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Issue 2, 2016 |
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zIIP Enabler for Natural goes Com-plete
Lower your mainframe’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by moving almost all online transaction workload, in addition to batch workload, from IBM® General Purpose Processors (GPPs) to less expensive IBM® zIIP™ processors.
Introduction
Introduced in 2012, Software AG’s zIIP Enabler for Natural takes advantage of IBM‘s innovation in specialty engines to lower the mainframe’s TCO by moving almost all Natural batch workload from IBM GPPs to less expensive zIIP processors for execution. This innovation enables users to shorten their nightly batch-processing window and thereby release resources to be used for online applications.
Today, online applications driven by the newest market requirements are serving more and more mobile devices as well as increasing Internet access. Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) application workload is getting increasingly heavy and would benefit from similar resource-saving capabilities provided to batch applications. Now you can realize that benefit by running Natural for Com-plete!
Com-plete
Com-plete is Software AG’s own mainframe application server, optimized to run Natural applications. While batch processing runs single Natural programs and manages large amounts of data without human interaction, online applications are used by thousands of users or (mobile) devices in parallel to answer short requests from the Natural applications.
Com-plete is designed to run any Natural program as a standard operating system subtask. This ensures optimal parallel processing and minimal response times.
With Natural for Mainframe 8.2.6, Software AG has extended Natural to run all these subtasks on zIIP enabling you to move OLTP workload from your GPP to the less costly zIIP. To accomplish this, we have not enhanced Com-plete but Natural. For customers who already leverage zIIP Enabler for Natural, we offer this capability with Natural for Com-plete 8. 3.
Under Com-plete, Natural can move similar amounts of OLTP workload to zIIP as batch, providing you tremendous cost savings.
Requirements
The requirements to operate Natural for Com-plete 8.3 are the same as Natural Batch:
- At least one zIIP configured on your IBM mainframe
- At least one zIIP attached to the LPAR running Natural
- A license for zIIP Enabler for Natural from Software AG
- Natural for Complete 8.3 modules to set up your Natural under Com-plete
- The Authorized Service Manager (ASM) to allow Natural to use privileged functions
Natural for Com-plete 8.3 was released with Natural 8.2.6, but it will also run with older maintenance levels from Natural 8.2.
There are no special requirements for Com-plete. However, you can achieve the best results by using the newest service pack for Com-plete and an enhanced Adabas Link module.
If you have not purchased a license for zIIP Enabler for Natural, but would like to begin leveraging zIIP, just talk to your sales representative.
What if I do not own Com-plete?
If you use another TP monitor to run your online applications, I recommend that you migrate your Natural applications to a Com-plete environment. For pure Natural applications that use Adabas as its database, it is quite easy to migrate to Com-plete. Customers have confirmed that the move to Com-plete saves more resources today—even before adding zIIP enabler. With the zIIP enabler for Natural under Complete, you will be able to move almost all of your Natural online workload to a zIIP and save even more.
If migration to Com-plete is not an option for you, then I recommend you explore the benefits of adding new capabilities for Natural under IBM® CICS® or IMS™.
More information
If you would like to learn more about Natural for Com-plete or obtain an enhanced zIIP Guide that details setup, please contact me.
Be sure to check the next TECHniques edition to learn about offloading CICS and IMS workload to zIIP.