The Foundation of Model 204 Connectivity Applications

Most organizations today employ a diverse range of computers to meet different needs across the enterprise. Sharing information among them can be challenging. Unless, that is, you use Horizon from Computer Corporation of America.

Horizon places Model 204 at the heart of a diverse client/server architecture. It seamlessly communicates with other Model 204 regions, personal computers and all other major IBM communication environments. In a nutshell, it allows you to leverage all of your enterprise-wide computing resources in an integrated, distributed computing environment.

Integrated Environments

By integrating the TCP/IP and APPC (LU 6.2) communications protocols with CCA’s powerful User Language, Horizon lets you manage complex inter-process communication easily. As a result, you can create seamless cooperative application environments across address spaces on one machine, or across multiple computers running a variety of operating systems. Applications simply initiate a conversation with the system that manages the required data.

In an integrated Horizon environment the information is important, not its location. Symbolic inter-process references make dialogues location-transparent. You can, therefore, easily develop applications on one machine and install them elsewhere. Users simply request information without regard to its physical location.

And as your system grows, you can logically group access to data from new locations using the symbolic definitions, thus simplifying the process. Furthermore, you can add or modify definitions without interrupting the production environment

Horizon Advantages

	Defer Costly Upgrades - Processor upgrades can be costly. The situation is particularly frustrating when you must add capacity to one resource while others remain under-utilized. Horizon might provide a more cost-effective solution. It enables you to eliminate bottlenecks by distributing processing, even among disparate hardware and software platforms.
	Reduce Storage Costs - Some organizations distribute data by copying it to each participating platform. However, duplicating data increases storage costs and introduces the need to synchronize data. With Horizon, you can eliminate data redundancy by giving everyone access to data without regard to where it is or what technology manages it.
	Increase Productivity - By integrating the TCP/IP and APPC protocols, Horizon delivers dramatic programming productivity increases. User Language supports comprehensive database manipulation, handling both text and numeric data, control of program flow, and cooperative processing via inter-process conversation verbs. With Horizon, your programming staff can develop and deploy distributed applications as quickly and easily as those running on a single processor.

The use of symbolic references further enhances productivity. System managers can define local nodes for testing within a single copy of Model 204®, thus enabling rapid development of distributed applications without the need for time-consuming and costly coordination of remote development teams. When the application is ready for production, the system manager simply changes the network definition–without disrupting existing production applications.

Network Control and Security

Distributing processing also distributes security concerns. Instead of a single node managing security for your network, now you must address security on many nodes, both client and server. Horizon implements three types of conversation-level security:

	Trusted Requests include the user ID and Already Verified Information (AVI)
	Nontrusted requests send only the user ID and password
	Requests with no security contain no user information

Client requests must match the security level of the Model 204® server. To provide flexibility and control, you decide the access level of each server. Horizon then distinguishes between trusted and nontrusted partners–accepting requests from the former while requiring a full user ID and password from the latter.
To enhance your network control, Horizon also allows you to monitor network definitions for usage, as well as dynamically modify, add, and delete security definitions

Increase the Return on Information Investment

Your organization undoubtedly invests heavily to capture, store, and manage information. Achieving a healthy return on investment is possible only if people throughout the enterprise can make effective use of the information. With Horizon, you can store diverse data in a central repository while allowing distributed systems to operate independently against it. Using this architecture, you can choose the most appropriate hardware and software for each distributed task, confident that they all have seamless access to the central information repository.

To learn more about Horizon, contact your Account Representative, or submit an Information Request Form.