VMS training for the absolute beginner

[Brian Reiter]

Hi Folks,

The company has been on a bit of a recruitment drive, I will shortly be supervising a number of engineers who will have had zero exposure to VMS, and possibly not much exposure to unix (new graduates).

Sadly I still have my own job to do, so I'm wondering if anybody knows of any resources which will give these folks a grounding in OpenVMS.

I can dole out the various manuals but I'm really looking for an "idiots guide" to VMS.

Hope you can help

cheers

Brian

[Kris Clippeleyr]

Hi Brian,

Have a look at
http://www.yrl.co.uk/phil/vms/vms_tutorial.html
and
http://www.iib.uam.es/man/infointro/VMSintro.html

Hope this helps,

Kris (aka Qkcl)

[Ian Miller.]

New VMS People - Hurrah!

see
http://www.openvms.org/pages.php?page=Beginner
http://seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu/vms_beginners_faq.html

[Mobeen_1]

Brian,
I am sailing in the same boat as you :)

I have had the privilege of training a couple of such graduates in my previous work place, but there i was lucky as i had a team member who was teaching full time VMS at Global Knowledge Network...

Now i am training 1 new college recruit... the following link should help you

http://www.ccsscorp.com/

(Please note, one has to be registered with them and they will also get access to a vms system :)

Let me know if you need any additional information, i will share with you the way i introduced topics...may be we can post it here and some of our colleagues, who are certainly more experienced than me can help refine it :)

rgds
Mobeen

[Antoniov.]

Brian,
welcome to wonderful vms world!

You can find variuous books about vms, for example on amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dblended%26field-keywords%3Dopenvms%26store-name%3Dall-product-search/102-6739560-6047354

You can find technical documentazion on line http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/os82_index.html

Mainly you can keep live contact with us.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Brian Reiter]

Hi Antonio,

Been involved with VMS off and on since 1994 ( V 5-2 or 5-5-2 ? running on a VAX 4100, during startup the disks sounded like a lorry revving up). Had a stint on Windows development (ugh) and now involved with control systems under VMS.

Sadly the lack of exposure of VMS is so great that new graduates don't come across it, lots of Windows experts who are scared by a command line :)

Ah well the training could be fun.


Brian

[Volker Halle]

Brian,

the OpenVMS FAQ also has a table of links:

3.7 Where can new users find tutorial information about OpenVMS?

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/faq/vmsfaq_003.html#doc11

Volker.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Probably they know a little about Linux and don't like reading a lot. This can be read reversed.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/VMS-to-Linux-HOWTO/index.html

Wim

[Dave Gudewicz]

http://digitalpressbooks.com/compaqbookstore/

Take a look at "Getting Started with OpenVMS" A Guide for New Users by Michael D. Duffy.


Dave...

[Brian Reiter]

Folks,

Thanks for all your help, especially the links to the books. I wasn't aware that there are so many new(ish) ones.

Mobeen,
My plan for the new starter is roughly,
1) Simple DLC commands and the disk structure (directories etc.)
2) Logical names etc.
3) DCL command procedures (can do an awful lot of productive work) to include symbol substitution, lexicals etc. etc.
4) Then the fun, system services under Pascal, C amd C++. Luckily I can leave Fortran and Macro out of the equation now.
5) AST routines etc.

System management stuff can wait for a while. We don't do too much that is complex anyway.

Part of the plan is to stop some of the vagaries I've come across, such as

1) A timer implemented as REPEAT gettim UNTIL time=target time
2) REPEAT LIB$WAIT (5.0) UNTIL false, to implement a 5 second period timer within a event driven program (code inserted prior to the main event loop).
3) Numerous recodings of date and time conversions etc.


Regards


Brian

[Mobeen_1]

Brian,
Your plan sounds great !
This is how we decided to go about

1. OpenVMS overview
2. OpenVMS editors
3. Basic OpenVMS commands (Copy, Dir, Diff
and others)
4. Simple DCL procedures
5. Queue Management
6. Exposure to PCSI and VMSINSTAL
7. Introduction to various devices on an
OpenVMS system
8. Account Management
9. System Security (File Prot, ACLs, etc)
10. OpenVMS Logicals

and many others :)

regards
Mobeen

[Ian Miller.]

For programming pay particular attention to
Guide to creating modular procedures
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/4518/4518PRO.HTML

Guide to file applications
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/731FINAL/4506/4506PRO.HTML

and the other guides of course.

The main thing is to get them to do things the VMS Way

[Brian Reiter]

Hi Ian,

The manuals on modular programming etc. have always been useful. I agree that stressing "doing things the VMS way" is the only way of guaranteeing results. But its quite paintful having to explain multi-tasking and virtual memory to graduates.

Even more painful is having to fix convuluted code where the programmer has failed to understand the underlying concepts (ASTs cause a lot of problem in this case). Still time will tell if my ideas for training in this area work.



cheers

Brian

[Willem Grooters]

Do you have clusters - you will face a very daunting task to have them understand even the basic principles of VMS clustering - the fact you CAN have one system image; you CAN do without data replication; you CAN have more than 16 nodes on a distance of of to 500 miles of signal length, without significant performance costs; you CAN rely on the integrity of the data in case of fatality; you CAN share EVERYTHING without a lot hos hassling around - and that you can have your major applications on line for years and years - without interruption - while replacing ALL hardware, all OS....
I had to explain this once to a Windows guy; I tried for half an hour and all he could come up with was a question how this system could ever work....

[Brian Reiter]

Willem,

Unluckily we don't have clusters (at the moment). The design of the system I work on (mixed co-operative architectures specified by other "consultants") precludes to some extent cluster technology. I keep suggesting it but sadly this falls on deaf ears. Stressing the benefits of clusters tends to result in the average consultant muttering the "VMS is dead" mantra to the customer. :) Strangely enough though these same consulants will extol the virtues of almost any unix technology.

cheers

brian

[Robert Atkinson]

Brian, you didn't say what country you were in....

If it's the UK, then I can recommend some good hands-on training, at a very affordable price.

Rob.

[Brian Reiter]

Hi Robert,

Yep, UK based (North East England). Some costs on training might be useful to have to hand. If the company can get enough bodies on it, then they may consider it. :)

From my experience, training is something that seem to happen to other people.

cheers

Brian

[Steve Reece]

If you'd like to mail me directly Brian, I may be able to help you out directly.

Steve
system ipl demon co uk

[Michael Hunt_4]

Hi Brian,
Like Steve Reece, I may be able to help.
If you want to send an email to mhunt planbuk com or visit the website dub-dub-dub planbuk com and call us I'll see if we can be of service.

Good luck with your search.
Best
Mike

[Ian Miller.]

I found this
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wbt/pc/welcome.htm
which claims to be a VMS Primer for System Managers. Might be suitable as background reading for your new people.

[Brian Reiter]

Hi Folks,

I've actually persuaded management to buy several copies of Michael Duffy's "Getting Started With OpenVMS" and David Miller's "Getting Started with OpenVMS System Management". Many thanks to you all for your feedback.

The subject of on-site training is (in our company) always contentious in that the maintencance teams are deemed to have the experience so all the training goes to the development contracts, sadly most of our new contracts are unix/windows based, so while we have a lot of people with "some" OpenVMS experience, very few have had any formal training.

Ah well, there's the modern world of computing for you.

Cheers

Brian