Storage Technology Corp is expanding its software portfolio with launch of NearArchive, a tape database management system, and a NearImage extension to it. NearArchive is designed to facilitate the archiving of infrequently accessed information to tape while making it relatively easy to retrieve either off- or on-line. The software is claimed to provide all the functions necessary for writing and retrieving data to and from tape and creating and maintaining the disk index files to it. It includes interfaces to enable tape database processing to be integrated into existing batch and on-line applications. It is claimed to give on-line recall of data within an average of 30 seconds using a 4400 Nearline tape library with multiple simultaneous retrievals from tape. The company suggests that customer billing, transaction processing and periodic monitoring of information such as utility meter reading will benefit from the new facility, but it did not give a price for it. The NearImage system combines the Near line library and NearArchive to perform the same functions to store and retrieve image data, and in cludes support for migration and retrieval of objects from tape us ing IBM Corp’s Object Access Meth od; StorageTek sees the facility being used for signature verificat ion long after the transaction was completed, and for retrieving legal documents where the original is in accessible in a vault. Retrieval time is again put at 30 seconds.
