SQL Server Magazine

Microsoft's newest enterprise interoperability server, code-named Babylon, is the company's planned replacement for the BackOffice suite's SNA Server product. As with SNA Server, Microsoft designed Babylon to integrate Windows networks with IBM mainframes and AS/400s. However, one of Microsoft's primary goals for Babylon is to move past the constraints of SNA Server and fully embrace TCP/IP as the underlying networking protocol. Microsoft's secondary goal for Babylon is to deepen the integration level that the server provides. Microsoft intended SNA Server to provide basic host connectivity, but Babylon will warp past the basic connectivity layer and into the realm of application integration. Microsoft's newest enterprise interoperability server includes many significant new features, some of which leverage existing SNA Server technology, but Babylon is still missing pieces of the enterprise-interoperability puzzle.

SNA Server Enterprise Roots
Babylon is an evolutionary but not revolutionary change from SNA Server. Although Babylon moves beyond SNA Server's connectivity constraints and extends SNA Server's integration level, the upcoming release includes many of SNA Server's enterprise-level features.

SNA Server has always provided great enterprise scalability, and Babylon will inherit this quality. Babylon will support up to 30,000 host sessions and provide load balancing and hot backup. Also, Babylon's hot backup and dynamic load balancing don't require Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS). As in SNA Server, Microsoft built these features into Babylon.

Hot backup requires at least two enterprise interoperability servers—a primary server and a backup server. The primary server maintains the configuration files that define the hosts and connections, and the backup server maintains a read-only copy of the configuration files. You use the primary server when you first establish a connection between the client and host. If the primary server is unavailable because of a network or system outage, the client system can immediately reestablish a connection to the host through the backup server. When the primary server comes back online, any new client sessions will connect through the primary server.

Dynamic load balancing is closely related to hot backup. When multiple enterprise interoperability servers are available, you can configure the servers to dynamically split client demands between the servers. As an organization requires new connections and services, Babylon automatically uses the server with the lightest load to optimize performance. Dynamic load balancing helps ensure that the host connections operate optimally without user or operator intervention.

Network Interoperability
Microsoft targeted Babylon to provide host integration at three levels: network, data-access, and application. At the networking level, Babylon will provide full TCP/IP support. SNA Server has supported native TCP/IP for client connections since version 3.0, and SNA Server 4.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and later provide host connectivity over TCP/IP. However, mainly because of the product's name, users have always perceived SNA Server as an SNA-centric product in a TCP/IP world. One of Microsoft's main goals in relaunching SNA Server with a different name is to distance the product from the aging SNA moniker.

On the server side, Babylon will support Windows 2000 (Win2K) and Windows NT 4.0. On Win2K servers, Babylon will be able to take advantage of Active Directory (AD) and Win2K's security enhancements. Babylon's AD integration will include the ability to perform LU assignments and configure host security by means of AD tools. AD will also eliminate the need to configure the Babylon server names on each client, which will simplify client configuration. Babylon's security-integration features include password synchronization between Win2K or NT and the host and single sign-on (SSO) support.

On the client side, Babylon will provide network-gateway functions for terminal emulation, printing, file transfer, and shared-folder file support. Babylon will also support the same client-side networking protocols that SNA Server supports, including TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, Banyan VINES, AppleTalk, Data Link Control (DLC), and DECnet. Figure 1 provides an overview of the network support that Babylon will offer.

Babylon will also provide a new management interface. Babylon's management console is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

For configuration and management, Babylon will provide support for Windows Management Instrumentation. WMI technology is an implementation of the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) initiative for Windows platforms. WMI lets you access Babylon services and management data through a COM programming interface. Babylon provides support for scripting in the WMI-scripting interface. To implement custom applications for automated management, administrators and developers can use a variety of COM-compatible languages, including Microsoft Visual Basic (VB), Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), VBScript, JScript, and Perl.

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