Databridge Installation Guide

Use this guide to install, configure, and run Databridge version 7.1. Follow the instructions for installing and upgrading the Databridge Host, Enterprise Server, Client, and other products (listed in the Table of Contents). Be sure to see:

• What's New in This Release
• System Requirements
• Installed Files (files installed during installation)

To install, configure, and run Databridge, you should be a system administrator familiar with the following:

• Standard Unisys® operations for MCP-hosted mainframes such as the CS7xxx series, Libra series, ClearPath® NX/LX or A Series

• DMSII databases and Data And Structure Definition Language (DASDL)

What's New in Version 7.1 SP1

• Eliminated the configuration parameter use_odbc_reg by making the SQL Server Client always get the SQL Server machine name from the Windows Registry instead of calling the ODBC function SQLGetInfo. The server name in the Windows Registry contains the full server name including its domain suffix, while the ODBC call returns the server name without the domain suffix. The Client uses this name to set the environment variable DBSERVER in the command file that runs the bulk loader (bcp). The machine name with the domain suffix does not always work; in some situations bcp fails to find the server. This change mitigates such failures.

• A new command named "Sessions" was added to the Client Managers page's Actions menu. This command displays the sessions that are active for the Client Manager service in a page formatted as a table. This page has an icon for terminating Customize command sessions that can sometimes get orphaned if you close the browser without properly terminating the command by pushing the "Done" button until the commend terminates. Terminating a Customize command session is handled by the service by sending it a request to save its state and exit. In the absence of this command you had to either use Task Manager (a kill command in the case of Linux/UNIX) to terminate the run or wait for the Administrative Console to time the session out after an hour of no activity.

• A new alert for the lag time exceeding a configurable threshold was added. The configuration parameter lag_time_threshold was added to control when such an alerts is generated. A value of 0 disables the alert, whose units are minutes. The parameter's range is 1 to 60 minutes and its default value is 10. To prevent constant alerts the alter is not cancelled until the lag time drops below a computed value that is much lower than the threshold.

• The 7.1 SP1 Administrative Console was enhanced so it can operate with the 7.0. and 7.1 services. This is done through protocol negotiation, where the two sides agree on which protocol level will be used. Menu items that are not supported in the older Clients are grayed out. The console code also deals with any differences in the RPC data taking the appropriate actions based on the protocol level.

• When the redefine command resulted in tables being dropped from the relational database (for example if you decided to flatten OCCURS clauses) such tables were not dropped by the client. This task was delegated to the user, who then had to run the drop scripts for each of these tables. The 7.1 redefine command automatically creates a command file (shell script in the case of UNIX) that can be run to get rid of all these tables. The script, which resides in the data source’s working directory is named src\drop_obsolete_tables_ddd.cmd, where src is the data source name in upper-case and ddd is the update level of the DMSII database.

Changes in Databridge version 7.1

• Implemented Postgres client for Windows and Linux platforms.

• Added Notifications. The Administrative Console can send alert messages using email to designated personnel when something goes wrong with a Databridge component.

• Modified the client to encrypt all passwords in configuration files (both text and binary). Previous obfuscated passwords will be encrypted when a configuration file is updated.

• Modified the redefine command to make back-to-back redefine commands work like the Administrative Console’s Customize command. As a result, the -u option for the Redefine command means start over using the control tables in the unload file.

• Added the parameter use_dmsii_keys to the Kafka client to make it use the DMSII SET selected by the Engine as the keys, rather than always using the AA Values/RSN as the key for partitioning data.

• Modified the Kafka client to support transactional operations.

• Updated the Kafka client so it can operate using the daemon on Linux. A Windows version of the Kafka client is included in 7.1.

• Modified the Kafka client to operate without requiring a database. The SQLite database is included with these clients and is used to hold the control tables.

• Enhanced the UNIX/Linux dbdaemon script to use the TERM signal to stop the daemon in an orderly fashion. Additionally, the USR1 or USR2 signals are now used to cause the daemon to write the RPC trace and the program status to the file trace.log in the working directory. The daemon script will need to be updated using the provided dbaemon.smp file as template to support this feature.

• Modified the second database connection used by the clients to be dynamic, which means that unless doing data extraction, the client uses only a single database connection.

• Switched log files to include a line that points back to the previous log file, which may have a much older date.

• Modified the client to maintain row counts for all tables. The counts are updated after an audit file switch and at the end of a client run. In the case of Oracle, do not use stored procedures if you want the row counts to be correct. In these cases, do not terminate the client prematurely (that is, do not kill the service or the client). Instead of using a UNIX kill command or using the task manager to terminate a client run, use the Administrative Console's Stop and Abort command.

• Updated the client control tables to replace all binary data (raw in the case of Oracle) by numeric data (BIGINT for the SQL Server and Postgres clients, and NUMBER(15) for the Oracle client).

• Enhanced the Oracle client’s index creation to use the parallel 8 and the nologging options to speed the index creation. In the case of a primary key, a unique index is created using use the parallel 8 and the nologging options. Once the index is created, the table is altered to add a primary key constraint, which uses the index that was created.

• Enhanced the deleted_record user column to support the data type of BIGINT(19), which causes the client to combine the timestamp with the sequence number to form a 48-bit quantity that is used in place of the timestamp. This enhancement eliminates the duplicate record problems that occurred when the same record was deleted and inserted multiple times during the same second in the client machine.

• The migrate utility, which was designed to migrate sites from command line-based operations to service-based operations in version 6.0, is discontinued in 7.1.

• The dbpwenc utility, which was designed to obfuscate passwords in text configuration files, is discontinued in 7.1. Use import and export commands to achieve the same result.

• The configuration parameter use_ctrltab_sp has been dropped for the Oracle and SQL Server because these clients always use host variables to update the control tables.

See the Databridge Release Notes for other changes and fixes.

Security Guidelines

Databridge 7.1 includes the following guidelines to decrease security risk.

System Requirements

Databridge 7.1 includes support for the following hardware and software.

System Support Updates

Note: Databridge will remove support for operating systems and target databases when their respective software company ends mainstream and extended support.

Related Documentation

Databridge product documentation

• Databridge Documentation - all guides for the current and previous versions
• Databridge installation image - the Docs folder contains the guides for installation and error codes as well as the administrator's guide for each Databridge product.
• Databridge Support Resources - includes Knowledge Base articles
• Product Help (HTML) is available for Databridge Enterprise Server and Databridge Administrative Console.

Unisys MCP Server documentation

For more information about DMSII configuration, refer to your Unisys documentation.

Description of Files on the Installation Image

The table below lists the directories and files on the installation image in alphabetical order. Databridge Host installation files (DISKINSTALL and IMAGE) are located on the root. Only 64-bit versions are provided for all Databridge Clients.