VMS vs. U*ix - any horror stories?

[Keith Parris]

> At the Munich ENSA@WORK there was a presentation ("OpenVMS delevers the adaptive enterprise now" by Dave Holt) that actually DID state this 20 YEAR warrantee ON SCREEN, IN WRITING! <

I looked up the presentation. It has a bullet item that says:
o DII COE
20 year commitment

So the existence of the committment is certainly mentioned there. But I didn't see any further details.

[Paul Jerrom]

Hhmm...2 problems with DII COE.
1) if you look at the list of validated products at http://www.disa.mil/ges/coe_kpc/validated_products.html VMS isn't listed. And
2) Red Hat Linux IS listed (ironically so is Tru64).

While the official VMS website mentions the certification process, nothing states a 20 year committment. A bit like the Vax server in Europe which hasn't been rebotted since 1983, me thinks - everyone 'knows' about it, but noone has actually seen it...

[Jan van den Ende]

Keith,

like I stated in my previous posting:

Until this ENSA presentation ALL of it was ONLY in speaking, NEVER in writing. I also mentioned that any details were second- third- ?- hand (although mostly from not-mentional HP personnel).
The big thing in my view is that NOW the 20 years ARE in plain writing!
And any dumbhead can make his own educated guess about the required hardness of your commitments if you give DoD a guarantee...

Jan

[Jan van den Ende]

Paul,


A bit like the Vax server in Europe which hasn't been rebotted since 1983, me thinks - everyone 'knows' about it, but noone has actually seen it...


There is a book
"OpenVMS and Windows NT integration for dummies"
by Jim McAndrew, Clark Schwffy, & Terry Sherlock,
(former?) Compaq Part #: 11N3-0200A-WWEN.
with a lot of input from "VMS" (engeneering, ambassadors, documentation, etc)

For references it gives www.idgbooks.com
& www.dummies.com
This book is from januari 2000, and on page 178 it mentions "a European railway" (ie. which did not reboot its VMS system for 18 years. The system manager of it (sorry, don't know his name) did a presentation about it at 1999 San Diego Decus. I last met him at 2002 Lyon Decus, and at time time it was still running.

And though we are still __WAY__ short off that, our production cluster, with a quite dynamic application portfolio, has an uptime of over 7 years.

hth

[John Pendergrass]

I would question the use of logic. You wrote: the battle is moving towards the "well, no one develops for VMS nowadays".

This reeks of logical fallacies. Clearly "someone" develops for VMS nowadays. Is their argument that there are "less" developers? If so, what is the perceived affect? And so on.

If these folks were purchasing a car would they argue for a Taurus instead of a Lexus based on the number of mechanics available? Well, it depends.

Shape the argument.

[Willem Grooters]

Clearly "someone" develops for VMS nowadays.


I would think so. OpenVMS engineering does, quite a lot of HP partners do, I do. And quite a lot of others.


Is their argument that there are "less" developers?


With addition of "with knowledge of the OS" - they might be right. More important is what is meant by "developer". But in the ordinary meaning ("programmer"), it's a general issue, not a VMS-specific one. Anyone who is able to develop programs in a standarized language (C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL) can do so on Windows, Unix and VMS. They only need to become familiar with another platform. Since VMS is quite different from Unix and Windows (and that's just all of what young people learn nowadays) there is quite some way to go. But do not despair: I have collegues with that non-VMS background that are now VMS-minded.

[John Eerenberg]

> I have collegues with that non-VMS background
> that are now VMS-minded.

Me too! Is this becoming a trend? I hope so. ;-)

[Rich_88]

Hi Paul,

In response to your post about moving from VMS to something far less then that and back, I know of a classic example. There is a company that decided for whatever reason(s) to move from VMS to a Windows based platform. They were playing around on Windows for about two days, not getting any serious performance and guess what, moved back immediately to VMS. And managed to loose data on the way back as well. Nice one, isn't it?

Regards,

Rich
From a cold and not so sunny Amsterdam, Netherlands

[Ian Miller.]

re 20 year commitment
- I have asked before for a public statement on the hp vms website so it then be clearly seen and referenced. So far no sign of it. If everyone reading this emailed their favorite hp contact asking for this parhaps something may happen. The 20 year commitment is well known and was publicly mentioned at ENSA so hp why not?