[Info-vax] DCL, DLM, APIs, RAS, RuleWorks, etc

[Dave Froble]

On 10/27/2022 8:05 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2022-10-27 21:20:50 +0000, Dave Froble said:
>
>> On 10/27/2022 2:03 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>
>>> The DLM API was and remains a nice box of parts arising from the 1980s, and
>>> does still work and does work well, but the API is really showing its age.
>>
>> Good ideas can have a length lifespan.
>>
>> But I confess to curiosity, what would a better API for the DLM look like?
>> I've used it from Basic, and anything one can use from Basic has got to be
>> rather simple.
>
>
> Off the top...
>
> Every peer process joining the peer group makes a call with some parameters, and
> each then gets a startup AST, and one peer process then gets the primary AST.
> Each joining process will initially get the startup AST, and will alway get the
> startup AST before the primary AST arrives. Any peer process may or may not get
> primary. The initial primary gets an uninitialized context block of 64 bytes
> (with an indication that the context is uninitialized/zeroed/invalid), and every
> subsequent process becoming primary gets the latest contents of that same
> context block. The primary can use that context block to request all peer
> processes perform a controlled exit (as they sequentially become primary) or
> whatever other means to communicate that, and/or can use the context block for
> passing around counters, and/or status, and/or whatever.
>
> Basically, one call with an argument list containing the peer group name, two
> AST arguments, a context block, and maybe a context parameter. No itemlists. The
> call itself stalls or hibernates in user mode, waiting for something to happen.
>
>
>

And that is suppose to be better than what exists today?  I'm confused.  That 
alone makes it worse.  Of course, I'm easily confused these days.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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