[Info-vax] VMS internals design, was: Re: BASIC and AST routines

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <snqqpn$72n$1 at dont-email.me>,
=?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_Söderholm?= <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com>
writes: 

> >>> I would really like to know what people could be running on
> >>> VMS on an Itanic that would be so difficult to move to a
> >>> totally different system.  Any applications are almost
> >>> guaranteed to be written in an HLL.  Just what is it that
> >>> they are doing on VMS that can not be done on another
> >>> system?
> >>>
> >>> bill
> >>>
> 
> An "application" is not only the core routines in Cobol or
> some other HLL. There are usually also a lot of routines that
> are written (for VMS) in DCL that "runs" the applications.

Indeed, e.g. job schedulers written in DCL.

> And the whole application infrastructure can rely on VMS unique
> things like logical names, mailboxes and other stuff.

Especially combinations such as cluster-wide logical names visible to 
only a group.

> I guess the majority of an porting effort is to move off the
> VMS unique features.

Yes.