What is HourGlass for MPE?

HourGlassTM is a date and time simulation tool.
(Current version is 20090115.)

With HourGlass installed on your system, each user ID, program, or even an entire application can have its own "private clock" telling it what date and time it is.

Without disrupting other operations on the machine, you can set the date back for your particular login session to, for example, the last day of the last fiscal period in order to re-run certain financial reports.

You can also define permanent data or time offsets for particular logons or particular programs or sets of programs. If you have a group of users who log in from a different timezone and want to see their local time on transactions, that's easy to do with HourGlass.

It's even possible to specify that a specific program should always see the same fixed date and/or time every time it is run.

Software developers know that date or time specific program bugs are the worst sort because every user will run into them at the same moment, even if they run on different computers. HourGlass makes it easy for developers to test your critical applications and systems for date or time specific issues such as calendar rollovers, leap years, end of week/month/year/period computations, etc.

Uses include:
  • Re-running old (or future) month- or year-end jobs
  • Testing date and time sensitive applications
  • Regression testing
  • Cross-timezone consolidation of applications which are not timezone-aware

Product Highlights

  • Thorough Implementation - ALL date/time requests are intercepted
    • Intrinsic calls (e.g., CALENDAR, CLOCK)
    • CI commands (e.g., :SHOWTIME, :SHOWCLOCK. Even IF/THEN/ELSE are handled properly)
    • Internal calls (e.g., DATELINE (which calls CLOCK), IMAGE/SQL, V/Plus)
    • Language date/time primitives (e.g., COBOL's CURRENT-DATE, WHEN-COMPILED, TIME; BASIC, BusinessBASIC, RPG, Powerhouse, Pascal, SPL, C, etc.)
    • POSIX and non-POSIX
    • Native Mode and Compatibility Mode

  • Robust
    • Powerful & friendly date/time parsing (e.g., 1/29/2001, or 29/1/2001, or 2001-1-29)
    • MPE Version checking
    • Extensive internal error checking
    • No AIF:PE deadlocks
    • Rule based date assignment, as well as by-request date assignment
    • Supports widest date range [1970..2199] (even beyond MPE's current CALENDAR limit of 2027).

  • Flexible
    • Future or past dates (e.g., re-run 1999 reports)
    • Multiple date types (e.g., absolute, relative, delta, original)
    • Delegatable authority (SM, OP, or "any")

  • Web Aware: Status report via web browser (or any terminal)

  • Standards Aware
    • ISO 8601 date format supported
    • "Standard" American & European date formats supported

  • Ease of Use
    • No modification to existing job scripts or logon scripts/UDCs needed
    • Installation does not generate an SLT, nor require a reboot
    • Tracks usage statistics, optionally logs calls

Downloads

  • Free Demo!

  • Update for licensed users (version 20050707)

Additional Information

HourGlass is also available...

  • for the HP-UX Operating System, from Allegro Consultants, Inc.
  • Sorry, HourGlass for IBM's AIX operating system is no longer available or supported
"HourGlass" is a registered trademark of Princeton Softech, Inc.
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