TS/MP Pathsend and Server Programming Manual (H06.05+, J06.03+)

This cost reduction occurs because:
• TS/MP and related products provide the most complex components of an OLTP application.
TS/MP includes the Pathway monitor (PATHMON), the command interpreter for management
(PATHCOM), and the means for interprocess communication.
In addition, the TMF product provides the transaction manager, and the Pathway/iTS product
provides a multithreaded TCP for communication with terminals, including fault tolerance and
transaction protection. (On NonStop system models earlier than the Himalaya systems,
Pathway/iTS is packaged as part of the Pathway transaction processing system.)
Used with or without TMF and Pathway/iTS, TS/MP provides a run-time Pathway environment
to simplify your development efforts for scalable OLTP applications on a massively parallel
processor architecture.
• HP makes valuable application development tools and utilities available for the Pathway
environment. These development tools and utilities can significantly reduce the amount of
programming time and effort required to generate a working Pathway application.
The RSC/MP product facilitates client/server computing, allowing workstation applications
to access Pathway servers. A large number of packaged tools and utilities are commercially
available for use with RSC/MP, including the POET.
• The Pathway environment helps you standardize program code. You can repeat and reuse
code; you do not have to write the same requester and server programs over and over again.
This ability to reuse code saves development time.
• The Pathway environment allows you to isolate and test your requester and server programs
before adding them to a running application. This capability is important because coding
errors are difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to find after an application is put into
production.
• OLTP products that are compatible with the Pathway environment are available from third-party
vendors through the Tandem Alliance program.
In addition to making initial development faster and easier, the structured Pathway environment
allows you to implement enhancements and develop new applications by simply adding new
requesters, sharing existing servers, or adding new servers to the existing application. You can
use code modules in the existing application as templates for new modules in the modified or new
application.
Manageability
Online transaction processing operations present a dynamic environment in which hundreds of
different transactions—from disparate locations and many different I/O devices—can be entered
concurrently and processed within seconds. To process hundreds of transactions, thousands to
millions more application program instructions must be executed. It is critical that you be able to
control and monitor such a complex processing environment.
To control and monitor your Pathway environment—as well as simplify the task of system
management— TS/MP provides:
• A PATHMON process, which provides a single point of control over your OLTP applications
and operations
• A choice of two different system management interfaces: the interactive PATHCOM interface
and the Subsystem Programmatic Interface (SPI)
• Status and error reporting capabilities, provided through a log file and through the Event
Management Service (EMS)
Because TS/MP provides these processes and capabilities, you do not have to spend the time and
money to develop, test, and implement comparable mechanisms.
18 Introduction to Pathway Application Programming