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What's Up DOCumentation
Robelle Consulting Ltd.
8648 Armstrong Rd., R.R.#6
Langley, B.C. Canada V3A 4P9
Telephone: (604) 888-3666 Telex: 04-352848
Fax: (604) 888-7731
Date: July 23, 1989
From: Robert M. Green, President
David J. Greer, Research & Development
Michael C. Shumko, Customer Support
To: Users of Robelle Software
Re: News of the HP 3000, 1989 #6
What You Will Find in This News Memo:
News Tidbits
DBAUDIT Builds EXTRACT Files
Technical Tips
About Robelle
Linking PowerHouse with QEDIT, Part I
Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions
News Tidbits
No Free MPE XL Performance Tools. Mike Anderson of HP Response Center
Atlanta called to say that the tools mentioned in our last news memo were not
available from the response center, except during HP performance consulting.
Sorry for the wrong information -- you will have to purchase HP GLANCE or
PROBE XL to see what is going on in your MPE XL machines.
DAT Backup. HP and SONY are working together to apply the new Digital Audio
Tape technology to computer backup. The goals are slow write, faster scan,
and very high storage capacity (1.3 gigabytes in a cartridge the size of a
regular music cassette). Rumor says HP will release a low-end MPE XL machine
next year that uses DAT for system backup.
The Truth About MPE XL Disc Files. Eugene has written a new paper for the
San Francisco Interex conference that is about the internals of MPE XL disc
files. How they differ from MPE V files, how disc space is allocated, and
much more. Highly recommended.
Cognos Rumor. According to the June 1st issue of DATAMATION, "Cognos
Corp. is quietly working on a successor to its PowerHouse fourth-generation
language using object-oriented programming technology. The company is
developing the next generation package using an object-oriented language
called Eiffel from Interactive Software Engineering, Inc. of Goleta,
California. Cognos chose an object paradigm to enable users to extend
applications, as well as smooth interfaces to a variety of data bases and
file systems. A development official declines to say when initial release of
the product is expected."
UK Users Meeting. The UK users met in Brighton July 9-12 and our cub
reporter was there:
IEEE Reals. HP has added a new "E" data type to IMAGE to distinguish
IEEE reals from Classic 3000 reals (R type), but is holding up release
until they figure out how to ensure backward RESTORE compatibility to the
Classic machines. VPLUS Replacement. HP has struck a deal with a third
party for a screen designer that will work on both UNIX and MPE XL --
look for an announcement in September. DTC. There will be a lower-cost
DTC soon. With MPE XL 2.0 at the end of 1989, the DTC will allow you to
switch between different Spectrum systems, but you will need to buy a new
LAN manager product. UNIX + MPE XL. MPE XL will be POSIX-compliant
within two years. POSIX is an industry-standard version of UNIX. The
POSIX intrinsics will not sit on top of the MPE intrinsics, but beside
them. Bye-Bye Portables. HP is going out of the Laptop PC business to
focus on desktops. The LS/12 (a Zenith with HP label) has not been
updated to match the most recent Zenith offering and will be gone in six
months. Open Systems Foundation. HPUX will support OSF/Motif before the
end of 1989 and OSF/1 before the end of 1990. Look for MPE XL somewhat
later. Tape Reel Management. HP is adding hooks to MPE (XL and V) so
that large customers and third parties can build tools to manage tapes.
This goes into Beta Test this autumn and anyone who is interested in
writing tape tools should contact HP for details.
GSA Seminars. Gilles Schipper is giving his seminars "TurboIMAGE 3000
Advanced Techniques" on October 3/4, and "Effective HP 3000 System
Management" on October 5/6. Place: Toronto. For more information, call
(416) 889-3000.
DBAUDIT Builds EXTRACT Files
DBAUDIT is intended to help system managers keep tabs on HP 3000 database
transactions through use of IMAGE logfiles. You can use it to monitor a
specific user, a troublesome dataset, a dial-in terminal port, or a suspect
application program, and see just what changes are being made to your
databases. Because transaction dumps can be sorted by up to five keys,
including dataset field values, you can use them as audit reports instead of
writing custom programs. DBAUDIT provides informative, readable summary
reports of database activity, organized by program, user, dataset, and logon
device. Using these reports, you can pinpoint performance bottlenecks in
your database applications.
At Robelle Consulting Ltd., we continue to improve our products, releasing a
new, enhanced version each year. Highlights of the changes to DBAUDIT for
version 1.9:
* EXTRACT command copies transactions into MPE files.
This allows you to put accidentally deleted records
back into the database or feed transactions into
custom reports.
* Commands may be continued using & at the end of the line.
* FORM command ╚ la QUERY, including FORM SETS.
* SET command to delete portions of the report's summary
statistics.
* PAUSE and DISPLAY commands to annotate USE files.
As always, the User Manual and on-line help have been updated to reflect
these improvements and are available on the same tape as the program files.
All users of DBAUDIT covered by service will receive an update tape
automatically (allow six weeks for delivery outside North America). DBAUDIT
is fully compatible with MPE XL and the logfiles generated by Turbo IMAGE/XL.
Technical Tips
How to Get MPE XL Variables into QEDIT Commands? Put the QEDIT commands into
a Command File with the MPE XL variable name preceded by an exclamation mark
(!filename). Don't forget to put a slash in front of each QEDIT command.
Then invoke the Command File by typing its name:
option nolist
comment cmd file to invoke QEDIT command with variable
/text !my_file_name
Saving Function Keys on MPE XL. There are a number of ways to save the
values of the user function keys. One method that we use is as follows: do
an FCONTROL 31 to put the terminal into VPLUS mode and an FCONTROL 41 to
specify Unedited mode with RS as the terminating character. Then FWRITE an
Escape sequence to put the terminal into block mode, display the user key
menu, up the cursor, and do a block transfer (Esc "&s1d1g0H", Esc "&k1a1B",
Esc "j", Esc "&a0c0R", Esc "d"). The terminal will wait for a DC1 to trigger
the transfer. You issue a big FREAD of 2000 bytes and should receive back
the Escape sequences that define each key, separated by CR/LF, and ending
with an RS character. FWRITE Esc "k" to remove the user key menu and Esc
"&k0a0B" to go back to line mode, then call FCONTROL 30 to get out of VPLUS
mode and FCONTROL 41 with a PARM of 0 to disable Unedited mode. When you
need to reset the function keys, write out the buffer that you captured.
This method will not work on MPE XL, because the DTC version of VPLUS does
not use handshaking (you must set G and H to 1 to inhibit waiting for DC1s,
Esc "&s1d1g1H"). When you press ENTER the terminal sends data immediately,
whether the CPU is ready for it or not. The DTC is responsible for saving
this information in a "typeahead" buffer until the CPU asks for it. When you
call FCONTROL 31 to turn on VPLUS mode, typeahead is not enabled in the DTC
until after the first read. If you save the function keys first, the
terminal may send the key values before the DTC has received the read request
from MPE XL. Result: the terminal may hang in the user key menu or your
program may receive only some of the Escape sequences. Solution: insert a
zero-length FREAD to ready the DTC. Randy Medd of Telamon notes that VPLUS
itself does a zero-length FREAD immediately after calling FCONTROL 31.
Note: this "typeahead" is unrelated to the new TYPEAHEAD feature of MPE XL
1.2.
How To List ALL Spoofles? Without being the console, you can print the
spoofles for all jobs and sessions in one command:
:showout #
How to Detect the DTC? If you have an MPE XL machine, you probably realize by
now that the DTC (Distributed Terminal Controller) is quite different from
the ATP that you had on your Classic 3000. So different that you may need to
put special code in some programs, special code that works only on the DTC.
A quick and dirty way to decide if you are running with a DTC is to check for
the system function THISCPU: if it returns a value greater than 15 you are
running on a Spectrum CPU. However, your user could still be connected to an
old ATP and be DS'ed over to the Spectrum. How to tell? There is a
little-known intrinsic, FDEVICECONTROL, which will give you this information
on MPE XL 1.2 or later:
procedure CheckDtc (DtcStatus);
integer DtcStatus; !16-bit Integer, Half Word on MPE XL
! Returns 0 for pre-DTC, 1 for DTC
begin
integer buf
,stdin
,errnum
;
intrinsic fdevicecontrol,fopen,fclose;
integer procedure thiscpu; option external;
DtcStatus := 0; !false, must be ATP or ADCC
buf := 0;
if thiscpu >= 16 then DtcStatus := 1; !run on SpectrumCpu
stdin := fopen(,[3/4,1/1,2/1]);
if = then
begin
fdevicecontrol(stdin,Buf,1,192,28,1,errnum);
if = then
DtcStatus := if 6<=buf<=7 then 1 else 0;
fclose(stdin,0,0);
end;
end; !CheckDtc
About Robelle
Big Party September 11th. Join us Monday night for an evening celebration
cruise extraordinaire aboard the Hornblower Yacht "The San Francisco". Enjoy
music and great food in one of the most beautiful settings in the world! To
get your ticket (limit of two per person), stop by the Robelle Booth Monday,
September 11th during show hours. With your ticket in hand (a must to get on
the bus), meet at 6:45 pm sharp in front of the San Francisco Hilton (Ellis
Street), or the Renaissance Ramada (Cyril Magnin Street). Buses will take us
to the yacht for our three-hour cruise from those two locations only. Hang
onto your ticket until you are firmly planted on deck: the number of guests
allowed on board is finite. After the cruise, the buses return to the San
Francisco Hilton and Renaissance Ramada Hotels. We look forward to seeing
you at the meeting and hope you can join us for a wonderful evening.
Robelle Presentations. In San Francisco, we will be giving seminars on our
products. These are shortened versions of our successful tutorials. We do
not have the dates at present, but we hope to give an hour tutorial each on
QEDIT, SUPRTOOL, and DBAUDIT, plus an entertaining talk on Electronic Mail.
Bob Green is speaking to the BCRUG on September 20th, and will be giving a
SUPRTOOL tutorial to the Cognos Multiview Users Group meeting in Ottawa on
October 18th. On November 7th, Bob will be giving a talk on "Improving
Software Quality" to HP people in the Oak room of the Cupertino site.
QEDIT and SUPRTOOL Tutorials in Toronto. Due to popular demand, we have
arranged to send Bob Green to Toronto in October to present the QEDIT and
SUPRTOOL tutorials. Date: Oct 16/17. Contact GSA at (416) 889-3000 for more
information.
Linking PowerHouse with QEDIT, Part I
PowerHouse is a fourth-generation language for HP, DEC and Data General
computers, as well as IBM PC-ATs and compatibles; it was developed and
marketed by Cognos of Ottawa, Canada. The primary modules are the QUIZ
report writer, QUICK screen handler, and the QTP transaction processor.
QEDIT is Robelle's full-screen text editor for HP 3000 computers. Among
Robelle customers, PowerHouse is a favorite development tool, second (barely)
to COBOL. It is possible to link QEDIT and PowerHouse to make a powerful,
convenient development environment, but we have found that many of our users
do not have access to the information on how to accomplish this.
Accordingly, we spent a day at a Cognos office tracking down all the
components of PowerHouse, trying them with QEDIT, and adjusting the
User-Defined Commands to streamline and optimize the linkage between Robelle
and Cognos products.
PowerHouse, QUIZ, QUICK, and QTP are Trademarks of Cognos Corp.
Types of PowerHouse Sites
Minimalist: run-time version of QUIZ with a compiled dictionary. Dedicated
applications, bundled in by VAR.
QUIZ Only: QDD generates a run-time QSCHEMAC data dictionary from a source
file, QSHOW reports on the data dictionary, QUTIL builds databases, and QUIZ
prints reports.
Full PowerHouse: above, plus QDESIGN (designs screens), QUICK (executes
screens), and QTP (batch transaction processor). This is the norm.
Graphics Option: above, plus a special version of QUIZ that can do graph
commands.
Architect: helps you design your dictionary and application. Menu
front-end. Automatic prototyper and documenter.
Any of these sites could be supplied with the QDDR option, the Cognos
interface to HP DICTIONARY/3000 (not available for ARCHITECT).
Where Does PowerHouse Live?
Each new version of PowerHouse is distributed in its own group, such as
DD501F or PH506C, in the COGNOS account. You are expected to put the new
version into production by copying the files into the CURRENT.COGNOS group.
Cognos provides a program for this copy function. However, some users leave
the software in the distribution group.
Where Are the UDC Files?
UDCs are User-Defined Commands; they combine a large number of command steps
into one simple command, making it convenient to access tools such as
PowerHouse. There are at least two sets of UDC files for PowerHouse. By
default, each set looks in a different group of the COGNOS account:
PHUDC assumes production software is in the CURRENT group
DDUDC assumes production software is in the DD501F group
In addition, most PowerHouse modules have an option to link to HP's
DICTIONARY/3000. This Cognos option is called QDDR. When you have this
option, you must choose between these two alternative UDC files:
PHRUDC assumes production software is in the CURRENT group
DDRUDC assumes production software is in the DDR501F group
For PowerHouse 5.01, these UDC files are found in the DD501F or DDR501F
groups. PowerHouse 5.06 does not discriminate between QDD and QDDR; the UDC
files are PH506UDC (assuming software is left in PH506C) and PHUDC (assumes
software is copied to CURRENT), and they are both found in the PH506C group.
As a QEDIT user, you should look at the file phudc.catalog.robelle for sample
PowerHouse UDCs that work well inside QEDIT. These UDCs are designed for
PowerHouse version 5.01, without QDDR, and assume the CURRENT group.
Program Filenames
When PowerHouse is shipped as a production version, the name of the Quiz
program is always the file QUIZ, regardless of whether it is in the PH506C
group or the CURRENT group.
When PowerHouse is shipped as a beta-test version, the name of the Quiz
program would be QUIZ in a group like PH506B (the B is for beta).
File Equations
PowerHouse currently supports FILE equations to specify names of program
modules, dictionary files, and help files. For example, here are two FILE
equations that work with QUIZ 5.01:
FILE QSHOW=qshow.current.cognos {program file}
FILE QCOBLIB=qcoblib.current.cognos
Old filenames usually remain the same, or go away. Sometimes new names are
added. In version 5.01, these names were also valid:
FILE COGMPE = xxx {program to execute MPE commands}
FILE COGSORT = xxx {program to sort with more stack space}
FILE COGHELP = xxx {help program}
FILE COGHLIB = xxx {help data file}
In version 5.06, Cognos added COGEDITR to define a text editor for the REVISE
command:
FILE COGEDITR = QEDIT.PUB.ROBELLE
Because FILE equations are not available on non-HP computers, Cognos may, in
future, replace the use of FILE equations with other ways of specifying
filenames (e.g., INFO=string or Variables in MPE XL).
Summary of UDC Changes
QEDIT users should usually make three changes to the PowerHouse UDCs to make
them work better from within QEDIT.
First, add a new parameter source for the source filename.
QUIZ source,info=" ",vers=current
The default UDCs always prompt you for the source filename. This change
allows you to do quiz * to invoke QUIZ on the current workfile.
Second, add these options to the INFO= string:
auto=!source suspend udc=$catalog
AUTO= causes PowerHouse to process the !source file parameter without
prompting you.
Note: AUTO= can also be used to invoke a "compiled" binary file.
:quiz source
>build binary
>exit
:quiz binary
Typically, this is used for menu options from QUICK screens.
SUSPEND causes PowerHouse to suspend when it returns to QEDIT instead of
terminating. By default, PowerHouse always terminates completely, forcing
you to re-RUN and re-initialize each module each time you need to use it.
With SUSPEND, QEDIT can "HOLD" the module until you need it. You will find
it much faster to get back into the PowerHouse module on subsequent requests.
The UDC=$CATALOG option causes PowerHouse to respect your UDCs.
Third, add this file equation to select QEDIT for the REVISE command (5.06 or
later):
file cogeditr=qedit.pub.robelle
QUIZ
QUIZ is the original PowerHouse module and the one you are most likely to
have on your system. It is a report writer and can read source files that
are in QEDIT format, as can all of the PowerHouse modules. The most
convenient way to use QUIZ is to live in QEDIT, edit your QUIZ programs, then
invoke QUIZ to compile and test the reports. You invoke QUIZ using the UDC
that you modified, as above, for use from within QEDIT. When you exit from
QUIZ, you are returned to QEDIT where you can correct your source program.
The first time you use QUIZ, QEDIT will ask if you want to "hold" onto it.
Answer "YES".
:run qedit.pub.robelle
/set udc phudc.catalog.robelle
/open source
/visual
/quiz * {* = current source module}
{QUIZ compiles and executes your report, then exits}
QUIZ.CURRENT.COGNOS is still alive. Okay to HOLD [no]? YES
Here is the UDC from the PHUDC file for QUIZ 5.01 modified for QEDIT:
QUIZ source,info=" ",vers=current
comment version 5.01, modified for QEDIT source file
file qshow=qshow.!vers.cognos
file qcoblib=qcoblib.!vers.cognos
file cogsort=cogsort.!vers.cognos
file coghelp=coghelp.!vers.cognos
file coghlib=coghlib.!vers.cognos
file cogmpe=cogmpe.!vers.cognos
run quiz.!vers.cognos;info="auto=!source udc=$catalog &
suspend !info"
reset qshow
reset qcoblib
reset cogsort
reset coghelp
reset coghlib
reset cogmpe
***
There are three other UDCs in the PHUDC file for other versions of QUIZ.
These have also been modified for use in QEDIT:
QUIZP privileged-mode QUIZ, faster serial reads
GRAPHICS QUIZ with graphics commands
GRAPHP priv-mode version of graphics QUIZ
If you are using QDDR, you will need to transfer these changes to the file
PHRUDC.
[Next Month: QDD, QUICK, and the other PowerHouse modules]
Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions
MPE XL Compatibility
All Robelle programs run on MPE XL in Compatibility Mode. All programs may
be Object Code Translated (OCT'd) for additional performance. (OCT chokes on
Qedit 3.7. Call the office for Qedit 3.7.1 if required.)
QEDIT Version 3.7 and 3.7.1
Using R9 to Insert Blank Space. When entering a lot of new text in VISUAL,
it is tiresome to keep pressing INS LINE for each new line. To insert a
block of 10 blank lines for the next paragraph, press INS LINE, CURSOR LEFT
twice, type "R9", and press ENTER. This will replicate nine copies of the
blank line after itself (as well as updating the paragraph you just finished
entering). Repeat after each paragraph.
Posting Changes and % Commands. When using the MPEX-Hooked version of QEDIT,
% commands are intercepted by the Hook and executed. As a result, QEDIT
never has a chance to post to the disc the changes to your current file, and
the % command may process an out-of-date file. Solution: disable this
feature of the Hook and use SET EXTPROG in QEDIT instead. Luckily, VESOFT
has provided such an option, which retains the other nice features of Hooked
programs, such as super-redo. The command is:
%hook qedit.pub.robelle;nopercent
DBAUDIT Version 1.9
Recovering Lost Lambs. You can repair accidental deletions of records with
DBAUDIT's EXTRACT command (new in 1.9) and the SUPRTOOL program. First,
create an MPE file with the lost records from the logfile. If you know the
program, user, or device responsible for the loss, you can select it
specifically, thus restricting the amount of output to just your desired
records.
:run dbaudit.pub.robelle
>input log001.dblogold.sys
>extract database,setname,exfname {define extract file}
>list calls delete {only DELETE transactions}
>list fields fields {only the IMAGE data fields}
>select program query.pub.sys
>xeq
>exit
:run suprtool.pub.robelle
>base basename,1
>input exfname=setname
>put setname
>xeq
>exit
*c1950a200b5g2P*p-50Y
Fortune Cookie of the Month
Tractor Feed - A mechanism which allows your printer, and its
co-conspirator, your computer, to waste virtually infinite amounts of
paper.