FairCom RTG COBOL User Guide

The FairCom RTG® product line leverages the technology of the FairCom Database Engine. Before explaining the details of installation and configuration, this guide will describe the features common to the FairCom RTG products.

Because the FairCom RTG products are designed as direct replacements for the native file systems, they require little or no modifications to your application.

Note: FairCom RTG V3 is based on the latest version of the powerful FairCom Server. The version numbers returned from utilities may reflect the underlying core version number of this server, which is currently V12.

You may notice references to “FairCom DB,” the database technology beneath FairCom RTG. Formerly called “c-treeACE®” (Advanced Core Engine), this technology is the high-performance server that replaces your COBOL file system.

 

How FairCom RTG Empowers Your Applications

The FairCom RTG products allow you to enhance your existing COBOL applications by upgrading the native file system to the advanced FairCom Database Engine. This file system allows direct access to your files. By replacing the native COBOL file system with a specialized version of the FairCom DB Advanced Core Engine, FairCom RTG brings many of the benefits of FairCom DB to your COBOL applications:

  • Transaction Processing
  • Client/Server Architecture, Sophisticated Caching & Index Compression
  • Multi-User Performance
  • Cross Platform/Multi-Platform Portability
  • Dynamic Backups
  • Granular Cache Support
  • Memory Files
  • Minimal Resource Requirements
  • Developer to Developer Support
  • SQL Access to Your Data

To take advantage of the complete set of features available to FairCom DB developers, you may need to use the FairCom DB Professional SDK in addition to your COBOL application development. This allows you to use industry-standard APIs such as .NET, Java or C/C++. Contact FairCom to explore using FairCom DB Professional.

 

Documentation Overview

Content: This manual contains topics to help you get up and running with your FairCom RTG product:

Audience: These topics are intended for system architects, developers, and administrators.

FairCom RTG requires very little developer effort (it is intended to require little or no changes to your application). Instead, most of your effort is in migrating your data and, if you desire SQL access, defining the record schema through an external XML file called an XDD.

For an overview of this manual and of the procedures you will perform, see the chapter titled FairCom RTG COBOL Quick Start.

 

FairCom RTG/ISAM File Handler Overview

The FairCom RTG/ISAM file system links directly into your application's runtime, giving existing applications immediate access to FairCom DB database technology without the need of recompiling. FairCom RTG/ISAM replaces the original file system. It intercepts calls for storing and retrieving records and takes advantage, when requested, of indexes over the record buffers.

An important consideration in a client/server architecture is the time spent in client/server communication (in contrast to the direct disk access of other file-systems). With this in mind, FairCom's engineers customized a special edition of the FairCom DB database engine, FairCom RTG/ISAM Server, incorporating the functionality required of the file system. The thin client sends requests directly to the server, reducing network traffic and time spent in communication.

Transactions are another advantage of running FairCom RTG/ISAM. It is suggested that customers with production databases keep transaction logs on another disk subsystem. If a disk failure occurs in the primary data subsystem, the logs remain available. Once the main subsystem is repaired (or a backup server is found), the logs can be rolled forward into a restored copy of the database.

In addition, FairCom RTG/ISAM transparently allows read/write access to data from your application through SQL and other FairCom interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET drivers.

Key Benefits of FairCom RTG COBOL

FairCom RTG provides many features for the application developer. Actual features may be limited based on particular license you have purchased. The complete list includes:

  • No need to recompile applications.
  • Quickly scale to thousands of users.
  • Eliminate persistent data corruption with advanced transaction control. FairCom RTG Server includes industrial-quality on-line transaction processing (OLTP) features that guarantee ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) properties of transactions that are transparently (to the application) activated on any table.
  • Add SQL for native data records, including tables that have multiple schema definitions (redefined fields) in the same table. See Working with Multi-Record Virtual Tables. Multiple Record Virtual Tables in the FairCom DB API Developer's Guide.
  • Support for ACUCOBOL-GT Version 6.1.0 and later and isCOBOL,
  • Support for Micro Focus COBOL and other COBOL dialects through the standard Callable File Handler interface (ExtFH).
  • Support for RM/COBOL via the Btrieve interface.
  • New Plug-In architecture allows you to extend their functionality with advanced modular capabilities such as HTTP Web Services for browser-based tools and replication.
  • Integrated as an additional file system. The file and path management is transparent for both Vision and FairCom RTG files. Details for handling FairCom RTG files are specified in the FairCom RTG configuration file. See FairCom RTG File System Details.
  • FairCom RTG and other file handlers can co-exist in the same application allowing on-the-fly data conversion from one file system to another.
  • A multipurpose ctutil utility implements similar functionality as Vision's vutil utility as well as importing/exporting ASCII files created with the Btrieve butil utility.

Cross-platform support includes Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX and others.

 

FairCom RTG Server Advantages

FairCom RTG is much more than another "COBOL driver." FairCom RTG is based on the full-featured FairCom Database proven in over 45 years powering thousands of mission-critical applications such as banking and financial transaction management, aviation flight plan coordination, package tracking, materials handling and factory automation, and health care office practice management. What do these have in common? They all depend on reliable 24/7 data integrity, advanced features and never sacrificing performance. FairCom RTG delivers these same advantages to your existing COBOL applications. This list only a peek into what your legacy applications can immediately gain from FairCom RTG.

Data integrity

Data security and protection

Performance from in-memory data caching

Availability through Database Replication

Plug-ins for Advanced server side functionality

Advanced Database Features

Centralized Management

 

FairCom RTG SQL Access for Advanced Data Query

Once you've added the many FairCom RTG server features to your application suite, you'll want to take the next step to advanced data access. FairCom RTG includes a powerful SQL engine directly over existing legacy data. No data duplication to alternate databases. No data normalization processes. No ETL, Direct SQL query reporting over YOUR data. FairCom RTG is not a read only "ODBC Driver." FairCom RTG is complete, concurrent access with read-write functionality. Locking and transaction control is completely coordinated with existing application access. See your data in a whole new view with FairCom RTG SQL.

ANSI SQL Data access

  • Advanced join engine for sophisticated data query
  • Recursive (common table expression) queries
  • Cross-database query
  • Table Valued Functions
  • Multi-row INSERT
  • Sequence number generator

Add SQL Over Legacy Data

Full-text indexing and search

Server side processing

Data Security

 

Extensive Alternative APIs and Drivers

Once you centralize complete database management over your existing data, why not open it to modern APIs and frameworks, from both SQL and fast direct record access. FairCom RTG includes a full complement of drivers and APIs immediately ready to access your data. C, Java, .NET, Python? Your choice. Pick the access method best suited for your task and framework at hand.

JSON DB API

JSON DB API

SQL Drivers

C, ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, Python, Node.js

ISAM Drivers and APIs

C, C++, Java, .NET, Python, REST

 

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