NEON Systems' Latest Release of Shadow Direct v.4.8 Enhances Mainframe Access for J2EE and .NET Applications

Business Wire, Jan 22, 2002

Business Editors & High-Tech/Internet Writers

SUGAR LAND, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2002

NEON(R) Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:NESY), a leading provider of data access, legacy renewal and OS/390 enterprise system management solutions, today announced the release of Shadow Direct(R) v.4.8, the company's unique open architecture platform for direct, transparent access to mainframe data sources. Shadow Direct v.4.8 provides business customers with an efficient, easy-to-use and flexible solution for integrating OS/390 data sources and transaction environments into composite applications, such as webservers, application servers, package applications or client/server computing environments.

Key Features of Shadow Direct v.4.8

The latest release of Shadow Direct v.4.8 offers a number of new customer-driven features including:

-- Shadow JCA Adapter -- Shadow Direct JCA adapters support the current JCA 1.0
specification, providing JCA system contracts like connection management and
transaction management. In addition, the new adapters also support features of
the proposed JCA 1.5 specification like connection pooling, two-phase commit
support, support for in-bound communication and support for XML and Metadata.
The new adapters allow JCA-compliant application servers to integrate with
Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) built on mainframe data and transactions.

-- Linux Client Driver -- The NEON Client driver has been ported to Linux
running on S/390,and has been modified to support the IBM HiperSocket
technology for high-speed communications between Linux resident J2EE
application servers on S/390 and the OS/390 partition.

-- Integrating Business Logic Embedded in NATURAL Programs -- The Shadow ACI
Support Module provides access to NATURAL transactions residing in CICS
environments enabling organizations to leverage existing business logic with
distributed applications.

-- Data Transmission Encryption with SSL -- Shadow offers hardware-based
encryption utilizing IBM's cryptographic coprocessor with GSK SSL. CPU
utilization is dramatically reduced by using the off board cryptographic
coprocessor to handle CPU intensive encryption routines. The Shadow Product
Family supports encryption of data transmissions using SSL, securing critical
data transmitted through firewalls.

Future enhancements to the Shadow Product Family will embrace XML for integration of all OS/390 data. Shadow's initial capabilities for XML will include automatic generation of XML documents from OS/390 applications that run within CICS and IMS, and provision of Web Services and SOAP for OS/390.

"In our global economy, customers want access to data from anywhere without regard to where that information is stored. With critical, corporate data still predominantly stored within the OS/390 environment, it is NEON's mission to unlock this data in a way that makes it interoperable with new technologies including Web Services built on J2EE and .NET," said Mark Cresswell, vice president and general manager of NEON Systems' Shadow Division. "Through a process of continuous, customer-focused development, we're delivering technology with superior performance, scalability, security and interoperability to extend the value of existing legacy infrastructure."

Merrill Lynch, one of the world's leading financial management and advisory companies, maintains one of the largest client/server to mainframe production environments. The company turned to NEON Systems' Shadow when it needed a safe, simple solution to provide mainframe data access to its users.

"Shadow Direct ran on every platform we considered and is simple and economical to use," said Jim Crew, Merrill Lynch vice president of global data management. "With Shadow Direct, it doesn't matter which Merrill Lynch department shows up at our door with a mainframe access need, because we know we're going to have a solution for them."

Additional Features of Shadow Direct v.4.8

Along with its unique monitoring and automated management capabilities, Shadow(R) Direct v.4.8 has several enhanced features, including:

-- SQL Access to ADABAS and VSAM -- This feature enables SQL

direct access to ADABAS and VSAM files along with Meta data

support. Distributed tools, based on discretely generating

SQL, can easily utilize Shadow Direct to build business

applications leveraging data in ADABAS and VSAM.

-- SQLJ API Support -- Shadow Direct now supports the SQLJ API

for accessing data and transactions on OS/390, reducing

programming efforts for and complexity of relational data

access for Java programs.

-- Shadow Enterprise Transactions -- This powerful feature

provides data integrity for distributed enterprise databases.

Enterprises running J2EE applications can take advantage of

the feature using Java Transaction Service (JTS). This feature

also includes support for IMS databases.

-- Shadow RPCs for CICS/TS Environments -- Shadow (RPC) modules

can now run in CICS/TS. This capability complements existing

Shadow CICS/TS interfaces, which provide integration at the