By John Burke

Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings at HP World are typically for housekeeping (elections, membership) as well as presentations by HP, and sometimes ISV representatives. The heavy-duty lifting of technical debates is usually done at the SIG3000 (formerly IPROF) conference, where there is plenty of time for wide-ranging discussions that include key CSY lab personnel. Two of the oldest and currently most active SIGs are SIGIMAGE and SIGSYSMAN. Here’s what happened at their HP World 2000 meetings.

SIGIMAGE

In the absence of SIG Chairman Ken Sletten, Executive Committee member Alfredo Rego presided over the meeting regarding HP’s most installed database. Due to visa problems and a family emergency regarding other CSY engineers, only Jon Bale was able to give the state of the product presentation instead of three representatives from CSY.

Coming with MPE/iX 6.5 Express 2 (IMAGE/SQL version C.09.2) will be increased limits:

• 240 datasets per database

• 1200 data items per database

• 64 paths per master dataset

• support for datasets > 80Gb

Note that this last item does not use Large Files; rather it is achieved by switching from name to record number reference. If you want to use this new (> 80GB dataset) feature on an existing database, a migration will be necessary. A migration utility, DBBIGSET.PUB.SYS, is being provided to handle the migration. Note that both types of datasets can exist within a database at the same time.

For new databases, the “$CONTROL LARGESET” schema command will be provided to designate the new “large” datasets. DBUTIL will show which datasets are “large”. This will obviously impact tool vendors, and may also impact application code. DBINFO modes 103, 203, 204 and 301 will require larger buffers unless DBUTIL has been called (ENABLE basename FOR OLDINFOLIMITS) or DBCONTROL has been called with mode 20. Bale did not know when this version of IMAGE/SQL would be available on MPE/iX 6.0 (the delivery vehicle will be an Express release).

QUERY has been enhanced:

• to support the new IMAGE/SQL limits;

• to allow FIND by record number; and

• so native mode QUERY will support the run time PARM=%777

This last item (from the QUERY manual) invokes “a Business Basic Floating Decimal override, which treats K1 and K2 datatypes as Floating Decimal datatypes.”

Work in progress for QUERY includes displaying a running count of records found and/or percent complete for QUERY’s FIND, MULTIFIND and SUBSET commands.

In 2001, the IMAGE lab will be working on further scalability issues, including integrating MPE/iX’s Large Files with IMAGE/SQL.

Rick Gilligan of 3000 application vendor CASE requested that HP develop a simple method for programmatically determining the run-time version of IMAGE/SQL without having to open a database or use some kludge involving the QUERY VERSION command. There was some discussion about whether DBOPEN mode 0 would do the trick; however, it was felt that this would not return the overall IMAGE version, but possibly the version of DBOPEN. The discussion was taken from HP World to 3000-L later in the week, where it continued. Eventually, Stan Sieler came up with an Intrinsic, hp32215, which returns the overall IMAGE version and does not require having a database open.

Oracle migration

There was a general discussion of the implications in Oracle’s decision to de-support the HP e3000. Everyone, including HP representatives Jon Bale and R&D Manager Dave Wilde (who spoke for some time on the subject) wants to try to keep existing Oracle users on the HP e3000, but no one knows quite how to do this. Migrating to Allbase is an option, but Allbase is never going to match Oracle feature for feature, even though work continues to improve Allbase.

There was also concern expressed (by both users and HP), but no real hard information available, about the status of the Oracle gateway products. Many HP e3000 shops use these products to integrate their MPE applications with Oracle applications running on other platforms.

Dave Wilde was asked if HP would consider giving the one missing piece of Allbase not included with IMAGE/SQL to all holders of IMAGE/SQL licenses. This would mean that if you had IMAGE/SQL, you would also have Allbase. The idea behind the question was that HP could do this in an effort to keep existing Oracle/3000 users on the platform and, perhaps, to keep other users from migrating off the HP e3000.

Wilde said it has been considered, but is just not financially feasible. What do you do for people who have purchased Allbase? How do you get revenue for continued development? The door is not completely closed, but it would appear there is only the tiniest light shining through on this prospect.

SIGSYSMAN

At the meeting for system managers, SIGSYSMAN Chair Donna Garverick introduced Kriss Rant of HP CSY to discuss the HP e3000 Grant Program.

The program donates HP e3000 systems to qualified US colleges and universities for use in teaching IS courses with an HP e3000 orientation. Applications for grants are accepted and reviewed each fall.

The goals are to provide a new pool of HP e3000 programming talent and to create an environment for special school projects or internship programs that offer mutual benefits.

Rant started out by asking how people are retaining HP e3000 trained talent. Robert Thorpe commented that his company had resorted to bonuses to retain talent. A member of the audience noted that retaining people was not as much of a problem as finding new people appropriately trained. This, of course, was just what Rant needed to launch into his presentation.

Six schools are currently in the program: Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Md.; Conestoga College, Kitchener, Ontario; Jackson State College, Jackson, Miss.; Long Island University, Brookville, N.Y.; Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Okla.; and Talledega College, Talledega, Ala.

HP needs customers to partner with these schools, to give their students places to submit applications. The school must submit a proposal for a course or courses that will use the HP e3000. Ideally, more than one local customer can be involved in the partnership to achieve a win-win-win situation for HP, the school, and the customer. Garverick suggested that SIGSYSMAN try to identify geographical areas with concentrations of HP e3000 users who would benefit from the increased pool of trained talent the HP e3000 Grant Program, when applied at a local college, would provide.

This is the first year of the program, so the scope is still fairly limited. Discussion ensued over how to “train the trainers” at the target schools. Paul Edwards, who trains HP 3000 customers in a contract with HP, suggested that HP’s three contract trainers and two internal trainers used could be employed to teach concentrated courses at program schools. It was also suggested that members of SIGConsult or even customers might be able to help out.

For more information on the grant program and how you can help or participate, send e-mail to csy_grant@hp.com

HP High Availability update

Walt McCullough gave the HP update on two features available soon, one part of FOS and one an extra cost item. The first feature is High Availability (HA) fail-over with dual active paths. In this case, you have an XP256 connected to a HP e3000 with dual SCSI cards, each connected to a separate disk string. In the event one of the paths is broken, the other SCSI card can take over data transmission for both paths. This functionality will be bundled into FOS and available on MPE/iX 6.5 Express-2, due out in the December 2000 time frame.

The second feature is HA clusters. In this case, if you employ the XP256, XP512 or AutoRAID and machine A fails, machine B can take ownership of the disk volumes. This is a manual process but only relies upon assigning machine ownership to a volume. This will be available or purchase, but no release date or cost was given.

Finally, McCullough asked the group whether there was a business case (i.e., would anyone buy it) for offering a hardware mirroring product that could be used with the system volume set and would cost about what Mirror/iX costs (note that Mirror/iX cannot mirror the system volume set). The group showed interest; however, it was somewhat lukewarm, since most large shops had already opted for an array of some kind and thus do not need a hardware version of Mirror/iX.

MPE, SIB enhancements reviewed

Next came a review of completed items. The 6.0 patch MPEKXY7 contains enhancements to BULDACCT, including the elimination of the in-line Pascal code.

The 6.0 patch MPELX11 contains the long requested store-to-disk option to STORE for everyone, enhanced CI INPUT() function for console requests and ABORTPROC (from the 1999 System Improvement Ballot, or SIB).

Garverick put in a pitch for everyone to install the DBUTIL security patch, commenting that HP responded quickly after the potential security problem was identified.

The SIG then veered off agenda a bit to discuss several items of importance to system management:

• All organizations need a test and/or crash and burn machine. 9x7 machines can be purchased quite reasonably.

• Everyone should strive to keep up-to-date with patches, particularly PowerPatches.

• Consider Mark Bixby’s Perl script to convert CICAT.PUB.SYS to HTML. It makes searching for information easier.

The SIG then returned to the agenda to discuss the SIB and the status of the top items relevant to SIGSYSMAN. It was a disappointing year for followers of the SIB, with no real progress to report on any of the top ballot items. The explanation was that CSY personnel had been too busy, first on the large files project and then on writing drivers for the N-class machines and preparing for IA-64.

Little time was spent on item one (“Don’t go through the entire HELLO and password validation process before displaying ‘Can’t initiate new sessions now’ ”). The general consensus being it is well defined (HP agrees) and should be very easy to implement — but no one at HP is working on it.

There was considerable discussion about what was meant by items 2 and 3 (shutdown mechanism and tie in to UPS) but no real resolution. Those with large 99x systems (and integral UPSs) seemed to have different concerns than those with smaller systems. HP’s Jeff Vance asked if the same shutdown process should be applied after a sysabort, and the consensus was no.

Garverick then went through items 4-6 (the top six items on the SIB came from SIGSYSMAN) making sure everyone understood what was being asked. There was a surprising amount of interest (number 1 in a straw poll of attendees) in item 6 (system-wide variables) despite the fact that there is a serviceable solution on HP’s Jazz Web site that emulates the functionality of system variables through the use of files in the HFS domain.

Just before adjourning, HP’s Vance dropped an intriguing possibility on everyone: Parts of the 3000’s operating system might be further developed by customers. R&D Manager Dave Wilde and General Manager Winston Prather are supportive of the idea of making sections of MPE source available for interested parties to work on the top SIB items. It would probably be done through the Interex Shared Source program (www.interex.org/tech /3000/hp30003.html), and HP added there are no resources in CSY available to work on this project now. The important thing to take from this is that CSY philosophically endorses the Open Source movement. While they may not be where we would like them to be yet, the 3000 division is heading in the right direction.