IBM has plans to make SNA more open to local area networks and distributed applications, and the company says that it may add a programing interface to Systems Application Architecture for messaging applications. Computer Systems News says that these plans are intended to improve IBM’s distributed networking capabilities, which is a must if the company is to provide support for client-server architecture. SNA is to provide Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking features, which is a staging post to accomodating high-speed broadband and fast-packet networking. Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking has been available on AS/400 and System 36 machines for some time, but not on System/370 or System/390 mainframes, and analysts are suggesting that it will be announced for OS/2 Extended Edition in March. The US trade weekly says that IBM intends to include Peer-to-Peer networking in mainframes running VTAM, and in 37XX controllers running Network Control Program, although both are long-term objectives. Analysts agree that Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking would be an enormous boon to SNA, eliminating the need for duplicating the definition of nodes in sub-areas like VTAM, and this ought to reduce administration time by 75% to just over three hours. IBM has said that it will make some of the enhancements available to other vendors, enough at least that they may participate in the peer-type SNA environment. However, others are sceptical and tend to believe that IBM will provide access to end-node configurations, but not to network-node configurations, and it is the latter that perform immediate routing in a network. Also proposed is the Common Programming Interface for Messaging, enabling SNA and IBM processors to support a range of distributed applications. However, IBM admits that the Interface is more akin to a Statement of Direction than a corporate commitment. Systems Application Architecture suppords LU6.2 protocols via the CPI-Communications interface, and IBM says that there will be another programming interface for applications using remote procedure calls defined by the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing environment. The company is also dropping hints that the Common Programming Interface for Messaging could be supported over Open Systems Interconnection and TCP/IP networks.
