Personal Communications brings the power of personal networking to your workstation by exploiting networking capabilities to provide a variety of connectivity options supporting local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) environments. Whether it is for host terminal emulation, client/server applications, or connectivity, Personal Communications offers a robust set of communication, networking, and administrative features.
Personal Communications is a full-function emulator. In addition to host terminal emulation, it provides these useful features:
A variety of SNA-based client application programming interfaces (APIs) are supported by Personal Communications. You can create applications that use the peer-to-peer client APIs, which are based on LU 6.2 and provided by Personal Communications. These APIs let you simultaneously access and process information on peer workstations.
Personal Communications supports Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) as an end node, and uses the advanced network features: high-performance routing (HPR) and dependent LU requester (DLUR).
AnyNet® SNA over TCP/IP is a feature of Personal Communications which allows emulator and client/server SNA applications to communicate over a TCP/IP network.
Enterprise Extender allows you to extend the reach of SNA applications and data to include IP networks and IP-attached clients with similar levels of reliability, scalability, and control as SNA users. Personal Communications supports the Enterprise Extender (EE) DLC.
Personal Communications Version 14.0 is based on the popular Personal Communications Version 6.0. If you are familiar with Personal Communications Version 6.0, you might want to review the following new functions and enhancements.
Starting from version 14.0, 64-bit version of PCOMM will be supported so that PCOMM can run as a native 64-bit application on all supported 64-bit Windows OS. Switching to 64-bit offers various performance advantages as well as better interoperability/integration with other applications as more and more applications are being ported to 64-bit.
For details regarding the changes in IBM Personal Communications for 64-bit PCOMM, and the list of unsupported features, see Updates for 64-Bit PCOMM .
As part of Managed IBM Personal Communications (MPCOMM) feature, a new panel has been added to the IBM Personal Communications Installer, where a user can provide the HACP Server configuration details in the installation panel.
Here are the configuration parameters,
The HACP server configuration is optional only, user can click next to skip the configuration and can configure this through "Preferences" utility post installation.
Starting from version 14.0, automatic upgrade of PCOMM will be supported. HACP administrators can manage the upgradation of PCOMM clients by placing the upgrade configuration file in the Web Server, which has the information of recommended fix-packs or refresh packs that are available on the Web Server. The Web Sever URL can be provided during installation or can be configured via the "Preferences" utility.
When a User invokes the "Start or Configure Sessions - Online", the application checks if the installed version of PCOMM is lower than the recommended version. If the PCOMM installed on the system is of a lower version, the User gets a notification of the latest available PCOMM version. The User can either choose to upgrade or decline the upgrade option.
For details regarding the Managed PCOMM Configuration parameters and changes in Preferences, see HACP Server Details.
For details regarding Session Manager Online, see Session Manager Online.
For details regarding the changes to Preferences, see Preferences.
When you have installed Personal Communications, the main functions that you can use are displayed as icons. Icons are grouped in subfolders of the IBM® Personal Communications program folder.
A brief explanation of each function follows:
The APING utility is available in U.S. English only.
These programs are provided on an as-is basis without any warranty of any kind, including the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose which are expressly disclaimed.
The sessions that Personal Communications provides are logical connections enabling communication between your workstation and a host system. The following session types are available:
Personal Communications supports a variety of connections to the following host systems. Following are the icons you will encounter when you begin to configure an emulator session:
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LAN  |
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COM port  |
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SDLC |
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SNA/IP  |
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API Client |
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IBM-EEDLC |
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OEM |
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LAN |
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COM port |
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SDLC |
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SNA/IP |
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IBM-EEDLC |
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OEM |
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LAN |
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COM port |
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Personal Communications provides APPN end node support for workstations, allowing them to communicate more flexibly with other systems in the network.
When your workstation is defined as an APPN end node, an APPN network node server provides the following directory and routing services for your workstation:
Using Personal Communications, you can establish client/server connections to a variety of computers and to workstations running Windows 7 and later versions. Another option is to connect the computers to a workstation running Communications Server. Available SNA client/server connection types are:
Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) is the underlying networking protocol that routes APPC traffic through intermediate nodes in the network. For instance, when Program A uses APPC to talk to Program B, APPN finds the node where Program B is located and directs the APPC traffic through the network.
APPN includes several features that help reduce the amount of configuration required to set up and maintain a network. These features automate many tasks that are time consuming, complicated, and error prone. For example, if you're installing a new workstation that uses APPN, you don't have to set up configuration information for every workstation you want to communicate with. You simply provide the name of the computer and the address of the intermediate node that handles your traffic. APPN takes care of the rest of the information needed to route APPC traffic to and from your workstation.
If you connect to an APPN network, you simplify your own configuration and make it easier for other computers in the network to find you.
For more information about SNA Client/Server concepts, refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference.
Advanced program-to-program communication (APPC), also known as LU 6.2, is software that enables high-speed communications between programs on different computers, from portables and workstations to midrange and host computers. APPC software is available for many different operating systems, either as part of the operating system or as a separate software package.
APPC is a communications protocol that enables programs on different computers to "talk to" each other. APPC provides the interface between the programs and the networking hardware and software and defines the rules that programs use to exchange information.
APPC serves as an interface between application programs and the network. When the communications application on your workstation passes information to the APPC software, APPC takes the information and sends it on to a network interface, such as a Token-Ring adapter card. The information travels across the network to another computer, where the APPC software receives the information from the network interface. APPC puts the information back into its original format and passes it to the corresponding communications application.
Refer to Emulator User's Reference for more information.
By participating in an APPN network, Personal Communications workstations can also take advantage of two additional functions:
Personal Communications supports high-performance routing (HPR) over token-ring and Ethernet connections, which increases data routing performance and reliability. HPR supports the rapid transport protocol to provide nondisruptive rerouting around network outages, efficient selective retransmission, and end-to-end data integrity and congestion control.
DLUR allows dependent LUs (LU 0, 1, 2, 3, and dependent LU 6.2) to benefit from an APPN network. It supports dynamic and multiple paths through the network and eliminates the need for dependent LUs (or their gateway) to be adjacent to the VTAM® host.
A DLUR is an APPN end node or network node that owns dependent LUs, but requests that a dependent LU server (DLUS) provide the system services control point (SSCP) for those dependent LUs. A DLUS controls conversion from a subarea environment to an APPN environment, allowing you to maintain central management of remote dependent LUs while benefiting from an APPN network.
Personal Communications uses the support in VTAM V4R2 for dependent LUs through APPN networks and combined subarea and APPN networks. The dependent LU server function (in VTAM) provides dependent secondarylogical unit (SLU) support by establishing an LU 6.2 session between a dependent LU requester node (DLUR), and a dependent LU server node (DLUS).
Refer to the information about SNA Client/Server concepts in Emulator User's Reference for more information.
Personal Communications includes AnyNet SNA over TCP/IP support, which allows SNA emulator and client/server applications to communicate over a TCP/IP network. Using the AnyNet function, you can reduce the number of installed network protocols and reduce operational complexity without modifying your existing applications or hardware.
Refer to Emulator User's Reference for more basic information about AnyNet.
Refer to Administrator's Guide and Reference for examples of how to set up AnyNet connections.
Enterprise Extender allows you to extend the reach of SNA applications and data to include IP networks and IP-attached clients with similar levels of reliability, scalability, and control as SNA users. Enterprise Extender integration uses standard IP technology and does not require new hardware or software in the IP backbone.
Enterprise Extender is a simple set of extensions to the existing HPR technology, and provides the following:
Personal Communications sessions can be included as part of a compound document. A compound document is a document that appears to be a single unit, but which is in fact made up of information from more than one program. For example, a compound document could include data that allows Personal Communications to execute within the context of the spreadsheet program.
When included as part of another program, Personal Communications is known as an embedded or linked object and the program is known as a container. Personal Communications supports ActiveX/OLE 2.0-compliant containers such as Lotus Notes®, Lotus WordPro, and Microsoft Word. For most containers you can embed an object by using a menu sequence (for example, in Microsoft Word, use Insert, then Object), or by dragging and dropping a workstation profile into the document.
As an embedded object, Personal Communications can change its appearance to be part of the container program, providing the container program allows this change to occur. Or, Personal Communications can be started so that it runs in its own separate window utilizing its own profile and screen displays.
There is a variety of ways that Personal Communications can be activated as an embedded object. For example, Personal Communications can be shown as an icon within another program, and be activated by double-clicking. Another way Personal Communications can be activated is through a script; Visual Basic or LotusScript are examples of scripting languages supported by Personal Communications, but any ActiveX/OLE automation scripting language can be used.
The use of scripts allows Personal Communications to be activated as a part of an automation request. For example, a script can be written to automatically start Personal Communications every time the container object is started, or a script can be used to automatically put data on host entry screens.
The Personal Communications session ends when the container is closed or when you close the Personal Communications window. If Personal Communications was actuated as a linked object, it must be closed separately.
Personal Communications provides a new language-independent object-oriented API. There are seven objects that can be used in conjunction with Visual Basic, Lotus Script, or any ActiveX/OLE automation scripting language to produce compound documents where Personal Communications is an embedded object within another program.
If you are interested in writing an application that includes Personal Communications as an object within your ActiveX/OLE 2.0 compliant program, refer to the Host Access Class Library (HACL) programming manual. This manual describes the objects that Personal Communications provides and describes what you need to do to access the Personal Communications data. Information is provided for programmers using Visual Basic scripts, Lotus scripts, and the C++ programming language. Samples of Visual Basic and Lotus scripts are provided on the Personal Communications installation image.