[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-01 09:31:00 +0000, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk said:

> Speaking of details, and changing the topic somewhat,Windows may not 
> have VMS-style RMS, but for the lastdecade or so (Win7?) Window boxes 
> have had a versioned
> file system under the hood.
> Not everyone who changes files on a filesystem is adeveloper (etc) with 
> all their working practices builtaround revision control systems, and 
> for those peopleand those operations, a file system with versions canbe 
> quite a handy thing. It's well hidden, so it maynot be widely known. 
> But the capability is allegedlythere. Is the capability robust and 
> trustworthy?Different question entirely.

Ayup; I routinely work with a platform that has integrated version and 
roll-back support directly into the apps, and has further and directly 
integrated file versions and roll-backs with what that is so often used 
for: backups.

Versions are a form of backup, and neither versions nor backup are 
particularly integrated with apps.  It all gets tossed over to the 
end-user.  Which is great if you're running with some weird and very 
site-specific requirements and have skilled staff around, but for many 
or even most of us — even those with skilled staff available — some 
reasonable defaults for version handing and for app-coordinated backups 
— preferably including a working and app-coordinated /IGNORE=INTERLOCK 
— generated from a common command procedure or tool would solve the 
vast majority of cases, particularly if the tool were integrated with 
its own job control and reporting.

Further along this same path is storage management and distributed job 
control and distributed backups, all of which are available on other 
platforms and variously available as third-party packages on OpenVMS, 
but are areas which OpenVMS itself utterly ignores.

So yeah. please go try to sell me on the value of RMS file versions.  
It'll be a tough sale.  I mean, sure, it's a step better than the worst 
of some real hack jobs, and it's OS-integrated.  But it's really 
limited compared to some of what's available, and what's already 
available is only going to become more widespread.




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