Rocket D3 licensing: a MultiValue database priced on users and connections.

Rocket D3 is a MultiValue database management system descended from the Pick operating system model, where data is held in variable length, multivalued records rather than fixed relational tables. Rocket Software acquired the D3 and mvBase family in 2014 and has continued to develop it, including the mvEnterprise variant tuned for AIX and the OpenDB option for SQL access. D3 runs on Linux, AIX, and Windows, not on z/OS, so it is not a mainframe capacity product in the MSU sense. It earns a place in a buyer's mainframe and enterprise software review because it tends to sit under old, business critical vertical applications and arrives as one line inside a broader Rocket Software (Micro Focus and ASG heritage) portfolio that the same sourcing team negotiates.

D3 is typically licensed by users and by connections to the database, tied to a server or environment, rather than by mainframe MSU. The user basis can be named or concurrent depending on the agreement, and Rocket has offered enterprise licensing that permits a defined number of connections from a client to a shared license. Because the metric counts who and what connects, the practical entitlement has to be measured against real concurrent sessions and against the application, web, and middleware connections that consume licenses without a person at a terminal. The model is simple in shape and easy to drift in practice.

Directional and pattern level. Confirm the user basis, connection rules, and edition in your own Rocket schedules before modeling a renewal.

The first driver is the user count, since the entitlement scales with named or concurrent users and that population is rarely revisited as staff and access patterns change. The second is connections, because modern front ends, web layers, and integration jobs each open connections to D3 and quietly consume licenses that nobody attributed to a person. The third is the edition and any environment sprawl, where development, test, and disaster recovery instances multiply the footprint. Across all three, the age of most D3 estates means the documented entitlement and the live system have usually diverged, and that gap is the cost risk at renewal.

D3 exposure is mostly user and connection drift. Common traps we see at pattern level:

Because D3 is a user and connection product, the levers are about counts, editions, and a credible read of the migration alternative. The five that pay:

The alternatives to D3 are other MultiValue platforms, including Rocket's own UniVerse and UniData line, and a full migration off MultiValue to a relational or modern data platform. None is a quick switch. MultiValue applications encode decades of business logic in the data model itself, so a relational migration is a genuine application rebuild, not a database swap, and the in family moves between MultiValue engines still carry conversion and retraining cost. The practical posture is to right size users and connections first, keep the database stable, and hold a costed migration plan as negotiation leverage rather than a near term project. Where an application is genuinely end of life, the exit conversation belongs in a wider portfolio strategy with Rocket, not a single product renewal.