Departing paradise - OpenVMS

[John Donovan_4]

Well it appears that OpenVMS has nearly come to its end-of-life here and the powers that be are having us move to multiple flavors of unix {shrug}.

There are several applications written in DEC C & Digital FORTRAN running on Alpha/VMS 7.3-2. As a system admin I'll be moving over to HP-UX side and I'd like know, from this illustrious group, if HP offers any migration tools/facilities I can offer to our programmers to go from VMS to HP-UX. Again the programs to port are currently written in DEC C and Digital FORTRAN.

[Jefferson Humber]

John,

As far as the DEC C goes there are some compiler switches which could help with the migration.

/WARN=ENABLE=PORTABLE is just one in particular which would help to highlight issues in the C which the HP-UX compilers might not like.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[Kris Clippeleyr]

John,
The newest FORTRAN compiler on VMS has the /WARNINGS qualifier, that can be used to signal informationals and warnings concerning non-standard features used. This can be helpful.
However, if your code contains explicit references to system services and/or RTL-routines, you have to find the equivalent routines for HP-UX.
You might find the following worth reading...

http://www.bo.infn.it/alice/alice-doc/mll-doc/migvms/migvms.html

Regards,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

[John Donovan_4]

Thanks for the replies so far. I've got about 2/3 of the answer. Doesn't HP offer some kind of migration program like they did w/ PDP to VAX & VAX to Alpha and now Alpha to Itanium? Except OpenVMS to unix?

[John Donovan_4]

I forgot to add:
I am trying to sell the idea, of porting the app. to HP-UX instead of Solaris, to the supporting programing group and I'd like to make it as palatable as possible.

[Kris Clippeleyr]

John,
Although I did not find any reference to VMS on
http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/324652-0-0-0-121.html
it might be worth contacting HP, since they claim they can help their customers to "transition to HP-UX" from any environment.
Regards,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

[Tom O'Toole]

Since VMS can run on the same HW (itanium) at around the same price as HP-UX, it doesn't make much sense for 'the powers that be' to mandate a migration unless it is forced by an outside, third party, vendor. (of course, we all know sense doesn't always determine management decisions.)


For example, oracle is still not ready on VMS itanium, yet HP will iminently stop selling alpha systems. In this case, VMS customers pretty much must migrate away - and the guilty parties are clear: HP and Oracle.

[John Donovan_4]

Tom - all so true. I LOVE my VMS but unfortunately it was Digital/COMPAQ/HP executives which have burned the bridges for executives here. Our CIO said to me, "There is no future for OpenVMS here."

{shrug} Oh well, time to move on...

[Peter Quodling]

INdeed, there are some sales people/execs at HP that should be fired....

There is relatively minimal difficulty to recoding applications, to be "portable".

There are also war stories out there, I can think of a couple of people that tried going Eunuchs (tm) after VMS, and failed and returned to the flock...

q

[Jan van den Ende]

John,

Maybe I can add my personal experience. It is only one example, so I have no idea how typical, or how exceptional, it is.

I work as a for-hire VMS consultant.
"Some time" ago I got a contract for 6 months (+ 3 month extension option) to "keep the VMS systems running, while the company staff was re-trained in Unix, and the 2 main application suppliers ported the apps to Unix and/or Windows".
Well, the contract got extended, and extended, and...
In the mean time I migrated the existing apps from Vax to Alpha, and a few VMS apps where added.

The upper part of this story happened 12 1/5 years ago!
Several of the ported apps HAVE been rolled out, but until now only one got further than the personnel retraining classes, when they proved to be lacking stability, functionality, and/or capacity.

Current official line is: moving away from VMS ASAP (aiming for end 2007).

So, are your apps of-the-shelf stuff or custom made? If the latter, have the ports already been demonstrated under full load?

As long as you ARE still running VMS, maybe you should not dispair yet.

But, YMMV.

And if you really have to leave VMS professionally, you ARE still welcome for a visit every once in a while!
Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Antoniov.]

Hi John,
I've already heard something like "OpenVMS has nearly come to its end-of-life".
Dying VMS is:
- #1 rated in Healthcare
- 30% of mobile phones billed in the world
- 50% of the world's SMS transactions
- 50% of the world's top Exchanges
- 66% of funds transfers
- Dominant presence in Lottery systems
- Leading supplier to Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide
Read here
http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/files/unprotected/openvms/10-25-05OpenVMSOverviewseminarbox.ppt

Migration is more work than compiling on new target platform.
Talk your management and them if they want save money running Itanium or they want spend money in difficult migration process.

Antonio
http://it.openvms.org

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

I fully agree with Antonio.

Over here we are in phase out since about 10 years. The latest plan is to move the application functionality from Belgium to an application in the Netherlands. But this application misses a lot of the functionalities needed for Belgian law. So, development is needed.

And the application in the Netherlands is going to be replaced itself within 2 years ... by an application in Belgium. That will need to be developped by a team having a lot of backlog. And no knowledge of the VMS application.

Could take another 10 years. By then we will be one of the last Alpha customers.

Wim

[John Abbott_2]

John.

RE:
> and the powers that be are having us move to multiple flavors of unix {shrug}.

Have you or the powers seen HP's UNIX portability initiative page ?

Link:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/portability/index.html

Especially the goals. I believe a GNV update is due very soon (if not already out).

We use ISVs that will be looking at porting software to VMS as a result of this.

John.

[Tom O'Toole]

My main point is that at a business level, if oracle is not ready on VMS itanium, VMS itanium is not ready. HP has screwed the pooch (in this case, feel free to substitute 'VMS customer' for 'pooch') by accelerating the discontinuation of alpha while fundamental apps are not yet available, and by not making it a top priority to insure that an app as critical as oracle was available at this late stage of the game.

VMS (and thus HP - most people won't go to HP-UX after feeling ill-treated) will be losing big projects because of this.

It's sad because the VMS engineering team has done such a phenomenal job with VMS itanium, and, in general, with recent releases of VMS.
The VMS itanium development seminars are also fantastically done, so it's a little surprising that oracle is so delayed.

Obviously, oracle corp. is at fault, but it's ultimately HP's responsibility to push their platforms. This is marketing 101, but HP has so many marketing resources allocated to windows, something they don't even produce, the rest is streched thin.

[John Donovan_4]

I sense, in your responses, the same heart-felt sentiments about VMS which I have stated repeatedly around here, but alas on deaf ears. Somewhere down the road they might regret their decision, but here they'll just go "full steam ahead!". However, I'll be retired then and won't care. Thank you all for your input. John Abbott, although your link is in the opposite (albeit correct) direction, I can really use that to point our programmers toward something and Kris yep I will contact HP support.

Farewell my fellow VMS fans
(at least here at work. Home I have 2 alpha servers â WOOT)

[John Donovan_4]

Stay true to the cause! Thank you all and everyone gets 1 point fo loving VMS!