[Info-vax] callable BACKUP example

[Stephen Hoffman]

> ... whole thread expurated ...

This OpenVMS doc is poor, and this source code example is weak, and the 
whole concept that folks won't be incorporating source code examples 
into production code is just, well, wrong.

This source code incorporation happens ~everywhere. I'd expect there 
are OpenVMS source code examples that have found their way back into 
OpenVMS itself. And elsewhere.

Example source code needs to be complete and correct and with 
functional error handling, needs to build correctly, and with a 
copyright amenable to its incorporation into customer apps.

Because that incorporation is what is going to happen.

Would I like skilled development staff able to recognize latent issues 
in (buggy) example source code? Sure. But if that were the case, I'd 
wonder whether that skilled staff was even looking at the source code 
examples.

And this incorporation happens. There are hunks of customer support 
center example source code I've met in various different customer 
engagements, and the source code itself is problematic at best.

That the customer support center was providing these examples isn't a 
problem, but it does tend to point to issues in... to point to 
opportunities for enhancements in OpenVMS and its APIs and 
documentation and examples.

Then there's the whole discussion of the staggering about of source 
code needed for an API call; all the glue code that's needed just to 
use OpenVMS APIs. And the other whole discussion about the level of 
abstraction provided by the existing OpenVMS APIs.

VSI has discussed providing ways to add user-provided source code into 
OpenVMS. Source code examples would be one such area. But that's all 
fodder for well after V9.2 is available and stable.

And a mea culpa specifically here: I'm responsible for the "" inclusion 
stuff within BACKUP (and not the expected <> inclusions). I was asked 
where to add some data structures and examples into OpenVMS, so I 
answered. What I hadn't realized at the time was that those data 
structures were the API. All that stuff should be in the public APIs, 
not where it's located.


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