[Info-vax] Does anyone know how long it will be before HPE kills the itrc openvms access?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-11-05 05:32:36 +0000, Jon Pinkley said:

> Related, I wonder if the DSNlink database survived the transistion from 
> Digital -> Compaq -> HP -> HPE -> VSI.

Some semi-history...

The back-end server for AskQ / DSNlink was known by the acronyms TIMA / 
STARS, and that was retired ~twenty years ago. Retired pre-HP or maybe 
very early HP, IIRC.

DEC TIMA: Time-critical Information Management Architecture. I don't 
recall the backronym for STARS off-hand. COMET was another related 
acronym from that era.

The TIMA / STARS content got clobbered during one of the several 
support system content migrations. Compaq and HP were fond of replacing 
and migrating their support apps as support for the existing support 
apps faded.

Unless you can find a CD copy of TIMA / STARS, that data is gone. 
Finding one of the rumored surviving CD copies of the database might 
not be easy. Cleaning it up for re-publication, more so.

Phillipe Vouters had his own TIMA examples online for a while, though 
that resource is seemingly no longer accessible.

In some ways that old example data might still be valuable, and in 
other ways each of those examples would need review and probably 
maintenance and updates. OpenVMS examples can sometimes be buggy, 
insecure, and/or stale. q.v. SYS$EXAMPLES

VSI was starting up their own Wiki, and that'd prolly be where some 
examples would become available. Support customers can likely ask for 
and receive code examples.


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