Press releases about new HP 3000 software have been elusive during the last couple of years, so the appearance of Robelle's release yesterday certainly qualified as news. The company put up its notice out on the PR Newswire press release service about SUPRAMXW, "a combination of the power of SUPRTOOL's data extraction and manipulation components with AMXW's ability to emulate MPE databases, files and commands."

The product simplifies migrations of data away from HP 3000 systems, combining the data extract power of Suprtool with Speedware's Automated Migration to Unix and Windows (AMXW) suite. Database administrators rely on Suprtool, and AMXW really helps a 3000 shop continue working with familiar concepts. Robelle's Bob Green notes in the release:

Unix does not have the concept of a record length for files (all files are just a string of bytes). MPE does have this concept and AMXW adds it, and many other MPE-isms to Unix.

Robelle's got a full article on their new product up on their Web site, including all the technical details of how it works. We've outlined the advantages of AMXW working with Suprtool in NewsWire articles, had John Burke track down some details on pricing ranges when the product first emerged from Neartek (Speedware purchased it in 2003) and we've reported a user's testimony from Expeditors International on using AMXW to migrate a customer with more than 150 HP 3000s.

Data migration can turn out to be the most complex part of a 3000 migration, according to users we've interviewed. Since the HP 3000 is a do-it-yourself community, the emergence of tools like SUPRAMXW is another sign that the customers who are migrating can gather momentum for their move.