[Info-vax] Use of logical names other than I/O redirection

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/14/2022 7:31 AM, Bob Gezelter wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 8:32:16 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj
> wrote:
>> On 9/13/2022 3:58 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
>>> Arne Vajhøj has brought this to us :
>>>> 3) Logical names does not scale well. 50 fine, 100 fine, 200
>>>> fine but 100000 does not work. Windows registry is a fine
>>>> example of something that has become so big that it is
>>>> difficult to find things.
>>>> 
>>> Not if you use separate, dedicated logical name tables. Putting 
>>> everything in LNM$SYSTEM is of course not good practice, but
>>> desiging applications to use their own table(s), use rights ids
>>> to grant access to them, and connect automatically to the right
>>> tables at login time works perfectly for me. We also use such
>>> mechanisms for our development environment, so that each version
>>> of each application gets its own set of tables.
>> I am sure that it works.
>> 
>> But it is very customized solution.
>> 
>> It requires changes to users login.com if I understand it 
>> correctly.
>> 
>> And I don't think it makes things easily searchable (unless there
>> are a number of conventions everybody need to know).
> 
> Separate per-product logical name tables are quite feasible, see my
> OpenVMS Technical Journal paper on Hierarchical Logical Names,
> "Inheritance Based Environments in Stand-alone OpenVMS Systems and
> OpenVMS Clusters (February 2004)" at
> http://www.rlgsc.com/publications/vmstechjournal/inheritance.html.
> 
> As to LOGIN.COM, Marc's suggestion of SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM works
> for global definitions. If one desires a more precision approach to
> manage individually authorized applications, or different versions of
> the same application, or for that matter, some mixture of both, one
> can straightforwardly implement a group-wide login.com, as described
> in "Group-wide LOGIN Profiles Lower Risk, Decrease Cost", the
> September 30, 2010 installment of The OpenVMS Consultant,
> http://www.rlgsc.com/blog/openvms-consultant/group-wide-login.html.
> 
> When I used the rights identified approach at a client, I was dealing
> with a large collection of applications, and a far larger workforce,
> each with an individual login. Individuals had to be checked out on
> each application by a supervisor, and then granted access when a work
> order required them to use the application. In effect, their captive
> account screen menu would only show the applications they were
> cleared to work on that particular shift. Granting/revoking these
> identifiers was delegated to the section supervisors, who similarly
> had an application (DCL-implemented) to check-in/check-out batches of
> work. Tens of operators per shift; worked smoothly for years.
Sounds like some people are doing some pretty advanced stuff
with logicals.

:-)

Arne