CA`s advantage EDBC delivers standards-based access to mainframe data for Web services, wireless users

Computer Associates International, Inc (CA) today announced the general availability of Advantage EDBC 1.1, a high-performance solution that provides standards-based access to mainframe data from Windows, Unix and Linux platforms. By facilitating access to legacy data through standard ODBC and JDBC interfaces, Advantage EDBC greatly eases the development, implementation and management of multi-tier applications - including those used for Web Services and wireless deployments.

Key enhancements to Advantage EDBC 1.1 include native 2.1-compliant support for JDBC; support for Windows 2000/XP, Unix, Linux and z/OS platforms; improved performance, fault-tolerance and scalability; and additional support for customers` existing security facilities.

"For nearly 17 years EDS Brazil has been a leading provider of enterprise information integration and enablement solutions for mainframe and distributed IT management to our dedicated support of multi-national information infrastructures," said Mayumi Matos, Software consulting manager, EDS Brazil. "The rich CA Advantage EDBC mainframe-to-web data integration capabilities allow us to effectively deliver the global, real-time information access our customers require to meet their increasingly critical business re-engineering challenges."

Advantage EDBC operates as a multithreaded server to manage mainframe I/O requests from networked clients. Advantage EDBC interfaces with existing mainframe security to provide high-performance concurrent access to native VSAM, CICS/VSAM, IMS, DB2, Advantage CA-IDMS, and Advantage CA-Datacom data sources. For VSAM and IMS, Advantage EDBC provides an optimised mainframe SQL engine to process requests with optimum efficiency. For relational DBMS data sources, Advantage EDBC exploits native SQL engines while seamlessly negotiating any dialect differences.

"When we had to integrate our Advantage CA-Datacom database into a web-based environment, we naturally selected Advantage EDBC," said Marcus Albuquerque, DBA at FURNAS Centrais El'etricas S.A., Brazil`s leading energy supplier for almost half a century. "Advantage EDBC provided us with the real-time mainframe connectivity, standards-based access technology, multi-platform support and integrated security we required to meet both our technical and business requirements."

Advantage EDBC 1.1 is the latest enhancement to CA`s Advantage brand of data management and application development solutions, which enable companies to transcend multiple platforms and networks in order to get the right information to the right people at the right time.

"In an increasingly information-based economy, businesses can`t allow the heterogeneity of their IT environments to hamper the execution of their e-business strategies," said Mark Combs, senior vice president, CA. "Advantage EDBC 1.1 demonstrates that CA has the technology to ensure that our customers succeed in managing their information delivery objectives."

Advantage EDBC is available on z/OS, OS/390, and MVS/ESA platforms for the mainframe data server, and on Windows (9x, NT, 2000, and XP), Unix (AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX), and Linux (Intel, S/390 and zSeries running RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, and TurboLinux 3.6) for the ODBC/JDBC client.