Linoma's Transfer Anywhere Tool Does Greenscreen, Too

by Alex Woodie

While a GUI may be a requirement for new software purchases in many IT sectors, in the iSeries world, users often prefer a 5250 screen, because it allows them to accomplish some tasks faster. To address the concerns of these hardcore greenscreen devotees, Linoma Software last week announced it has included more greenscreen commands with Transfer Anywhere version 1.6, a new release of its multiplatform data transfer utility.

Transfer Anywhere is a flexible Java program that converts, compresses, encrypts, and distributes files among OS/400, Windows, Linux, and Macintosh clients. As a database replication tool, Transfer Anywhere can pump records among DB2/400, DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, and Informix databases. It can also convert the files to Excel, HTML, XML, and fixed-width or delimited text files; compress them using ZIP; encrypt them using PGP; and then distribute them via e-mail, FTP, or file them in OS/400's Integrated File System (IFS) or the Windows NTFS file system. It does other things too, but this gives you an idea of the product's range.

With version 1.6, Linoma has enhanced the product's greenscreen capabilities with the addition of several new native iSeries commands and the improvement of several existing commands. Linoma gives users the option of using a greenscreen interface or a Java GUI for just about everything you can do with Transfer Anywhere. The exception is setting up data transfers--that must be done with the product's graphical wizard.

The first of the new commands in Transfer Anywhere is Work with Properties (WRKPRP), which makes it easier to change the product's properties--such as connection settings, FTP retry values, and history purge settings--from a greenscreen interface. Also the product now includes a native iSeries menu that allows user to quickly access all Transfer Anywhere iSeries commands.

Another native iSeries command, called Copy Transfer (CPYTFR), was added to allow copying a Transfer Anywhere definition from one installation of the product to another. Linoma says this command is useful for promoting new data transfers from development into production environments, or for duplicating transfers in high availability environments.

Linoma also created two native iSeries commands, ZIP and UNZIP, to compress and decompress files up to 9 exabytes in size (that's 1 billon gigabytes for all you non-math majors). The ZIP command allows for wildcard selections of files, password protection, and different compression levels. Both commands can be run from an OS/400 command line, placed in a CL program, or run from a job scheduler for automation, Linoma says. The company also took the opportunity to enhance several other native iSeries commands, including the ENCRYPT, DECRYPT, SGNFIL (Sign File), and VFYSIG (Verify Signature) commands.

Linoma emphasized that Transfer Anywhere includes native iSeries commands because of the false perception that some people in the industry have that Transfer Anywhere transfers must run from a GUI, says Brian Pick, a Linoma marketing manager. " It can run that way, but most people just use the GUI interface for creating the transfer, [and] have it run natively in a CL program or on the iSeries scheduler," he writes via e-mail. "You do have to first create the transfers from the GUI interface though."

The new release also gives users the option of sending encrypted files to trading partners that are using an older version of third-party PGP software, as this release supports PGP version 3 digital signatures. For a full list of new features and fixes in Transfer Anywhere version 1.6, click here.

Transfer Anywhere version 1.6 is available now. The product supports OS/400 V5R1 and higher, and starts at about $4,000. For more information, visit www.linomasoftware.com.