[Info-vax] Databases, LDAP and the limitations of RMS-file-based authentication

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-01-05 15:57:38 +0000, Bob Gezelter said:
> 
>> On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 11:15:53 PM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:
>>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>
>>>> As opposed to the VMS guy who spends a whole lot of time working on 
>>>> Unix
>>>> and C, and with C on VMS?  (Having a more robust C environment would be
>>>> useful on VMS -- working on a list of the local snags with C99 and 
>>>> C11 to
>>>> send along to Mr Reagan as part of that -- and maybe access to some 
>>>> newer
>>>> tools like, maybe, Rust would be nice.  The versions of Fortran or 
>>>> BASIC
>>>> available for VMS, alas, tend to be non-starters for the sort of work I
>>>> usually use C for.   If not C on VMS, it'd be Bliss or Macro32, but 
>>>> then
>>>> more folks are familiar with C than with either Bliss or Macro32.)
>>>
>>> Gee, and just why are some of the legacy (stuff that works) 
>>> non-starters?
>>>
>>> I mean, I just figured there is / was this thing called the VMS calling
>>> standard, that every language (except for C) seems to respect, and so
>>> one should be able call code from any VMS language.
>>>
>>> How naive could I be?
>>>
>>> It's crap such as this that makes me thing that VMS is good and *ix and
>>> C are bad.
>>>
>>> I still cannot understand why I could not call the SSL routines from
>>> Basic, and I still cannot understand how VMS development could have
>>> stooped so low as to throw things out there that could only be called
>>> from C.
>>
>> Insofar as I know, there is no reason that you cannot call SSL 
>> routines from BASIC (I have been invoking C routines from BASIC for 
>> decades, literally).
>>
>> If the data structure definitions provided as C header files are not 
>> supplied in forms compatible with BASIC, one may have to translate the 
>> data structure/record definitions, but that is not a major job, just 
>> tedious...
> 
> What David is likely grumbling about is the lack of VMS descriptor-based 
> interfaces for these and other calls.

Actually, no.  I understand descriptors, and other structures that may 
not be native to Basic.  I can build such and use them.

> Making the SSL calls directly from BASIC is certainly entirely possible, 
> it's just more work than creating a jacket with a descriptor-friendly 
> interface.

Most definitely!  Write it once, and then call it from many places.

> The current OpenSSL interface leaves folks the choice of either a more 
> complex API scattered around within the BASIC code (and the OpenSSL 
> interface is pretty ugly to start with),

Yes, and who is to blame for that?  If I was asked, the finger would 
point to HP who didn't care enough to distribute usable tools.  I doubt 
this would have happened in the days of DEC software development.

And since I'm on another rant, documentation is like the grey / orange 
wall, not a snipet of C code.

> or creating a set of jackets 
> written in BASIC or in C to isolate the OpenSSL calls.  Pushing the C 
> API incantations including the ASCIZ support and the pointers up into 
> some BASIC-based jacket code does make for somewhat more work and it can 
> mean having to translate the symbolic constants, which means somewhat 
> more complex code and more effort.  Using C-based jackets 
> <http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1853> keeps the BASIC code simpler and 
> much more consistent, and it avoids having to generate BASIC versions of 
> the C definitions, where those BASIC definitions don't already exist.
> 
> For OpenSSL, David would have preferred something closer to the 
> DECwindows APIs where there are C native bindings 
> <http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/5642/5642pro.html> and VMS-native 
> bindings 
> <http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/732final/documentation/pdf/dw_guide_nonc_bindings.pdf>, 
> and not having needed to create the C jackets at all.

What I believe I ran into was the data associated with the context 
pointer.  It's been a while, and I tend to forget things that cause me 
pain.  No where could I find (talking about me, not things in general) 
how to set up a structure for the context to point to.  At least, I 
think that was the problem.