Open VMS 8.2 and SAS 8.2

[robert bowman_1]

Why did HP release Open VMS 8.2 before testing to see if 3rd party products such as SAS 8.2 and above could run on it? SAS ran great on the 7.2 version of VMS, but errors out with %sas-f-badinit, unable to initialize the SAS System.

[Brad McCusker]

OpenVMS does not test or qualify 3rd party products prior to releasing. It is the 3rd party vendor's responsibility to determine which products they want to support on a new OS release, and then qulify that product. In the case of SAS, isn't the latest product V9.1 (not8.2)?

Further, upward compatibility for non-user mode applications is not (and has not in the past been) assured when the major version ID changes (i.e. OpenVMS V7.* to OpenVMS V8.*). In the case of OpenVMS V8.2, there are a number of infrastructure changes that affect non-user mode applications which require such applications to be recompiled and relinked (at a mininum). I suspect SAS is one such program.

Please contact SAS for more information on which version of their product is supported on OpenVMS V8.2.

I hope this helps.

Brad McCusker