HP 3000

Hewlett-Packard first introduced the HP 3000 system in 1972. It was the company’s first computer that was designed specifically to serve the needs of the business community. It was renamed in 2000 to the HP e3000. The HP e3000 is a mission-critical system and was renowned for high availability, performance, volume and connectivity.

The HP e3000 is one of the most robust and reliable OLTP (On-Line Transaction Processing) platforms around. It runs the MPE/iX operating system which is capable of communicating with other hardware platforms. It was also designed to handle a variety of critical data processing applications. The MPE/iX OS offers system management utilities, high availability options, tools for performance measurement and monitoring and built-in features to ensure data integrity.

The HP e3000 had three main specifications:

• 9x8 Series – entry level RISC architecture
• 9x9 Series – Mid range RISC architecture
• 99x Series – Mainframe performance

The year 1992 saw the release of the first HP 9000 mid-range servers, some of these legacy systems include:

• HP 9000 Series 200, 300, 400, 500
• HP 9000 Series 700 Workstations
• HP 9000 D,K,L,N, RP Class

Integrating HP e3000 based Applications

HP e3000 servers are still running mission-critical applications today, in many different industries. The HP e3000 has an amazing up-time record and is seen as rock-solid and reliable. Although the HP e3000 hardware was scalable and architecturally compatible with other hardware, applications that resided on these platforms were not built with integration in mind, and thus the only interface to the application was that of the user, through the terminal/workstaion devices.

The application residing on the e3000 platform would have been written to support a specific terminal type, and the transport of information to and from the terminal and the e3000 server would utilize what is referred to today as a terminal data stream. This terminal data stream is the only ubiquitous, non-invasive application interface provided by a legacy application like this. MitemView utilizes this data stream as an application interface. Applications that ran on the the MPE/iX operating system utilized a data stream known as HP 700.

This means that applications which run on e3000 platforms can now be integrated, non-invasively and in real-time, with new applications, whether they are composite applications, packaged or web-based.

Integrating HP 9000 based Applications

The HP 9000 platforms are found in abundance and are a cornerstone product amongst HP Server offerings today. Unlike the HP e3000, the preferred operating system is HP-UX which is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system. It runs on their PA-RISC range of processors and Intel's Itanium processor, and was also available for latter Apollo/Domain systems.

As with the HP e3000 many of the original implementations would have seen applications written to support specific terminal types. These tended to be VT-based terminals, a terminal type originally introduced by Digital Corporation. Again it was common that the only interface with the application was between the user and the terminal, so data stream integration becomes the only method in which to integrate. MitemView has full support for the VT data stream and enables applications that run on HP 9000 platforms to be integrated, non-invasively and in real-time, with new applications, whether they are composite applications, packaged or web-based.