[Info-vax] OpenSSL CSWS-2.2-1

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-03-14 21:10:22 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:

> On 3/14/2019 3:04 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 3/14/19 2:26 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> Or port at least the web front-end to a different platform with a more 
>>> current web server.
>> 
>> But, that was my point exactly.

I wasn't replying to you with that posting, Bill.

>> If a business is running on VMS and a major part of that business is a 
>> web server front end and they have to move that front end to a 
>> different platform where is the incentive to leave anything still on 
>> the VMS system?

The cost and the effort getting the apps ported off of OpenVMS, 
usually.  Inertia.  This is the VSI market for the foreseeable future.

Or an established and long-time pool of experienced OpenVMS developers 
working on the apps, and that either don't know or that are disinclined 
to port or to learn different platforms and different tools and for any 
of various good and bad reasons, for that matter.

Half-expecting to see somebody do a run of EDT4EVR stickers.  If EDT 
works for you, sure.  But don't assume that most (any?) newer 
developers are going to want to learn EDT.  You'll have to pay them to 
learn it and to contend with its limits.  But I digress.

As for more general server configurations, web servers routinely 
operate remotely from and separate from the associated database 
servers.  That's something that the common front-end web-oriented 
languages make quite feasible.

>>   I  have worked with heterogeneous systems. It ain't fun.  Especially 
>> when something goes wrong and you have to determine which platform is 
>> responsible (and I am not even talking about the politics and finger 
>> pointing at the meeting tables!!)
> 
> I suspect that the companies running VMS typically already are 
> heterogeneous. Maybe not fun but reality.

It'd be more interesting to find those organizations that weren't 
heterogeneous, what with the prevalence of mobile clients and Windows 
clients, and with integration with Windows Server and Active Directory 
and and Exchange Server and other related services.

I'm sure there are still a few customers that are wholly based on 
OpenVMS, and maybe even with VT terminals.  Or that have non-networked 
OpenVMS boxes. Most of those are probably using OpenVMS as an embedded 
operating system, too.

But customers commonly using homogeneous configurations?  Not a chance.

And not when OpenVMS isn't built, sold or positioned for front-end 
client usage.  Not that there's really been a supported front-end box 
suitable for and priced for front-end client usage available with 
OpenVMS in recent years.  There are some folks using local or remote X 
via DECwindows, not that that is seemingly all that common.  I see 
rather more command line and previous-millennium UIs, and web UIs. Not 
so much X, though there's some around.

There are some folks using Apache on OpenVMS as a production front-end 
for the server, any complaints around the various issues with the 
commonly-down-revision components and with the utterly absurd 
web-related packaging aside.




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