[Info-vax] message communication (VMS <> PC)

[Rich Jordan]

On Jan 22, 5:35 pm, "Richard Maher" <maher... at hotspamnotmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi Rich,
>
> > Rich    (Ooooh! what does THIS $QIO call do!)
>
> Have a look at TCPIP$EXAMPLES:*AUXS* it's really very easy. (At least so
> long as you're happy with one server process per client, and a few other
> things)
>
> If you'd like to see a COBOL version then I'll post one when I get back
>
> Cheers Richard Maher
>
> PS. Thanks for the mention, and I hope to have something very interesting to
> show you shortly. (These LiveConnect threading and timer behaviours are
> really getting on my tits :-)
>

The server was on a PC; I needed code to allow a VMS client (one per
customer) to talk to that server, and I needed it within a couple of
hours, and I hadn't written network code in 15 years, and it had to be
in BASIC.  NETlib won; one neat little library with one include file
and very few simple calls just perfect for our application programmers
to use.  I have no doubt I could punch it out using QIOs ( and fairly
easily if they would let me use Fortran) but it would have taken quite
a bit longer and I'd have spent lots of time re-learning something I
probably won't get an opportunity to use again for a long, long time.
Just the way it is.

As it was we did run into a BASIC limitation anyway; no UNSIGNED WORD
data type, which made even some of the NETlib interface code a little
clumsy.  However that didn't pose a problem for the particular
application.

No thanks on the Cobol; gives me a headache and as you noted there are
copious examples around if I need to do some again.

Enjoy your vacation.