Bug Busters Software Engineering has announced Release 8.1 of Remote Software Facility (RSF). Used by thousands of software vendors and iSeries shops worldwide, RSF has helped set the standard for System i object distribution and remote support, the company says.

"The new release takes robust, affordable high availability software for the System i platform to a whole new level," said a company spokesman.

With RSF 8.1 users can now easily replicate:

• User profiles
• System values
• Network attributes
• Authorization lists
• Data queues
• Object-level authorities
• Spooled files
• Message queues
• Data areas
• Database files
• IFS objects, and more...

This release includes full support for binary large objects (BLOBS) and character large objects (CLOBS). In fact, there isn't much you can't replicate with RSF 8.1, the company says.

New commands in this release allow users to manage lists of libraries and system object types and to change synchronization attributes for all items in the list at once. A new Work With Sync Attributes display makes it easy to monitor the progress of all replication/synchronization tasks from one central place.

New displays and options make it easy to monitor the mirroring setup, showing at a glance any errors or omissions. And setting up and maintaining RSF High Availability support is extremely easy, requiring just minutes per library. RSF can configure all needed journals automatically. Plus, nearly all the setup is done on the source machine alone; no complicated setup is required on the target machine.

Administrators can specify individual objects to omit from mirroring. Changes to programs, display files, and other non-database objects can be mirrored with ease. Shops can replicate from one machine to one target, or to multiple target machines and partitions.

Database record changes on the target machine are processed by unique key, greatly increasing flexibility and integrity. RSF determines the appropriate unique key access path automatically.

Two-way mirroring is supported, allowing updates to occur to the same files on multiple systems simultaneously.

The RSF High Availability feature is licensed separately. This complete solution is availailable for a fraction of the cost of traditional HA implementations, the company says.

RSF 8.1 now supports sending and retrieving huge spooled files. Previously, the largest spooled file that could be transmitted was 16 megabytes.

Other RSF features include:

• Send objects to hundreds of machines in the time it takes to send to one.
• CL command interface lets you transmit objects and spooled files programmatically and in batch.
• Communicate with other iSeries and AS/400s without prior configuration or setup.
• Works with any connection, including the Internet. SDLC, TCP/IP and PPP connections supported.
• Industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption supported for TCP/IP connections.
• Centrally monitor and respond to system messages on any number of satellite AS/400s.
• Broadcast objects to many machines and poll any number of machines to retrieve sets of objects.
• Build your own utilities with RSF's ability to call programs on remote machines, passing input and output parameters.

For additional information, visit www.bugbusters.net for more about what's new in this release. Free 30-day trials for RSF 8.1 can be downloaded from the Web site.