Asset Suite / PassPortGeek

Asset Suite / PassPort originated on IBM MVS mainframes with the online environment running under CICS, a high volumn transaction processing environment, and the database being DB2. At some point a decision was made to go multi-operating system and multi-database and PassPort was ported to work on various flavors of Unix and the Oracle database. Maintaining the business logic in one place was paramount and to accomplish this Indus (now Ventyx) created psuedo-CICS environments for Unix. It allows the same .ccp and .csm programs, containing most of the business logic, to execute on HP-Unix and on MVS. This is what makes Asset Suite / PassPort so warm and fuzzy.

Knock on effects of this include an Indus custom CICS precompiler when compiling for Unix and an Indus custom SQL precompiler when compiling for Oracle. (See why you want those compiler listings!) Indus developers must restrict themselves to CICS commands supported by the psuedo-CICS environment and to using SQL common to both DB2 and Oracle, I believe it's a POSIX standard. Developers customizing Asset Suite / PassPort can use Oracle or DB2 specific SQL.


PassPort's Graphical User Interface (GUI) has gone through several generational changes and for the time being has settled on Portal/J. Portal/J, i.e., the GUI written in Java, far outshines its predecessors and if you can migrate to it, you should. Asset Suite version 7 works with Foundation Architecture and does not support Portal/J

Portal/97. The MicroSoft Visual Basic (VB) interface. It's arguable that this allowed the most user friendly interaction. Indus programmers had a difficult time keeping the settings of the VB Integrated Developement Environments (IDE) sychronized.

Portal/G. The C (or Paradox fat client?) interface. It has some very nice debugging capabilities, like being able to emulate the Portal/RF (Radio Frequency, using hand held computers in a warehouse connected to PassPort via a Wi-Fi, 802.11b/g connection).