[Info-vax] VMS - what is the current thinking amongst the user community

[Simon Clubley]

On 2009-03-24, Jon.Power at sector7.com <Jon.Power at sector7.com> wrote:
>
> So much for the bits and bytes - Obviously, the projects we see these
> days are no longer the 'low hanging fruit' - we are - as always -
> focused on complex code migrations - I would be very interested in
> understanding what the VMS users "feel about" VMS. We seem to be
> seeing large corporations with UNIX as the focus - that have a VMS
> server / cluster that is working perfectly - but - represents a very
> small percentage of the organizations skill set - and yet is as
> mission critial as any other server.
>
> We wont be soliciting / calling or even emailing - but - If anyone
> feel so inclined I'd especially like to hear:
>

In my case, I'm not interested in your services, but if you want
clarification on anything below, feel free to email.

> (a) Is your VMS system running mainly home grown application or
> packaged

Home grown applications.

> (b) If homegrown - are there any specific VMS API/ Subsystems - that
> make VMS irreplaceable (lock manager, clustering etc)

I don't think there's any one major thing for me, but it's more a series
of little things (DCL environment, print/batch processing, etc) that the
application code tends to take advantage of.

> (c) Is there any 'software' that would make life easier - I hate to
> use the DEC I14Y "Interoperability" - only because - I still miss
> DECUS / New Orleans and the TGV guys paying a for several great nights
> out.

Not really in my case. A few years ago, a formal effort to provide a
continuously upto date web infrastructure of the kind available on Linux
would have helped keep that function on VMS for me, but now I'm comfortably
established using Linux for that role.

Given what's happened to the support for web infrastructure in VMS over
the last few years, I'm glad I made that jump when I did.

> (d) Is there still the religious fervor associated with VMS? (after
> having to duplicate the AST/QIO/Lock Manager mechanisms - I have even
> a greater appreciation of VMS internals)

In my case, no. I used to use VMS a lot at home for hobbyist purposes,
but now I only really use it in a work environment - my home hobbyist
network is now basically Linux based, with a Solaris system as well as
some RTOS environments.

(If you search a usenet archive you will probably find posts by me from
a few years ago about things like placing PCI TV cards in Alphas. I have
zero interest in doing that on VMS these days)

At work, I've long abandoned the idea of running things like webservers on
VMS - VMS gets used for core business data processing and for serving data
to the webservers (the webserver interface is also home grown and not
available before anyone asks :-)), but other things are done on Linux
servers.

> (e) What programming languages are popular ? (no one has asked for
> BASIC or DIBOL for 2 or 3 years)

I still have some DIBOL code in use at work (using the Synergex compiler).
What did others here, who have moved from DIBOL, replace their DIBOL code
with ? COBOL's too verbose for me and things like C++ don't really cover
the same kind of commercial data processing that DIBOL does.

> (f) If VMS was going to be replaced - as VMS guys - what target would
> you lean toward (AIX/HPUX/LINUX/Solaris x86)
>

For the core data processing, I'd probably look to Solaris first and then
Linux as an alternate choice. For secondary functions, (websites, etc), I'm
already using Linux.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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