A new type of replication, Supplementary Instance (SI) 
replication, allows replication to a supplementary instance which can 
execute its own business logic and commit database updates, to provide 
reporting, decision support, data warehousing, auditing, and more - 
all in real time.  A technical bulletin is at 
http://tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/articles/GTM_Supplementary_Inst... 

    MUPIP REORG now has a TRUNCATE option, to return unused space at 
the end of a database file to the host file system, after operations 
such as data archival - even while the database continues in active 
use. 

There are other noteworthy enhancements as well, for example: 

    A framework to allow GT.M to be extended with plugins, whether 
from FIS or others.  In parallel with this release, FIS is providing a 
sample plugin which wraps zlib (http://zlib.net) to compress strings 
in M code. 

    Routine invocations using DO no longer require empty parentheses 
for calls with no actuallist. This change also improves the 
performance of routine invocation. 

    The encryption reference plug-in supports a method to employ if 
key management requires the ability to pass an obfuscated password 
between unrelated processes, or even from one system to another. 

As usual, the release includes many smaller improvements and 
corrections.  A more detailed announcement is at 
http://fisglobal.com/products-technologyplatforms-gtm-infobulletins-c... 
and the Release Notes are at http://tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/articles/GTM_V5.5-000_Release_N... 

There is a fix to a bug exposed by VistA.  While the application code 
from the VistA Surgery package that exposed the bug was unnecessarily 
convoluted and easily replaced with more readable code, it was legal 
code and reliably produced a segmentation violation in V5.4-002B. 
From the release notes, the relevant entry is: 

    GT.M now handles nesting of XECUTE strings that contain 
subscripted FOR control variables. In V5.4-002x such constructs could 
result in a memory segmentation violation (UNIX SIG-11 or OpenVMS 
ACCVIO). (GTM-7007) 

Please do try V5.5-000 and let us know what you think. 

Regards 
-- Bhaskar 
ks dot bhaskar at fisglobal dot com <-- send e-mail here