[Info-vax] What does VMS get used for, these days?

[John Dallman]

In article <278cc014-2429-4664-add4-fb3923213a6bn at googlegroups.com>,
rbc at rbcarleton.com (Robert Carleton) wrote:

> One thing that stands out about OpenVMS is its record-oriented 
> filesystem (Files-11), along with its extensive batch facilities. 
> The Linux and Microsoft Windows environments don't really seem to 
> have those kinds of tools as part of their baseline. 

They don't. They follow the classical UNIX model of files as nothing but
sequences of bytes. Windows' NTFS provides Alternate Data Streams, which
were created to support classic Mac OS resource forks, but they're very
little used. There are third-party batch systems for both Linux and
Windows, but I haven't looked at them this century. 

Record-orientated filesystems are really quite alien to people used to
the UNIX model, and caused me significant FUD when I first started
working on VMS. This wasn't helped by record-orientation not actually
being useful for the work that I was doing, supporting programmers
working on code that had to work on many platforms. 

> It seems like at least some organizations where there is a significant
> culture separating duties, they might choose OpenVMS as an alternative
> to z/OS and friends.

Well, VMS is doubtless a /lot/ cheaper to run than an IBM mainframe, but
has less certainty of being around in the long term. Going after some of
the other legacy mainframe markets might make more sense, but they're all
rather different from each other. 

John