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Maintaining tradition and blazing new trails - these were the objectives that Merck Finck & Co set at the time of its foundation more than 130 years ago. Clarity and vision in corporate strategy, openness and team spirit in corporate culture are the elements that together secure the long-term success of an enterprise. At Merck Finck & Co, the values formulated by our employees complement the strategy put in place by our management.
The data processing environment at Merck Finck & Co. is very heterogeneous and the hub is an IBM™ MP2003- 206 with 256 MB's of main storage and more than 36 GB's of disk storage. The mainframe operates VM with VSE/ESA 2.2 and the online system is CICS/VS. The operational data is stored under Software AG's ADABAS™.
Beside the mainframe environment in Munich, there are also connections to OS/390 based mainframe systems at Landesbank in Hamburg and to the Frankfurt based DWZ. And, on top of that, the heterogeneous landscape distinguishes the remaining part of the data processing structure: from DEC-VMS applications, via RS6000 AIX-Systems to UNISYS and WINDOWS NT, the palette of operating systems is quite versatile. WINDOWS NT has become the strategic platform for LAN/WAN. "Because of our individual applications and our heterogeneous environment, it was our declared goal, to establish an integrated data-household using standard interfaces", remembers Harald Scherr, Manager Systems programming. "The only problem was, that our mainframe was not open for these requirements."
Merck Finck & CO discovered tcACCESS while attending a road show in Munich, Germany. "The concept and the way this concept has been implemented in tcACCESS convinced us and we put the system on trial", Harald Scherr continues. "The most important for us was the fact, that using tcACCESS we can access our ADABAS database with plain SQL-statements." At the day of install, the first results were already available: ADABAS database structures, which are stored in the PREDICT dictionary were processed by tcACCESS with no problems. These structures are the base of a variety of SQL access-possibilities. "Neither Periodic Groups nor Multiple Field Values have been a problem to tcACCESS. During the trial period we really put tcACCESS to the acid test", quotes Harald Scherr. "Besides importing the PREDICT information we have also imported PL/I record and file descriptions. We also tested the access to our mainframe files from JAVA programs; and the communication from BATCH mainframe programs with tcACCESS using APPC has completed our tests. Not to mention the easy integration of the product into our existing security concept. We also implemented out programs as stored procedures into the tcACCESS access." The decision was then made by Merck Finck & CO to purchase tcACCESS.
Very quickly, a number of qualified employees were using the product and could individually formulate SQL queries. "An analysis tool, which can't be missed by the end users anymore." Wolfgang Hügel, Manager Application Development, comments on the flexibility offered by SQL in conjunction with tcACCESS. "For us, our ADABAS databases have now become relational tables. We very frequently use the SQL DECODE-function to translate abbreviated data into meaningful information." tcACCESS is used by MS-ACCESS applications to access ADABAS and VSAM tables and to modify selected records. End users' departments are using these applications. "We did not have maintenance programs for these tables, because we never could justify development of these programs. As a result, changes to the tables had to be done by database personnel using system tools. The maintenance of the tables is now the responsibility of the end users" adds Harald Scherr.
Another application is the access to ADABAS from MS-WORD documents. When using VBA macros, the user is prompted for a customer or account number; the data is directly selected out of ADABAS and inserted into the document. "We plan additional applications in the MSOffice area", stated Harald Scherr, who knows that success has multiple facets, even in data processing.
