[Info-vax] Final Orace release on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/15/2020 10:22 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 11/15/2020 8:22 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
>> Dave Froble wrote :
>>> For example, if there were services on the database servers, or other
>>> systems that could directly access the Oracle database servers,, which
>>> would act as an middleman between the application systems and the
>>> Oracle database servers.  Then for example the VMS systems would
>>> "talk" to the middleman application(s), and no longer need the Oracle
>>> client software locally.
>>>
>> Not going to happen.
> 
> If that is the knee-jerk reaction to any suggestions, then it most 
> definitely won't happen.
> 
>> If we need to dedicate significant amounts of
>> resources to develop something just to keep the OpenVMS platform in
>> business, the decision will certainly be to dedicate those resources
>> to eliminate that platform from our IT landscape once for all.
> 
> What I mentioned is what I commonly refer to as a relay.  Basically a 
> communications application.  I've implemented some to get between VMS 
> applications and communications with services available on the internet, 
> mainly due to the shortcomings of the TCP/IP and SSL/TLS available on VMS.
> 
> Obviously the design of such an appliance will depend heavily upon the 
> required communications.  But "significant amounts of resources" is not 
> in that picture.  Something like that should take much less than a 
> single man year, and you mentioned the alternative is perhaps 200 man 
> years.
> 
> As a possible incentive, I have no idea of the cost of Oracle client for 
> VMS including support, but such a relay would not incur such costs, 
> perhaps actually saving some costs, and that would be yearly savings vs 
> a single development cost.

It is not just the relay application that need to be developed.

They would also need to change all their applications from using
Oracle client (whether embedded SQL or direct OCI calls) to interact
with the relay. And that would be rather intrusive.

And depending on what features are needed then the relay
application may be more complicated. I would be a bit
concerned about the transactional integrity.

It can be solved. Oracle solved it with the way they
support thin JDBC driver for Rdb. But most companies
want to focus their development effort on the business
problem and not on developing let us call it platform
components.

Arne