[Info-vax] Moving away from OpenVMS

[John Wallace]

On May 24, 12:12 am, johnson.e... at gmail.com wrote:
> > but wondering if there are particular
> > reasons why you are thinking of starting
> > from a low level of abstraction when
> > higher level more functional stuff
> > apparently already exists
>
> I'm advocating a level of abstraction that matched what current code was doing.  I don't see it as low level of abstraction vs higher level abstraction. I see it as - providing a way for current code to be recompiled on a new CPU and still have real time access to the data sets that are currently warehoused in an existing VMS cluster.  Real time access through native APIs.
>
> One of the themes in this thread is that everyone wishes HP would just port VMS to x86. I certainly think that's a good technolgical move for VMS but I don't think it will happen.
>
> So if that's not going to happen - is there a way to provide the benefit of an x86 CPU upgrade without completely uprooting out of the VMS investment?  I think the answer lies in providing a very low latency high speed pipe between a Linux box and a vms node.
>
> Such a pipe would enable one to get access to the files in a way that native vms code would want it and not the "narrow" view that NFS/Samba provides. Its not just files either  dont forget about things like SYS$TRNLNM.  And just as important - share access with other systems and processes in a clustered environment so that they are oblivious to the fact that some parts of the system are now puppet mastered from an x86 box.
>
> I can understand the comparisons to CORBA, ORBs, DCOM, SOAP, RESTful, web services, etc and their history of hype. I think some of those complexities can be avoided by keeping a simpler process model and not trying to be so general. I see this approach as being philosophically closer to the ATA over Ethernet mindset than CORBA.
>
> EJ

" I see this approach as being philosophically closer to the ATA over
Ethernet mindset than CORBA."

OK, let's look at that particular example then. I don't know ATA over
Ethernet (or iSCSI). What's the security model with them? Does it
credibly map onto a VMS security model , or does the storage have one
level of authentication which entitles any authenticated client to get
at all the blocks? Simple/lightweight usually means low functionality.
Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's not good.

I note also that the Sector 7 part of my earlier post hasn't had much
response - they (allegedly) already have (for fee) versions of SYS
$CONNECT and a wide variety of VMS-derived stuff.