The StarPipes for Windows software uses the Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) to provide a gateway for connecting a client computer on a TCP/IP or SSL network to a DB2 host. StarPipes implements an "intermediary DRDA Server" as that is described by The Open Group's DRDA Architecture Specification Version 4.
StarPipes allows advanced DRDA application requesters, such as StarSQL, to use native TCP/IP connections to interoperate with IBM SNA-based DB2 systems. The StarPipes software runs on a Windows computer and appears to the application requester (client) as a TCP/IP server. StarPipes fields incoming requests from DB2 users who are running applications that communicate using the TCP/IP network protocol.
StarPipes can be configured to transfer the incoming messages as SNA-APPC conversations to DB2, or to allow the TCP/IP messages to flow directly to the DB2 host unchanged. The DB2 system must support DRDA over TCP/IP to receive TCP/IP messages unchanged. See the System Requirements topic for details about specific DB2 releases.
StarPipes provides advanced functionality, such as support for encrypted datastreams, for TCP/IP clients that connect to an SNA network that supports DRDA Level 3 or higher (such as OS/400 v5r2, UDB v8, and z/OS v8 and later releases). Be sure to review the topic, DRDA Security Flows, if you want to configure StarPipes to pass encrypted user IDs and passwords to a DB2 host.
In addition, StarPipes provides support for both inbound and outbound SSL (encrypted) communications. This ability is useful for supporting encrypted communications between DRDA clients or DB2 hosts that do not support or have not been configured for SSL. Using the SSL functionality of StarPipes avoids the complexity of configuring SSL on the clients and the host, and offloads the CPU intensive task of handling encryption. In addition, a pair of StarPipes servers can be used to create an encrypted tunnel over the Internet to connect remote data centers without configuration changes or updates to the clients or hosts. See SSL Scenarios.