topic OpenVMS in Operating System - OpenVMS

OpenVMS

Jees Joy — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:11:36 GMT

hi Friends,

I am very new to OpenVMS, is openvms is a UNIX operating system.

Re: OpenVMS

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 13:06:29 GMT

No, not at all. I am a bit lazy ;-), so here is just a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS

Re: OpenVMS

John Gillings — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:11:39 GMT

>No, not at all

In some senses, that's correct. OpenVMS is very different from Unix. However, it was the first operating system to obtain formal Posix compliance, so is actually entitled to call itself "Unix". That was many years ago, and most people would agree it was more marketing than of practical use.

However, today, OpenVMS contains many of the standard APIs, utilities and commands from various flavours of Unix. It's possible to configure a user so when they login they see a familiar Unix shell. They'd be hard pressed to determine they were really running on OpenVMS.

The goal is to make porting an application from any flavour of Unix to OpenVMS as easy as porting it to some other flavour of Unix.

So, in some ways, yes, OpenVMS *IS* a Unix operating system, but then it's so much more! :-)

Re: OpenVMS

Phillip Thayer — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:06:48 GMT

In the US Gov't circles OpenVMS is classified as a flavor of Unix if it has certain layered products applied to it. What layered products I don't know becuase I have never had to do that.

However, most OpenVMS people will say it is *NOT* a Unix system.

Phil

Re: OpenVMS

Ian Miller. — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:15:38 GMT

see the FAQ
http://www.hp.com/go/openvms/faq

In particular chapter 2
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/faq/vmsfaq_001.html#faq_general

Re: OpenVMS

Phillip Thayer — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:43:03 GMT

Jees,

The thing to remember about OpenVMS is that most of the current systems technology was initially developed in OpenVMS and then ported or copied from OpenVMS.

Clustering was first introduced in OpenVMS in 1985 before other operating systems were even contemplating the use of this type of technology.

Volume Shadowing was first introduced in OpenVMS in 1986 before any other Operating system had this functionality.

Distributed Lock Manager was first introduced in 1985 along with Distributed File systems and Distributed Job Management. All of these were fists for Operating systems.

Clustering of large numbers of systems was introduced also in the 80's when other operating systems were still attempting to cluster two or three systems.

Emphasis on High Availablity systems was always something that OpenVMS was very good at and has been the "Gold standard" that other operating systems compare themselves to.

All of the clustering and distributed I/O functionalities of most operating systems on the market today came from the breakthroughs made by the OpenVMS Operating System.

Phil