP, serv er for order-processing transactions will be available. The R/3 customer can access this server, which runs on a single gen eral-purpose database, across corporate networks or the Internet ro perform mul tilevel product-availability checks.
Another innovation with release 4.0 is the Engineering Workbench, a dedicated platform for managing real-time changes that users make to the R/3 business pro cess. The Workbench is Internet-enabled and instantly incorporates the latesttem plates for business applications into the R/3 system.
R/3 4.0 also extends its international business features by providing an intelli gent function that will convert financial information to and from the European Monetary Union currency.
SAP plans for R/3 to be written in pure Java in the future . The GUI for release 3.1 is already written in Java. "We reimple mented the GUI as an applet," says Graf. "When you use our GUI, there's zero maintenance needed at the client level." The Java-enabled GUI also makes it easy to push R/3 content out to the Web.
SAP for Smaller Companies
R/3 got its reputation as a big company's product because SAP sold it that way. SAP's new, separate channel for smaller customers means R/3 no longer needs to be characterized as a big corporation's tool. Small firms are now a target for R/3, which is a boon not only for them, bur also for the resellers and integrators that SAP is using to sell to this market.
In August 1996, SAP created the Certi fied Business Solutions (CBS) program. CBS is a network of independent pro viders focused on customers with an an nual revenue of $200 million or less.
"SAP realized that large enterprise
SAP Gets Small
Implementing R/3 is not a simple task. Often, small· er firms are more nimble at implementing R/3 than large companies with huge legacy mainframes and in· frastructures.
NetManage, a fast-grow· ing S ilicon Valley-based network·application·devel· opment company, has about 5 00 employees and $1 05 million in annual revenue . The company came from a PC LAN-based invoicing and accounting system that could readily be dropped in favor of R/3.The cost was acceptable, and the firm gained a more flexible and scalable infrastructure from the migration. "R/3 was a perfect fit for us; says Sheryl Haller, business applica· tions manager for NetMan· age. "It has the configure· tion capabilities built right in that made it work for us."
R/3 is a big product, and it requires customization sometimes extensive cus· tomization. To get around that, R/3 employs 20 indus· try-specific modules. The module for the software in· dustry, for example, meets demands for the complex tracking of licenses, seri· al numbers, configurations, and software ownership.
Do these modules really save time? "SAP integration makes sense, especially in the software industry; says Haller. "We have nothing to ship except code, so e-com· merce is obviously the solu· lion for us~ To program R/3
Some may fear that R/3 is simply too big to fit the needs of mid-size or spe cialized companies. "With R/3 we could select only the modules we needed, and we also.got a system that can keep up with us as we
"R/3 was a perfect fit for us. It has t he configuration capabilities built right in that made it work for us." - Sheryl Haller
to carry out these functions woulddemandmuchscript· ing and worker-hours, but industry·specific modules can save this expense. "We don't waste too much time scripting," says Haller.
grow:· Haller explains. "We have the same issues as large corporations," she adds. "We all have to track sales, keep a general ledger, and track spending. We just do it at a lower volume ~
projects accounted for only 50 percent to 60 percent of our business," says Bry an Plug, executive vice president of SAP America. "The other 40 percent were what now falls into the CBS program ."
A CBS customer's R/3 solution is typi cally viewed as being in a different league from that of a small to midrange or start up company. SAP, however, is making a concerted effort to sell the product to these organizations. Simple awareness of the CBS reseller channel is a problem for many resellers. ") hear, 'Jeez, I thought we were too small for SAP' from a lot of companies," says Gil Missana, an SAP reseller with Missana & Associates of Westbrook, Illinois. "The challenge is not awareness ofR/3, but to help people ap-
preciate the new strategy for delivery." R/3 didn't need to change, butSAP's im
plementation practices did . "We learned what mattered was that the product must fit Best Business practices and be scalable and easy to use, acquire, and maintain," explains Plug. "This means we ti e up the smallest possible number of people, be cause these companies simply don' t have manpower to spare for implementation when people are needed at work."
SAP also learned that system needs may be rhe same for smaller companies, bur implementation needs are more exacti ng when there are fewer resources. M.ichael Malone, executive vice president ofsales and marketing with CTS, a reseller com pany based in Atlanta, says, "Compa
9 2 N BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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SE PT& MBE R 111 97 BYTE 92 0
Thinking Small(er) with SAP
nies set expectations, but without block and-tackle documentation, customers wait too long and then fall prey to time constraints."
CBS Is Small
SAP's CBS reseller channel is pretty tight: SAP plans for about 20 resellers in North America, and 16 of those slots are already filled. SAP investigates the organization, staff, product-management experience, information-technology (IT) experience, and capital of a reseller firm before mak ing a company a certified reseller.
But unless you're one of four compa nies ready to rake the mantle of Certified Business Parmer from SAP, discussing this channel seems pointless. SAP has looked at over 50 resellers just to select the ones who are certified resellers today.
Fortunately, R/3 is such an expansive technology that the opportunities for people who can sell peripheral products and services, such as hardware resellers and IT companies, are endless. "Our re sellers are typically not hardware resell ers, networking experts, NT experts, or database experts," says Plug. CBS reseller companies are experts in R/3 implemen tation, but they depend on others for the extensive peripheral services and hard ware needed for a complete execution.
Integrators and resellers need an as sortment of platform and environment skills. Seventy-five percent of R/3 sys tems currently in use run on Windows NT, but knowledge of Unix for LAN and WAN environments is frequently needed. Oracle databases predominate, and ex tensive knowledge of it is necessary for the implementation of R/3.
CTS sells IBM RS/6000 servers and its expertise in Oracle database products to R/3 customers. CTS works with larger consulting firms, such as Andersen and Cooper, who build the SAP environment, while CTS builds the server and data base architecture. "A lot of resellers mis calculate the size ofthe box needed," says
WHERE TO FIND
Computer Associates International Islandia, NY 516-342-5224 fax : 516-342-5329 http//:www.cai.mm
SAP America Wayne.PA
610-725-4500 fax: 610-725-4555
TSI International Software Wilton, CT 203-761-8600 fax : 203-762-9677 http//:www.tsisoft .com
Third-Party Solutions for R/3
S AP is fastidious about certification and its R/3 product. But with a technology as expansive as R/3, there's always room for peripheral products to supplement the core package.
TSI International Software's Mercatorfor R/3, for example, eliminates the need to write custom ABAP codes for data-conversion tasks. Mercator provides a graphical environ ment for creating ALE interfaces for drag-and-drop conversion to and from R/3 formats. The program cuts the time and skill level needed to integrate information, and it supports information definitions that R/3 doesn't support, including COBOL copybooks and rela tional databases.
ComputerAssociates' ARCserve Backup Agent for SAP R/3 backs up data while R/3 applications are open and in use. This means that the system can be backed up without a system crash and ensures that users' mission-critical data is protected from human error. The product gives administrators the option of managing backup tasks from either SAP's BACKINT interface or ARCserve's GUI.
Malone. "R/3 eats up small boxes, and we need to feed it more hardware for an upgrade."
Customization
Many people chafe at the notion of buy ing into a monolithic solution like R/3 because it would seem to rigidly impose a single business model on companies with distinct personalities. But this sim ply isn't the case.
"It's flexible enough that we can run things the way we did before," saysPoly fibron' s Fulcbino, who's currently in the process of migrating to R/3. "There are minor changes that we put up with: We bad to adjust some methods because of the size of the number field in some applications." Polyfibron has two people on staff who can script in ABAP/4, SAP's scripting language. To customize R/3 ap plications, a company should have staff ers familiar with ABAP/4, but all R/3 ap plications are somewhat customizable without scripting to fit a company's gen eral business needs.
Sheryl Haller, business ap plications manager for NetManage, a Silicon Val ley-based development company, agrees that R/3 is flexible. "The software is de signed generally enough that it's not a hindrance. We'll use it as long as it meets our requirements." (See the text box "SAP Gets Small" on page 92N.)
In addition, R/3 applications are eas ily recognizable by standard Windows interfaces and the integration of Micro soft Office programs, which can be used for presenting R/3 files. "I think the real strength of the system is the use of Win dows programs for presentation," Ful chino says. "They're familiar to just about
anyone with a computer at their desk." How Jong does all this take? SAP aims
for general implementations to take five to six months. "Some companies have encountered delays because they don't have sufficient knowledge of how their business works in the first place," ex plains Fulchino.
Of course, the time to implementation is affected by the approach a company takes. Most companies prefer a gradual one, implementing one or more R/3 mod ules in the department or departments that need it most, and adding on as nec essary. The "big bang" approach may be lucrative for companies that are impa tient to update their systems, but it sharp ly increases the learning curve for the whole company. "We changed over our financial department first," says Fulchi no. "I think changing gradually makes a smooth transition possible."
The opportunities for a reseller in R/3 implementation are currently growing. As SAP's market share grows, and as the company cultivates its new sales avenues, more resellers, integrators, and consul tants will be able to cash in on its product family.
But no one should leap blindly to this product line. SAP is picky about who it se lects for certification, and R/3 itself is such an all-encompassing technology that no one can half-heartedly adopt it. This is true for integrators and customers alike. As jean Fulchino summarizes the imple mentation ofR/3, "it's an investment, not an acquisition." Ill
Jason Krause is a BYTE associate news editor based in San Mateo, California. You can con tact him at jkrause@mgh.com.
9 2 P BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
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Har dware
Power Platforms: 233- and 266-MHz Pentium lls Compared
These 17 Pentium II systems deliver surprising power and promise to the desktop. By Michelle Campanale
ision, forethought, and poten tia l are three important and desirable qualities. We like to see them in our politicians, leaders, city planners, network adminis trators- and ourcompurers' CPUs. Intel's new Pentium II (PII) processor, which powers the 17 233- and 266-MHz PCs we reviewed in this roundup, has all these characteristics. Indeed, the true merit of the current generation Pll and its supporting archi tecture lies in its latent possibilities- not so much what it can do, but what it will do when it can reap the benefits of ex pandability, added Multimedia Exten sions (.MMX) instructions, and speeded up segment-register writes, which allow the Pll to run older, 16-bit software faster than the Pentium Pro.
New Architecture
First, rhe PIT represents a whole new ar chitecture that carries a much greater possibility for future expansion than do its Pentium predecessors that use Sock et 7/8 (the zero insertion force [ZIF] type socket where the processor sits). For example, the Pentium's limited upgrad ability is due to the lack of on-chip cir cuitry and other chip components that are necessary for you to be able to up grade to a faster CPU.
The PII's Single Edge Contact (SEC) car tridge, which is about the size of a Nin tendo cartridge, sits in Slot 1on the moth erboard and is designed to make upgrades easy. The tool-free SEC cartridge pops out from Slot 1 after you unscrew the retain er, heat sink, and CPUfan.
With the PII design, gone are the days
when you had to pry out the processor with a rake and risk bending pins whi le changing chips. Within the SEC cartridge is a circuit board that contains the pro cessor, some core logic, and system and bus caches-all the components needed to handle future high-frequency versions of the PII (although SRAM chips for the L2 cache are not in the same package as the CPU die).
Dual - Bus Support
Like the Pentium Pro, the PII uses the Dua l Independent Bus (DIB) architec ture. This accelerates the flow of infor-
BEST
DTK APRl·74M t K266 and
1El~ PC 300XL
mation within the system, boosting over all performance to three rimes than of a single-bus-architecture processor. The DIB architecture allows today's 66-MHz system-memory bus to move to higher speeds in the future.
Two buses make up rhe DIB: the L2 cache bus and the processor-to-main memory system bus. The Pll processor can use both buses simultaneously, which increases the chances that it will achieve
its peak execution time of three instruc tions per clock cycle.
MMX Technology
Like the Pentium with MMX, the PI! pro· cessor includes accelerated MMX, which enables it to execute two MMX instruc tions ar a time . Added to the PJI are 57 new MMX instructions specifically de signed to process video, audio, and graph ical data more efficiently. The use of sin gle instruction/ multiple data (SIMD) technology enables one instruction to perform identically on multiple pieces of data and allows the chip to reduce the compute-intensive loops common with video, audio, graphics, and animation.
Intel expects MMX to play a signifi cant role in videoconferencing, among other applications. It also expects upcom ing MMX drivers to improve printing.
Setting the Specs
Future possibilities aside, the current em phasis of PCs with the PU processor and the 440FX (lntel'snew PJI chip set) is per formance. In this roundup we focus on a range of systems, from high-powered 266-MHz PCs to surprisingly competitive 233-MHz machines.
Although rhe PU market extends be yond mainstream business, we chose to focus on Windows NT PCs ranging in price from about $2200 to $4100 . Each was equipped with a single-processor configuration and 64 MB of RAM. A max imum 512 KB of secondary processor cache, a 32-KB L1 cache (16 KB for in structions, 16 KB for data), and a mini mum 3.8-GB hard drive were also in cluded. In addition, a CD-ROM drive, a
9 4 BY TE SEP TEM B ER 1997
MOTHERBOARD '
This one is based on '
theATX·based standard, ' '
although NLX·based and
'
aplrsoopcrioemtamryodne. signs are
HEAT SINK AND FAN
f MEMORY
Note the extra fan for the processor, wh ich gets hotter than
I The lack of cable interference
/ HARD DRIVE
previous P6s. The Pll also calls for a large heat sink-which
makes upgrading memory
I 4 GB is standard.
is about the cartridge's size and an inch deep.I
I easier. Eight SIMM sockets, I
I
I forupto512MBofEDO
I
4 '' t~"(;~!~~~~
~~F~~~·~~:.'!~~~fI":lD:"R!AlfMt",'a~re~-s-t.a.n.d.a.r.d,.
I I I
SEC CARTRIDGE '
Rectangular in shape ' '
and palm·size, it comes
'
with a retainer that helps
' '
keep the processor in
the slot.
SLOT1 - - The CPU fits in the - new Slot 1, which
uses less system real
estate, allowing
system makers to use
existing motherboard
designs for it.
All cache is on the SEC's c ircuit board.The Pll's cache
has a dedicated bus-part of the Dual Independent Bus
(DJB) architecture-which increases throughput.
. ' ' EXPANSION SLOTS
Four PCI, two !SA, and one shared
·
slot are standard.
' eus
The PCI bus currently runs at 66 MHz. Bus speeds of 100 MHz are expected next year.
\ DRIVE BAYS These will typically contain ZIP, CD· ROM, hard, and tape drives.
Illustration is based on the DTK APRl-74M/K266.
3 ~-inch floppy drive, and VGA with 4 MB of video memory were part of the sys tem specifications.
The Pil is optimized for 32-bircode. As BYTE readers increasingly demand cov erage that reflects what they most often use, we selected Windows NT Worksta tion 4.0 as our OS for this roundup.
What's Next?
Expected to ship this month, lnrel's440LX chip set will include add-ons to better ex ploit the PII's abilities. The 440LX will be compatible with the Advanced Graph.ics Port (AGP), which gives graphics chips ded icated access to main memory. Error-cor rection-code (ECC) RAM will also be sup-
ported, making the Pil with the 440LX chip set ideal for high-end desktops and servers. The 440LX will include support for syn chronous DRAM (SDRAM), which can boost overall system performance by allo cating memory for each bit of data that passes through the PCI bus. You can also
Contributors
Michelle Campanale, technical editor/BYTE Andrew Froning, managing editor/NSTL Dorothy Hudson, project manager/NSTL Linda Higgins, editorial associate/BYTE Maggi Bender, John Mcloughlin, and John McDonough, product testers/NSTl Maryanne Eves, aquisitions editor/NSTL
expect to see Ultra OMA hard disk support. The current iteration of the Pll with
the 440FX chip set supports two-proces sor symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) . Support for four-way SMP won't be avail able until 1998. In addition, the internal bus speed is 66 MHz; support for a 100 MHz bus is not expected until 1998.
By the time you read this, 440FX PIIs are expected to plunge in price as the first Plls with the 440LX chip set roll our, so seek current pricing when making your buying decisions. Pricing aside, the Pll's high performance rest results and expandabil ity make rhe jump to Intel 's new platform worth the while of many business and home users lookjng for entry-level PCs.
www.IJyte. om
SEP TEM BER t 99 7 BYTE 95
BEST OVERALL
PENTIUM
I I
PCS
n y o f th e 17 PII PCs in thi s roundup will fi t nicely in the wo rkplace or home office. Equipped with 32 MB of RAM and powered by the breakn eck-speed PIT, these systems offe r great per fo rmance with current Windows NT applications. And, because they're MMX- ready, they can take advantage of MMX-opti mized applications and futur e MMX -friendl y OSes, such as the next majo r upgrade of Windows 95 (code-named Mem phis). We rated these PII workstatio ns based on their perfo rmance, usability, features, techno logy, implementatio n, and price, a.ll on a scale of five stars. Perfo rmance is weighted highest, at 67 percent. Usabil ity is rated at 17 perce nt, while the fea tu res set is faccored in at 8 perce nt. Val-
ue (price) and tech nology (inn ovation) each take 4 percent of the pie.
Because PI! machines are co nfig ured similarly and constructed aro und ide n tica l CPUs, they are commodi ty items, and price becomes a determini ng faccor. So, co de termine the low-cost wi nn er amo ng all the systems tested, we derived a separate scoring fo rmula. All systems we re weighted with price at 50 percent, perfor mance at 30 percent, usability at 10 percent, and features at 10 percent.
We derived overall performan ce rat ing by averaging the results from our benchma rk tests. User's guides and oth er pertinent features regarding the oper ation of a system, such as ease of access, setup and installation issues, and upgrad a bili ty, we re used tO deri ve a usabi lity
score. Finall y, the fea tu res score is based on components that differe ntiate the sys te ms from each other. Add-o ns, such as ZIP drives, high-capacity hard drives, and 62-bit graphics cards, are examples.
Best Overall
With its strong performance, efficient motherboard and chassis designs, and a good price, t he 266-MHz DTK APRl 74M/K266 is hard to overlook. It showed the highest and most consistent perfor mance scores in all t he tes ts we th rew at it: C++, Access, Fourie r, !Ma rk, and BYT Emark .
Perfor mance isn't the only thing that matters, of course. T he APRl-74M also scored well in both the usability and fea tu res categories. For example, it co mes
The First Brand-Name AMO K6 System
j.g!tal,Eqlli'Pq:!erit ycnt 'tnti,.fi fst niachin'e ffo
DJ.~i.1ats ~.rpous.":}o!bsmoara design,bas~d on the N~l:X stanctar.d,allor1~ ,:.'.. ift ~ljde ~hcimit'directlY, out·thtough the top of th~S'YJte111. Un otch the
top-tic( system vencfort<1 be poweml by tile ·_ three nonrcmovable screws on thecover, and you C!an acees~its internal
AMO KS P,roc~or. Al ~2504, i.t·s:·a cos.t-e'f:::. ,components fnstantly.th~ks p~ocessor,offers full Mtv!X--instructiori,sct
fcc{ivcsystem,cons~deringthat itcomeswith eompatibllity. Like the Pentium and Pentium MMXchips, it usesth'e Iow
a <bGB Ultra OMA har.d drive and 64 MB of cost ZIF processor Socket?.
SDRAM. Although Dlgital'sVenturis line corry~, W~tl\ the right manuractuccr.support, BIOS, and voltage-regulation mod
pn~installed with Windows 95,we tested.tile ule, it is theoretically possible to swap a Pentium or Pentium MMXcliipfor
s~tel'l)_ usi!)g,_,~indows NT 4.0 Workstatio~. w Af'..10 ~6. Digital says·it might offer an upgrade kit in the,future. Along .
our : just as we dia far:ttie 1:),Pentium II PC!:sin
with,this MMX compatiBilltY and·a.larger L1cache than the P~~tium 1(1's, :;
roundup.
AMO claims its KS chip's core logic has fcwermisprcdktionsthan the Pe~-
But llon'~e.xpcct pcrfo(manac that beats that of Pll machines. We.exer- tiuril'll. 'Accorcli11g to AMD.-8000 stored entries ov.ershadow the Pcntium
cjseiHhc Venl uris by duplicating most of NsTL's benchmark tests, inclu~- ll's 200 ~r so built-in branch predilltionsused for running execution units:
ingthc floatin:g-poinf-intcnsive Fourier<tcst, CH language test, !Marlo: In short, executions are processed efficiently.AMO plans to ship anAGP
graphics test, and BYTEmark CPU test. .We' compared its P.erformance · ctiip set by this fall,and several graphics-chip vendorsplan·to supportAGP
two to that of of the top-performing 233-MHz systems inour roundug, onS!JCliet 7 by the end ofthe year.>
~fa:'ron'sGlientRro XLU and Unicent'.s:ntanja 1123\l )\LA.We also compar.e,d
Although it's not'll w.orksta,tion optimized for intensive 3-0 gaming or
. its·s~oies"f~!li:ose of ourtwQ wirfners-6dtltis6r.MH?·s'yste~s-t~c· QI~,. <.,~fc'tirating s,clentifiC'eqtiatiqns,:t~cVenturis will do w'&l!.:for i~.\ntc'(iqed °j
,J1:f!Rl~74M/?66 and IBtyl'sP.C 300.Xt
"
~ ·· ma~et; the enterprise leV.~. eind'busincsses will appreciate.its advance(!
· The 233-MHz P.11 rliac~incs had aslightpeffor!llance !ldvantageover th;e featur.6 set and'low price. 'KS-cquipee~ Venturis.And it's no surprii~hat the 26S-MAz pfl syst:;s . .-'-_""_-______- -'---~-------..........----~
weicsignificantly more robust than the K6systcm (sec the figure).
Still, thissystem could be agood choice:ifyou don'twant to wait (for the Pll with4401.X chipset)to reap the bencfifS of UI~ D,MA and SDRAM.The l/enturis~whichshippcd in J~ly, targets the business market lt'$CquipJ?Cd
with AMD's.g33~MHz· KS processor and us~'lntel~s 430 TX P.Cl'chip set.~ >
4!.GBl:Jltra DMA'harddrive. a 12X CD-RQMtfrive,and a 4-MBMatrox Mil.Ien~
Perfonnance
DiOlal Venblis FX (233-MHz) (AMD116)
Urieent TrtariaII XLA (233-MHz) (PH) Miiron C&ent Pro XLU (233-MHz) (PH)
. nium II grap~ics card.roundoutthis.well-balanc.ed systcll).Its 66-MHz P.C~
IBM PC 300Xl (286-MHz) (I'll)
bussuppo.rts1hree PIMM sockets-ana up'to·2ss KB of.SDRAM.Afull 64 ~B of l 1 cachC°ls Included on thechip(32 KBfor data, 3:2 ~Bfor instructions):
and 256 KB of pipcline-burst l2 cache is ~ldcrcd onto the mothcrb<iard.
DTK APRl-74M/11·(286-MHz) (Pll)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
9 6 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.bytc .com
Your applications can now run on "the faste ·t Windows T mac hine o n the planet." These include Microsoft Office, Oracle and Net cape; plus engineering and graphics software such as Fo rtran, C/C++, Vis ual Basic, Pro/ Enginee r, Microstari o n , ANSYS , LAPACK , G aussian, Softimage and Lightwave. Over the last 15 yea rs we have designed y terns fo r thou. ands of satisfi ed customers including many prestigious inst itutions like NASA and Fideli ty Investments. O ur technicians are expert at confi guring all A lpha opera ting systems and app li cations, and you will not find more techn ica ll y competent sales people anywhere.
System Performance
Microway un de rsta nds the importa nce of
ba la n c in g fast CPUs with equ a ll y fa st caches, memory and peri phern ls including SCS I hard dri ves, 30 gra phics ca rds ;md
I AlphaPowered
RAID o lutions. Microway's excl usive 4MB SSRAM cache , fed by a
Numeric Performance
144-bit wide memory sys
Microway produces one of the fin est numeric optimized com
tem, boosts performance
pilers - NOP Fortran. S ince 1986, hund reds of applicatio ns
by up to 30%. Its 64 -bit
have been po rted to the X86 with it. O n a 600 MHz 211 64, a
PC! bus is d ri ve n by a
dot product kernel we use fo r compi ler testing achieves a mind
sta te-of- th e-a rt Dig ira l
boggling 11 28 megaflops! !! Usi ng hand-coded BLA' and FFT's,
chip se t th a t feeds 32
our new NOP VDSP Li brary hits 343 mega fl ops trian gulari zing
and 64-bit PC ! sockets.
dense array and perfo rms a 1024 complex FFf in 200 micro
seconds.
For a complete descriptio n of the optimiza tion facilities pro
Microway's Screamer . . . "is, quite simtJl)', the fastest Windows NT machine on the
v ided by NOP Fortran o r C. o ur Sc rea mer Syste ms and
motherboard pricing call 508-746-7341 or visit ou r WEB ite
planet . .. The perfonnance leader. "
at: http://www.microway.com.
PC Computing - July, 1997
M
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_______ Digunl. Alpho.am! DigitalUNIXTM Dlgirnl. \lb ual Ba>ic. NT. Excel and Word TM Micro· ft. T_ie_
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Corporate Headquarters: Research Park, Box 79, Kingston, MA 02364 USA · TEL 508-746-7341 ·FAX 508-746-4678 www.microway.com, info @microway. com ·France 33 491826312 ·Germany 49 6997650001 ·India 91 806637770 Italy 39 290782776 ·Japan 81 64593113 ·Korea 82 25561257 ·Poland 48 224871 72 ·Spain 34 35809444 ·UK 44 1819446222
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&::;
A I}ll'fotm ofTht. McGru14"f{itl Co·upari.tJ
RATING RESULTS !
BEST OVE RALL DTK APRl-7 4M/K266 T he DTKAPRl-74M/ K266 is rh e clear winner
WEIGHTING Features
among the Pentium 11 crop, outperforming the
other systems in our benchmark tests by a big
margin. Plus, irs usability and fea tures were
I
also solid.
1111 1'
I I
DTKAPRl-74M/K266 Dell Dimension XPS H266 IBM PC 300XL Digital Celebris G L-2 6266 Polywell Poly 7266TD Compaq Deskpro 6000 HPVectra VL6/266
PRICE
$3500 $3 179 $2500 $4149 $2495 $ 3 199 $3350
TECH NOLOGY
**** *i!t** **** *ilt** **** **** ****
IMPLEM ENTATION
***** ***** ***** **** ****'* **** ****
PERFOR MANCE FEATU RES
***** *1<***
**** **** **** *****
**** *****
**** ****
**** ****
***
***
USAB ILITY
*** ****1< **** **** *'*** **** ***
OVERAU RATIN G
*****'***1\I<* ' · 11'1
11'
II
*"**** Ii
**** I
****
****
***.
LOW COST AND B EST VAL UE IBMPC300XL If price is a concern, we recommend the IBM PC 300XL, our Pentium 11 low-cost winner. It was helped by excellent usability and fea tures scores and a rock-bottom price of $2500.
WEIGHT ING
Features
IBMPC 300XL Polywell Poly 7266TD Dell Dimension XPS H266 Xi 266 Pll Mtower SP Unicenl Titania 11233 XLA DTK APRl-74M/K266 Micron Millennia XRU
PRI CE
$2500 $2495 $ 3 179 $2499 $2399 $3500 $2839
PRICE RATIN G
***** ***** *** ***** ***** ** ****
***** Oulstonding **** Very Good ***Good **Fair
PERFORMANCE
*** *** **** ***'* ** ***** ** I
I
*Poor
FEATU RES
**'*** **'** ***
******
**** ***
11'
USABILITY
*1<** **** ***** ** *** 'I<'** ****
OVERAURATING
*****
***** · 1
**** I
**** ***
l.J.~._.II
***
;
*** ' II Hf 11'1 I
equipped with a 16X SCSI CD-ROM, Sea gate's Cheetah Ultra-Wide SCSI 4.55-GB
hard drive, and the Matrox Millenium n
graphicscardwith8 MBofEDO DRAM. To boot, it comes equipped with a Creative Labs AWE 64 sound adapter and a built-in network interface. Its well-organized de sign allows easy accessibility to internal parts and contributes to its usability.
Best Value
In picking a low-cost winner, we skewed our rating system to e mph asize price, which accounted for 50 percent of the overall score. Thirty percent of the over all score was based on performa nce, with
10 percent determi ning usabi lity. Features made up the remaining 10 percent.
The IBM PC 300XL is our choice for best low-cost PI! machine. T his 266-MHz sys tem rurned in top scores in our benchmark tests. It shined in the usabil ity and features areas. A Matrox Mi llennium II graphics card with 32 MB of video memory and a 2.5-MB IDE hard drive round out this low cost leade r. [rs well-written user's manu als, easily accessible drive bays, and a cov er lock all added value to the package.
Runners-Up
The Dell 266-MHz Dimension XPS H266 represents our overall second-place pick.
It turned in a perfect usabi li ty score and a solid composite performance score, which was third best. Its strong features set in cludes a ZIP drive, a Matrox Millenn ium ll graphics card with 8 MB of dedicated Window RAM (WRAM), and a 24X CD ROM drive.
Behind by a hair in the low-cost race was the 266-MHz Polywell Poly 7266TD, a system that combines strong usability and features scores with middle-of-the road performance. This machine includes an S3 ViRGE 3D/GX graphics accelerator with 4 MB of DRAM , a Maxtor 5. 1-GB e nhanced IDE hard disk, and a 16X CD ROM drive.
www.by ··J.com
S EPTEM B ER 1 997 B YT E 99
DETAILS
The engineers at Digital. made getting at the Celebris GL~'s
I motherboa_rd simple. As a result. swcrp,ping out the boar or
·replacing the memory isn't ato.,ugh chore. Becau~e of this@1 s organized design, none of the infernal components,such astff'e drj}.',e bays, cabl~s. and power SJ!.P.WY· blac~accm to the mot ~ efuC)ard,, Tool-foee aecess to the·mothelloard malCesj textrem ly easy to deal with; you just pull two dips, and the whole board sljJles out from the tqp of thesy,stem. We found accesS"lofuan.x other systems' motherboards trickydye<ta their cluttered interi ors, which makes adding memory or switching a jumper setting cf>niyhtmare.
TECH FOCUS
Investigating the SEC
Th.e SE.C cartridge sits in Slot 1 on the motherboard, a design·fea
ture tllat saves system real estate and power. If you break op~il
the ~E;C cartridge (which, incidentally, renders it useless), you'll
see the circuit board. This contains the CPU, cach'e chlpS; and some·
of the core logic (for more information, see -rile Pentium II Re
vealedn on page 51 ).
The CPU is manufact11red on a 0:35-micron process and con
tains 7.5 million transistors. It uses both buses simultaneously,
.thank's to the superpipelined rnlcroar,chitect'ure. Th'e pipeline of. ,("'
1
r-
the ·P~if)imily.co,nta1ris t
2 ~ta_ges·an~,o$~s·~yna~ice,x.ecutipn,
wif~ .,'JJ.jf
,
two-level adaptive training and brancli-prediction mechanisni1. '~,
T1rh1e,asnececobymubpinteodtjhlr~oceeisnssintrguctetfcohnnsiqpueerscslopcekedcyucjife's.0ftware perfor-
--.~,;:
:·~
All ca-che: is·locateil on the SEC cartridge's circuit board. Nut
to the CPU chip is 512 KB of level 2 pipeline burst; placement liere
helps ~he PU .achieve its improved performance. Afull 32 KB·of
level~1 cadie( 16 KB to handle data a'nd 16 KB fo handle instruc
tions)" Is integrated into the CPU chip itself.
. .. Oth.~~. advantages of the.SEC cartridge involve lowered produ~-
tion cilsts: Intel'can employ current'manufacturingtechniques and
still obtain very high frequencies; the company can then pass the
resulting cost savings along to the consumer.
SEC CARTRIDGES
pipeline-burst cactie
, , Te1,mW,~!ion , ,· ./ re51stors·anc:i
,
/ capacitors
, Edge connectOr / (fits lnlo Slot 1
,
/ on the motherboard)
1 00 BY TE SEPTEMB ER 1997
TEST RESULTS
ur benchmark tests represent overall system performance under a demanding OS (Win dows NT 4.0) and intensive applications. The range of performance tests reflects real-world applications that typical BYTE readers use: Microsoft Ac cess (database test) and C++ 4.3 (lan guage test), plus the Fourier test (WAY file analysis), !Mark (graphics test), and our low-level BYTEmark CPU test. None of our benchmark tests, however, included applications recompiled for MMX tech nology-a feature that the PI! cancer tainly take advantage of.
Performance Tests
In the Fourier test, we ran simultaneous copies of the floating-point-intensive Fourier transform program. This pro gram analyzes the spectral content of a WAY file; its results are largely dependent on raw floating-point power.
The second processor test measures how fast a system can build (i.e., com pile and link) a large amount of source code by running two simultaneous in stances of version 4.3 of Visual C+ +.This benchmark produces results that also de pend on hard disk 1/0 performance, be cause the tested systems must access their hard disks often for both reading and writing when running the test.
The Access test is the lone application based benchmark in this suite. Using Mi crosoft's Visual Test4.0 compiler, it mea sured how well these Pll systems could generate multiple business-database transactions. It executes two iterations of test runs.
The IMark video tests were conducted at 640- by 480-pixel resolution with 256 colors, using each vendor's preinstalled graphics driver.
The single-threaded BYTEmark test exercises the capabilities of a system's CPU, FPU, and memory system.
Usability and Features
We examined each of the 17 reviewed machines for usability by focusing on system design and documentation. Sys tem design is important; therefore, we rate how easy it is t0 remove and rein stall the cover, for example. Ease of up gradability (for adding RAM and mass-
storage devices) adds points to the us ability score. We look for accessible memory slots and drive bays that offer room for cabling. Systems are penalized for ha ving 1/ 0 connectors that are blocked by an expansion slot.
We give top honors to systems with
and graphics adapters on the mother board frees up expansion slots. The amount of video memory supplied with the system is critical in determining the maximum display resolution. We weight the highest noninterlaced dispJay reso lution supported by each system, along
Bang for the Buck
Better I .
W.orsIe . ·-I
......... 65'--~~~~--~~ ~~~~~~~--'-~~-'-~~~~---'
$5000
$4000
$3000
$2000
Cost
Weighting: Perfonnance 70% Usability 20% Features 10%
vendor-specific manuals that are com prehensive, include easy-to-use dia grams, and offer up-to-date technical information. Manuals with a glossary and an index get better scores. Those that lack specifications for the motherboard, hard disk, and graphics subsystem get rared lower.
Each vendor completes a lengthy ques tionnaire that we send to provide a de tailed description of each system's fea tures and support options. We weight each feature and calculate an overall features score. Features related to per formance include the size and write pol icy of the secondary cache. The use of hard disk controllers, network adapters,
with the maximum number of colors at that resolution.
Finally, it's important to note that war ranty and support policies are what fre quently separate major system vendors from second- and third-tier vendors.
Eva/11atio11s in this report represent the)11dg me11t ofBYTE editors, based 011 tests co111$11ct ed by NSTL, Inc., as doc11tnented·in a recenf
issue of NSTI:s monthly PC Digest. To pur chase acopy ofthe full report, contactNSTL at
625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428;
(610) 941-9600; fax (610) 941-9950; on the
Internet, editors@nstl.com. Fora s11bscriptio11,
call (800) .257-9402. BYTE magazine and
NSTLare both operatillgimits ofThe McGraw Hill Companies, Inc.
wwv1.byte.corn
SEPTEMBER 1 9 97 BYTE 101
PENTIUM II SYSTEMS FEATURES
Compaq Comput er Corp. Deskpro 6000 6266/4200
$3199
--'""""*'"-*'- * ·
MICROPROCESSOR
Digit al Equipment Corp. Celebris GL·26266
$4149
'***
DTK Computer, Inc. APRl-74M/ * K266
$3500
~
Duracom Computer Systems Mlllenla 1000
$3699
Gateway 2000 G6 ·266MT
Gateway 2000 G6·233
$2748
Hewlett·Packard Co. HPVectra VLG/266
$3350
EQUIPMENT INFORMATION
Sound adapter/chip
Compaq Bus iness Pro Audio/
ESS 1868
Yamaha OPLSA-3
ESS 1887
Non e
Creative Labs AWE64
Yamaha OPL3SA·3 YMS715
En so niq PCIAudio
Ensoniq PCIAudio
Sooy CDV~5f fl 16X
Mitsunii FX· 24os11s
U.S. Robotics/
Aztech MM Pro 16V-A PnP
VIDEO l/OPORTS MEMORY
1280 x 1024
1280 x 1024
64-bit PCI
64-bit PCI
. ~EDJl>D~M~!!;~tE!'©' O @M
1280 x 1024 1280 x 1024
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Inquiry number
1041
1042
* =BYTE Best
V =yes: N/A=not applicable ; Warranty: P=parts: L= labor; INP= information not provided. F=freight to repair cenler; R =return to customer.
102 BYTE SEPTEMBER 199 7
800-322-4772
. '.'l\llp:f/WWW '>'
'jje:C:°a;;,. '
1048
* * * * * O u t s tand ing **Fair
**** Very Good · Poor
***Good
IBMPC Co.
IBMPC * 300Xl
$2500
Kingdom Computers Pinna c! e233
$2197
Micron
Mi cron
Electronics, Inc. Electronics, Inc.
MillennlaXRU Client Pro XLU
$2 839
$28 14
Polywell Computers, Inc. Poly7266TD
$2495
Prem i o Computer, Inc. Sh adowhawk FX2
$3539
Unicent Technolog ies Titana 11266 XLP
$3099
Unicent Technologies Tilana II 233XlA
$2399
XI Computer Corp. Xl 266Pll Mtowe rSP
$2499
233
233
ROM, video
IBM Crystal C54236
None
Ensoniq Audio PCIES 1370
Yamaha O PL 3SA
None
Yamaha OPL3SA
266 . AMl3
ROM, video
ROM ROM,video
v
Disk Video
Crystal 30 ·16
Creative Labs
Yamaha
Sound Blaster 16/ OPL3SA
Vibras 16C
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ROM, video
Creative Labs AW E 64
Phoebe33.6
Phoebe33.6
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256 F.iSl'pa~il
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 1 03
_J
See and Be Seen
Over IP
Software
Videoconferencing software is the next best thing to being there. By David Seachrist
here's no denying the allure of videoconferencing over IP networks. Whether you're using the global Internet or the corporate intranet, videoconferenc ing means that you can use the nuances of body language and facial expressions ro get your point across or to better understand what faraway colleagues need from you without even getting up from your desk. As the rwo Windows 95 videoconfer encing programs we examined demon strate, instant and inexpensive multime dia communication over the Internet or the corporate intraner is possible, but two obstacles must be overcome: the band width barrier and the usability barrier. Despite barely adequate performance over 28.8-Kbps links, videoconferencing uses a lot of bandwidth. And despite ade quate usability with properly configured systems, because IP videoconferencing relies on a medley of hardware, software, and networking technologies, it has a ways to go before it is as easy as picking up a telephone. The International Telecommunica tions Union (ITU) H.323 specification is a vendor-independent standard that defines how audiovisual conferencing application data can be transmitted over an open network using standard trans port protocols like TCP/IP. Two of the ear liest products that adhere to or are on the verge of adhering to this standard for audiovisual conferencing are White Pine Software's CU-S eeMe version 3.0 and Microsoft's NetMeetingversion 2.0. Col laborative tools, which make videocon ferencing with these new clients even
more useful, include electronic white boards to provide blank drawing space that can be used by all participants; shared applications ro allow all partici pants to view the same application win dow while one participant at a rime manipulates it; file transfer; and chat.
Standards-based IP collaborative soft ware is still fairly new technology, and it requires a platform of a well-equipped PC config11red for IP connectivity. Bur there are many other players besides
BEST
Picking a winner this earlyon is like trying to pick the V;1inner of a marathon based on who's in the lead after the first 100 yQ1'as. Mlc'rosoft's NetMeetlng and
White Pine's CU-SeeMe are both strong contenders; but it's still too early
and too close to call one the best.
White Pine and Microsoft in or near this marker, with more videoconferencing products that were still in the pipeline when we compared CU-SeeMe and Net Meeting (see the table on page 108).
Getting It Together
Interoperability is the name of the game, especially when you're playing with IP. No matter how good a proprietary video conferencing solution is, if it can' t play nicely with the other videoconferencing solutions, it's not going to be as useful to you. Despite the early implementers' claims of adherence to H.323, I couldn't interoperate CU-SeeMe with NerMeet-
ing because CU-SeeMe's H.323 client-ro dient interoperability capability would not be available until long after I finished testing. This capability will be enabled through White Pine's MeetingPoint videoconferencing server product (see an upcoming BITE for an Eval). NetMeet ing happily interacted with other video clients, but CU-SeeMe requires Meer ingPoint to support multipoint, multi window videoconferencing with other H.323-compliant clients. White Pine reported that CU-SeeMe clients will get direct compatibility without the server in an upcoming release due early next year.
Another stumbling block for many users will be taming the configuration beast. You'll need ro put together video inputs, audio inputs and outputs, and proper IP networking software and con figuration, as well as the videoconfer encing software itself. Even when it all comes in a single package, it doesn't always work right out of the box. CU SeeMe and NetMeering both include installation wizards, and both support any video-capture board that supports rhe Video for Windows standard, but software setup may sti ll require fine tuning, particularly when dealing with firewalls and managing bandwidth con sumption on internal LAN connections.
So Many Standards
Interoperability issues go beyond com patibility among clients: Videoconfer encing is a complex application that has to interoperate with other network pieces, too. The H.323 standard for mul tipoint aud iovisual communication com plicates matters for firewalls because it
1 04 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Microsoft NetMeeting lets you float an electronic whiteboard nex1 to the video display.,
'
Application sharing with NetMeeting must share Windows real estate with other apps like chat and video.\
' '
Pl 33 64t.18 Colort am: This is a multicast conference over
10Mbps Ethem!\ lan
486/100 20 B&W Ci"': Note that even with bandwidth at hu
tHf1 of times greater standard internet connections video
blotchy
586/133 12 B&W Caln: This is especially true when using
codecs
\
586/133 12 B&W C!utl And a sharp quick movement occuUiii~~
\ Displaying more than two video windows at a time gives CU ·SeeMe an edge in true videoconferencing.
\ CU-SeeMe, like NetMeeting, uses wizards to help simplify conference setup and configuration.
The images are small, but with access to chat windows
and shared applications, IP videoconferencing can jump-start productivity.
uses two separate Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections as well as User Datagram Protocol (UDP) datagrams to set up and maintain a single connection. (TCP is a virtual circuit transport protocol ; UDP is a connectionless transport proto col.) T.120, the standard for multipoint document conferencing and data sharing, requires only a single TCP circuit, unlike H.323, so data conferences do not pose the same problems to a firewall as do audio and video communications. (For more on stan dards, see the Tech Focus, page 106.) Both NetMeeting and CU-SeeMe can be con figured to work through firewalls, but doing so is not trivial. Unless the firewall explicitly allows H.323 videoconferencing,
the administrator must manually open the TCP and UDP ports used for conferencing.
Performance Problems
Latency, the delay in receiving a signal after it has been sent, can really hammer bandwidth-hungry apps like live video: A transient delay of more than a fraction of a second can seriously disrupt reception. Microsoft NetMeeting has an automatic tuning mechanism that makes audio qual ity easy to adjust to compensate for band width variations. CU-SeeMe uses forward error correction to compensate for pack er loss on the Internet, and it uses inter leaving to cut down on the actual data loss es when packers are dropped.
Because audio and video streams are so bandwidth-intensive, videoconfer encing products must compress data on one end, send it over the network, and decompress iron the other end. This pro cess of compression and decompression reduces the quality of the original, mani festing itself in many ways: as dropouts, static-plagued audio, or blotchy, pixelar ed video. Codecs are the software that compress and decompress this data, and selecting one codec over another involves issues that include quality versus perfor mance trade-offs, the amount of band width that is available, and the need for interoperability.
These products also use different audio
www.byte.com
SEP TE MBER 1997 BYT E 105
Software Lab Report See and Be Seen Over IP
codecs to allocate a certain amount of the data stream for audio transmissions, for different bandwidths. This helps keep audio qualiry up to snuff without adverse ly affecting video quality.
Anyone who has used a cheap speaker phone knows that only one party can speak at a time, and when someone at one end of the connection is speaking, the people atthe other end can only listen; this is half-duplex communication. Hands free, full-duplex conferencing, provided by both CU-SeeMe and NetMeeting, allows different participants to hear and talk at the same rime, though at the cost of additional bandwidth.
An approach to managing the band width beast is to use so-called "gatekeep er" products, which let system adminis trators monitor video an d audio strea ms. Unlike gateways that route H.323 traffic, gatekeepers monitor and limit network bandwidth and let administrators restrict the bandwidth used by streaming video and audio applications.
Many other variables can affect perfor mance during videoconferencing sessions. For example, connecting the camera to a video-capture board is much more effi cient with system resources than linking through the parallel port. l found that mix ing LAN and dial-up links in the same con ference bogged down the rest system.
Desperately Seeking Someone
Users can register their contact informa tion with a location server, like the one from Fourl 1, or with Microsoft's own Internet Locator Server (IL.$). A directory based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), ILS will eventually be integrated into Microsoft's Active Direc-
PROTOCOLS
Conferencing Standards
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards body maintains these four important specification families for conferencing technologies:
ITU H.320 was adopted in 1990 and refers to a suite of specifications setting standards for multipointaudio/vidcoconferencing over digital switched networks. H.320 sets stan dards for conferencing over ISDN links only, laying a foundation for room-based conference systems that will be most useful to organizations that can afford the high-priced facilities. ITU T.120 is part ofthis suite.
ITU T.120 specifies protocols for use by multipoint document conferencing and data-shar ing applications, and it includes functions such as image sharing and exchange, electronic whiteboard conferencing, and file transfer. Some of these protocols, most importantly those defining how conferencing applications interact and what they do, have already been rati fied. Other protocols in the suite, in particular those defining conferencing control and reser vations services. have not yet been finalized.
The ITU H.323 standard suite addresses multipoint audiovisual communications. As an extension of H.320, it specifies services over ISDN and plain old telephone service (POTS) direct links as well as over IP internetworks and Ethernet LANs.
The ITU H.324 standard suite addresses sharing audio, video, and data using point-to point analog modem connections over POTS; this specification is analogous to the H.320 suite for conferencing over ISDN and switched data circuits.
Agood source ofinformation about ITU standards is at http://www.itu.ch, the ITU site. For information about interoperability among products supporting these standards. check out http://www.imtc.org, the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium Web site.
rory Services. Client software notifies the server of things like IP address changes each time the user connects. You can connect directly to videoconference participants as long as you have an IP address for them; using a directory service is not always nec essary and can be time-consuming. Some of the directories must deliver their entire database eve ry time you make a query, though eve ntually they will support more efficient search methods.
How to Decide?
We tested these products for ease of learn ing, ease of use, sound qualiry, and range
of features. Video quality was measured subjectively by our NSTL testers, and the results were included as part of each pro gram's ease of learning and use scores. The tests designed to rate ease of learning and ease of use assumed the products would be used to run a meeting between geo graphically dispersed participants.
White Pine CU-SeeMe
CU-SeeMe is the grandaddy of video over IP. White Pine was first to market with IP based group videoconferencing, though the version we tested required White Pine's upcoming MeetingPoint server-
IP VIDEOCONFERENCING
BEST OVE RALL
Mlcro~oft~s NetMeeting and White Pine's CU-SeeMe
This time around, it's a toss-up between
NecMeeting and CU-SeeMe. But if you can wait a few months, you'II have many more products to .choos~ from.
TECHNOLOGY
**** Microsoft NetMeetlng 2.0
***
White Pine CU·SeeMe 3.0
****
***
*****Outstanding ****Very Good
*"* *** Good
Fair
EASE OF USE
*** ***
*Poor
OVERAURATING
******
1 06 BY TE S EP TEMB ER 1997
See and Be Seen Over IP Software Lab Report
based reflector software to interoperate with other vendors' clients. The only pro gram we've tested that displays video of more than two participants simultane ously, CU-SeeMe allows up to 12 video windows in a virtual conference room. You can have additional floating windows on top of that, although that many open video windows would tear through lots of system resources.
CU-SeeMe controls allow individuals to limit send and receive rates, but this must be done on a client-by-client basis. Meet ingPoint will let clients with lower band width participate in conferences with clients that have much higher bandwidth, permitting everyone to get the best possi ble quality based on their own bandwidth. CU-SeeMe's Rolodex-style contact inter face is a straightforward directory mech anism, though its display of splashy ani mation prior to each connection makes it cumbersome during routine use. Directo ry service is provided through Fourl 1, and White Pine adds support for the Versit vCard standard for transferring electron ic business card information. The Four11 service and vCard make for more helpful directory entries. Direct support for X.500 directories through LDAP is planned for the next release.
Integrated chat, also available with Net Meeting, helps a lot during those times when low bandwidth or a spotty network connection limits transmission of usable audio or video. Chat is well-integrated into the CU-SeeMe interface. This mode includes support for macros to create key board shortcuts for longer character strings, filters to screen out the ranting of specific participants, and a private facili ty to set up one-on-one conversations-a capability that extends to private audio conversations, too. CU-SeeMe uses T.120 to transport data for whiteboarding and file transfer, as does NetMeeting.
Microsoft NetMeeting
With Microsoft NetMeeting, no matter how many participants there are in a meet ing, only t\vo video windows can be dis played at the same time. Audio and video are point-to- point, unless you ' re using an H.323 conferencing server; application sharing, whiteboard, and chat are all mul tipoint without an extra server; for audio and video, you can switch among mem bers of a conference without a server. Thus, participants must request the use of the video window when they want to
IP CONFERENCING FEATURES
V'=yes
IC--Utility allows pri~ting from othe~ ~pplications to program·compai ible image fifes.
MP=Meeting Point co~ference ~e,;;~, software costs between $1995 and $10,090, depending on number:of
simultan0ous1Us'ers:·" · 1~
·
\ ·· · '
'
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VG='Via gai eway
W'w'l.'W .b y t e .c o m
SEPTE M BER 1997 BYTE 1 07
Software Lab Report See and Be Seen Over IP
.. ', v
Ifs still the early days of IP videoconferencing, iind video isn'tHie VDOPhone.Professional. RictureTel also announced an H.3!23 suite
only way to conference over the Internet. The tab!e below points to that includes an H.323/H.320 gateway to connect users of both stan·
some of the established players providing videoconferencing, as well dards in·the same conference.
as audio and document conferencing, over IP.
Another choice is to consider conferencing products that offer
Though H.323-compH.ant videoconferencing.produ.cts were spar~e.:; ~oic~J.¢1ebtronic w~iteboard, ancj application-sharing functions with·
when we tested Microsoft's NetMeeting and White Pine's C:lJ· 6ut they ideo. Netscape Communicator's Conference module pro·
SeeMe, by the end of theyearthere should be a much better selection vides such features. T.120-only conferencing, like that offered by
of products from companies offering video telephones and H.324
videoconferencing. For.example, Vocaltec's Internet Phone with Video
will support H.323 conferencing this year, as · W.ill VDON~t's
DataBean:i's FarSite 3.0, cuts out both audio and video, which means
le~s overhead and more modest system requirem~nts, while stil! per· mitti~g . standards-based virtual conferencing over the Internet.
PRODUCT NAME
AudioVision
l;asyAxess ·
=·
Internet Phone with Video VDOP!icine Profes8i~nal LiveLAN3.0
VENDOR
Smith-Micro Software ' · ·AoerWare, a·unit ofAce! Vocaltec Communications Ltd.
VDONet' ~
PictureTel
URL
http://www .smithmicro.com
Netscape Conference
Netscape Communications
http://www .netscape.com
STANDARDS SUPPORTED
H.324, H.323 (as of June), NetMeeting-compatible
l:f3.24i T.f'20
H.323 in fall '97
H.~24·comp1iant, , f:t~,23 s.u~port announeed H.323, T.120; software-only product available later this year
H.323, T.120
PRODUCT TYPE
video telephone
viae.o teleph_one
video telephone
vief~o telep~one.
videoconferencing
document c~nfer!me ng audio/ data conferencing
be seen by the other participants. NetMeeting's whiteboard won't yet
interoperate with CU-SeeMe's White PineBoard because White Pine uses the T.126 protocol for whiteboarding while Microsoft devised its own standard. The NetMeeting whiteboard app1ication runs on top of the T.120 services. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company <level· oped the proprietary protocol before the T.126 standard was set. Although a T.120 connection can be made, the two appli cations cannot share any whiteboard data.
Microsoft NetMeeting uses the T.128 application-sharing protocol to allow one user to share access to t he document through rhe conference. NetMeeting's
PRODUCT INFORMATION
CU-SeeMe 3.0 $99 list; $69 via Website (Windows 95, NT 4.0; Mac version in beta) White Pinc Software Nashua, NH 603-886-9050 fax: 603-886-9051 http :l/www.cu-seeme .com Enter 1022 on Inquiry Card.
NetMeeting 2.0
free download
via Website
(requires 32-bit
Windows)
Microsoft
Redmond, WA 206-882-8080 http:J/www.mlcrosoft .com Enter1023 on Inquiry Card.
application sharing allows only one per son at a time to have control over the document, but anyone participating who gets control of it can make changes to it.
Microsoft NetMeeting combines ease of use with lots of functions. Its unique ability to allow remote-control collabora tion and video, audio, and char channels make ir well suited for technical-support application s.
Something for Everyone
Videoconferencing and data conferencing are deve loping technologies. N either White Pine nor Microsoft has fully addressed all the needs of a routine pro· ject·status meeting between multiple, geo graphically dispersed participants, run· ning over the Internet. But both products offer something the other lacks. Microsofr NetMeeting's remote-control application sharing suggests implementing it as a tool for remotely providing technic al sup· port- a help desk staff can take co ntrol of a user 's computer. Unlike dedi cated remote-control products of the past, the re al-tim e communications mod e can allow rhe user to explain the problem as the help desk staffer is working o n the problem. Still, sound and video quality are
essential in this scenari o, too, raising the bandwidth and quality issues.
Altern ativ ely, the popul a rity of chat rooms on on-line services suggests that a product like CU-S eeMe that offers multi· point video, audio, and ch at will benefit from the user base of th e char culture. CU· SeeM e is designed ro acco mmodate all three media in an interface that is famil iar to users of chat sessions. If you're look in g for bro adca st-qu alit y inte raction ove r the Net, it doesn' t ex ist yet. Bur if you've ever wanted to hear and see the col league you've traded e-mail with, or the person you 've talked with in a chat room, CU-SeeMe is just what you need. Iii
Da11id Seachrist (dse a c hr ist@pro d ig y.com) has tested software at N STL (o r 10 years.
Eval11ations i11 11'is reportrepresenU/1e j1idgme11t of BYTE editors; based '1«part·011 exte11sive t(lsts conducted by NSTL, l11c., <1s documented i11 a rece111 iss11e .ofits monthly Software Digesr! To purchase a copy ofIhat report, iuit/, NSTI:s own evdli1atiq11sa11d data, co11tact NSTLat 62S'Ridge -Pike, Co1tshoh/Jcke11, .PA '19428; 610-94 1."!)600; fax 610-941-9950; q11the Intemet, editors@11stl .com. For a s11bscriptio11, ca/1 800-257-9402. BYTE 111agazi11ea11dNSTLareboth operati11g1111its Q(The McGraw-Hill Compa11ies, file.
1 08 B YTE SE PTEM B ER 19 97
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including
I I&
D'atabase Management
Finally, 1992 (and newer) technology combines 00 and relational data management for distributing complex data. By Robert]. Muller
Oracles: Worth the Wait?
ou've run your business with Oracle for years, but your re quirements are changing and Oracle is hard pressed to meet your needs. You' re suddenly getting more users, huge rabies, and hardware up grades that significantly stress your cur rent software configuration. Now your business managers want to put your organization on the Web. They want to eventually offer on-line catalogs or, worse, large multimedia-content data bases and interactive applications that re quire serving up complex data that's way beyond your current server's capabilities. What are you going to do? The long-awaited new version of the Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS), Oracles, is finally avail able in an extended beta release, and it delivers strong performance gains for large database configurations as well as a strong object-relational typing system that gives you the ability to handle new kinds of data. If you need to allow many simultane ous users to log on to a database, or ifyou need to back up and restore huge data bases, or ifyou want to store and retrieve data that just doesn't fit well into stan-
RATINGS
*
dard relational tables, Oracles offers some real solutions.
Before getting into what this new pack age does, it's important first to point out what it is not-Oracles isn't what we nor mally refer to as an object-oriented data base management system (OODBMS). Those systems offer full data encapsu lation, inheritance, full integration with 00 programming languages, and all the other defining characteristics of 00 soft ware; Oracles does not. [Editor's note:
You can do anything you want to an Oracle server on your network with the Enterprise Server Manager administration tool.
Several OODBMSes will be examined in theSoftware Lab Report scheduled to ap pear in the October BYTE.]
Instead, Oracles is an object-relation al system; it adds a layer of data abstrac tion on top of the standard relational methods of representing data and pro gramming, and it also provides the abil ity to extend the storage mechanisms to cope with complex data types. The ob ject-relational data abstraction that Or acles provides gives you the abi lity to add new data types to standard SQL (see the Tech Focus on page 112) and to store and retrieve arrays of values and nested rabies (e.g., column values that are them selves tables) and methods (i.e., stored subprograms that you associate with the new object types). However, there's no inheritance system for the types you add, nor can you hide the data columns in yo ur object types.
Finally, the object-relational system provides you with a way to make your complex objects look like relational ta bles; Oracle calls this the object view. While these features do not give yo u true
00 database- programming capabilities, they nonetheless extend the already strong Oracle RDBMS into the object world in a tremendously useful way.
The strength of Oracle has always been in its strong server capabilities: security, integrity, concurrency, and high-volume transaction processing. Oracle's high per formance, reliability, and wide availabil ity on many different operating platforms have catapulted the product into the fore front of the database marker. Oracles extends these strengths with additional client/server capabilities and adds the ob ject-relational extensibility that the new application world needs.
Object Lessons
Ifyou've been holding off looking at Ora cles because you're afraid ofrhe learning curve, it's now time to take the plunge; Oracles really isn't all that much differ ent from Oracle7.3 . For a database ad ministrator (OBA) experienced with Ora cle?, learning the new features won't take long. If yo u're currently programming database applications in C++, you will
*****Outstanding ****Very Good ***Good **Fair *Poor
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 111
Review Oracle8 : Worth the Wait?
benefir fro m th e new rype fea tures, an d ir likely won' r rake you lo ng roger used ro th em o r ro rhe new OCI AP! (the O racle Call Interface, a ser of functions rhar allow a progra m to send SQLro O racles and get data bac k) . In fact, rh e bera process has grearl y im proved the srructure and capa biliries of rhe OCTAP! as compared ro the earliest ve rsions.
N oneth eless, I'm no t abo ut ro describe OCIprogramming as easy, so ir's good that rhere's an alternati ve progra mming inter face: Pro*C/C++ . This precompiler tech nology gi ves you somewhat easier access to O racle8's major enhancements ro SQL, including an extensive new system of ob ject ty pes, tables, and views; large object (LOB) and image data ty pes; collections of objects (VARRAYs, or va ri able-length ar rays, o f data and nested tables); and table partitio ns.
Object types let yo u d eclare new SQL
types, which yo u can th en use to defi ne tables, co lumns in tables, or arrributes of oth er types. See rhe Tech Focus below fo r some derails of object types. In addition ro rep resenting co mplex typ es, you have th e ability ro link objects rhro ugh references (REFs) and srore those pointers and deref erence rhem o n demand. Obj ect vie ws !er you consrruct objects fro m old-style re la rio nal tables fo r programming purposes, inregrating such tables w ith rh e full ob ject-relati o nal programming fac iliries in Pro *C/C++ and rh e OCI APL
LOBs are special data types in th e Ora cle RD BMS serve r engine. Unlike w ith th e o ld LONG dara ty pes, yo u can declare as many LOB columns as you need in your rabi es. There are fo ur LOB ty pes: BFILE, BLOB, CLOB, and NCLOB (see rh e rext box "Four Va ri eties of LOB" on page 113 ).
In addition ro these fl avo rs, th ere's a builr-in image type, implemented as a Net-
wo rk Compurer Archirecrure (NCA) dara cartridge, rh ar uses BLOBand BFfLE ty p<;s and a ser ofobject types ro represent image objects. LOB ty pes provide a much more powerful means of representing complex dara than th e o ld LONG and LONG RAW dara types did . They also rel ax th e single BLOB limitati on that the use o f LONG data im posed .
The disadvantage of rh ese types, as al ways, is th at th ey are no t o bjects, just ra w data. It's up ro your program to interpret th e results. At least for the image types that the image-data cartridge supp orts (BMP, CALS, GIF, JPEG, Kodak Pharo CD, PCX, PICT, Sun raster, Targa, and TIFF), you get some SQLextensions th at let you do mo re programmin g, such as changing fo rm ars, copyi ng, sca ling, and o ther image-relat ed operati ons, in the database. These types show what the NCA and Sedona enviro n ments can do; unfortunately, these aren' t
TECH FOCUS
OBJECT TYPES
Roll Your·own Data Types
. OracleB extends the SOL data-type system with a TYPE object that comes complete with its own CREATE, ALTER, and DROP statements. Types include both attributes (i.e., data) and methods (i.e.. stored sub programs that operate on the data). The data attributes can be stan dard SOL types, such as VARCHAR2 or NUMBER, previously declared object types, or collections of nested tables. Here's a simple example:
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE Address (
Street VARCHAR2Cl00),
City
VA RCHAR2Cl00),
State CHARC2l .
Country VARCHARC50) ,
Postal Code VARCHAR2(25l,
Location REF GPSLocation .
MEMBER FUNCTION Label RETURN VARCHAR2,
MEMBER FUNCTI Otl Location RETURN GPSLoca t 1on
MEMBER FUNCT I ON Loe at ion RETURN Building l ;
The sepa.rate.CREATE TYPE BODY statement has the Pl/SOL imple mentations of the member methods. The figure MReferencing Objects" atrightshows this type using the object-oriented Universal Modeling
Language (UML) design notation. The best way to use these types is
to create a table as the type
CREATE TABLE Addresses OF Address;
This object table lets you create objects with the INSERT statement using the built-in constructor method for the type, which you can also use when creating objects embedded in tables or other objects:
INSERT INTO Addresses VALUES (Address<' 1600 Pennsy 1vani a Avenue · . 'Washing t on· . ·OC · · · USA ·. '12345 · ));
The·trick to embedding objects, though, is that you can't use point-
ers to such objects because they don't have object IDs; only stand alone objects have them. A much better approach than embedding objects is to create references to objects (REF types, pointers to ob jects of a type) that are stored separately. That lets you refer to and
Referencing Objects
Address
Street: VARCHAR2( 100) City: VARCHAR2(100) State: CHAR(2)
Country: VARCHAR2(50)
Label(): VARCHAR2 Location(): GPS_Location
Label(): VARGHAR2 Location(): Building
No_Floors Size Use
You can design complex object types that include methods (i.e., behavior) and references to other object types.
dereference pointers to such objects in your programs, which is gen erally what you want to do in an 00 program. You should realize, Qf course, that most of what you are likely to wantto do with this kind ofobject through SOL is best done through a Pl/SOL or C++ program that enables you to call the methods and get complex results into variables that you can do something with, not with SOL0 Plus or oth er simple query tools.
11 2 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Oracle8: Worth the Wait? Review
available yet for your own data cartridges. (As this review went to press, there was much confusion over Sedona because of remarks made by Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., saying that the product had been placed on hold, and denials of this by other sources at Oracle.)
The collection of objects lets you rep resent either variable-length arrays of data or tables nested within other tables, ex tending the original relational first-nor mal-form model, which required a single value of a column for each row. Now each value can be an array of values or even a complete table.
Table partitions add the ability to store tables (and indexes, too) in more than one data segment. This allows you to store a table on different disks or in different lo cations that are under your control by allo cating multiple tablespaces and assigning rows to the different partitions according to their data content, as the figure "Table Partitioning" above illustrates. You can use table partitioning to replace complicated disk-striping performance optimizations to speed up access or to allow for taking part of a table off-line for maintenance or backup without interfering with the rest of it. This is a major improvement for huge tables, which are increasingly becoming a requirement for many large databases.
Another use for partitioning is to sim plify and speed parallel processing. In par ticular, if you're using data manipulation language (DML) operations in parallel, your tables must be partitioned so that each operation is confined to a single partition. (Often, much ofrhis type of processing in volves large batch jobs.)
What about Pro,.C/C++ program ming? This is the alternative to messy program ming with OCI, the precompiler that takes an embedded SQL program and turns it into C++ source. I wish I could report that the enhancements that have been made to Pro"C/C++ make programming with objects easy, but the y do not. First, you have to use a completely separate utility, the Object Type Translaror, to produce header and typefi le files foryourobject types. Unfortunatel y, this produces C++ st rue t s, not classes, which means that object-oriented C++ programmers won't be happy with the results.
There's more: Pro .. C/C++ uses an ob ject cache to create these st r uct objects in memory, and you must use explicit em bedded SQL commands to allocate and de allocate memory rather than the standard
Oracles lets you partition large tables
row-wise across multiple disks.
c++ free-store facility. The advantage of going through all this is that you can ex tract object data using SQL. One disad vantage for those used to OODBMS behav ior is that you need to use explicit UPDATE statements to move changes from the ob ject cache back to the database. It doesn't happen automatically when you commit your transaction.
On the downside, however, Oracle8's SQL, called SQL*Plus, conforms to the Entry level of the SQL 1992 (SQL2) stan dard. This sounds great-until you real ize that the Entry level is pretty close to the SQL 1989 standard and does not include most of the neat features of the 1992 stan dard, such as the extended FROM clause syntax for inner and outer joins, the or thogonal use of SELECT queries in lots of interesting places, the TIMESTAMP and INTERVAL data types, and the character set features, which are much cleaner and easier to use than Oracle's National Lan guage Support.
Also, the development tools (Design er/2000, Developer/2000, Pro *C, and JSQL for Java) still lag behind the server technology and don't yet take advantage of the new object features. The graphical tools for the DBA 's use , such as Oracle Enterprise Manager (shown in the screen on page 111), haven't changed much anc still are not particularly easy for a OBA to use. However, the OBA now has the abil ity to administer passwords through this as well as through Oracles directly using SQL*Plus, which is a new capability.
Finally, until Oracle releases its Sedona project, you won't be able to add your own data cartridges to the system to construct your own data types. Only the Oracle built cartridges will be available until Se dona comes our.
The new backup and recovery man agers will make life a lot easier for the ever suffering OBA and system administrator by fully automating the backup process and by providing bener incremental back ups than Oracle?. Because I did not bench mark the product, however, I was unable to verify many of the claims of improved architecture, memory use, performance, and scalability. But the beta version that I used was refreshingly bug-free and per formed well on a Pentium-133 NT-Work station system.
Overall, I was impressed by the engi neering in Oracles, if not entirely happy with the product's design and integration. If you need complex objects and you're willing to write complex C, C++, or CO BOL programs to use them, this is a great tool. Otherwise, you might want to wait
Four Varieties
of LOB
BFILE: A bina'ry file outs.ide ihe database that contains some kind of binary object.
BLOB: An unstructured, in-database
binary LOB.
CLOB: A large object consisting of many single-byte characters, such as ASCII or
EBCDIC.
NCLOB: A large·.fixed-width object con sist ing of many multiple-byte characters, such as Unicode. (Oracles does no!' sup port variable-width character sets.)
for upgrades to Oracle's application-de velopment tools that take advantage of Oracles. Butifyou're an Oracle? user and you need the advanced performance fea tures of Oracles for very large applica tions, you should start exploring Oracles now to see if it meets your needs. Iii
Robert]. Muller is a partner at Poesys Associ ates, an OOand client/serverdevelopme11t co11 s11/ting (inn in San Francisco, Cali(omia. I-le is
the author ofthe Oracles SuperBible (Waite Group, 1998) and The Oracle Developer/2000 Handbook (Oracle Press, 1997). Yo11 can reach
him at muller@acm.org .
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 11 J
Microsoft turns Windows into a multipurpose network device with its NT RRAS. By Morgan Stern
Software-Only Routing for NT
icrosoft's quest for enterprise OS domination with Win dows NT Server takes an im
· · ·· portant new direccion with the release of the Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS), formerly code named "Steelhead." Positioned as an in expensive alternative to satellite-office hardware-based routers and remote-ac cess devices, RRAS turns NT 4.0 Server into a dial-up server or Internee router.
Actually chree pieces in one, RRAS in cludes an enhanced version of the fa miliar Remote Access Service (RAS), a demand-dial routing service, and a com pletely revamped set of mulciprotocol routing tools. RRAS also adds server-to server Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) capability to the client-to-server links introduced in NT 4.0 to simplify the creacion of multisite virtual private net works (VPNs). The enhanced version of che already-popular RAS includes a re designed administration tool and RADIUS authentication, which auchenticates dial in users through either the NT security database or a RADIUS server (see the Tech Focus below).
Demand-dial routing lets RRAS estab lish dial-up network conneccions on de-
TECH FOCUS
The RADIUS
Authentication Protocol
Remote Authentication Dial-In User Ser vice, or RADIUS, provides centralized au thentication services for dial-in users. When a remote user dials In to a network, his or her user name and password are transmitted to a RADIUS server, which stores a master list of users, passwords. and services available to each user. A RADIUS server can handle multiple dial-In devices, providing a central point for user-account maintenance and session accounting.
\\PRO-NT
j-l [ lAthnd Demand Dial lmdaces ~ demand
S~ IPRoWlil
Ulntemal
-l[ StmnarY
1912JMaxTech ...
t-l[ OSPF by Bay Networks
·:!£ RIP for Internet Protocol
-][ Static Awe.
l911]RealekR. .. ~ Oiaf.ln Cienls
e·~ IPJ< RoWlg
I 'c·:s:ma f-;g 1 ::£ NetBIOS Broadca.U RIP lor IPJ<
I ,._.!1. SAP lcr IPJ<
bI I
Scalic Awes
l . I a~·~~~
RRAS keeps remote-access services and multiple routing protocols in order with the Microsoft Management Console interface.
mand. Users and administrators looking to reduce the cost of dial-up Internet and network-to-network connections will find this service useful. The mulciproto col router piece extends NT 4.0's rout ing functions, adding support for IP RIP versions 1 and 2, OSPF, !PX RIP, and a DHCP relay agent. AppleTalk routing, while supported by the Services for Mac intosh component of NT Server, can't be managed through the GUI.
You can install one, two, or all three of the services, although the installation program removes any old versions ofthe components being updated, such as an existing RAS service. (Keep a recent tape backup handy in case of problems.) The RRAS Admin utility is an Explorer look alike service-configuration tool that's based on Microsoft Management Con sole (MMC); you can also enter configu ration commands at a command line or in router-configuration scripts.
Although I found installation simple, configuring a multiprotocol routing service to work in an existing network means understanding how the proto cols work and how the existing network
is configured. So, don't expect to be op erational in a half hour if you 've never worked wich routing protocols before.
RRAS offers basic packet fi ltering for the IP and IPX protocols, wi th the ability to filcer by source and destination net work, protocol, and port number. But fil tering alone isn't really a suitable alter native to a stand-alone firewall.
RRAS simply doesn't have the horse power to replace large backbone roucers
RATINGS
TECHNOl,OGY
j, ~ *' *
* * * IMPLEMENTATION
*'
or switches, but it's not meant to. Micro soft offers RRAS as an inexpensive alter native to small-office dial-up routers or for use with the Microsoft Proxy Server for enterprise-network border routing and access services. For the price, it's hard to beat. l!J
Morga11 Stem is a 11etwork consultant and the coauthor of NT Enrerprise Network Design (Sybex, 1997). You can reach him by se11ding e-mail to morganst@world.std.com.
11 4 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
***** **** *** ** * Outslonding
Very Good
Good
Fai r
Poor
The Winterm 2930 uses a touchscreen and a radio link to free Windows users from their desktop PCs. By Barry Nance
Wireless Wonder
ong before Oracle and Sun launched their network com puter initiative, Wyse Tech nology was making Windows terminal devices that embody the spirit of the network computer. Wyse's latest product is a lightweight (3.4 pounds) radio-linked terminal on which mobile Windows users can interact with appli cations. The software runs on a central multiuser NT Server-based network equipped with Citrix WinFrame and a 2.4-GHz spread-spectrum, frequency hopping radio transceiver (such as a Proxim RangeLAN2 Access Point unit). Each sleek Winterm 2930 connects its user, via the Intelligent Console Archi tecture (ICA) and radio link, to WinFrame on the NT Server computer. The Winterm 2930 sports a PS/2-scyle keyboard port, and Wyse says it will release an integrated-keyboard version later this year. (Though I must say that while testing the unit, I became quite accustomed to its virtual, on-screen keyboard.) The 8.5-inch 640 x 480 dual scan LCD, capable of either 16 or 256 col-
TECH FOCUS
Remote Control Linkage
· Cit~ix Winframe diverts Windows screen updates, keyboard events, and mouse
events fo and from the-Winterm 2930.
The Winterm unit handles screen updates as if it were a Windows device driver. On the server, Winframe intercepts calls to
the Windows Graphical Device Interface -(GDI) and redirects them to the client ·through the Intelligent Console Architec tilre (ICA, a protocol developed by Citrix
that lets NT distribute graphics process
ing to networked clients). Flash-upgrad
able ROM-based code-in the Winterm understands ICA and handles the redi re~ed GDI calls.
Wyse's Winterm 2930 captures the essence of a network computer and a hand-held PC in a 3.4-pound package.
ors, is clear and sharp. In my tests, the 2930 let me operate a small Visual Basic
lithium ion battery required recharging application, which I ran on a Windows
after slightly more than five hours of NT Server PC I left powered on in my car
heavy, continuous use, and after about outside the library. The Winterm 2930's
seven hours of moderate use. (Wyse coverage range let me roam throughout
claims you'll get five to eight hours on a the library without losing the connection
single charge.) The delay intervals for sleep mode (instant wake-up) and hiber
nation (a 10-second wake-up after 60
minutes of sleep) are configurable.
Wyse put some special touches in the
* * * *
RATINGS
TECHNOLOGY
'* * * IMPLEMENTATION
*·
Winterm2930 to make it easy to use. For to the server. Wyse accurately says the
example, ro click an on-screen button, unit works within 500 feet of the server
you simply rouch it with the stylus. Wyse in an office environment and 1000 feet in
also allocated two left-side icons as hot open spaces.
keys so you can assign keyboard macros. You won't use this device in an aircraft
I exercised the Win term 2930 in the at 30,000 feet. But for mobile networking
barcode-based local public library. I used on a shop floor, or in an office, the Win
a three-column Microsoft Access data term 2930 makes a superb thin client, fig
base that had Catalog ID, Book Catego uratively and literally. liJ
ry, and Author Name columns. In addi
tion, I used a battery-powered barcode Barry Nance isa co111p11tera11alyst, consultant,
scanner I had lying around to inventory and a11thorof1111merous books on networking.
a few shelves of books. The Winterm You can reach him at barryn@blx.com.
***** **** *** ** * Outstanding
Very Good
Good
Fair
Poor
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 11 5
Telephony S,_erver
Lucent's MMCX Server now supports PC endpoints and the latest ITU standards. By Michelle Campanale
Mixed-Media Maven
he latest release of Lucent's MMCX (Multimedia Com munications Exchange) Serv er extends multiparty confer encing to mixed-media sessions on PCs, Unix workstations, or any standards compliant device connected to a LAN or WAN. The MMCX Server can link with a PBX (i.e., a circuit-switched telephony network) for TCP/JP internetworking with phones and multimedia PCs. Available sinceJuly, the second release of the server and client software now supports Intel-compatible PC endpoints running either Windows 95 or NT. Al though it's a pricey package (starter kits begin at $36,650), MMCX Server now of fers support for any kind of mixed me dia and handles mixed-media sessions the same way it handles conference calls. Also new to thi s version is support for H.323, the Internet/LAN ITU standard for voice and video data over IP. In addition, the MMCX Server now supports T.120 based data sharing (for shared applica-
n . - . . - ..... - - - - - ·· The UI manages audio and video, plus whiteboard and document sharing.
tions and whiteboarding) and mobility, so users can access any MMCX endpoint by using a single log-in name.
By year's end, Lucent plans to add sup port for MASI (which allows the Defin-
MMCX Server supports one Ethernet NIC, one ISDN PRI, and four end-user versions of the GUI software.
ity PBX to act like a features server sitting on a LAN); H.320, an early ISDN standard that's circuit-switch-based for voice and video over 128-Kbps lines; and H.263 vid eo capabilities.
I tested an early version of Lucent's newestMMCX Server release. After Jin.k ing to a Definity PBX and a 24-B-chan nel ISON Primary Rate Interface (PRI), I plugged the server into three Windows 95 machines. These three clients each contained 32 MB of memory, a Windows compliant video-capture card, and a full
duplex sound card, in accordance with Lucent's specifications.
I initiated a conference call among the three client PCs on the LAN as well as a phone that was plugged into our PBX. Then, using Lucent's client-side user in terface, it was easy to initiate the system's H.261-compression-based videoconfer encing, share whiteboard and Word doc uments, and transfer and forward calls.
Based on a 166-MHz Pentium proces sor, MMCX Server comes with 48 MB of DRAM, a 2-GB SCSl-2 hard drive, a 1.44 MB floppy drive, and a WILDcard (WAN to LAN device card) that provides inter facing among LAN, Ethernet, and ATM network interface cards (NICs) and El/Tl circuit-switched networks. IS managers
RATINGS
TECHNOLOGY
** * '** * * IMPLEMENTATION
1c 1c
who have an immediate need for a mul
timedia confe rencing package shou ld
take a look at Lucent's MMCX Server. With no direct competition, it represents a robust solution that's easily integrated into existing PC LANs. liJ
Michelle Campana le is a BYTE technical edi tor based i11 Sa11 Mateo, Cali(omia. You ca11 reach her at mlchelle@blx.com.
11 6 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
**** *** ** * *****Outstanding
Very Good
Good
Fair
Poor
The combination of
writable CD-ROMs and
New Synergies
new image technologies for Computing
may usher in a new age
for computer users.
was at an opera association lunch the other day when I found I was seated at the table next to Mr. Blackwell, who annually compiles the Worst-Dressed List. Figuring that any publicity is better than none, I quickly rook m)' "We BE Geeks" pocket protector out of my shirt pocket, where it probably wouldn't be noticed, and put it in my outside jacket pocket. I don't know if he saw it. While that incident wasn't impor tant, another was. I had my Olympus D 300L digital camera with me and rook pic tures of the stars, including Richard Bernstein, our home-developed Figaro, and Inva Mula, the Albanian Susanna. Everyone was fascinated. Most had never seen a digital camera before. When I showed them the pictures I had justtaken, they thought it was wonderful, and I sus pect I sold several of those cameras with that demonstration. That was probably a mistake. The D-300L is wonderful technology, and I don't mind recommending it to BYTE readers. However, the software that comes with it is miserable at best, and I suspect it will prove impossible for con sumer-market buyers. It's not so much that Adobe PhoroDeluxe isn't pretty good once you get it installed; it's that installation is between extremely diffi cult and impossible. Here, I have to make a confession. Usually I do everything myself, but my son Alex and our intern Eric were fasci nated by the D-300L when we got it a cou ple of months ago, and it came at a time when I had books due. Alas, I let them do the software installation, and they rook care of downloading the pictures. The result was my enthusiastic report about the D-300L. While I don't withdraw a
word of that, I do have to give fair warn ing: the software is both ill-conceived in design and horrible in execution.
First, installation: you must install Adobe PhotoDeluxe from a CD-ROM before you install the Olympus Digital Vision software from floppy disks. You do both in the blind faith that your system will find the camera; there's no way to tell the software what port your camera is on.
When you run Adobe PhoroDeluxe, it isn't at all clear that this isn't really an Olympus program; what happens is that Digital Vision installs as a plug-in to PhoroDeluxe. It's easy enough to find the big Digital Camera icon, but when you
off that task, eventually you'll be con nected to your camera. The software now gets thumbnail sketches of all the photos on the camera and lets you select one one-and download it. It then shuts down the plug-in, having given you just enough time to delete that photo from the camera. You'll want to do this, because after you save your photo, you have to go through all that, including download ing all the thumbnails, each time you want another picture. The more pictures in the camera, the longer that takes.
In other words, you can't just tell the system to download and save all the pic tures on the camera and put them in a
The D-300L is.wonderful technology, and I
don't mind recommen.~ing it to BYTE readers.
click on that, you get a menu of plug-in holding folder for dealing with later. You
options . You then have to figure o ift haverodealwiththemoneatatime.This which plug-in goes with the D-300L; th~t is fun at first, but it soon becomes tedious.
happens to be TWAIN 32, there being no It gets worse. I never did get this stuff mention of the D-300L whatever in the '~1 to install on my new Compaq Armada
menu you're offered.
- .; laptop, because I never got to the con
If you select the wrong one, the pro iguration menu; and if PhotoDeluxe
gram goes offto never-never land, and you once tries to find your camera and can't,
have to do Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut down it doesn't even bring up the Olympus
PhoroDeluxe. Ifyou choose the right one screen again until you reinstall.
but the serial port isn't properly selected, Finally, if you want to uninstall Photo
if you're lucky, you'll get a message that Deluxe, the best of British luck to you. It
says your camera isn't connected or not doesn't uninstall everything and leaves
turned on and please try again. Only after behind both font and DLL files that you
that do you get a menu that lets you con can delete only by shutting down to
figure the system to select the serial port. DOS and deleting them from there. For
If you get that far, Bob's your uncle. the final insult, if you uninstall Photo
Sort of. That is, there's an "automatic" Deluxe and then try to reinstall, when it
configuration button that probably will gets to those undeletable files, it doesn't
do the job. If it won't, you can manually tell you they are undeletable. It merely
select the port and serial rate, and while says they are read only; but you'd better
you may have to do Ctrl-Alt-Del to rum not tell it to overwrite them because it
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 11 7
Circle 13 7 on Inquiry C ard (RESELLERS: 138).
PI<n!P
Chaos Manor New Synergies for Computing
can't, and when it fa ils to overwrite, the silly installatio n program blows up.
access more U.S. Robotics systems than the other kind, and since I' ve always been par
for Windows
There are a fe w mora ls t o this story. tial to them anyway, that's what I'm using. Fi rst, my ap o logy fo r no t d oing all thi s W hen I began writing with computers,
Version 2.50 Compatible with
no nsense myself before repo rting about it would rake many seconds to save a text the camera. Second, even after I learn ed fil e to disk . Now it's nearly instantaneous,
../Windows 95 ../ Windows NT
just how stupid this softw are is, I proba bl y wo uldn ' t have n oti ce d if I ha dn ' t been thinking about how the opera stars
and I'd hate to go back. On the other hand, so me o pera ti o ns, such as saving even ve ry large text files, are very fast on my
../Windows 3.lx
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I've been wondering about speed:
why do we need more?
will react when they encounter thi s mad ness. We computer enthusiasts w ill put up with a lot; to o much, I think.
Botto m line: the D-3 00L is a technical marvel, but I sure don' t reco mmend yo u buy one fo r an unso phisticated fr iend.
Flash: I have e-mail saying there is avail able at the Olympus Web site a routine that will let you batch-file transfer yo ur pic tures to yo ur hard drive in one unattended operatio n. It's not easy to find-yo u have to go to http: //www. oly mpusame rica .com/di gital/download/download.html, and there's no di rect link fro m the Olym pus home page .
Once you get the software, it does install properly, although the instructio ns talk abo ut " insertin g yo ur CD," and th ere's some oddball co nfusion about dates; but it does let you download all the pictures in one batch. So far as Ican tell, if you do batch the downloads, you can grab the pictu res only inJPEG fo rmat; ifyou want the full res olution, you still have to get them one by one. Bottom line now: you can get th is fo r Aunt M innie ifyou'rewilling to spend some time showing her how to get and use the upgrade software. But stay tuned.
E VERYONE ISADVERTISLNG FASTERSYSTEMS.
I've been wondering about speed : why do we need more ? I supp ose it depends on w hat we' re doing. I have lately been using the U.S. Robotics 56-Kbps external modem fo r m y lnre rn e t conn ecti o ns th ro u gh Earthlink, and I have to say it's easy to get used to th e resulting48 -to 52-Kbps effec tive speeds and to fee l deprived at a mere 28.8 Kbps. Th e U.S. Robo tics 56 -Kbps system really wo rks. So does Diamond's Rockwell chip-set 56-Kbps modem , but of co urse t he Di amond and U.S . Ro bo tics modems are not compatible; that is, each w ill send to a no ther system just like it, bur not to each other. Atthe mo ment, I can
slowes t syste ms, and I do ubt I would notice imp rove ments.
One pl ace I wo uld like more speed is in transfer operatio ns. Unive rsal serial bus (USB) promises to speed up operations such as downloading photos from a digital cam era. It's also supposed to make Plug and Pl ay much eas ier, so there won' t be prob lems like notb eingable to find the D-300L. I suspect that will be true only for newer sys tems, t ho ug h , a nd I' ll still get m y monthly ration o f horror stories.
We all want mo re speed fo r graphics. We have several new high-end systems at Chaos Manor, and artist associate David Em has been putting them through their paces with enorm ous graphics fil es. The result so fa r is that the Compaq Worksta tion 5000with dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro p rocessors is ve ry fast, the Carrera Com puters Cobra EV5 6 with a 500-MHz Digi tal Equipment Alp ha is even faster, and the Intergraph Dual Pentium II 266 system is awes o m e.
Any one o f th ese would be impressive. H oweve r, it also shows th e ratcherin g ex pectations effect: once yo u have used the Intergraph system with So ftimage, and watched shadows move in real time as you move th e lights a round the screen, you wonder how you ever lived without that speed. Dav id has a full re po rt in the Web Exclusive section.
Bottom line : you can now have on your deskto p image-processing capabiliti es that no o ne had a few years ago.
T he re's more. Pl ay, the peopl e w ho bro ught yo u the Snappy image-capture device, have been showing Tri nity, a real time, broadcast-quality, full-motion image p ro cessor that w ill let yo u merge image input sources.You can animate 3-Dobjects w it h programs such as So ftim age 3D Extre me or J D Studio Max and then mix in live acto rs. If your din osaur object has
shiny eyes, you'll see the actor's image reflected in them. Real time. In addition to real-time reflections, Trinity does wipes and fades and all kinds of mixes that you associate with studio equipment.
With the $5000Trinity box and a decent Pentium system, you can have your own lVstudio and produce professional-qual ity video. Add the new digital camcorders and writable digital videodiscs (DVDs), and the result will be a spate of innova tive lV documentaries, dramas, and odd ball entertainments. Most of those will be silly oruseless, butnot all. I expect some real revolutions in television entertain ment over the next few years, and the cost to get in on it is about the same as a year's tuition at a major university. Graphic arts is one of the fastest-growing fronts in the computer revolution.
Affordable digital camcorders, Play's Trinity, and DVDs form one synergy. Oth ers are beginning to emerge.
T HE IDEA OF THE PAPERLESS OFFICE HAS
been around since the earliest days of microcomputers. The goal, we are told, is that some day all documents will be elec tronic and filed in databases, retrievable by subject, keywords, or black magic, and we won't need paper files at all.
We haven' t got there yet. Visioneer 's PaperPort ix did move us a bit close r. For those who tuned in late, this is a small gad get that sleeps on a serial port. (There's also the PaperPort Vx, which is built into a keyboard; that works, too.) When yo u feed it a sheet of paper, it wakes up and reads it. Then it stores that as a bit-map image. It can also feed it to an optical char acter reader to turn it into a machine-read able, editable, electronic document. This works pretty smoothly, and a number of businesses use the PaperPort, which is small enough to carry in a briefcase and can be used on trips.
There are several problems. First, the PaperPort, while small, still requires a power source, and it was black and white only. Second, even in this era of cheap disk drives, storing all the documents in an office can use up a lot of storage and cre ate a nightmare of files and folders.
Solutions to both problems are at hand. Visioneer recently introduced a color ver sion, the PaperPort Strobe. This one hangs off the parallel port (with a pass through to the printer). It can do both black-and-white and color documents, but also photographs and business cards.
continued
www.byte.com
Circle 165 on Inquiry Card.
Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems
SOFIWARE ENGINEERS Candidates must possess a BS/MS in CS, or the equivalent and e,xperience in UNIX and object oriented CIC++. Previous experience inco11>0rating 00 panern theory into design, target recognition, signal processing o r HMJ/GUl, Rational Rose or Software 1llrough Picrurcs preferred. Opportunities are available from entr)' level to project lead experience levels. Additional opportunities for experienced Software Engineers will require the following skills: · Displa)' Software - Designs, develops, tests & documents an imagery
displa)' >)'stem and graphical overlay. E.xperience with Motif, X-\Vmdows and GUJ required. OOA/OOD and strong math background a plus. · Database - Experience with Oracle 7 Database design, architecrure and nming required.Also required is experience with Oracle Programmer/2000 and Designer/2000 tools. RADAR SYSTEMS ENGINEERS
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For details and consideration, please direct )'Our resume, indicating position, to: Lockheed Martin, Tactical Defense Systems, Attn: Human Resources, Dept. BM997, P.O. Box 85, MI S 1013, Litchfield Park, AZ 85340-0085. Fax: (602) 925-7568. Email: <hr.tdsaz@lmco.com> See us on the web at www.careennosaic.com/cm/lockheed/lockheed68.html Applic:mts selected will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Equal Opportunity Employer.
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I'll get back to photographs in a moment, because there's another important syn ergy there.
Adaptec, with Easy CD Creator Deluxe 3.0, has made the write-once CD·ROM drive a practical device that's easy to use. It will read regular CD-ROMs and write on $4 blanks. Mass storage ceases to be a problem. Scan your documents, put them through an optical character reader- Caere's OmniPage Pro for Visioneer PaperPort is a good one that works with the Visioneer scanner-or don't, as you choose. Store them on a CD ROM blank. Periodica ll y compi le your archives to another CD-ROM that you store off-site.
For that matter, at 600 MB on a $4 blank, I can afford to make monthly or even weekly backups of everything in the office. I'll store a copy at Niven's place, so even if my house burns down, I can recover what I'm working on and everything else.
The final synergy involves the Visioneer PaperPort Strobe, writable CD-ROMs, and Kai's Photo Soap from MetaCreations (nee HSC, nee MetaTools).
Kai's Photo Soap is a $50 program that takes photo images and lets you clean them up, increase the contrast, touch up colors, and generally do anything you can do with Adobe PhotoDeluxe and a lot ofwhat you can do onlywith Phoroshop. There's some mild morphing or "goo" capability (in crease the smile on the Mona Lisa or make your boss into an egghead).
The program accepts most graphics in put formats and outputs nearly everything but GIF. If you want GJF, you'll have to get something else-PhotoDeluxe, one of the Corel image manipulators, or Deba belizer-because MetaCreations declined to pay the GJF-format licensing fees for a $50 program.
With a Visioneer PaperPort and Photo Soap, you can scan in all those old pho tographs, including the boxes of them Grandma has stored away, sharpen the contrast if they've faded, arrange them in electronic albums, and store them on cheap CD-ROM blanks. When Visioneer came here to show me the PaperPort Strobe, I fed it my photograph of Jeremy Bentham (see the August Web Exclusive section). It worked just fine, and the Visioneer people kept a copy as well. I've been playing with it with the goo features of Photo Soap.
No one knows how long CD-ROM files will be stable, but it's certainly many
12 0 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Circle 172 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 173) .
Chaos Manor
decades, so once you have scanned your pictures, you'll have really permanent fam ily archive albums. You can also send copies to anyone with a PC and CD-ROM drive, which nowadays is probably everyone you want to send copies to. You could also print them on the Alps MD-20 I 0 Photo-Realis tic Color Printer I've mentioned before.
The key to this is ease of use: anyone can scan photos with the PaperPort, any one can clean up rhose photos with Phoro
program. I had no problems at all; thus, in less than an hour, I made an archive of everything I wrote from 1983 to 1993. It comes ro about 14 MB.
T HE ADAPTEC SOFTWARE WILL ALSO LET
you write audio CDs with a CD Recordable (CD-R) drive. Alex calls this the "Arrrh!" feature, as in "pirate's special," because you can play all or part of your audio CD in one drive and record onto another. You
In less than an hour, I made an archive of
everything I wrote from 1983 to 1993.
Soap, and with the new Adaptec soft ware and interface, anyone can store both pictures and documents on CD-ROM. Unlike PhotoDeluxe and the D-300L, they did this right for the consumer market.
Eventually there will be standards and easy-to-use digital CDs, and we'll move all our paperless-office and photo-file ar chives to that medium; bur that's going to be a while. CD-ROMs will be with us for years to come.
With Easy CD Creator Deluxe 3.0, it's as easy (but nowhere near as fast) to write files onto a CD-ROM blank as it is to write to an Iomega Zip drive or a floppy disk. Just put your blank disk into the drive (a Philips COD 2600 with 2X write and 6x read capabilities in my case), invoke Adapcec's easily installed software, and follow the instructions. You can write files or whole directories, from local drives or across the network.
None of this is fast, and my first write seemed to cake forever. I had selected a large directory, Q&A, which contains many subdirectories (everything I wrote on Q&A Write, which is effectively every thing I wrote for about 10 years), with the notion of making an archive. The pro gram went into "test" mode and trun dled for a long time without doing any thing. Eventually I interrupted it and wrote something shorter, noticing as I did that the formerly blank CD now had a se rial number. I selected a shorter directory and wrote that. This went quickly, so I re turned to the Q&A file. That worked fine, and to rest it, I ran the Q&A program from the CD-ROM and used it to examine a dozen or so files.
This was a good test because Q&A uses a complex file-storage format, and if there's anything corrupt in the formatting notes, you'll find out when you read in the
can even assemble albums of different stars performing the same work. You can also play old 33 - or45-or even 78-rpm records, pipe the resulting audio into the Adaptec software, automatically clean up hisses and pops and scratchy noises, and make a CD. Ihave some very old Paul Robeson 78- rpm records and a badly scratched 33-rpm rec ord of Highlander song I intend to salvage this way. I love that.
Fair warning: as I write this, I've found some glitches in the writable CD system, particularly if your regular CD-ROM is IDE and you then add a SCSI writable. Most of those problems are sloppy application soft ware. Example: I installed the external Philips CD-R drive on Cyrus, the Cyrix 6x86 P-166. Cyrus has an internal Mat sushita !DE CD-ROM drive. New World Cornputing's Chaos Overlords was the first CD I found in the Games book (I use Case Logic CD " books " to store CD ROMs), so I rested compatibilities with it.
The Philips CD-R drive displaced the Matsushita !DE CD-ROM drive, raking over the G slot and moving the !DE drive to H. This was more or less as expected; at least the Philips CD-R drive didn't dis place the Fujitsu DynaMO or the Iomega Zip, which both live on the Cyrix SCSI string. I was once told chat the SCSI ID device number is important in determin ing drive-letter assignments, bur it's not.
Then I put Chaos Overlords into the !DE H drive. It auto-started and offered to play the game. I clicked on play. The sys tem trundled and then demanded that I insert the CD-ROM-from which it had just re ad the EXE file in the first place . Nothing I could do would change this.
I used Device Manager to ass ign the lDE CD-ROM to R, so it would stay there regardless of whether the Philips drive was present. Reset the system, booted up with
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 121
Chaos Manor New Synergies for Computing
the Philips drive in the string but turned that's fast enough for most things, some like a bad VHS copy from a UHF station up
off. That left me with drive letters G and H games already demand a faster drive. (The the coast 200 miles.) They ' re all right on
free, the IDE CD-ROM at R, and Chaos "rewritable" CD-ROM drives called CD your monitor, but the translation from
Overlords played just fine. Reboot, with RW have all the above problems, are even NTSC to VGA is only good, not great.
the Philips CD-R drive turned on . Philips slower, can't make audio disks, and aren't Games and other DVD visual stuff writ
seized Gas expected. Chaos Overlords in totally compatible with other drives; ifyou ten to be shown on a computer screen are
R would auto-play and demand the CD replace your usual CD-ROM drive, you're also wonderful; the visuals are stunning.
ROM.
Could this, I wondered, be a problem because I have both IDE and SCSI CD-ROM
DVD movies look spectacularly great on a TV
drives? I tried it on Pentafluge, which is a pure SCSI system with a Sony internal SCSI
screen, when they're encoded intelligently.
CD-ROM drive. Exactly the same resulrs
obtained. Then I tried the experiment with better off using CD-R in my opinion.)
Most of us will have a DVD in our future.
MicroProse Software's This Means War, The other remedy is to use an external However, whatever happens with DVD, I'm
and that played perfectly; and I realized writable drive and leave it turned off; turn sure that at least one of my networked com
what was happening. Chaos Overlords it on and reboot to write CDs.
puters is going to have a writable CD-ROM
looks for its CD-ROMin the lowest-lettered This is likely to be a temporary problem drive as well. The combination of ease of
CD-ROM drive, and if it doesn't find it only: I don't think it will be all that long use and cheap media is just too useful. I said
there, it looks no further. This Means War before they make lOx and faster CD-ROM long ago that CD-ROM would change the
keeps searching.
drives that can also write. The writing world. It did, and in conjunction with cheap
At the moment, the drive-displacement speed will be slower than the read speed, scanners, it's about to do it again.
T problem isn't fixable: your writable CD but it is now.
drive is probably going to take over a lower One thing that may not be fixed soon is
HEBOOKOFTHEMONTHISBYCUVEMAx
drive letter than your regular CD-ROM the ability of DVD drives to read "gold" field and Alvin Brown, BEBOP Bytes Back,
drive, and software such as Chaos Over writable CD blanks. As ofnow, DVD drives An Unconventional Guide to Computers
lords will be too stupid to survive that. It's can read ordinary CD-ROMs just fine, so (Doone Publications, ISBN 0-9651934-0-3).
particularly dumb when it auto-plays but you could replace your CD-ROM drive While this looks like a book with a CD
then can't find the CD-ROM to finish load with a (read only) DVD drive; but that drive ROM, it's actually an entire course in prac
ing. Fortunately, some software is better won't read CDs you have written your tical computer application, but presented
designed. Incidentally, if auto-play drives self. Most everyone says this is fixable and in an irreverent and amusing way. You
you nuts, you can tum it off: click your way will be fixed, but there are a few skeptics "build" your computer on-screen, endow
through Control Panel, System, Device who think it will never happen. That ought it with many properties, and set it tasks, all
Manager, CD-ROM, your particular CD· to be clearer by the time you read this. the while learning about what goes on
ROM, Settings, and then check the "auto Given the low cost of writable CD media inside a computer. Build text editors, hard
inform" box. Then restart. Naturally none and the falling cost of the CD-R drives, it ware simulators, logic engines, and any
of this is in the Windows Help system.
may not matter. There's no single standard thing else a computer can do. If you work
Of course, you can make the writable for DVD formats, and writable DVD drives through this book, you will understand
CD drive your only CD-ROM drive. They are expensive anyway; it will be a few years your computer a lot better.
are, after all, falling in price, they read all before those are popular on desktops.
The game of the month is Strategic Sim
CD-ROMs, and you can connect them to DVD has a lot of neat features . DVD ulations' Age of Rifles with the follow-on
your speaker system; why not? The only movies look spectacularly great on a TV Campaign Disk. British-Indian Colonial
drawback here is that the fastest writable screen, when they're encoded intelli Wars, the Austro-Prussian War, the Fran
CD drives I know read at 6x, and while gently. (Many of the early DVD titles look co-Prussian War, and many battles of the
American Civil War; they're all here and
all very playable, hours of game fun and
..Xge of Rifles
Campaign Di.sk $9.99
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800- 234-3008
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Enter 1013 on Inquiry.Card.
Ea.sy CD Creator Deluxe 3.0
$99 Adaptec, Inc. Milpitas, CA 800-442-7274 408-957-4535
fax : 408~957-7150
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Pape;Port Strob.e· Windows 95,
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800-787-7007
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military history. I'm out of space, and the place is still
stacked to the ceiling with good stuff. I'll
getto more of it next month. Stay well. l:il
ferry Pourn elle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's seniorcontributing editor. You can write
D-300L $899
Kai'.s Photo Soap $49.95
Olympus America, Inc.
MetaCreations Corp.
Melvill.e,NY
C3rplnteria, CA
800-347-4027
800-472-9025
51 &-844-5000
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fax:Fax:805-566-6385
http://www;olympusamerica.com http://www.metacreations.com.
Enter 1014 on Inquiry Card.
Enter 1016 on Inquiry Card.
Trinity from $4995
Play, Inc.
Rancho Cordova ·, CA
800-306-7529
916-851-0800
fax : 916-851-0801
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Enter 1018 on Inquiry Card.
to ferry c/o BYTE, 29 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, MA 02173. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope and put your address 011 the letter as wellas on the e11velope. Due to the high volume ofletters, ferry cannot guarantee a per so11al reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIXat Jerryp@blx.com.
122 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 97
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SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 123
ered for the world to benefit. The TELECOM INTERACTIVE 97 Forum
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BUYER'S GUIDE
Essential Products and Services for Technology Experts
Mail Order
Top mail-order vendors offer the latest hardware and software
6 products at the best prices. Page 12
Hard ware/Software Showcase
Your full-color guide to in-demand hardware and software products,
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The BYTE classified directory of computer products and services, by subject so you can easily locate
the right product. Page 138
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Circle 188 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 189).
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400 Cottontail Lane
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Tel. 908-764-8886 Fox 908-764-8887
E-mail soles@roriton .comhttp://www.roriton.com
MosterConsole and MasterView are trademarks of Raritan Computer Inc . Circle 184 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 185).
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Circle 178 on Inquiry C ard (RESELLERS : 1 79)_
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130 BYTE SEP TE MBER 1997
C ircle 182 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 183).
Communications · Data Acquisition
Data Acquisition
Expandable Data Acquisition
Circle 90 on Inquiry Card .
Our 12- and 16-bit, 100-kHz plug-In DaqBoardsN offer you high-speed, expandable PC-based data acquisition that grows with your application. Expand up to 256 channel5 with signal conditioning options for temperature, strain, pressure, acceleration, Isolation. high-voltage. ~. and more. Extensive icon-driven software support avallable.
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132 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Circle 103 on Inquiry Card.
DAQ Designer 97
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Circle 105 on Inquiry Card.
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industrial PC Power Supp1y,
· 85-265VAC, -48VDC, +24VDC, +12VDC input
· 70W-350W output · 60KHz PWM control IC · 0-55°C operating · MTBF > 20 years
ICP ACQUIRE INC.
CALL: 1-415-967-7168
FAX: 415-428-1172
s~ ·xs.9"x3.4"
Circle 93 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS : 94).
Circl e 111 on Inquiry Card .
Call 800-800-6889 to receive a FREE 100
page Solution Guide for your OEM or system integration needs.
AoVANTECH*
750 E. Arques Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408-245-6678, Fax 408-245-8268
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 133
Industrial Computers
PROTECT Your Customers with APPRO Fault Tolerant Industrial Computers
· Full Line of Rack Mount Products
· Systems C9nfigured To Your Specification
· Custom ChassisManufactured When You need It
·-
PA<)M()f; A81002
www.appro.com
E-Mail : in fo@appro .com
800- 927- 5464
"lmiwln:ll T.U.~c{n..ll>rnlU ··
International, In c.
446 Sooth Abbott Ave.. A~lpltas, CA 95035 Td (408)94 1-l!IOO · fu (408) 941-811 1
C ircle 11 4 on Inq uiry C ard (RESE LLERS : 1 15) .
Industrial Computers · Laptops a Notebooks
RECORTEC, INC.
1290 Lawrence Station Road Sunnyvale, CA 94089-2220
Tel : (408) 734-1 290 Fax: (408) 734-21 40 E-mail: info @recortec.com
C ircle 113 on Inquiry Card.
Need Down-to-Earth Solutions with Today's S p ace - Age Rack Mount Equipment?
Then sclcc1 1he bes! and most complete li ne of compu ter rack mount equipment in the uni\'crsc.
Tri-MAP International, Inc.
Over 40 models of chassis designL'!l to to meet your specific rack mounl requiremenL1. Cuslomizcd configurations incl ude complete syslems witl1 keyboard
drawers, monitors, switches, power supplies and PC componcnl'i.
At Tri-MAP lnlcmational, Inc. we specialize in meeting the needs of our customers witlt modem design, engineering and technology.
Voice (510) 447-2030
Fax (510) 447-4559
4569-A Los Positas Rood, Livermore, CA 94550
w w w. r a c k c o . c o m
Circle 11 2 on Inq uiry Ca rd.
Industrial PC Enclosures Tower PC Enclosures Tower Drive Enclosures Rack Systems Rackmount Accessori es CPU Cards and Backplanes Rackmount Drive and PC Enclosures Indus trial PS2 Power Supplies Redundan t N+1 Load Sharing Power Supplies
1 34 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Ci rcle 116 on Inq uiry Card (RE S ELL ER S : 11 7) .
Run DOS from ROM. Portable System has 3'86 CPU, graphics
LCD, PCMCIA $49.9t-q1
C:Omplete wlth'2SMHt·Ean'386; GGA controller. LP' and /Ceypad. Up tto 6MB "DRAM, FOOH, PCMCIA, 3Serial, ll.Parallel, batteryoperated.
Laptops Et: Notebooks
Multimedia/CD-ROM · Programmable Hardware
Let your true colors
:,
shine through
·
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Advertise your product
in the BYTE
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE
SHOWCASE ..·~ the popular, affordable,· 4-color·aavertising section!
For more information call your BYTE sales representative
(see listing, page 141) or fax 603-924-2683
Embedded DOS ~!~~"!&~
Controllers at 8051 ~ ·ces
F/ashlite"use your PC
development tools! No
more crash and burn EPROM!
· 2 Serial Ports
· 8/10 MHz V-25
· 24 Parallel 110 lines · 512K RAM
· 2 Timers
· 256K/512K flash
· 4 Interrupt Lines
· X-Modem Transfer
· 8 Analog Inputs
· includes DDS and utilities
JK microsys~ems ~1~:~~g:1~~9tax
Cost e!fectwe controllersf or mdustry www.dsp.com / jkmicro
Circle 100 on Inqu iry C ard .
S EPTEM B ER 199 7 BYTE 1 3 5
Networking
Programmable Hardware
Contact us toda) for free Win :\Tl'JS ,\1'1-232 Lihra~ c.:op).
.MOXA Multlport Board Support....·. · 2 to 256 AS·232 ports per board. · Speed up to 921.6K bps. · Drivers for all popular O.S. such as Windows NT/9513.x,
DOS, UNIX, NetWare, Linux, SCO UNIX/XENIX, and so forth. · MOXA APl·232 Library for DOS, Windows NT/9513.x.
Moxa Technologies 524 Weddell Drive, Sutte1, Sunnyvale, CA 941l89 Tel: (408)734-2224 E-mail: info_byte@moxa.ccm Fax: (408)734-4442 WWW: http://www.moxa.com
C ircle 107 on Inquiry C ard (RESELLERS : 1OB) .
WHO SAYS??
"··· Network Monitors are confusing and bard to use···"
· 2.3'x2.2"A·CoreN. · 3.6'x2.3' A·Englne"' · AMD188ES.50+ I/Os, 1112·bit ADC · 3 UARTs, 3timers, 2 PWM. Bat+RTC
· Clibrary, Development kits
·Easy to program In Borland/ Microsoft C/C++
We have 20+ Low Cost 16-blt Controllers with ADC. DAC, solenoid drivers. relay, PC· 104, PCMCIA. LCD, DSP motion control,
1o UARTs, 1oo I/Os. Customer boards
design. Save timeand money.
216 FStr.et, Sle. 104, Davis, CA 95616, USA
TrERNINC. Tel:916-758-0180 Fax: 916-758-0181 tem@netcom.com h t t p : / / w w w.fem .com =·Circle 99 on Inquiry Card.
They obviously
aren't using···
LANWatch®
Network Protocol Analyzer
~ Unlocking the complexity
"tp-
of Network Analysis
G P~E:CISIDN9susSWffk, Inc.
Five Central Street, Topsfield, MA 01983
(508) 887-6570 (phone)
http ://www. gucsswork .com
(508) X87-6552 (fax)
Emai l: info@guesswork.com
136 BYTE SE PTEMBE R 1997
C irc le 109 on Inquiry Ca rd .
EasyStart Kit · The fastest, easiest way todevelopcontrolsystems · 30 1/0 lines, RS232, RS485, ruggedenclosure, LCD, & keypad · Includes all necessary hardware, simplified software development
system, step-by-stepdocumentation and manysample programs.
TECHNOLOGY
Call 1-888-362-3387 toll-free for
your PK2270 EasyStartKit or ~
to receive a free catalog. We' ll ship within 24 hours.
'ZwoRLD
Come see us at ISA·TECH, booth #6124
2900 Spafford Street Davis CA 95616 USA
TEL 916-7 S7· 3737
FAX 916-7 53-51 4 1
http://www.zworld.com
Circle 98 on Inquiry Ca rd .
UPS/Power Management · Internet Services
Internet Services · On-Line Services
TH.I WORLD'S BEST
su·RGE SUPPRESSOR···
dQe~ oof use sc;icdficial/ weqr components, has no
l'oule roling or surge current
imitation, W ILL NEVER FAIL (tested and certified by UL to one thousand 6000V, fffi\
3000A >Sltrges), does not ~
divert.surge current to the ground,.wire, clamps instan taneously, has ih'e industry's lowest let-tl\rough v9ltage ond is THE BEST LINE FILTER YOU CAN BUY.
Now c;.qnsider this...no mc;iller what y.ou paid for it, the odds ore OV~RY/HELMlt\fG that your current surge protector does use sacr1fic(al/wear components (MQV's)t hos a joule/current
limirotion, WIU EVENTUAUY FAIL fsee: "5 things you probably
don't know abo.ut y0ur sur~e suppressor'' at www.fivethingsccom) , and .does divert surge current to the g'teund wir,e.,(causing system lock-ups, data disruption end degeneistlve equipment domQge).
So..!How Important Is Your System?
Blllck 'WALL suaGE"FILTERS
Available in point;of-use, hard .wire, rack mounf and OEM modular form .
. .., ·800·528-0313
BRICK WALL DIV.,
PRICE WHEELER CORP.
·
Fox: 1-800.528-6623
E-Mail: info@brickwoll.com Web: www.brickwall.com
Circ le 101 on Inquiry C ard (RESELLERS : 102) .
Surprised
at your
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C irc le 120 on Inquiry C ard (RESELLERS : 121 ).
Hiway Tedlnologles
SEP TE MBER 1997 BYTE 1 3 7
THE
BUYER'S
MART
· · · ·· · ···
THE BUYER'S MART is a unique typewritten c opy. 2'Jx1 1'1e" ad
classified section organized by
can include head line (23 characters
product category to help readers
maximum), d esc riptive text (300
locate suppliers. Ads may have inquiry characters is the maximum recom·
numbers to aid readers requesting mended) plus company name,
information from advertisers.
address, telephone and fax number.
AD FORMAT: Each ad will be
2"x2 S/a" ad has more space for
designed and typeset by BYTE. Do descriptive text (850 characters is
NOT send logos or camera-ready
the maximum recommended).
artwork. Advertisers should furn ish DEADLINE: Ad copy is due
approximately 2 months pri or to issue d ate. For example: November issue closes on September 15. Send your copy and payment to:
THE BUYER'S MART, BYTE
Magazine, 1 Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. For more information please call Mark Stone in BYTE sales at 603 -924-2533 or FAX : 603 -924 -2683 .
RATES (January 1997)
2"x 1'/·'· 2 ad s/issue 11 3 ads/issue "
660 620
1 ad $1,640 $ 1,580$1 ,380
2"x2W' 2 ads/issue "
1,320
3 ads/issue "
1,250
........COLOR - Add$100···ao··ao
BARCODE
CD-ROM
DATA RECOVERY
Bar Code Headquarters
· Complete Bar Code Read ers from S299
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· Cordless Scanners fro m $595
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· Bar Code Labeling Software for
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· Bar Code Fonts for W indows/Mac - $199
· Direct from Manufacturer
Worthington Data Solutions 800-345-4220
Phone: 408-458-9938 · Fax: 408-458-9964 In UK call 0800 293 213
In France call 0800 90 65 47 In Germany call 0130 81 50 84 Rest of Europe call 353 1 6614 566
C ircuit Design Software for W indows
Easy-to-use schematic entry, PCB design , and
simulation soltware, starting at S149 each. Complete
paci<age with schematics, simulation, autorouter. and
layout for 2-layer circuit boards, S549. Enhanced
version with autoplacement, more symbol libraries,
and up to 16 layers, S999. CAM file outputs.
Mental Automation, Inc.
5415 136th Place, SE-Bellavuo WA 98006
(425) 641-2141
FAX (425) 649·0767
h t t p ://www.mentela .c o m /
Inquiry 381 .
I~
CD-R Media $3.99
11c Recorders, DVD, Towers
303-384-3922 FAX 303-384-3926
http://www.cdrominc.com
Inquiry 384.
CD·ROMS
511m-..,,. Wlndowa95.com 32-brl Shmware Collection ... ... .. . .. .. , ... $35 00
Com¢allon of "wwuindows95.com" ~tb$1te 32-ltO
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LINUX Toolbox tnclu<ln 6 CO
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p~t"!~~z.'i.i;,;,;i,:3·,p~~ i,i.;;;~;)~~5 00
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Wlbmutet Tools Volume 1 .. · ·. . . . . .. . .. .
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Everything nttdet1 10 oe~rale and pnxooe web pagts.
W1bm11lerTool1 Volume2........... .............. . . .. $35.00
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lrdJdesalth!""3nalf"l"d$olv.!bdesJillttcl.MJVod!o, \11Mt.aro
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iN
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MC, VISA & AMEX
Intl Phoo·r ·1·520-526-9565 Web Orders: www.lnfomaolc.com E·IT'<ll: 0tde1S@inlornagic.com
I nfoMagic 11950 N. Hwy 89, Flag1teH, AZ 66001
Inquiry 385.
The Leader in Data Recovery
· Expertise In virtually every operating system & media storage device.
· Emergency services with calls answered 24 hours a day. Call tor a FREE consullationl
ONTRACK DATA RECOVERY
Mpls · LA· DC· London· Tokyo ·Stuttgart 1·800-872-2599 · www.ontrack.com
Inquiry 388.
Don't pay thou sands of Dollars! Download our
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Email: dota_recoveryOcompuseMJ.com
The Virtual Data Recovery Company
Inquiry 389.
Data Recovery Service
From one ol Europe's largest disk drive manufacturers · 24 hour. 7 day hotline · Dais promptly resrored and returned
e SSA capability
· No fiX. no fee Call now: +44(0)1705 443283 or (0)374 136170
On-line Information: www.xyratex.com
Xyratex
Inquiry 390.
CAD/CAM
CONTOURING MOTION CONTROL
FR1~f!! r~~,\!,~,~RTI $249
VERSION 3
VISA/MC
· Con1rols up to six step motors slmultanoously.
· Llnoar and Circular Interpolation.
· New features to accommodato machine control.
· Ea!'>y· lo-use device d river. Super Monual .
· CAO-CAM Interlace availablo.
RWin."" Ability Systems Corpom!lon, 1422 AtnoldAve. 19001 (2 151657··338
http:/twww.abilitysystems.com FAX: (215) 65HB15
Inquiry 382.
COMPUTERTELEPHONEY
IT'S HERE! Commer/cal
Long Distance Telephone Cal/Ing
Over The Internet.
Transparent to the callers. Internet gateways make you the long distance phone company.
Break through technology. Call for more Information & schedule times for free semi nars
www.ttmlnc.com
Fax 714-449-8700
Inquiry 386.
DATA/DISK CONVERSION
CONVERSION/DUPLICATION
Tape : 4MM, OIC, BMM. DLT. 9-trk, 3480/90/90E
Disk: 3". 3'/,", 5'1<. 8"
CD·ROM
1·800·357·6250
Shaffstall Corporation
317-842-2077
7901 East 88th Street
Fax 317-842-8294
Indianapolis IN 46256 sales@shaffstall.com
Since 1973
http J/www. shaffst ell.com
TG·CAD Professional v.6.0
CAO Solutions Software
A 16 & 32 bit C/C++ Windows 95. Win NT &Win 3.1
CAD Developers Kit. The best inCAD/CAM software
kits. Free Demo and Technical Paper.
Call 800-635·7760 or Fax 972-423·7288 or
http://www.disksoft.com or E-mail
disksoft@ix.netcom.com or BBS 972-881-9322
Disk Software. Inc. 109 s. Murphy Rd.. Ptino. TX USA 75094
Inquiry 383.
DATA RECOVERY
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r
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Restoring data since 1985
1-800-440-1904
I
415-883-4232
Inquiry 387.
EDUCATION
EARN B.S. AND M.S. IN COMPUTER SCIENCE THROUGH DISTANCE EDUCATION
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138 BYTE SEPTEMBER 19 9 7
THE BUY E R ' S MART A DIRECTORY OF PROD UCTS ANO SERV ICES
HARDWARE
HEWLETT-PACKARD
Buy- Sell - Trade
LaserJet
ColorPro
DeskJ et
DraftPro
RuggedWriter DraftMaster
Electrostatic Plotters
Desi gnJ et
We specfalize in Demo & Refurbished Equipment
HP 9000 Workstations and Vectras also available.
Ted Dasher & Associates
4117 Second Ave., S. Birmingham , AL l5222
Phone: (205) 591-4747 Fax: (205) 591-1108
(800) 638-4833
E·mall : sales@dasher.com
Inquiry 391.
SECURITY
THE ULTIMATE SOFTWARE SECURITY
e STOPCOPY family - UNCOPIABLE copy protection · STOPVIEW sottwam encryption
· NETLIMIT netwo1k license metering
e DOS, Windows (3.X, 95, NT), Mee, Osr.! , support
· Machine Tio, Internet Prolaction, CD·AOM Protection,
Serialization, Date & Execution Umilalion, Registralion,
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BBi Co mpute r Syst ems, Inc.
14105 Heritage Lane, Silver Spring, MO 20906
BOIJ/l'RHBBI · 800/8711-2224 · 3011171-1094 · FAX: 301/460-7545
E-mall: bbl@bblcs.com · Web : htto:l/ www.bblcs .com
Inquiry 396.
SIMULATION SOFTWARE
Analog/Digital ~imulation! !
· Windows, NT, DOS
· Model Libraries, RF, Power
· Power Mac, Macintosh · More Than 5000 parts
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· Schematic Entry
starting a l $95. Complete
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tu ft P.O. Box 710 San Pedro, CA 90733-0710 ·
I n 50 (310)833-0710,FAX(310)833-965B
Call for your Freo Demo and Information kit.
Inquiry 400.
INTERNET PRESENCE
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Virtual Web Hosting· 3-T3 ConnectionsI
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http://PICK.NET RESELLERS Welcome
Inquiry 392.
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KinetiSys
(800) 799.7115
(847) '!l35 -7115
www.kspot.com
sales@kspot.com
Inquiry 393.
CRYPKEY rnHWARf llC[NSING SYSHM
"Software Protectionwith HOhanlware lock ond HOdisk key" Cl)'pKey Is sollwaro copyprolecllon Iha! is:
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Cl)'pKey iscompletely compatible with MS·ODS, MS·
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Kenonic Controls Ltd. Calgary,Canada
1403) 258-6100 · lax: 1403}258-6201
INTERNET: crypkey@kenonic.com
Inquiry 397.
KEY-LOK IITM SECURITY
Software Piracy Prevention - Survival 14 years proves
effectiveness. Active algorithm, programmable memory.
counters, date control, remote update. No 10 on device.
Low pnoog (e.g. $16.50 each lor 5).
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Also, ACCESS CONTROL systems and disk drive/system LOCKS
MICROCOMPUTER APPLICATIONS, INC.
3167 E. Otero Circle, Littleton, CO 80122
http://www.keylok.com
Hl00-453·9565 (303) 770·t917 FAX: (303) 770·1863
Inquiry 398.
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8586 Monticello Or., Wesl Chesler, OH 45069
Phone/Fax: 513-779-7977
Inquiry 401 .
SOFTWARE!TRANSLATORS
Word Translator for Windows
· Hot-key traasfolion of wonls & pliroses frnm wilhit
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STOCK CONTROL
Stock Control Software
STOCKIT PROFESSIONAL provides comprehensive
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Sub Assemblies, o!klws Scheduled and Random Ordors,
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Low Cost - High Portonnance. Price Only $630
Runs on Low Cast 386sx 4MB PC Number One Systems
TeVFruc (408) 395-0249
Download demo from hltp:Jlwww.numberono.com
Inquiry 403.
High·Speed xBASE Engine...
For C, C++, VB, Delphi and Java programmers. Get mulli-user compatibility with FoxPro, Clipper and
dBASE files. CodeBase is portable between DOS, Windows, UNIX, Mac and 0512! Includes unlimited clienVserver. ActiveX controls & visual report writer!
FREE 30 day test drive!
Call Sequiter Software Inc. for details or visit us on the web at www.sequiter.cam
Phone 403 437-2410
FAX 403 436·2999
Inquiry 394.
YEAR 2000
Worried about dates? ZCOBOL will help. ZCOBOL analyzes COBOL programs. Includes many handy utilities with source code in Assembly Language. Set of Disks $25 Printed Manual $10
ZIPFAST Box 12238, Lexington KY 40581-2238
HTTP://WWW.INDEX.MIS.NET/ZIPFAST
email zlplast@mls.net
Inquiry 395.
VT Protect
SECURE PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION OVER THE WEB!
VT Protec1 Is a securo reliable soltwaro solution for proloctlng your products from piracy. II can be easily embedded within your product to provide various levols of controlled use.
You can now otter time·Hmited full evaluaUons or demos ol you r product over the web. When your cuslomor decides lo buy, you gonorete a password and the sakl is complete!
Provides lull produa and sub-producl ltcenslng.
Administer multiple products, not ono at a limo, using just ONE 1001 for en Windows and UNIX platforms.
VT Protect Is a traction ol the cost of othor Hardware Uccnsing solutions.
Buy VT Protect and make sure that all copies of your software are purchased copies!
visit us on the web at:
WWW.VIATECH· INC.COM Vlateeh, Inc.
(508) 647-0464 / (888) VIATEC-3
Inquiry 399.
YOUR AD HERE
I
ADD
COLOR IMPACT
I
TO YOUR AD
The Buyer's Mart
For rates and details to
start or upgrade your
m
advertising
Call Mark Stone today at
603-924-2533
Fax:603-924-2683
II
stonem@mcgraw-hill.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 139
ADVERTISER CONTACT INFORMATION
To order products or request free information, call advertisers directly or send in the Direct Link Card by mail or fax! Let them know you saw it in BYTE!
INQUIRY NO.
PAGE NO. PHONE NO.
A
91-92 AClSYSTEMS
133 800·983·1177
90
AMERICANAOVANTECH
132 800-800-6889
110 AMERICANADVANTECH
133 800-800-6889
111 AMERICANADVANTECH
133 800-800-6889
AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION
18A·B 401·788·2197
128 AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION
17 888·289·APCC 0118199
AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION
41A·B 401-788·2797
127 AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION
49 888·289·APCC ell 8224
114-115 APPROINTERNATIONALINC 134 800·927'5464
153 ARTECON
50 800-USAARTE
170·171 ARTMEDIA
74 +888·2-778·5850
B
101-102 BRICKWALLDIV., PRICE WHEELER CORP BYlE BACK ISSUES BYlE CARD DECK BYTE ON CD ROM BYlE REPRINTS BYlESUBMESSAGE
c
137 800-528·0313
123 603·924·9261 920 803·924·2596
91 800-924-6621 92 603·924·2525 121
163·184 CMDTECHNOLOGY
38
COM PAO
20-21
121 COMPUTER DISCOUNT WAREHOUSE
28·29
COMPUTER PROFESSIONAl:S BK CL
101A·B
COMPUTER
109
PROFESSIONA~SBKCL
129 COMTROLCORP
79
103 CONTECMICROELECTRONICS 132
130 COREL
42
110 CORPORATE SYSTEMS
128
CENTER/CSC
351·352 CUBIXCORP
92J
131-132 CYBEX COMPUTER
55
PRODUCTS CORP
714·454·0800 800·345·1 518 800-959·4239
614-759·3749..
614-759·3666
600·926 ·6 876 800-888·8884 613-728-0826
011 3080 408·743·8732
800-953·0140 205·430·4000
D
DELL COMPUTER CORP cv-cvi
DEUCOMPUTERCORP
CVll
DEUCOMPUTERCORP
CVlll
DEUCOMPUTERCORP IONA3
DEU COMPUTER CORP (FIOOO)
cv-cvi
DEUCOMPUTER
CVll
CORP(FIOOO)
DEUCOMPUTER) CORP(FIOOO)
CVlll
151 DISTINCT CORP
18
152 DISTINCT CORP
16
353-354 DISTRIBUTEOPROCESSING 92G TECH
800-348-8348 800·247-2057 800·847-4106 800-247-4817 800-579·0342
800-759· 1170
888·738·3355
408·388·8933 408·366·8933 407·830-5522
INQUIRY NO.
PAGE NO. PHONE NO.
F
133 FAIRCOMCORP 111 FOREFRONT DIRECT INC 167 FORTRESGRANOCORP
78 573·445-6833 127 800-475-5831 73 800-331-0372
G
158 GLOBETROTTERSOFTWAREINC 71
192·163 GRANITEDIGITAL
130
149-150 GRIFANTECHNOLOGIES
80
408·370-2800 510-47f.6442 800-986·6578
H
120-121 HIWAY TECHNOLOGIES
137 800-33 9-HWAY
IBM 93-94 ICP ACQUIRE 134-135 INTERGRAPHCOMPUTER
SYSTEMS 104 IOTECH
ITU
11 133 4().41
800-500-4138 800-254·5325
132 216-439-4091 124 8()0-632-7946
J
100 JK MICROSYSTEMS
135 510-236-1151
K
KILA KILA KILA KINGSTON
132 303-444·7737 134 303·444-7737 138 303-444-7737 920 800-337·7039
L
360-381 LEOPTICS INC
165 LOCKHEED MARTIN
921 +886·2·755-0366 119 602·925·6271
M
356 MICR02000
92B·92C 818·547-0397..
172·173 MICROMACRO TECHNOLOGIES
120 303-320-1628
MICRO·INTERNATIONALINC 135 800-961-5667
147 MICRON ELECTRONICS
Cll·I 800-362-7306
MICROSOFT CORP
31
MICROSTARLABORATORIES 132 425·453·2345
MICROWAY
97 508·746-7341
351·359 MITAC
92M +886-3-328-9000
107-101 MOXA TECHNOLOGIES
138 800-699·MOXA
N
105 NATIONALINSTRUMENTS
97
NEATOUC
NETWORUD+INTEROP
116-167 NEWVOICE
363 NSTL
181-182 NSTORCORP
132 135
93 130 IONA 7
15
800-433·3488 800-984·9800 800-486-2883 908·684 · 1300 800-220-NSTL 600·724-3511
0
OSBORNE MCGRAW·HILL
91 600-822·8158
IN QUIRY NO.
p
PAGE NO. PHONE NO.
159-180 PHIUPSBUSINESS
12
ELECTRONICS
137·131 PKWAREINC
111
1n POLYWELLSYSTEMS
131
164-156 POWEROUEST
39
109 PRECISION GUESSWORK INC 136
800·835-3506
414 ·354·8899 800·300-7659 B00-370-2666 608·887-6670
Q
139 ONXSOFTWARESYSTEMS LTD 25
QUANTUM CORP
1-9
140·141 OUATECH INC
n
800·678·0566 ext 1046
800·624-5545 exl 131
800·553· 1170
R
142 RAINBOW TECHNOLOGIES
800-852·8569
114-165 RARITANCOMPUTERINC
128 800-RCl·8090 ext71
175·178 REALTEKSEMICONDUCTOR CORP
67 +886·35·780211
113 RECORTECINC
134 888·RECORTEC
384 RICOH CORP
BONAS 800-544·8246
171·179 ROSEELECTRONICS
s
129 B00-333·9343
143 SAMSUNG 357 SCEPTRE TECHNOLOGIES 116·117 SUGERDESIGNS 144 STATSOFT
T
27 92 800·788·2878 134 702-356·5595 69 918·749· 1I19
174 TROWEPRICE
120 800·541-8466
111·119 TECHNOLAND
134 800-292-4500
99
TERN INC
136 916-758·0160
112 TRI-MAP INTERNATIONAL INC 134 510-447·2030
v
122-123 VALUEWEB 188·119 VCOMMUNICATIONS 108 VIOEXINC 145·146 VIEWSONIC
96
VITEC
w
137 888·846·7756 126 800-648·8268 133 541·758·0521 S3 S00-888·8583
AGENT1377 136 +33146730600"
149· 150 WIBUSYSTEMSAG
382 IVINBOOKCOMPUTER CORP
124-125 WORLOWIOEINITERNET PUBLISHING
z
80 800-986·6578 800-468-0712
137 800·785·6 170
91
Z.WORLD ENGINEERING
138 916-757·3737
1 40 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www.t1yte com
BYTE ADVERTISING SALES STAFF
Michael P. Walsh, Associate Publisher. 24 Hartwell Avenue, Lexing ton, MA 02173, Tel: 617-860-6714, Fox: 617-860-6179, mike_wols/1@mcgrow-hill.com
Lori Silverstein, Eastern Regional Soles Director. 921 East wind Drive, Suite 118, Westerville, OH 43081, Tel: 614-899-4908, Fox: 614-899-4999, lorisf@mcgrow- hill.com
Jim Hussey, Western Regional Soles Director, 1900 O'Forrell Street. Suite 200, San Mateo, CA 94403, Tel: 415-513-6861, Fox: 415-513-6867,jim_hussey@mcgrow-hill.eom
NORTH PACIFIC
AK, Northern CA, HI, ID, MT, OR,
Silicon Valley, WA, WY,
Western Canada
Lisa Farrcll 415-513-6862
lfarrell @mcgraw-hill.com
The McGraw-Hill Companies
1900 O'Farrell Street. Suite 200
San Mateo, CA 94403
FAX: 415-513-6867
SOUTH PACIFIC
Al, Sou them CA, CO, NM, NV, UT Beth Dudas 714-443-9314 bdudas@mcgraw-hill.com Geanette Perez gperez@mcgraw-hi ll.com The McGraw-Hill Companies 635 Camino de losMares, Suite 212 San Clemente, CA 92672 FAX: 714-443-9602
MIO WEST-SOUTHEAST NEW MEDWONUNE PRODUCTS
FL GA, IA, IL IN, KS, KY, Ml, MN, MO,
NC, ND, NE, OH, SC, SD, WI Neil Helms 404-843-4777 nhelms@mcgraw-hill.com Kirstin Pihl 404-843-4765 kpihl @mcgraw-hill.com The McGraw-Hill Companies 4170 Ashford-Dunwoody Road Suit e 520 Atlanta, GA 30319-1465 FAX: 404-256-5962 Paul Franchak 614-899-4912 franchak @mcgraw-hill.com The McGraw- Hill Companies 921 Eastwind Drive, Suite 118 Westerville, OH 43081 FAX: 614-899-4999
Ontario, Ca nada, Eastern Canada Edward Marecki 401-351-0274 617 - 860-6221 ed_marecki@ mcgraw-hill.com BYTE Magazine One Ri chmond Square Providen ce, RI 02906 FAX: 401 -351-0276
MID ATl.ANTIC
NJ, DC, DE, MD, Metro NY, PA,VA, WV Don Calamaro 212-512-4811 doncalam aro@ mcgraw-hill.co m John Ferraro 212-512-2555 jfrrraro @mcg ra w-hi ll.co m Jill Pollak 212-512-3585 jpollak@mcgraw-hil l.com The McGraw-Hill Companies 1221 Avenue of Americas, 28th Floor New York, NY 10020 FAX: 212-512-2075
SOUTHWEST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN
AL, AR, LA, MS, OK, TN,TX Jennifer Brinkman 214-688-5165 jen_brinkman @mcgraw-hill.com Chrissy Copple 214-688-5171 ccopple @mcgraw-hill.com The McGraw-Hill Companies Mockingbird Towers, Suite 1104E 1341 W. Mockingbird Lane Dallas, TX 75247-6913 FAX: 214 -688-5167
INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING SALES STAFF
Lori Silverstein, lnternotionol Soles Director. 921 East wind Drive, Suite 118, Westerville, OH 4308 1U.S.A.
Tel: +614-899-4908, Fox: +614-899-4999, lorisf@mcgrow-hill.cam
BYTE ASIA-PACIFIC
AUSTRALIA, HONG KONG, INDIA,
INOONESIA, KOREA, MALAYSIA,
PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, OTHER ASIA
ANO PACIFIC COUNTRIES,
SINGAPORE, TAIWAN
Weiyecln
weiin @mcgraw-hill.com
Jennifer Chen
jennchen@mcgraw-hill.eom
#305 Nan king East Road,
Section 3, 10th floor
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Tel: +886-2-715-2205
FAX: +886-2-715-2342
KOREA
Young-Scoh Chil)n
JES Media International
6th Fl .. Donghyc Bldg.
47- 16, Myung ii-Dong
Kangdong-Gu
Seoul 134-070, Korea
r.1: +82-2-481 3411 FAX: +82-2-4813414
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA
Jurgen Heise jhcisc@ mcgraw -h ill .com The McGraw-Hill Companies Adam-Berg-Str. 11 5a D-81735 Munich, Germany Tel : +49 -89-680701-16 FAX: +49-89-68070 1-1 B
ISRAEL
Dan Aronovic rhodanny@actcom.co.i l DARA International 11 Hasheldag Street P.O. Box 2335 Kadima 60920, Israel Tel: +972-050-945940
ITALY, FRANCE, SPAIN, PORTUGAL, SCANDINAVIA
Zena Coupe, Amanda Blaskett 101645. 1710@comp use rvt.co"I A-Z International Sales'Ltd. 70 Chalk Farm Road London NW 1BAN, E'ngland Tel: +44 171 2843171 FAX: +44 1712843174
JAPAN
Hirokazu Morita Japanese Advertising Communications, Inc. Three Star Building 3-10-3 Kanda Jimbocho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101 Japan Tel:+B l 3326 14591 FAX:+81332616 126
UNITED KINGDOM, BENELUX
Jonathan McGowan jonmcgow@mcgraw-hill.com Tcl: +441714956781
Marc Green
Tel: +44 171 495 6780 The McGraw-Hill Companies 34 Dover St. London W1X4BR En_gland FAX:+'\4 1714956734
One Phoenix Mill Lane Peterborough, NH 03458 Sales FAX: 603-924-2683 Advertising FAX: 603-924-7507
BUYERS MART & EURO-DECK Mark Stone 603-924-2533 slonc m@mcgraw-hlll.com
BYTE Deck Brian Higgins 603-924 2596 bh iggins@mcgraw -hill.co m
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
Advertising/Production FAX: 603-924-7507
Advertising Production Manager: Linda Fluhr 603-924-2551 IOuhr@mcgraw-hill.com SeniorA~rtising Production Coordinator: Lyda Clark 603-924-2545 lelark@mcgraw-hill.com
Advertising Production Coordinators: Karen Cilley 603-924-2557 kclllcy@mcgraw-hill .com Rod Holden 603-924-2675 wholdcn@mcgraw-hill.com
Senior Operations Coordinator: Lisa Jo Steiner 603-924-2540 lisajo@mcgraw-hill.com Advertising Graphics Manager: Susan Kingsbury603-924-2507 suekings@mcgraw-hlll.com
MARKETING AND PLANNING
Market Information Mana.Yer: Edward.fielding 617-860-6344 FAX: 617-860-6822 fielding@mcgraw-hill.com
Market Information Coordinator: Dylan DiGregorio 617-860-6267 FAX: 617-860-6822 digregor@mcgraw-hlll.com
Marketing Communications Manager: Carol Sanchlonl 603-924-2505 FAX: 603-924-2683 csa nch@ mcgraw- hlll.com Assistant Manager,·Trade Shows and Special Events: Arja Neukam 617-860-6378 FAX: 617-860-6307 aneukam@mcgraw-hill.com
Marketing Services Coordinator:
Kate Woodhouse 617-860-6361 FAX: 617-860-6307 woodhous@mcgraw-hill.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Customer Service U5. 1-800-232-2983 Outside U.S. +1-609-426-7676 Fora New Subscription U.S. 1-800-257-9402 Outside U.S.+ 1·609·426·5526
www.byte .com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 1 41
For more information on any of the companies covered in articles, columns, or news stories
in this issue, enter the appropriate inquiry number on the response card. Each page number refers
to the fi rst page of the article or section in which the company name appears.
INQUIRY NG.
PAGE NG . INQUIRY NG .
PAGE NG.
INQUIRY NG.
PAGE NG .
INQUIRY NQ.
PAGE NG .
A
Acer
1B
Acknosoft
321S7
Active Software
65
1015 Adaptec
117
Adobe Systems
321S2t
AGP Implementors Forum BONA 1
AMO
BONA 1
AN SI
92E
Application Consulting Group B1
Applied Voice Technology
75
Applix
Bl
Arbor Software
B 1
1000 Asymetrix
143
Autonomy Systems
321S 7
B
Baan Nederland B.V.
321S 15
BEA Systems
65
1003 Big Picture Multimedia
143
Borland International
56
Borland Open Environment 65
Brio Technology
Bt
Bristol Technologies
56
Business Objects
B 1
c
CallWare Technologies Canon Cap Gemini NV 996 Cardiff Software Casio Chili Soft 1020, Compaq Computer 1041 Computer Associates Computer Associates
International Com share Cyrix
75 321S21 321S 15
143 321S2t
tB 33, 94 75
92K Bl
BONA 1
D
Debis Systemhaus
321S 15
Decisio n·ism
65
Deitel and Deitel
1B
1042 Dell Computer
94
992 DeskStation Technologies 1B, 143
1043 Digital Equipment
94
Dimensional lnsighl
B 1
DisplayTech
16
1044 DTK Computer
94
D2K
65
1045 Duracom Computer Systems 94
E
Elms Syslems EMail Connection emWare Epson 985 Epson America
1B 75 45 1B, 321S 21 143
Equisys
75
Et ak
lB
F
1034 4 Sight 989 Fujitsu
321S 25 143
G
979, Gateway 2000
1 B,
1046,
94,
1047
143
Giga Information Group
1 B
H
1048 Hewlett-Packard 1029 Hitachi
94 1B, 321S 25
1049 IBMPCCo.
94
I·Kinetics
65
lndramat
92E
ln foGa te
321S 3
Information Advantage
B 1
Information Builders
B 1
lnformix Soltware
Bl
lnfospace
Bl
Info Value Compuling
1 B
1004 InMagic
143
1030 lntegralis
321S 25
Intel
49, BONA 1
Interactive Intelligence
75
991 Interactive Solutions
143
Interworks Systems
tB
Iona Technologies
65
IQ Software
Bl
ISoft
321S7
J
JavaSoft Jyra Research 1050 Kingdom Computers
56 321S3
94
K
Kopin
16
L
1009 LolusDevelopment lB, 65, 75, 143
9n Lucent Technologies
75. 116
Lutze
92E
M
Mainsoft
56
987 Matrox
143
Matsushita
32IS 2t
1010 McAfce
143
1008, MetaCreations
11 7
1016,
143
1019
1001 Micro Focus
1B, 143
1051, Micron Electronics
94
1052
1023, Microsoft 1024, 1039
lB, 37, 53, 56, 75, Bl , B5,
104, 11 4
MicroStrategy 1028 Mitac International
Mitsubishi Electronics Mondex International Motion Engineering Motorola 983 Mylex
B 1 321S 25 1B, 321S 3 321S 15
92E 321S 3
143
N
1021 NECComputerSystems 16, 33
976 Netscape
1B, 3B, 75, 6 1, 65
1032 NetSupport
321S 25
998 Neuron Data
143, 321S 7
New Era of Networks
65
993 NexarTechnologies
143
982 Nikon
143
Noise Cancellation Technologiesl B
Nortel
75
997 NovaSoft
143
Novell
75, 321S3
990 Number Nine Visual Technology
1B, 143
1007 NuView
143
0
Object Management Group 56
ObjectSpace
69
Octel Communications
75
1014 Olympus America
117
Olympus Optical
321S 21
Open Horizon
65
Opto·Electronics &
321S 21
Systems Laboratories
1011 Oracle
43, Bl , 111
Origin U.K.
321S 15
p
Pacific Scientific
92E
988 Pana sonic
143
Photobit
321S21
Pilo t Software
Bl
Planar America
tB
Planning Sciences International B1
Platinum Technology
B 1
1018 Play
117
1053 Polywell Computers
94
1035 Powersim AS
321S 25
Powersoft
56
1054 Premio Computer
94
Pr ent ice- Hall
1B
1026 Psion
321S 25
R
Rambus
BONA 1
980 RedCreek Communications 143
986 Ricoh
143, 321S 21
River Run
tB
s
SAP AG
321S 15
SAP America
92K
Seagate Software 984 Seagate Technology 1033 Select Software Tools
SERCOSN.A. Sharp Siemens Rolm Sierra Siliscape SLDRAM Consortium 1031 Softech Telecom Software AG 1005 Software Pursui ls Softway Systems Sony Sp eedware S3 1013 Strategic Simulations Symantec Syntell
Bl 143 321S25 92E 321S21
75 321S 21
1B BONA 1 321S 25
56 143
1B 321S21
Bl BONA 1
117 56 61
T
1027 TaiwanMyComp
321S 25
Tal arian
65
TechForce BV
321S 15
Teclnno
321S 7
Ten Four
tB
TIBCO
65
Toshiba
1B, 321S 21
TSI International Software 92K
Tyan Computer
u
BONA 1
1055, Unicent Technologies
94
1056
Unisys
1B
v
VeriSign VIA Technologies Visio 994, Visioneer 1017 1002 Visionics Visix Software VIT Vitria Technology VLSI Vision
w
56 BONA 1
1B 117, 143 143
B9 65 65 321S21
Whit eLighl
Bl
995, White Pine Software 1022
1B, 104, 143
Wiley Computer Publishing 16
999 Wrighl Strategies
143
1012 Wyse Technology
115
x
Xense
Bl
Xerox
1B
1057 Xi Computer
94
IS pages appear only in the International edition. NA pages appear only in the North America edition. E and K pages appear only in 1hc Reseller edition.
142 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
www. b~ le.com
Hardware
We look at Gateway's newest desktop-replacement notebook, new digital paint brushes from Painter, and an 800-MHz-ready Alpha workstation.
Solo9100 $4799-$5999
Enter979 on Inquiry Card.
Gateway 2000 Sioux City, SD BOO-B46 -2000 605-232-2000 http ://www.gateway.com
One Laptop, with the Works
Gateway is touting the Solo 9100 as a desktop replacement, and with 4 MB of EDO video memory, two USB ports, NTSC/PAL video input and output, a fast IR port, and up to 192 MB of EDO RAM, this system has more features than many desk top systems. A 13.3-inch XGA TFT display and a weight of B.6 pounds make this laptop system too cumbersome for use in an economy-class airplane seat, but it's ideal for taking multimedia demonstrations on the road.
The unit measures 12.3 by, 9.6 by 2.2 inches. It includes an exter nal VGA port,a serial port, a parallel port, a PS/2 port, two deep socketed CardBus slots,ajoystick/MIDI port,and a 240-pin PCI connector for docking withthe Gateway Solo station or minidock ing station. The lithium-ion battery gives up to 5 hours of battery life; actual time will vary with use. It has afull·size BB-key Windows 95 keyboard, which has a·very slight throw but is easy to use, even for touch-typists. It also has some new design enhancements for durable use and added functionality. The door that covers the par allel port,serial port,and PCI docking connector locks down when open to prevent breakage.Also, rather than force users to choose between a CD-ROM drive or a disk drive, the 91 OO's drives are stacked in a single, removable, modular unit. The system comes with either a 150- or 166-MHz Pentium with MMX, a 256-KB pipelined burst cache, integrated 16-bit stereo Sound Blaster Pro- compatible Allee Lansing dynamic-equalization speakers, and the Intel 430TX chip set. The 91 OOLS, with a 2-G B hard drive and 24 MB of SDRAM, costs $4799; the 91 OOXL, with a 3-GB hard drive and 64 MB of SDRAM, costs $5999. - Jason Krause
www.byte.com
Security
Security for the Small Office
RED CREEK 'SRAVLIN LINE OF STAND alone security products provide standards-based encryption and authentication for mobile employ ees and small offices. The Ravlin 4 ($ 1300) unit has an encryption throughput of 4 Mbps and creates VPNs over private and public net works through DES encryption. The Ravi in 10 ($3500) also uses DES with two lOBase-T Ethernet ports for secure network connections. Th e Raviin Remote Access is aver sion of the Ravi in 10 with the same standard features, but with soft ware that lets remote users log in securely. All three products are designed for Windows 95 and NT installation. Contact: RedCreek
Communications,
Newark, CA, 510-745-3900;
http://www. redcreek.com.
Enter 980 on Inquiry Card.
Storage
RAID for the Small Office or Home
Contact : Mylex Corp. , Fremont, CA, 510-796-6100; http://www.mylex.com. Enter 983 on Inquiry Card.
Faster Access to Data
THE SIDEWINDER 50 ($4000) ISAHIGH end tape backup for midrange servers using Sony's new Advanced Intelligent Tape standard, which supports memory chips embedded in storage cassettes. With a 16-Kb programmable memory chip built
into the data cartridge, the Side winder 50 speeds up file access by storing reference information on the chip that is normally stored on tape, reducing seek time. The Side winder 50 has aself-cleaning head, Advanced Metal Evaporated me dium, and a capacity of 50 GB with data compression or 25 GB native. Contact: Seagate Technology, Scotts Valley, CA, 408-438-6550; http: // www.seagate.com. Enter 984 on Inquiry Card.
RAIDPLUS($179-$499) ISA SCSI host bus-adapter card for small office and home environments. RAIDPlus can support up to eight drives per adapter for mirroring and/or striping capabilities. RAID Plus is designed for users who want the performance gains that are associated with RAID hardware (mainly for graphics or CAD appli cations) or for small offices that need reliable backup, which is still typically a high-end solution with hardw are of this kind .
Printers
Create Bigger,
Bolder Prints
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERSAND GRAPHIC artists can produce full-bleed color prints and presentation material at 1440 dpi with the Epson Stylus Color 3000($1995). The printer can handle paper ranging from 4 by 4 inches to 17 by 22 inches and has a built-in tractor feed and banner
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 143
What's New Hardware
paper holder. It uses Epson's Micro Piezo technology, which accurately and consistently places dots on the page with electromechanical pres sure.This process is less heat-inten sive than previous technologies, let ting th e Stylus Color 3000 use faster-drying ink. Contact: Epson America, Torrance, CA, 800-463-7766; http://www.epson.com. Enter 985 on Inquiry Card.
One-Stop Digital Camera Printing
You CAN PRINT COLOR PHOTOS DIRECTLY from digital cameras with the RXP 10 digital color printer ($499) with out processing photos on aPC. The printer has controls for sharpness and softness, allowing you limited control over photo quality. This eliminates some of the need to use PC-based photo-imaging software for editing and tweaking before printing. Cameras can access the unit through a serial cable, and it prints directly from a digital cam era as well as from Windows or a Mac. The RXP-10 prints at 640- by 480- dpi resolution with a digital camera input or 700- by 480-dpi resolution with a PC connection. Contact: Ricoh,
Sparks, NY,
800-225-1899;
http://www.ricohcpg.com.
Enter 986 on Inquiry Card.
Networking
Easy Internet Access
THE MATROX !SWITCH ($999) HAS EIGHT switched lOBase-TEthernet ports, two enhanced serial ports for mo dem connections, and wire switch ing for instant Internet access for small office environments. The iSwitch supports any type of mo
dem, including 56 Kbps and ISDN. With two serial ports and eight Ethernet ports, you can significantly reduce charges to ISP accounts, as well as build a small, high-speed LAN. The iSwitch protects against outside hackers mapping your IP addresses and comes with firewall protection. Contact: Matrox,
Dorval, Quebec, Canada,
800-837-3611 or
514-969-6080;
http://www.matrox.com.
Enter 987 on Inquiry Card.
Scanners
A Smaller Desktop Color Scanner
THEVISIONEER PAPERPORTSTROBE (WIN dows, $299; Mac, $329) is an update of the PaperPort desktop scanner, with a new imaging tech nology and color scanning. The Strobe measures 11 by 2 by 2.5 inches. It scans photos and color or black-and-white documents or business cards, which you can save in various formats. With the bun dled TextBridge and PaperPort Links software, you can drag and drop documents or photos into Windows applications. Contact: Visioneer, Fremont, CA, 510-608-0300; http://www.visioneer.com. Enter 994 on Inquiry Card.
Systems
Walking and Talking with Your Computer
THE INTERACTIVE SOLUTIONS MENTIS ($3699) computer measures 5'h by 7'h by 1'h inches. It features a 75- to
166-MHz Pentium processor, a2.5 GB IDE hard drive, a removable 6x CD-ROM drive, aSound Blaster Pro audio card, and an MPEG decoder card. You can wear it on the hip with an LCD mounted waist high or with an optional head-mounted moni tor. The manu facturer claims the lithium-ion battery lasts 6 to 8 hours. You can use a keyboard, but it is optimized for voice-recogni tion applications. The programs this product runs are interactive tuto rials and diagnostic programs called Real-Time Mentoring, designed for technicians to take into th e field and use to make repairs. Contact: Interactive Solutions,
Sarasota, FL,
888-463-0474 or
941-753 -5000;
http://www.i11fo-isi.com.
Enter 991 on Inquiry Card.
Beat PC Obsolescence
THENEXAR XPA (STARTS AT $1100), OR Cross Processor Architecture, is a family of mini-tower PCs that fea
Are You Ready for 800 MHz?
THE RUFFIAN IS ENGINEERED FOR POWER hungry users. It is optimized for 3-D animation and CAD programs. It has plenty of room on the motherboard for new add-in cards. It features six PCI slots, on-board Ultra Wide SCSI, and 10-/100 Mbps Ethernet. The Ruffian RPX Workstatio n/Server ($5995) sup ports Alpha processors at speeds of up to 600 MHz currently, and future CPUs up to 800 MHz. The Ruffian runs Windows NT and has 128-bit memory access, 64 MB of memory, and six DIMM sockets, for up to 768 MB of memory boost. Contact: DeskStation
Technology,
Lenexa, KS,
800-793-3375 or
913-599-1900;
http://www.deskstation.com.
Enter 992 on Inquiry Card.
Add-ins
High-Performance Graphics
ture an easily removable and up gradable motherboard for simpli fied processor changeovers. The mini-tower ch assis is designed for easy access, with a motherboard that slides out. The Nexar mother board is modular, with the proces sor, chip set, and memory sockets on one half and 1/0 controller inter nals and expansion slots, which are not as susceptible to obsolescence as processors, on the other half.To upgrade, simply slide out th e old motherboard and snap a new one in. Nexar has Pentium, Pentium Pro, dual Pentium Pro, and Pentium II boards available. Contact: Nexar Technologies, Westborough, MA, 888-639-2772 or 508-836-8700; http://www.nexarpc.com. Enter 993 on Inquiry Card.
THEREVOLUTION 30 ($349 TO $449) IS agraphics card with anew acceler ator chip. It supports advanced OpenGL and Direct3D features. An 8-KB on-chip texture cache allows for faster rendering, and an exter nally mounted 220-MHz DAC pro vides cleaner video signals to the monitor. A floating-point setup engine coupled with a 128-bit 3-D drawing engine provides enhanced graph ics performance. Contact: Number Nine Visual
Technology,
Lexington, MA,
617-6 74-0009;
http://www.nine.com.
Enter 990 on Inquiry Card.
Peripherals
24x CD-ROM Drive
THENEW PANASONICCD-ROM DRIVES offer a transfer rate of 24x in a standard-size 5'/,-inch unitthatfits
144 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1997
Software What's New
in a PC drive bay. The drives range in price from $199 to $209 and offer a seek time of 85 ms. At a speed of 24 x, the transfer rate equals 4104 KBps. The drives fea ture CD audio output through a headphone jack and power-save features for controlled power con
sumption. CD-ROM, CD-Audio, Photo CD, CD-R, and CD-RW are supported, as well as Video CD and CD-I. An MPEG board is needed to support the last two formats. Contact: Panasonic, Secaucus, NJ, 800-742-8086; http://www.pa11asonic.com. Enter 988 on Inquiry Card.
A Powerful Pen Tablet
THE STYLISTIC 1200 {$3300) IS ASYS tem in a pen tablet. It comes with a 120-MHz Pentium processor and has a 1.4-GB hard drive, aUSB, and a 128-bitvideo controller built into a pen tablet. With 16 MB of EDO RAM, expandable to 48 MB, the Stylistic 1200 is a portable system in a hand-held unit without cum
bersome keyboards or input devices. It runs Windows NT, Windows 95, orWindows3.11, and is ready for PC Card add-in WAN radio devices, enabling you to work remotely. Contact: Fujitsu Personal
Systems,
Santa Clara, CA,
800-831-3183;
http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com.
Enter 989 on Inquiry Card.
Digital Camera
SOFTWARE
Video
The New Storage Medium: Floppy Disks
The Future of Videoconferencing
WHILE THE DEBATE RAGES OVER THE BEST
digital-camera storage medium, WHITE PINE'SMEETINGPOINT {$1995
Sony turns to an old friend, the 3'h $10,000) conference-server soft
inch 2HD floppy drive. The Mavica ware supports the International
{$400-$700) stores images on disks Telecommunications Union's H.323
in JPEG formatand formats disks in standard for conferencing over
DOS, making them operable with packet networks. Meeting Point
Windows or Mac applications. The makes true group conferencing and
camera uses rechargeable lithium multipoint collaboration manage
ion batteries, and the LCD screen able. Any standards-based client,
tel Is you how much battery life is such as Microsoft's NetMeeting,
left in minutes. Disksstore 40 images Intel's Internet Vid eophone, or
in standard mode and 20 at high White Pines' CU-SeeMe, can par
resolution.It has a2.5-inch LCD with ticipate in full multipoint group
a 30-fps video display and built-in conferences. Users can participate
flash. The camera has aphoto-edit in conferences regardless of the
ing application.There are two mod hardware and software that they
els.The higher-end model has a 10 use. With Meeting Point, you can
to-1 zoom lens.
control bandwidth usage in group
Contact: Sony Electronics,
conferences, minimizing the im
Park Ridge, NJ,
pact on a network with multicast
201-930-1000;
ing and other bandwidth-optimiz
http://www.sony.com/mavica. ing technologies.
Enter 981 on Inquiry Card.
Contact: White Pine,
Camera, Audio Recorder, and Messaging Center
Nashua, NH, 603 -886-9050; info @wpine.com; http://www.wpine.com.
Enter 995 on Inquiry Card.
THECOOlPIX300 {$699) IS ANEW HYBRID
camera, audio recorder, and message pad product that Nikon is calling a
Programming
personal imaging assistantThe cam era has an output resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, allows continuous
Build Applications for Hand-Held Devices
shooting at 1 fps, and stores photos
as standard JPEG images. The unit WINDOWS CE AND NEWTON APPLICATION
includes4MB ofinternal flash mem developers have a new develop
ory, which can store 132 images in ment platform, Wright Strategies'
standard mode or 66 at high resolu FormLogic 3.0. FormLogic {$195
tion, or 17 minutes of audio in the per seat) consists of application
ADPCM format. The built-in touch model and management tools de
screen/2.5-inch color LCD allows you signed to accommodate the lim
to review images instantly without ited computing power and net
having to upload them to aPC. as well working capabilities of Newton OS
as write messages with astylus.You and Windows CE.You use the Form
can store these messages separately Log ic Builder to build applications
from the photos or merge them into with standard languages such as
a photo for documentation.
Visual Basic and C++ in a visual
Contact: Niko11,
environment. Developers can cre
Melville, NY,
ate and input images for touch
800-526-4566;
screens on the Newton MessagePad
http://www.nikonusa.com.
130 and 2000 interfaces. Another
Enter 982 on Inquiry Card.
product, the FormLogic Applica
ti on Server ($1000 per port), facil itates the integration of hand-held applications with LANs, dial-up communications, TCP/IP, and Cel lular Digital Packet Data networks. Contact: Wright Strategies,
La Jolla, CA,
619-551-6808;
http://www.wrightstrat.com.
Enter 999 on Inquiry Card.
Write and Rewrite Application Rules
PRESENTER/J ($495), APURE JAVA GUI toolkit, and Advisor/J ($6000 per developer), aPureJava rules engine, combine to create an open-com ponent framework for building Java applications. Advisor/J is a set of
Java class libraries that runs on any Java virtual machine and Web browser that simplifies embedding business rules into an applet, client, or server application. Developers not only add logic and rules to soft ware with this product but they can also rewrite ru les without recom piling applications. Presenter/J isa GUI builder with a set of interface components for Java applications. Contact: Neuron Data, Mountain View, CA, 415-528-3450; http:I/www.neurondata.com. Enter 998 on Inquiry Card.
Visual Java for Visual Basic Developers
Two NEW EDITIONS OF SUPERCEDE, THE Java/ActiveX edition ($199) and the Database edition ($499), make it easier to change applications writ ten in other languages into Java. The Java/ActiveX edition allows you to develop pure Java applets, translate existing Visual Basic proj ects into Java, and also build Win dows-based Internet applications that use Java and ActiveX controls. The new Database edition uses a
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER 1997 BYTE 145
What's New Software
drag-and- drop interface to imple ment Java Database Connectivity for database development. Contact: Asymetrix, Bellevue, WA, 206-462-0501; http: // www.asymetrix.com. Enter 1000 on Inquiry Card.
Painter 5 (Mac/Win 95) $449 Enter 1019 on Inquiry Card.
Beat the Clock
M1cRo Focus's SoFTFACTORY/2000 application suite employs "win dowing," a technique that leaves two-digit date fields in place but adds logic that allows programs to
MetaCreations Corp.
Carpinteria, CA
800-846-0111
408-430-4100
fax: 408-438-9670
http://www.metacreations.com
differentiate between centuries. Windowing minimizes risk by reducing the overall effort and offers flexible and incremental implementation.Owners ofCOBOL based legacy systems use SoftFac tory/2000 to identify and reinter pret the logic that dictates how years are read by a system. For $35,000, the Revolve/2000 appli cation assesses and identifiesyear-
field problems, and the SmartFind module that creates the new logic costs 9 cents for each line of code written. For large legacy systems, this could mean millions of lines of code. To conduct system testing, the Workbench/2000 costs $5000. Contact: Micro Focus,
Palo Alto, CA, 800-872-6265;
http://www. micro(ocus.com.
Enter 1001 on Inquiry Card.
Applications
Is True Interoperability Here?
ANYSOFT'S ANY97 ($69) PROMISESAN open cross-platform application environment for PC users to open any Windows application, includ ing Internet, legacy, and PC. This application-independent tool sup ports user components installed on a system as part of applications from Microsoft, Lotus, Corel, and other publishers, and activates them using asimple UI. With asin gle GUI, you can access informa tion from heterogeneous platforms and applications.Currently, Any97 supports only OLE components, but it's slated to support ActiveX and Java in the future. Contact: Anysoft, Cambridge, MA, 617-868-3397; http://www.anysoft.com. Enter 1006 on Inquiry Card.
Business
·New !$rushes Make You
·
1- .
·
¥·' .
a Better Paniter
·F· racial Desjgn's Painter nasalways been afavorite among artists
, _. for its brushes that closely simulate natural media. Version 5's
,
~
~
'\;_ne,.w.b·rushes! filt!3rsL!Ind
otl)ed!3atures
sh8!!1d
~roaden~
,'
1ts·appeal
~¥,tp,neYI. alldieng,es without d_iminishing its.status .among artists.
. One of.the m_ost appealing additions is "photo brushes" that you
·4se to touch up scanned photos.These photo brushes letyou elim·
...inat.e sc;ratchel? or recolor and.tint photos. Painter 5 has other new
°'-) ru$1)es, too:.:The cloning brushes do more than sta,mp out image·s
~'t'· ·.<t -
.> ·
.,
i
.
.. .
' '
.
.· coci,kJe·cutter'style; tliey can·also mak!'! a photo seem like a.paint·
.irfo. The layer brusheS'are akin to painting.on glass dverliys. And
;. tl)e gooey brushes do exactiy-that-tuniimages into-liquid pools
>'th~l,Yli>U can PxHll, P\JSh, and pinch.
./
:. :.
·~,,~. Some qfthef cooler and'ni·o~ useful flc:iater:stwhicli are·fi(ters that ~ · ' _: can dynamically a,pply special effects to agi~~li'layer in your.image, .
. -jnclude liquid metal, which g.:iE!cS the effectofdripping,metallic ~int,
· · arid:glass distortion and l<aleidoscope lens!'!S that alter th,e look.of :,..the layer Ul)der:neath, mµq~ as viewing an i111age under'glass wo.uld: .
, ' ·' Qther ada;i1ci!1!l incl4de acy improved interfac~ ..;.;ith tea~·off tool ,
pal~ttes, the ~ility to create eye-catching Internet effects fafrly eas·
ily, and Kodak;s Color Management, for consistenoy in production.
· Also worth noting are'seme excellent masking features and the abil·
'lh! to·.e,asJly share files be~een l?hotoshop<4 an~ Painter Wainter
~ Ca.n·read and Write PhotoshopJiles). Given all-these changes;Painter
·, 5 remains a prime paint"tool-and has evolved into a program-that
.g~phiG designers and business users involved with professional
.,.: i!J1~ge editing_should ·cons\~~rforthei~softy-(are shelf. -Jcm P!!pper
:r~?</ , '
· }.
,
I
Peripherals
Autom ated Internet Data Entry
A Face Your Computer Will Love
VISIONICS' FACEIT PC 3.0 ($99) USES A videoconferencing camera that's mounted on a Pentium-powered PC to control access to your system. Facelt PC 3.0 automatically detects the presence of a face in video and matches it to a database of autho rized users' faces. Ifsomeone is not an authorized user, he or she is de nied access, the software saves a thumbnail of the person's face and the time they were viewed by the camera, and gives them the option to leave a standard MIME e-mail message with the thumbnail for the system's owner. Authorized faces are saved as standard JPEG files. Contact: Visionics Corp., Metuchen, NJ, 90 8-744 - 1585; http://www.faceit. com. Enter 1002 on Inquiry Card.
COUECT DATA FROMINTERNET ORINTRANET resources with Cardiff Software's TELEform ($4995). TELEform creates HTML forms that can be accessed, filled out, and submitted by anyone with a Web browser and transmit ted to an Internet server using stan
dard protocols such as MAPI and POP3. The forms are converted into the appropriate database language and sent to a database for process ing.TELEform supports HTML 2.0 and requires access to a Web server for posting forms created with it. Contact: CardiffSoftware, San Marcos, CA, 760-752-5200; http://www.cardiffsw.com. Enter 996 on Inquiry Card.
146 BYTE SEPTE MBER 199 7
Software What's New
New Work-Flow Functionality
NOVAWEB ISASUITE OF JAVA-BASED DOC umen t management business applications that document and manage work flow. Two new re leases, NovaWeb/Approve ($750) and Nova Web/View ($50),supple-
ment th is suite. NovaWeb/Approve gives employees the ability to review and approve documents via the work flow. With an open-stan dards approach, it can run through any Java-enabled browser; with an HTML editor, users can create and modify documents. NovaWeb/ View is asearch-and-view function
Software Update
Ray Dream Studio release 5, from Fractal Designs, updates the pop
ular 3-D illustration program with new tools for more realistic 3-D rert~ering . The application inciudes new.object-cre;ition tpol~;· new .
animation tools (including physically based behaviors suc.h as colli
sion detection and gravit'(~. ner' rendering effects such is visible
lights and depth offield, and anewtool for a.hand-draym look called Natural Media. flay Dr.earn Studio.51.!pports·Apple~s 0.uickDr,i~JDan·~
Microsoft's Direct3D software arid hardware acceierators'for better '.
on-screen.previe~s. You can export files directly in VMRL for on-line . .pres~ntation. The program supp.Qrts drawing.pr9gram·ssuch as.Corel
Drawanil ·Adobe Illustrator anql~·~ users iitiport 3DMF orD~Ffile .
· format:s from other 3-D desigri:P-rograms: :r.
·
, c dntaat: M.etaCreation;, Sc~tts Valley, CA, 800-297-26_65;
hff;p: f(www. fractal.com. '·
·
Ent~r: t 008 pn lnquir.y Ca~d:'
Release 8of Lotus cc:Mail,the populare-mail system,provides lnter
nef e-mail'integration with support for Internet standards, includ
'fhg'POP3,·IMAP4.- LflAP, and~MIME..The bundied'Lotils Miffl,4.5.is a
native POP3 eonnector that lets users acee~ mailboxes fror,n any POP3 client including Web browsers. Rel~ase 8 provides a,n up,grade ' path·and backward compatibilityforcc:Mail.r~easeG use~~Jhjsver- .
··slQil also includes an enhanced;version Of cc:Mail for the Web that .
that gives workers access to docu ments without theability to anno tate or change text Contact: NovaSoft Systems, Burlington, MA, 617-221-0300; http://www.novasoft.com. Enter 997 on Inquiry Card.
Backup
Sync Up Your Network
SURESYNC($795 PER SERVER, $69 PER user) is synchronization and disas ter-recovery software for manag ing remote PCs on LANs and WANs. It organizes and manages synchro nization between disparate PCs and disparate backup disk drives. With SureSync, you can provide rules and requirements for synchronizing files by selecting unidirectional or bidirectional synchronization, as well as organize directories and files individually. It supports DCOM for secure communication and recog nizes when files have been stored multiple times. Contact: Software Pursuits, Alameda, CA, 510-747-6900; http://www.spursuits.com. Enter 1005 on Inquiry Card.
The Web
Build a Bug-Free Web Site
BIGPICTURE MULTIMEDIA'S MORTAR 2.0 aims to be an all-encompassing tool for Web developers. It integrates Java 1.1, Dynamic HTML, and FTP and HTIP clients for automating changes to aWeb site. Also, it hasa URL-verification tool, for checking all external links, and asite mapper with graphical notations marking any errors within asite to help elim inate bugs before you go live. The program runs on Windows 95 and NT. It costs $499. Contact: Big Picture Multimedia, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 888-424-4742; http: / / w w w.bigpic.corn . Enter 1003 on Inquiry Card.
Untangle Your Intranet
INMAGICAND Lvcos's INTERNET SPIDERING technology is the basis for this intranet-indexing software. Spiders gather and index on-line docu ments, and this Windows NTspider ($995) automatically builds a cat alog database that personnel can search using a standard Web browser. The Lycos Intranet Spider eliminates trial-and-error search ing by enabling users to preview
?:;..~\· -~;:tJ·:~; ....'7.'~.t ':!~ ~..:~1.f~- ;.~;~'
Se~r(.. fOf ,dowlH:nU.br,<OntMll Of lbt,e!.(i · "'·
·~-..../~~··L~.S-~ >~:. :~ ···f)~;;!_:;~~!~J
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multiplesearchresults and has doc ument management control for redistributing information in the intranet environment. Contact: /nmagic, Woburn, MA, 617-938-4442; http://www.inmagic.com. Enter 1004 on Inquiry Card.
Networking
Personalized
Windows NT
NuVIEW MANAGEX 2.0 ($299) EXTENDS Microsoft's Management Console for Windows NT with personalized remote-control functions. The NuView Management Console lets managers customize NT and Back Office functions such as database, security, and operations manage ment according to their everyday needs. There are seven snap-inmod ul es, such as a Reboot/Shutdown module, which reboots systems remotely, and an Event Log module, which prioritizes, filters, and con solidates log messages and can automate functions on remote sys tems. NuView hasSNMPsupportto hand le event messages from con soles such as Tivoli TME. Contact: NuView, Houston, TX, 281 -497-0683; http: //www.nuview.com. Enter 1007 on Inquiry Card.
www.byte.com
SEPTEMBER1997 BYTE 147
Advances and Retreats in Computing
Besieged with mail, fax es, voice mail, e-mail, FedEx, UPS, Western Union, pages, phone
veloped by WormWare Productions, of Cuper ti no, California. Three months ago, on a lark,
NANO-QUALITY NOTES
As promised, we have begun publishing our new journal, "Nano-Quality." It's off to a rousing start.
calls, and just plain yelling, to we bought a copy for
CEOs from more than 1200 corporations have writ
day's managers are caught in an " Executive Dilemma." As a Reuters wire-service report re
$4.95 at CompUSA and installed it on our Mac's 10-GB drive. We had no
ten in, asking how they can go about starting NanoQuality programs within their own companies. To them
cently put it, ''They believe they real plans to use it; we we can only say this: If you feel the need to ask, then you most likely
cannot operate efficiently with out high levels of information.
h But this
T e heavy load
of often-
E irrelevant n data affects their efficiency of and clogs the corporate ma
chine." Stilted, but true.
In However, help has arrived.
o- We recently tested a program
called "Stochastic Cleaner." Sta
GIut Sto~ chastic Cleaner claims to "clean
your hard disk of all the clutter
purchase and install any already have a Nano-Quality program at your company.
thing we find in Comp-
USA for $4.95, on principled
The only $4.95 software pro- what files you will never need,
whim. Eight weeks later, in one of grams it did not remove were the but it makes reasonable guesses.
d
thosecoinci- other programs manufactured by In all the time that we've been
dences that WormWare Productions (about using Stochastic Cleaner, we can
600 MB's worth, altogether}, in- honestly say that we haven't
eluding the earlier copy of Sta- found a single file that it lost. We can recommend this prod
make you wonder, a review copy of Sto chastic Cleaner arrived in
uct without hesitation. It's one of those rare ones that does just
whatitsmanufac
the mail. Having forgotten about the earlier copy, we in
turer claims. chastic Cleaner
that you probably don't need," stalled and actually ran the new chastic Cleaner.
wipes your
and that's exactly what it does one. Were we impressed: Sto
One terrific thing
(more aboutthe word "probably" chastic Cleaner removed every about this program
in a minute).
piece of $4.95 software on that is that every time you run it,
Stochastic Cleaner was de- disk-more than 9 GB's worth. it leaves an extra copy of
itself on your disk. That's
Mouse Paper Chase
mighty handy in case you
ever need to know how
Following the release of our Mouse Report, the commodities markets have run wild. Our five -year
many times you've run it,
and it also makes you feel
like you've gotten a terrific
study demonstrated that the best item to use as a computer mouse
bargain. In effect, the $4.95
buys you a lot more than just
the traditional "single-copy
pad is actually a pad of paper, not
license." We run Stochastic
Cleaner every morning. It's a
great way to start the day
are traditionally used. As a result you feel that you've just got
I
ten a great piece of software
z
of the report, several major paper for almost free.
C/l
s
companies have in the last two months raised the prices for mouse-quality paper. We will continue to report the details of this exciting story.
Now about that key word "probably." Stochastic Cleaner has no way to really, absolute ly, guaranteed-for-sure know
Marc Abrahams is the editorofthe Annals of Improbable Research. You ca11 contact him by sending e-mail to marca@lmprob.com.
~
;o
c52
0
"""''
148 BYTE SE PTE M BE R 1 997
www.byte .com
QUENCH YOUR THIRST FOR POWER
WITHOUT D NING YOUR WALLET.
I
* 12.1"SVGA Active Matrix Display * 16MB RAM (nMB Max)
· 256KB L2 Pipeline Burst Cache
* NEW 1.&GB Hard Drive
· Options Bay accepts 12X Max" Variable
CO-ROM. 3.5· Floppy Drive
(both included) or Optional 2nd
Lithium Ion Banery
* PCI Buswith 128-bit Graphics
Accelerator with 64K Colors
· Integrated 16-bit Stereo Sound
· Smart Lithium Ion Banery
* Microsoft· Office 97 Small
BusinessEdition
· Microsoft· Windows· 95
· lrDA 1.0 Standard Compliant
· Touchpad/Under 7 Pounds·
· Extendable 1Year Warranty'
* Upgrade to 40MB RAM. add $299. * Upgrade to a2.768 Hard Drive, add$149.
* 2nd Lithium Ion Battery, add $199.
* Motorola 33.6Fax Modem. add $149.
Business Lea se0: $108/Mo.
Order Code #800140
TO ORDER TOLL-FREE
800·247·2057
TO ORDER ONLINE
www.dell.com/buydell
Mon- Fr i 7am -9pm CT· Sat 10am-6pm CT Sun 12pm-5pm CT In Canada: call 800-233-1589
GSA Contract #GS-35F-40760
I I Keycode #01240
Sure . Power comes at a price . Fortunately, it's one you can afford. Because we've lowered the price on our award-winning. powerhouse notebook. the Latitude LM Ml 66ST. You see. we started out with the fastest Mobile Pentium' processor available. the 166MHz Intel" Pentium processor with MMXTMtechnology with a 32KB internal cache. Then we added an improved 128-bit graphic accelerator for blazing fast video. 64K color depth and true multimedia functionality. The result? Well . Windows Magazine tested an LM M166ST configuration" and puts it subtly in thei r June ·97 issue: "The fastest notebook we've ever tested with every option you could ever want.'' Not bad for a notebook line starting at under $3000. And you get all this from the only notebook manufacturer to receive an "A" grade based on PC Magazine's
July '97 Service and Reliability Readers' Survey results. So go ahead and give
us a call. Because while the performance puts the LM M166ST over the top. the price brings it well within reach .
Common features: · Mini Tower Model · 512KB L2 Cacl1e · NEW 24X Max' Variable CD-ROM Drive · Microsoft" Office 97 Small Business Edition plus Bookshelf 96 · M · Microsoft Mouse IMS lntelliMouse on XPS System) · 2 Universal Serial Bus (USB) Ports · 3 Year Limited Warranty' wi th 1Year On-site>Service
Upgrades: · 3Com· 3C905 Fast EtherLink' XL 10/100 PCI Card. add $99. · 4/BGB EIDE TR4 TBU. add $199. · HPLaserJet 6Pse Printer. add $799. · 3 yrs. On-site Service,
DELL DIMENSION" XPS H266
266MHzPENTIUM' II PROCESSOR FEATURING MMX'" TECHNOLOGY
DELL DIMENSION XPS H266
266MHzPENTIUM II PROCESSOR FEATURING MMXTECHNOLOGY
NEWDELL DIMENSION XPS M233s DELL DIMENSION XPS M200s
233MHzPENTIUM" PROCESSOR
200MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR
WITHMMX TECHNOLOGY
WITH MMX TECHNOLOGY
Common features listed above plus:
· 64MB EDO Memory with ECC
· 6.4GB Hard Drive (9.5ms)
· NEWlOOOTX Trinitron" Monitor
115.9" v.i.s.. 26dp I
· NEW Matrox Millennium II BMB WRAM Video Card
· Integrated Yamaha 16-Bi t Sound · Al tec Lansing ACS-90 Speakers
· Iomega Zip 100MB IDE Internal Drive wi th One Cartridge
Common fea tures listed above plus:
· 32MB EDD Memory with ECC
· 4.3GB Hard Drive 110ms)
· 1000LS Monitor (15 9" v.i.s .)
· NEW Matrox Millennium II BMB WRAM Video Card
· Yamaha 32 Wave Table Sound
· Allee Lansing ACS-90 Speakers
* Upgrade to 64M8 EDD Memory with
ECC. add $220.
* Upgrade to 6.4G8 Hard Drive (9.5ms}.
add$95
Common features listed above plus:
· 32MB SDRAM Memory
· 4.3GB Hard Drive llOms) · NEW 1OOOTX Tri nitron~ Monitor
(15.9" v.i.s...26dp.)
· NEW Matrox Millennium11 4MB WRAM Video Card
· Sound Blaster 16 WaveSynth Wavetable Sound
· Altec Lansing ACS-90 Speakers
· Iomega Zip lOOMB IDE Internal Drive wi th One Cartridge
Common features listed above plus:
· 32MB SDRAM Memory
· 4.3GB Hard Drive (10ms)
· 1000LS Monitor 115.9" v.i.s.)
· NEW 4MB EDO ViRGE 3D Video Card
· Sound Blaster 16 WaveSynth Wavetable Sound
· Al tec Lansing ACS-90 Speakers
* Upgrade to a IOOOTX Trinitron
Monitor (159" v.i.s...26dp}. add $99.
* Upgrade to A/tee Lansing ACS-290
Speakers with Subwoofer. add $75.
$3299 $2799 $2499 $2099
Business lease' : $116/Mo. Order Code #500609
Business lease: $101/Mo. Order Code #500606
Business lease: $90/Mo. Order Code 1500607
Business lease: $76/Mo. Order Code 1500619
-
-
,DELf DIMENSION DESKTOPS FOR tiOME
Common features: · Mini Tower Model · 512KB L2 Cache · NEW 24X Max' Variable CD-ROM Drive · NEW 56K Capable" U.S. Robotics x2 Modem · MS Windows 95 · MS Mouse IMS lntelliMouse on XPS Systems) · 2 Universal Serial Bus (USB) Ports · 3 Year Limited Warranty with 1Year On-site Service Upgrades: · Iomega Zip 1OOMB IDE Interna l Drive w/One Cartridge. add $99. · HPDeskJet 820Cse Color Printer. add $299. · 3-Pak of Zip lOOMB Cartridges. add $39.
DELL DIMENSION XPS H266
266MHzPENTIUM II PROCESSOR FEATURING MMX TECHNOLOGY
DELL DIMENSION XPS H266 266MHzPENTIUM II PROCESSOR FEATURING MMX TECHNOLOGY
NEW DELL DIMENSION XPS M233s DELL DIMENSION M166a
233MHzPENTIUM PROCESSOR
166MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR
WITH MMXTECHNOLOGY
WITH MMX TECHNOLOGY
Common features listed above plus: · 64MB EDO Memory wi th ECC · NEW 7GB Hard Drive 11Dms) · NEW lOOOTXTrinitron Monitor. (15.9"vj.s.)
Common fea tures listed above plus: · 32MB EDOMemory wi th ECC · 4.3GB Hard Drive (10ms) · lOOOLS Monitor 115.9" v.i.s.)
Common fea tures listed above plus: · 32MB SDRAM Memory · 3.2GB Hard Drive (12ms) · 100DLS Monitor 115.9' v.i.s.)
Common features listed above plus: · 16MB SDRAM Memory · 4.3GB Hard Drive (10ms) · NEW BOOLS Monitor 113.7' v.i.s )
· NEW Matrox Millennium II BMB WRAM Video Card
· Yamaha 32 Wave Tab le Sound
· Altec ACS-490 Full Dolby Surround Sound Speakers with Subwoofer
· Iomega Zip lOOMB IDE Internal Drive · Microsoft Office 97 Small Bu siness
Edition plus Encarta 97
· NEW Matrox Mil lennium II 4MB WRAM Video Card
· Integrated Yamaha 16-Bit Sound
· Altec Lansing ACS-290 Speakers with Subwoofer
· Microsoft Home Essentials plus Bes t of Entertainment Pack
* 64M8EDDMemorywithECC.add$220.
· NEW 4MB EDO ViRGE 30 Video Card
· Sound Blaster 16 WaveSynth Wavetable Sound
· Al tec Lansing ACS -290 Speakers with Subwoofer
· Microsoft Home Essentials plus Best of Entertainment Pack
* Upgrade to 64M8 SDRAM. add $199.
· 2MB EDO ViRGE 30 Video
· Sound Blaster 16 PnP Sound Card
· Allee Lansing ACS-90 Speakers
· Iomega Zip 100MB IDE Internal Drive with One Cartridge
· Microsoft Home Essentials plus Best of Entertainment Pack
* Upgrade to 32M8 SDRAM. add $99.
$3579 $2799 $2299 $1899
NEW Personal lease: $159/Mo?' Order Code 1500604
NEW Personal lease: $125/Mo?' Order Code 1500603
NEW Personal lease: $102/Mo? Order Code 1500602
NEW Personal lease: $85/Mo?" Order Code #500801
Call for details on Dell's Business Leasi
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"Monthly lease payment, based on 24-month lease arranged by Dell Financial Services LP. Due prior to delivery: 0 $318; ~S2!i0; ~$204; "$170. No security deposit required. Subject to credit approval and availability.
Lease terms subject to change.
icrosoft Windows95
add $99.
DELL DIMENSION M200a
200MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR WITH MMX TECHNOLOGY Common features listed above plus: · 16MB SDRAM Memory · 3.2GB Hard Drive (l 2ms) · NEW 800LS Monitor (13.7" v.i.s.) · 2MB EDD ViRGE 3D Video
* Upgrade to 32MB SDRAM. acid $99. * Upgrade to a 4.3GB Hare! Drive
(Wms). acid $55.
* Upgrade to an BOOHS Trinitron
Monitor (I 3.7" v.i.s· .26clp), acid $49. * 3Com 3C5098 Etl1erlink I/I 10Mbit
/SA Combo Carel, acid $69.
Business Lease: $61/Mo. Order Code 1500805
SOFTWARE
DESCRIPTIONS
MS Office 97 Small Business Edition (SBE) includes: · Word 97 · Excel 97 · Publisher 97 · Outlook 97 · Automap Streets Plus · Small Business Financial Mgr 97 · Internet Explorer 3.0
MS Home Essentials plus Best of Entertainment Pack (available on desktops only) includes: · Word 97 · Works 4.0 · Encarta 97 · Greetings Workshop · Arcade · Internet Explorer 3.0 · TETRIS. Taipei. Skifree.
Dr. BlackJack and more.
, ,;·,P,-,i,~ "';.1 .., '.71··;~~ · "1";-.,1',"-,:-.- -,, ..---,-s-,~ :;-";",..!o~.-.;; V',-,;-1.:.i_Tl:p,~'l.\~-~~·;t1~:'!.'\!F'!.':<·"r~!...
. ·NEW -DELL'. ·POWEREDGE-~SERVERS~·::\,:-·~,f&
., ··· '
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Common features: · 512KB Integrated L2 Cache · Integrated PCI Ultra-Wide SCSI
3Controller · Intel· Pro/1 DOB PCI Ethernet Adapter · Intel LANDesk' Server Manager
v2.5x · Dell Server Assistant CD · 3 Years Next Business Day On-site Service
DELt POWEREDGE" 2200 SER~- ,o ~~ POWEREDGE 2200 SERVER
266MHz PENTIUM II PROCESSOR _
233MHz PENTIUM II PROCESSOR
Ouaf Prcicilssor Capable,.RAID Capable Dual Processor Capable, RAIO Capable
Common features listed above plus:
· 64MB ECC EDD Memory
· 4GB Ultra.Wide SCSl-3 Hard Drive (27GB Max.)
· BX SCSI CD-ROM Drive
· 3Com Office Connect Hub 8-Port/TPC
· MS Windows NT' Server 4.0 (10 Client Access Licen ses)
* Upgrade to 12BMB ECC EDO
Memory. add $460.
* Upgrade to a 9GB Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 Hard Drive. acid $450.
Common features listed above plus:
· 32MB ECC EDO Memory
· 4GB Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 Hard Drive (27GB Max)
· BX SCSI CD-ROM Drive
* Upgrade to a 266MHz Pentium II
Processor. acid $300.
* Acid a 4GB Ultra-Wide SCSl-3 Hare! Drive. acid $849.
* 12/24 GB SCSI DAT Tape Backup. adcl$1099.
* APC Smart-UPS 700w Power Supply. acid $399.
$4999
Business Lease: $175/Mo.
Order Code 1250081
$3499
Business Lease: $123/Mo.
Order Code 1250080
Common features: · 256KB L2 PipelineBurst Cache · Options Bay accepts 12X Max" VariableCD-ROM. 3.5" Floppy Drive Iboth included). or Optional 2nd Li-Ion Battery
· PCI Bus with 128-bit Graphics Accelera tor witll 64K Colors · Integrated 16-bit Stereo Sound · Smart Lithium Ion Battery · Microsoft Windows 95 · lrDA 1.0 Standard Compliant · Touchpad · Under 7 Pounds· · Extendable 1Year Warranty'
DELL lATITUD~ LM M166ST
DELL lATITUDE IM M166ST
DELL lATITUDE LM M166ST
NEW DELL lATITUDE LM M133ST
166MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR W/MMX 166MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR W/MMX 166MHz PENTIUM PROCESSOR W/MMX 133MHzPENTIUM PROCESSOR W/MMX
Common features listed above plus: · 12.r SVGA Active Matrix Display · 72MB RAM · 2.lGB Hard Drive · 2nd Lithium Ion Battery · MS Office 97 Small Business Edition
* Upgrade to a 4.0GB Hare! Drive.
acid $349.
* Dell Latitude LM Port Replicator.
aclcl$159.
* Motorola 33.6 Fax Modem. acid $149. * Leather Carrying Case. acid $99.
$ 3 9 4 9r
Common features listed above plus:
· 12.1" SVGA Active Matrix Display
· 40MB RAM l72MB Max.)
· 2.lGB Hard Drive · Motorola 33.6 Fax Modem
· MS Office 97 Small Business Edition
* Upgrade to 72MB RAM. acid $299. * Upgrade to a 4. OGB Hare! Drive.
aclcl$349.
* 2nd Lithium Ion Battery, add $799. * 3Com 10Base-T Network Carel.
add $129.
$3599'
Common fea tures listed above plus:
· 12.r SVGA Active Matrix Display
· 16MB RAM (72MB Max.)
· NEW l.6GB Hard Drive
· MS Office 97 Small Business Edition
* Upgrade to 40MB RAM. add $299. * Upgrade to a 2.1GB Hard Drive.
acid $149.
* 2nd Lithium Ion Battery, acid $199.
* Motorola 33. 6 Fax Modem. acid $149.
* Dell Latitude LM Port Replicator.
aclcl$159.
* Leather Carrying Case. add $99.
$2999'
Common features listed above plus:
· 12.r SVGA Active Matrix Display
· 16MB RAM (72MB Max.)
· NEW 1.6GB Hard Drive
· MS Office 97 Small Business Edition
* Upgrade to 24MB RAM. add $99. * Upgrade to a 2.IGB Hare! Drive.
add $749.
* Motorola 33.6 Fax Modem. acid $149.
*2nd Lithium Ion Battery, acid $799.
* Nylon Carrying Case. acid $69. * Dell Latitude LM Port Replicator.
acid $159.
$26991
Business Lease: $139/Mo. Order Code 1800143
Business Lease: $127/Mo. Order Code #800t62
Business Lease: $108/Mo. Order Code 1800140
Business Lease: $97/Mo.
Order Code 1800t54
ng and new Personal leasing programs.
TO ORDER TOLL-FREE
800-348- 8348
TO ORDER ONLINE
www.de11.com/buyde 11
Mon-Fri 7arn-9pmCT Sat 10am-6pm CT Sun 12prn-5prn CT InCarrnda; call 800-233-1589 GSA Con tract #GS-35F-4076D
j Keycode #0 124 t [
· Mini Tower Model · 32MB EDD Memory · 512KB Integrated l2 Cache · 4.3GB Hartl Drive [10ms] · 1OOOLS Monitor (15.9. ·v.i.s.) · NEW 4MB EDO ViRGE 30 Video Card · NEW24X Max! Variable CD-ROM
Drive
· Integrated Yamaha 16-Bit Sound · Allee Lansing ACS-290 Speakers with
Subwoofer · NEW56K Capable.. U.S. Robotics x2
Modem · Microsoft· Office 97 Small Business
Edition plus Encarta 97 · Microsoft Windows· 95 · Microsoft lntelliMouse · 3 Year Limited Warrantyt with 1Year
On-site" Service
Personal Lease
$119/Mo:
orbuytodayfor$2679
Order Code #500811
A little overwhelmed by the rate of technology change? Suffering from the "fear of computer commitment?" Well. you can breathe easy now. Because in addition to our business lease program, Dell is now offering computer lea sing directly to consumers on all our Dell Dimension and Latitude LM systems. With an over-the-phone approval process that takes less than a minute and low monthly payments, you can get the latest technology on your desk in a snap.
But here's the real advantage: at the end of the 24-month lease period, you can trade your system in for anew one!t This practically guarantees you'll never be stuck with obsolete technology again. And in the unlikely event you need service. your system is covered by our service program
for the entire lease term . Plus, as added flexibility, you have the option to buy your leased system outright at the end of the lease term. or even extend the plan for six monthsY So call us now for more details.
0Monthly lease payment, based on 24-month lease arranged by Dell Financial Services
LP. Due prior to delivery: $238. No security deposit required. Subject to credit approval
and availability. Lease terms subject to change. tsome conditions apply.
TO ORDER TOLL-FREE
800-847·4106
TO ORDER ONLINE
www.dell.com/buydel
Mon·Fri 7am-9pm CT· Sai 10am-6pm CT
Sun 12pm-5pm CT In Canada: call 800-233· 158
GSA Contract #GS-35F-40760
IKeycode #01239 J
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