Wall Data Inc, based in Redmond, Washington with a UK base in Southall, Middlesex has launced new software products intended to bring Advanced Program-to-Program Communications capabilities to Windows users connecting to IBM Corp mainframes, AS/400s and RS/6000s. The company’s Rumba client software, enhanced with APPC, enables users to access and run AS/400, mainframe and APPC applications across the same SNA subsystem. Used with the company’s Rumba Tools for APPC, the client software provides a real-time interactive APPC development environment in Windows. The Rumba APPC engine is implemented as a native Windows application; as well as bringing multitasking capabilities to Rumba, this eliminates the MS-DOS memory limitations that have put personal computer users off APPC in the past. With Rumba for the Mainframe APPC Edition and Rumba for the AS/400 APPC Edition, users can run 3270, 5250 and APPC applications simultaneously. A single user licence for Rumba for the Mainframe APPC Edition is UKP370; existing Rumba users can upgrade for UKP70. Rumba Tools for APPC costs UKP370; Wall Data has not yet decided pricing for Rumba for the AS/400 APPC Edition. Rumba Tools for Visual Basic is available now, while the other products will be out next June.
