Jennie and Tony Bond of Gresham organized an excellent event at the Millennium Hotel in Sydney. ARUG was held on July 26 and was well attended with twelve RMS users present. Dan Crook made the trip down under to attend the meeting on behalf of DDS.

Tony opened the meeting with a corporate overview of Gresham Financial Systems. Dan provided an update on Data Design Systems and a brief overview of DDS� strategic direction. Dan then introduced PrimeCode™ after which Jennie conducted the PrimeCode™ off-line demo. PrimeCode™ was enthusiastically received with numerous questions and good suggestions coming from the attendees. Jennie also presented technical updates on RMS and ran a continuing education session entitled RMS - Making Life Easier for Developers".

Many thanks to Tony and Jennie for pulling together a first class ARUG meeting.

OZTUG - Australia and New Zealand

OZTUG was also held in the Millennium Hotel in Sydney on July 27 and 28. Attendance was impressive, given the size of the Tandem install base in Australia and New Zealand. Data Design Systems participated in OZTUG with a booth in the vendor area. Several existing users who were not able to attend ARUG stopped by to see the PrimeCode demo. PrimeCode™ continues to generate excitement and enthusiasm with RMS users.

ITUG �99

This was one of the better attended ITUGs ever, if not the best. A lot of interest was expressed in PrimeCode and in our enterprise SCM capabilities. ITUG left the entire sales team very excited about our potential sales opportunities. People seem to be understanding that now is a great time to implement an SCM process. Why? Their Y2K code remediation has provided a clean baseline of their applications and the code is currently frozen.

Data Design Systems attended an ITUG vendor update meeting wherein we were provided with an interesting insight into the workings of the DEC users group (DECUS) and the resulting challenges ITUG is faced with in respect to merging ITUG and DECUS. The primary difference between the two user groups is that ITUG is financed independently of Compaq/Tandem, whereas DECUS has always been fully funded by DEC. Furthermore, ITUG users pay membership dues, whereas anyone buying a DEC system was automatically deemed to be a DECUS member.

To everyone�s surprise, the recent DECUS conference held in Los Angeles was no bigger than this year�s ITUG. Interestingly, there is no international DECUS organization. Each DEC geographical region had its own DECUS organization which operated independently from all other DECUS groups. This resulted in a lack of a unified international consensus within DECUS. As things now stand, ITUG and DECUS have decided to leave it up to each regional TUG and DECUS group to decide if they wish to merge locally.

Canada is the first region to try to pull off such a merger. ITUG 2000 is scheduled for October 2000 in San Jose under the same format as 1999. There remains a possibility that DECUS will participate in this year�s conference. Data Design Systems will be there either way!

Dan Crook -  Sales & Marketing

Fall IRUG �99 Deemed a Success!

The IRUG Fall Conference was held in San Jose, California on November 7 at the San Jose Hilton and Towers. From my perspective, this was one of the better IRUG conferences I have attended since becoming a member in 1997. There were more volunteers for presentations than available time. The turnout was very good as well.

There were two user presentations during the conference. The first was given by Jan Ebbes from Rabofacet and Ruud Rademaker from Channel Selection and Management. They shared the problems they faced in supporting different users who each used RMS in a different way, and how they were able to meet each of their customer needs using RMS. The second presentation was more of a question and answer period led by the IRUG chairman (me). I shared how eFunds currently uses RMS, and asked for feedback and suggestions as to how eFunds could fully utilize RMS functionality.

From the responses I received from users that were present, and the interaction displayed during the conference, I have to say this was the best conference for me to date. More users were involved and there was more open discussion.

I am currently working with DDS to get our web page up to date and to reflect what users really want. Any help or suggestions regarding this would be greatly appreciated. My tenure is up at the Spring IRUG. I already have a nominee (you know who you are!). We may also be looking to expand the IRUG board to more than one or two people as well. Hope to see you in the Spring!

David McFarlin

BUG �99

Once again DDS participated in the annual BASE24 User Group meeting, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was an excellent opportunity for us to get to know our users better and gain valuable insight into the challenges they face very day. We also participated in a vendor display area. This gave BASE24 users a chance to look at additional products and services which can help them manage their business applications. By participating in these user groups, we support their activities and efforts to provide feedback to the vendor.

Dave Harper - Sales & Marketing

Around DDS

Francis Thomas resigned from Data Design Systems in July to accept a position with Sun Microsystems in Detroit that will require less travel. Francis joined our Company in December, 1994 after having served as our Tandem Alliance Representative for several years.

Sasha Kurtsidis has transferred from our Client Support and Services team to our Product Development Team to fill the Quality Assurance Technician position recently posted. We believe that his customer service experience will be an asset in developing test cases and procedures.

Jerome Boyer joined us in November as Director of Product Development. He brings with him significant skills and experience in project planning and managing information technology projects.

Please join us in welcoming Jerome to our staff and Sasha to his new position. We wish them and Francis success and happiness in their new responsibilities.

RMS Update

There have been two releases since our last issue of Dispatch. RMS D00.09 was released in July and RMS D00.10 in October. For highlights, see the Release Notes for both on our website.

� If you are planning to do any code freezes soon, you should be on at least D00.08.

RMS D30

The next version of RMS will be D30, available in the Spring. Many of the enhancements were made to support external file systems mapped to components, such as UNIX and NT files. Some of the highlights:

• component names may be up to 128 bytes long and will be case sensitive
• userchanges will be stored in a hierarchical tree like other RMS entities
• a new FORMAT ORIGINAL option on EXTRACT and SUBMIT will allow you to retain the original form of references in submitted code.

Support During the Year 2000 Transition

In order to make the transition period from 1999 to the year 2000 as easy as possible, we have created a Y2K web page on our website to communicate any Y2K-related product and support issues.

We will be monitoring RMS/PrimeCode™ -related software issues from around the world and other pertinent customer information relative to the millennium from December 15 through to March 31, 2000.

You can access this information by visiting our website (www.datadesign.com) under Y2K Update. Be aware that you will need your customer password to access this webpage area. Your account manager can assist you with obtaining a customer password if you don�t currently have one.

Amy Hughes, Sales & Marketing Coordinator

Hints and Tips

... DDS Client Support and Services Team

Managing Tandem Compilers Within RMS

We suggest that you manage Tandem compilers within RMS. Using the externally referenced compiler approach can cause problems:

• Installing a new Tandem operating system will replace all Tandem compiler files. This will make it impossible for RMS to reproduce object component versions originally created with the older compiler files, as they are no longer on the system.
• Installing a new Tandem OS will also invalidate all object components compiled with the original compiler versions. This will require the compilation of all object components in the catalog. These new objects may not compile successfully or execute in the same manner. Object components may compile successfully with the new compilers, but not execute on an older operating system environment.
• Language-specific run-time libraries (such as TALLIB and COBOLLIB) and interface copy libraries (such as EXTDECS and COBOLEX) may not be compatible with current program code and/or older OS environments.

DDS Mailing Lists

We currently have five mailing lists which keep our customers up to date on various issues:

• Bugfixes
• Dispatch newsletter
• Marketing and new products
• Product enhancements
• Release dates and new versions.

If you would like to be added to one or more of these lists, please e-mail us at sales@datadesign.com

RMS Course Dates for 2000

• February 14-17
• May 1-5
• August 14-18
• November 6-10

We need a minimum of three people to run a course, so please don�t make non-refundable reservations with your airline. Our Client Services team can also provide customized courses to suit your needs. Contact your account representative for more information.

Current Product Versions
as of December 8, 1999