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

[Richard Maher]

Hi Brian,

<VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote in message
news:00A97F87.AD004A70 at SendSpamHere.ORG...
> In article <DRjEQc1+ENFR at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
> >In article <4b57add4$0$275$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
> >>
> >> You can try and call the standard socket functions
> >> directly from Fortran.
> >
> >   We actually did that on a system where the programmer couldn't figure
> >   out the $QIO documentation for UCX.  I showed him how to translate
> >   the C header file info into VAX Fortran structures (ANSI Fortran
> >   didn't yet have structures back then), and pass arguements by value
> >   and such.  We did have to code some calls to socket routine X as
> >   DECC$X.
>
> A programmer that can't read the $QIO programming interface should NOT,
> IMHO, be programming on VMS.  Send them off with their own TRS-80 and a
> BASIC interpetter and a cassette interface until they appreciate what a
> wonderful environment they had in VMS.

Yep, I just don't understand it either :-(

There's a perfectly valid, robust, hi-performance, interface available and
yet all the horses keep dying of thirst.

Anyway my advice to the OP and anyone interfacing to external systems is,
whether it's $QIO or BSD-style Sockets, go out and see what's available in
the outside world as well as VMS. Is there a Python module for NETLIB? A
Perl Module for NETLIB? A JAVA class for NETLIB? No, but there are
interfaces, classes, and modules a plenty that mimmic the C Socket behaviour
on a 1:1 basis; just as $QIOs does on VMS. Peek, Lockbuf, OOB, and so on.
It's all good and it's all available for free without another layer of crud
with best-endeavour support.

But then that's the type of crap that COV people seem to crave so I'll leave
you all to it.
>
>
> -- 
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker
VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Cheers Richard Maher
>

PS. And then there's Ruby, Flex, Silverlight, HTML5 (Nah the Frankenstein
they've achieved there with Websockets is not worth including with the other
full-throttle, industry standard Socket implementations. Who knows, maybe
NETLIB can emulate Websockets?)