Number 67 (Update of Volume 6, Issue 12)

Your next meeting: SIG3000?

With travel plans buckled down worldwide, it might be a good thing there's nothing on the immediate meeting horizon for nationwide HP e3000 events. But the MPE faithful might want to look toward the end of next February as a time to get back on airliners, because MPE/iX and its developers will need to meet by then, and perhaps the meeting of Special Interest Groups will tag along. At HP World's SIGSOFTVEND meeting, chair Birket Foster was moving the group of HP 3000 tool suppliers toward a meeting in the week of February 25. Foster was hoping that the VAB Prep version of MPE/iX 7.5 would have shipped or be near shipping at that point, giving the software vendors something specific to discuss with the HP 3000 lab experts in the NDA environment of the HP 3000 California labs.

With 3000 lab experts on hand for the SIGSOFTVEND meeting, that week has the potential for hosting the next meeting of Special Interest Groups for the platform. SIG3000, as the collective meeting of SIGS has come to be known, will have a new chairman as well: David Floyd of the Support Group inc., a second-generation HP 3000 guru and son of tSGi founder Terry Floyd. David represents the first of a new generation of MPE SIG leaders, having steered SIG-FORTRAN for more than a year already. The SIG meeting represents some of the most impassioned vision for the platform's future, a meeting that last year was populated by a host of experts well past age 40. By naming Floyd to the chair for this year, the group of SIGs appears to be responding to concerns from last year's meeting discussions that the 3000 needed younger talents to study its skill set. We'll stay tuned for definite word on which month the SIG3000 meeting will surface for next year. In the meantime, dust off those suitcases and get ready to meet face to face. Despite the threats and fear, we've all got to live our lives, with courage if needed.

Free DBTune utility goes online

After a hiatus of more than four years, Hicomp's Denys Beauchemin has updated his IMAGE/SQL utility called DBTune/SQL, or DBTSQL for short. The newest version is at the Hicomp Web site http://www.hicomp.com/dbtune.htm, and HP's Jazz Web site for the HP 3000 points to it as well.

Beauchemin reported, "There are two versions, the old one called DBTSQL works on system prior to the MPE/iX 6.5 release of IMAGE/SQL which brought in date mappings. The new version, DBTSQL2 is meant for 6.5 and 7.0 systems and displays the date mappings, if used. I will try to add new features, especially geared towards these new date mappings, if there is any interest in them. Other requests are, of course, welcome at any time."

"One of the features of the utility is its ability to create a command file that can be used to re-attach databases and recreate the splits, updates and new users that existed prior to the detach. Another interesting feature is the ability to do an update statistics on all TurboIMAGE tables, with one command. This is especially important for optimum performance of IMAGE/SQL via the SQL interface. The utility is totally free but read the disclaimers on the page. Download it at will and install it on as many (or few) systems as you want."

HP updates its patch updates

HP's patch expert Mel Robertson unveiled a new online information service for HP 3000 sites during the last month, offering a Weekly MPE/iX 6.5 Patch Digest through the HP IT Response Center. The digest doesn't require a paid support contract, simply a short registration with HP at the ITRC (http://itrc.hp.com). Patrick Santucci alerted the community about the new resource with this message:

"For all you system managers out there who've been waiting, the wait is finally over. There is now a weekly MPE/iX 6.5 patch digest! The timing couldn't be better(for me, since we just got all our systems upgraded to 6.5. Three cheers for Mel Robertson, CSY patch coordinator, who "pushed the right buttons" (people) at HP to get this done! Log in to the IT Resource Center at http://itrc.hp.com, click on "maintenance and support" and scroll down to the bottom where it says "notifications" and click on "support information digests." Click the checkbox for "MPE/iX 6.5 patch digest" (it's near the bottom) and click "Update Subscriptions." You can also see the latest digest by clicking the link to the right of the checkbox."

As an example of what's in a patch digest, there's notice in a recent one about a patch that repairs TurboStore's ;ONLINE=START option, which can silently fail to backup some files. In the examples given, the files under the combined circumstances below won't be backed up without patches MPELXR9(A) for 6.5 or MPELXR9(B) for 7.0:

- Files which are not XM attached (TurboImage databases, KSAMXL, KSAM64 and user XM attached files not affected)
- Files that are NOT large files ( recsize * limit > 4 GB). Large files are unaffected, independent of whether size of allocation is larger than 4 GB or not.
- Files must be open during the sync point
- Files must be closed (by all processes) between the
end of sync point and the point where they are written onto the media

If these conditions match, then TurboStore will only write the file label onto the backup media, but no data contents are stored. No error message is generated in the STORE listing, close inspection of a VSTORE listing will show files with a number of sectors = 0.

Next up will be an automated update for MPE/iX 7.0 patches, according to HP's Robertson. "There is more to be done. As you can see, the 5.0 Release is still there and our latest Release (7.0) is not there. I was able to get the owners to committ to getting the 6.5 Release out there through the patch process. But to remove the 5.0 and add 7.0, those two Releases will need to go through the production process for installation. The team said they will keep me informed on the timing for the production process. I don't have a timeframe at the moment, but I know it is in the plans."

That Secure Web server will be free for the 3000

Despite a little confusion during the most recent HP Webcast, there's been no change in the status of the Secure Web Server for the HP 3000. HP still intends to offer the software for free with an upcoming release of the operating system, according to MPE Product Marketing Manager Mike Schneck:

"We will definitely be providing the Apache Secure Web server product to our customers at no additional cost. There are ongoing discussions as to the exact date that this decision will be executed, the best delivery vehicle as well as other components of the WebWise suite which should/shouldn't make the bundle. Again, these are the lesser known topics which require more discussion among our HP team."

No more N-Class systems for HP-UX

HP began to move away from the N-Class designation for the most powerful of its new mid-range HP 9000 systems in the last month, when it introduced its latest server as the HP Server rp8400. The computer, powered by as many as 16 PA-8700 processors -- the ones that are on the way for the e3000 N-Class systems -- "extends HP's mid-range UNIX server offerings, which include the HP Server rp7400, formerly known as the N-Class server," said an HP press release. "Customers can now purchase the HP Server rp7400 with the PA-8700 processor." The new rp line is Itanium-ready, just like its N-Class predecessors, and the CSY product line will retain the N-Class designation.

HP's e3000 division is no doubt waiting for the Intel chips to catch up to HP's PA-RISC power. Intel released specs on its next generation IA-64 chip, McKinley, saying the processor will ship with 1.5 to two times the performance of its predecessor. Intel said systems based on McKinley will run selected applications with 70 percent better performance than current systems running the 64-bit Itanium. Intel's chip road map has the Madison processor, successor to McKinley, available in 2003, sporting 6 Mb of cache and built with 0.13 micron technology. McKinley chips will ship with 3 Mb of cache sometime next year, the company said. HP's said IA-64 processors won't be introduced for the e3000 until the second half of this decade.

How 7.0 betters 6.0: a list

As volume shipments of MPE/iX 7.0 start to roll out to the customer base with the Express 1 release, it pays to look at how much has been added to the operating system since 6.0. NewsWire contributor Andreas Schmidt helped with an extensive list of benefits to programmers for making the upgrade, noting that he completely skipped all technical hardware-related enhancements and purely focused on topics a programmer may be interested in:

1. QUERY/iX - FIND by Record Number
2. ALLBASE/SQL - AS clause
3. APACHE/iX 1.3.9 - supported by HP as part of FOS
4. APACHE/iX 1.3.9 - DSO for Java Servlets
5. TurboIMAGE/iX - new limits for
-- items defined in a database from 1023 to 1200
-- sets per database from 199 to 240
-- paths for each master to detail from 16 to 64
6. TurboIMAGE/iX - large size datasets removes 80 Gb limit for one dataset
(now 2**31-1 entries)
7. File System - large files: limit increases from 4 Gb to 128 Gb, for
ordinary, fixed length record files and a new KSAM type KSAM64 first.
8. LISTFILE / LISTF - new formats 10 and 11 to display accesses
9. Multiple Job Queues - not planned for use because of MAESTRO!
new commands and !JOB parameter ;JOBQ=
10. NEWCI command (session only!) - ci process is replaced for the calling
session so that one process less is left.
ATTENTION: session will terminate by leaving the program invoked by NEWCI!
Useful in LOGON UDCs with ;NOBREAK.
11. STM tool - replaces SYSDIAG tools.
12. LDAP C-SDK/iX introduced
13. MPE/iX Software Developer's Kit (SDK) for Java, Version 1.2.2 introduced
14. HP Driver for JDBC introduced

At least one of the items on Schmidt's list caught some criticism, the STM tool introduced to replace SYSDIAG. Steve Cooper of Allegro noted that "This does not belong on an "enhancement" list. Do you have a list entitled "Giant Steps Backward?" Even with the regression of STM -- Unix-style tools that require the network to be up in order to diagnose your HP 3000 -- that's still more than a dozen improvements in 7.0. It's a pull release, meaning you've got to ask for it from the HP Response Center to get a set of update tapes.

GHRUG mounts ODBC, MPE training

On November 8 the Greater Houston RUG hosts a day of training on HP 3000 systems as well as their Unix counterparts. Steve Cole of Outer Banks Solutions leads a workshop on the newest release of MPE/iX, while M.B. Foster Associates offers half-day courses in ODBC fundamentals and Advanced ODBC. The conference will be held from 8-5 at the Southwest Hilton Hotel, 6780 Southwest Freeway, Houston, Texas, (713) 977-7911. The conference includes a continental breakfast, lunch, refreshments, vendor exhibits and wine and cheese at the end of the workshops. More details are available at the RUG Web site, www.ghrug.org.

HP 3000s will say more to UPS units

HP's 3000 labs will be enhancing the platform to better communicate with Uninterrupted Power Supply systems in the coming months. HP's Jeff Vance reports that the system will gain the ability to know the remaining time on the UPS, so system managers can know that the UPS will last long enough to shut down my applications and databases and let the system crash. Vance said that HP has scheduled to begin its work on this improvement, voted number 8 on the last System Improvement Ballot, in late fall.