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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 Fax: (604) 888-7731 Date: July 16, 1990 From: Robert M. Green, President David J. Greer, Research & Development Michael Shumko, Customer Support To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP 3000, 1990 #4 What You Will Find in This News Memo: News Tidbits Technical Tips New Release of DBAUDIT About Robelle Life at Robelle - Aussie Perspective by Michael Redmond Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Feedback Loop - Qedit News Tidbits Native-Mode KSAM. Some customers are already using early releases of MPE XL version 2.1, the one with the new Native-Mode Spooler and Native-Mode KSAM. MPE XL Version 2.1 comes with both a Compatibility-Mode version of KSAM and a Native-Mode version. NM KSAM files are radically different from our old CM friends. HP has decided not to permit MR/NOBUF access to NM KSAM files. This means that the only way Suprtool can read NM KSAM files is one record at a time. It works but it may be slower. Recovering deleted records from NM KSAM files is difficult or impossible. Unfortunately, Suprtool Version 3.2 does not print an error if you turn Set Recover On and attempt to read a NM KSAM file. If you never use Set Recover On, you can use Suprtool Version 3.2 with native-mode KSAM. If you use Set Recover On, we have a new pre-release version of Suprtool that prints an error when you attempt recovery on NM KSAM files. Note that Suprtool will never be able to recover deleted NM KSAM records. Mark Your Calendar. The next European Interex Conference will be in Hamburg, Germany on April 24, 1991. See you there. Digital Audio Tape. DAT backup does seem to be as good as HP claimed. We have it on our new 922 Spectrum machine and it does hold a complete backup on one "reel". Here are some timings that we have found, comparing it to a 7974 at 1600 bpi: Load 7974: 37 seconds Load DAT: 42 seconds Store to 7974: 5 minutes, 179 files Store to DAT: 3 minutes, 179 files Restore last file from 7974: 3 minutes, 10 seconds Restore last file from DAT: 1 minute, 23 seconds At the Nice meeting, HP announced TurboStore 2 and claimed it could store 5 gigabytes on a DAT in 2 hours, or 74 gigabytes on an optical disc. Sounds great, but we haven't tried it. I've heard from one customer that their customer has their seven-reel backup down to one DAT tape. Note that DAT is now available for Classic machines as well as Spectrum series. European Character Sets and Databases. Ole Nord has written a program, DBCONV, for converting databases from the 7-bit old character representation to Roman-8. This has been a long-standing problem for European users, whose terminals have been configured for 7-bit Ascii for years. With the increased number of PCs attached to the 3000, it is imperative to switch to Roman-8. HP provides software for database conversion, but it requires a DBUNLOAD/DBLOAD, making it unfeasible to convert all databases over a single weekend. Ole's program, on the other hand, only changes those records requiring it and does an Update whenever the key value is not changed (instead of a Delete and Put). With this approach it should be able to convert databases in evenings or Saturdays. Anyone who is interested can contact Ole Nord AB at +46 8 623 00 50 in Sweden. Technical Tips Diskette Hazards. Avoid the use of magnetic typing stands. These copy holders use a magnet to hold the paper and a crossbar in place, which can erase a disk. Avoid magnetic paperclip holders for the same reason. Also watch out for the telephone. Disks that slip under an old-style phone are in danger of being erased by the phone's electromagnetic ringer. ROLLBACK vs ROLL-FORWARD Recovery. On MPE XL, ROLLBACK recovery no longer requires ILR. In fact, HP recommends that ILR BE DISABLED. If ILR is enabled, a significant degradation of performance will be observed; ILR flushes the buffer to disc for every DBPUT, DBUPDATE, etc. The Transaction Manager will flush all buffers to disc at least every 1.1 seconds, and guarantees no broken chains during its ROLLBACK recovery. Saving Disc Space. We recommend that you trim CM programs that have OCTCOMPed, to save disc space (with Qedit's XLTRIM command or MPEX's ALTFILE;XLTRIM). DSCOPY Indirect File. DSCOPY will look for a list of files in a file named DSCOPYI. Just create a job file with a list of files to be copied, equate DSCOPYI to it and let it go. You can get a hard copy listing by equating DSCOPYL to LP. [Jim Bird] Watch Out for MPE XL Bug. There is a bad bug in FOPEN in MPE XL 1.2 (release A.20.1N) and 2.05 (release A.31.00) that is not present in 1.2 (release A.20.11). Suppose you request Read/Write or Update Access when opening a file, but are only allowed Write Access by MPE security and not Read Access. You will be granted Write-Only Access if you have this bug, instead of Write-Save Access. What difference does that make? Big difference! Write-Only always erases the existing contents of the file, while Write-Save does not. Nuggets Gold. We have started using the Nuggets Gold collection of MPE XL utilities from Software Research Northwest, (206) 463-3030. David Greer's comments: "How can you live without them? The price is so reasonable and the software so useful, that Nuggets should be part of every MPE XL machine. Few Classic system managers could live without Sue/Soo. Nuggets offers similar functionality in the completely new Shot program. MPE XL :store tapes have a new format. If you lose your :store listing, how do you discover tape contents without the Tindex nugget? These two utilities alone would justify the price of Nuggets, but they are only two of 13 programs (and more are on the way). The multi-cpu and update pricing is even more reasonable. Highly recommended." A funny thing happened the day after we received our tape. Somebody from Federal Express called to find out how much gold we had imported so that they could assess the taxes and duties! We had a bit of difficulty convincing them that Nuggets Gold was software, not precious metals. I can't wait to see what happens when we order Nuggets Emerald! New Release of DBAUDIT What can Dbaudit do for you? * Dbaudit helps system managers keep tabs on HP 3000 database transactions. * With Dbaudit and your IMAGE logfiles, you can 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. * Dbaudit provides informative, readable summary reports of database activity, organized by program, user, dataset, and logon device. Use these reports to pinpoint performance bottlenecks in your database applications. * Dbaudit enables you to sort transactions by up to five keys, including dataset field values, so you don't have to write custom programs. Robelle releases an improved version of Dbaudit every year. If you are on service with us, we have just sent you a tape containing the new program files, user manual, and on-line help. Here are just a few of the changes to Dbaudit for version 2.0.1: * New transactions and modes recognized for Multi-Database transactions. * Redo/Listredo completed with all MPE XL features (OUT=, etc.), including multi-word searches and @-searches, for the last thousand commands. :Listredo shows the list of preceding commands; modify them before redoing with :Redo (HP-style modify), or Before (Qedit-style modify with control codes). The :Do Command repeats the commands instantly. You can repeat a range of previous commands. * Eliminate batch or online transactions from your report with the Exclude Command. * The Extract Command allows you to direct the selected output to a disc file. You could create a file of accidentally deleted transactions, then use Suprtool to replace the transactions in your database, or you can send the transactions to a custom report writer. The Extract Command now has two new options: Quiet, to avoid seeing the output on the screen, and the Erase option, to fill an existing file (a Quiz subfile perhaps?). * Wildcard matching. Select User and Select Program, and Exclude User and Exclude Program, allow you to be more sweeping in your choice of what to see or to exclude. For those of you just going through the motions, Exclude @.@.@ should lighten your afternoon's workload. * Program quality control. Dbaudit has a new option to help isolate programs that don't define logical transactions with DBBEGIN and DBEND intrinsic calls. You can detect code that isn't following your guidelines for logging recovery. Dbaudit runs on all versions of MPE V and MPE XL, and supports TurboIMAGE and TurboIMAGE/XL, including the new option for multi-database transactions. About Robelle Boston Conference. Unless you've been on another planet, out of range of Interex's powerful mail campaign, you know that this year's conference is being held in Boston on August 20-23. As usual, we will be out in full force, smiling, kissing hands, shaking babies, and promoting the Robelle way of life. Bob Green is presenting a paper, Improving Software Quality, and we have a couple of in-depth tutorials lined up for Suprtool and Qedit users who want to become Robelle gurus. The vendor booth will be `personned' by Bob Green (El Presidente), Marie Froese (Sales Manager, Milky Way Region) Mike Shumko (Techie Extraordinaire), Michael Redmond ("No worries, mate"), and a host of others. Look for us in our distinctive double-knit one-piece leisure suits. London Tutorials. Monday, Sept. 3rd, David Greer is giving our Qedit training course in London England. And on Tuesday, Sept. 4th, he teaches the Suprtool training course (this should be a great course, since David is the person in charge of Suprtool!). These courses are good for new users and experienced users always come away muttering, "I never knew there were that many features...". The price is 75 pounds plus VAT (86.25) per person, per day, including lunch. As only a few seats are available, we suggest you sign up soon (August 10th is the cut off). Call 071-473-2558 in the UK for more information. David Greer Schedule in South Africa. David will be presenting technical papers in South Africa this September. Here are the dates, places, and contacts: Sep 7 Johannesburg Doug Brown, (011) 706-7568 Sep 14 Durban Steven Phaup/Jon Wild, (031)86-6017 Sep 24 Cape Town Hans Hendricks, (021) 61-9001 David will be talking on Software Quality and Database Efficiency in all three places, and will also present a Human Interfaces Tutorial in Durban and Capetown. Life at Robelle - Aussie Perspective by Michael Redmond, Co-Cam Pty. Ltd. At the South Pacific and Asian Regional Conference (SPARC), held in April of 1989, Mike Shumko mentioned that Robelle were keen to have the dealers of Robelle software spend some time working in the office at Langley in B.C., Canada. I jumped at the chance to travel over the Pacific, with the obligatory stop in Hawaii on the way over, and indicated I would be willing to work for about three months. The main objectives were to increase product knowledge, see how technical support is handled, and generally get a feel for how the Robelle operation is run. I would be exposed to a much greater number of Robelle users and get an idea of what they are trying to accomplish with the products. I also thought it would be a great opportunity to experience the work situation in a different office environment. I wasn't sure how different it would be, but I was to find out very quickly. In the months before I was scheduled to begin work, faxes were shot back and forth finalizing the details of my stay. All were fairly standard (arranging flights, arrival dates, and work visas), until I sent a fax asking about the Robelle dress code, since shirt and tie is the required dress for males at Co-Cam. The response was a full-page spread of Robelle President, Bob Green, in knee-length surfer shorts and tee shirt. I got the idea pretty quickly. I arrived in Vancouver on May 12, and was met by the newest of the Robelle techies, Jim Bird. Jim proceeded to show me around Langley and promptly got us lost trying to find the office from my apartment. Jim has an excuse. He is from Calgary. Once I freed myself of Jim, I found the most direct route to the office and fronted for work at 8am on the Monday. I suppose I should explain what I mean by the term "office". It is situated on a farm, a fair distance from any shops or other signs of urban life. If you've ever wondered what the "R.R. #6" on Robelle's address means, it stands for Rural Route (try saying that quickly three times). Rural Route means that the postmen consider it too far to venture to the address on the envelope, so they dump the mail in a centrally-located mailbox to await pick-up by the addressee. It is a very peaceful part of Canada, until you step in the door. With the doubling of Robelle staff numbers in the past year or so, the office has become quite crowded, and a move to a bigger office in Surrey is in the works. The present office is actually the converted back living area of a lovely farmhouse. The techies work in a converted loft and, due to the amount of hot air generated by Mike and Jim, the area gets quite warm. I figure that this is one reason for Mike's mode of attire. Shorts and tee shirts are the norm and they are every bit as loud as those displayed by Bob Green in his infamous fax. I'm sure that Mike's shorts come with volume controls sewn on - they are that loud. His tee shirts have cerebral messages emblazoned across the chest. My personal favourites are the Simpsons series of shirts. The Simpsons is an adult cartoon show that has become quite popular in North America. Downstairs is where the sales, marketing, and administration departments share quarters with the computers, the various documentation and files, and the kitchen. Sales Manager Marie Froese actually has her desk located in the kitchen and often has to carry on a telephone conversation with spaghetti sauce bubbling next to her ear. Kerry Lathwell, budding office manager, has obviously been at Robelle the longest of the in-office members since she has the best view from her desk. I'm sure she will tell you she is too busy to take it all in, but I think she steals a glimpse of the Golden Ears mountains every now and then. Of the few visitors we get to the office, probably the most welcome is Annabelle Green's dog, Frank. He is a happy canine, always ready with a friendly lick of the face and wag of the tail. His tail, by the way, is as thick as a kangaroo's and has knocked over dust bins and fans with one quick swipe. He also sits in on staff meetings and generally brightens up the office. Because the office is so far away from any shops, lunch is prepared on site every day. All members of the office pitch in and help with the preparation or the cleaning up. The fare on offer is always well prepared and I look forward to Kerry blasting "LUNCH!!!" over the intercom. One word of warning though: if anyone is planning to spend more than a week at Robelle and intends to eat lunch, beware of the ubiquitous Kraft dinner. One of the more popular areas of the Robelle office is just to the right of Marie's desk. It's the junk food basket and is filled with just about every piece of North American confectionary ever produced. It is refilled every week or so, and heaven help the buyer if the peanut M&M's are forgotten. Resident System Mangler Ken Robertson gets quite upset if the basket is M&M-less, and "grrrrs" and "bletches" can be heard for miles. As you can probably guess by now, this is not your typical office situation, and I'm sure I will need a period of re-adjustment when I return to the normal office environment of Co-Cam. One thing that is quite evident, though, is the level of service that Robelle provides. It is of the highest quality and all members of staff strive to be as helpful and courteous as possible. If a customer has ever finished a phone call with Robelle and is unsatisfied, that customer must be very hard to please. Editor's note: Sorry, there are no job openings at this time. Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Qedit Version 3.8.1/3.8.2 Reflection Backups. Corrections to last issue's article, Job Stream to Backup PCs Automatically. The job stream failed to do Use Message.pub at the end, and there is an important fifth requirement for this procedure to work: * The version of Reflection must be Reflection PLUS. Only the PLUS version supports the BACKUP command. Another Neat Command File. Suppose you want to add some lines of text after every line in a file. A real life example might be a list of filenames, and you want to insert some commands after every filename. Here's a handy little Qedit command file do do the job. parm textfile addfile /text !textfile setjcw numlines = qeditcount setjcw counter = 0 while counter < numlines do /add * = !addfile /list *+1 setjcw counter = counter + 1 endwhile /keep,yes How would this work? Glad you asked. Let's say the command file is called ADDLINE, the file full of filenames is called FLIST, and the lines to be added are in a file called STUFF. You would invoke the command file in the same way you invoke a udc: just give its name followed by the parameters it needs. E.g., /addline flist,stuff Purge QMANUAL. Once you have installed QEDIT 3.8.x, the old documentation file can be purged. QMANUAL.DOC is replaced by two new files, QAPPLY.DOC and QCOMMAND.DOC. All these files are in the ROBELLE account, of course. Correction to Moving Columns Example. The example for moving columns in last month's newsletter had an error - instead of REPQ $HOLD 1 it should have been REPQ $HOLD 1/3. Xpress Version 2.6 Recovering Incinerated Messages. Have you ever looked for a message in your Waste Basket, only to discover that it was one of the messages that was incinerated when the Janitor passed by first thing in the morning? Well, it turns out that Xpress simulates real life even more than you may have thought! The Janitor doesn't really incinerate your messages on the spot. He just empties your Waste Basket into the big trash bin in the basement. That bin gets emptied only when the DBMAINT program runs as part of the daily Xpress cleanup job. So, if your message is important enough that you don't mind wading through the big bin, you can do it. Here is a way to recover waste basket messages that have been incinerated by the Janitor. It uses Dbaudit to extract the deleted records from the Image logfile, and Suprtool to put the records back into the D-WASTE-BASKET dataset. Of course, this means that you must have enabled logging on the mail database, and that you are a licensed user of all three products. One thing to remember is that this technique could change with some future release of Xpress. We don't guarantee that the database structure won't change. In fact, we can pretty much guarantee that it will change as new features are added to Xpress. This method can only be used from the time the user has his messages moved from the waste basket to the incinerator, to the time the next Daily job is run. This Daily job runs the DBMAINT program that, among other tasks, removes messages that are no longer linked to any baskets. In the example below, we will un-incinerate messages from the Waste Basket of Mike Shumko, who responded Yes to the Janitor sometime between 6 am and 10 am on 90/06/22. :run dbaudit.pub.robelle >INPUT DBLOG001 >SELECT FIELD MAIL D-WASTE-BASKET USER-NAME == "@MIKE SHUMKO@" Database to be opened: MAIL.MAILDB.ROBELLE Database password? XYZZY >SELECT AFTER 900622 0600 {Select time slice when the user} >SELECT BEFORE 900622 1000 {... incinerated his messages} >LIST FIELDS FIELDS >LIST CALLS DEL >EXTRACT * * EXMIKE MAIL.MAILDB D-WASTE-BASKET Use LIST FIELDS to select Header fields for your file. >XEQ Start of DBAUDIT log-file scan. End of DBAUDIT log-file scan. >EXIT :LISTF EXMIKE,2 ACCOUNT= ROBELLE GROUP= MAILDB FILENAME ------------LOGICAL RECORD----------- ----SPACE---- SIZE TYP EOF LIMIT R/B SECTORS X MX EXMIKE 39W FB 55 1000000 52 2048 1 * :run suprtool.pub.robelle >INPUT EXMIKE >PUT D-WASTE-BASKET,MAIL Database password [;]? XYZZY >XEQ IN=55, OUT=55. CPU-SEC=2. WALL-SEC=3. The waste basket messages that were incinerated by the Janitor are now back in Mike Shumko's waste basket. Notifying Users of New Features. Question: Dear Helpman, how can I send my Xpress users a short list of the newest features of your products, without sending them the whole change notice that they would have to print using Prose? Answer: You can very easily create such a file yourself, using the features of QHELP, our online help system. Say, for example, that you want to produce a short list of new Qedit features. Just run Qedit and do the following: /build x;rec=-80,,f,ascii /file qhelpout=x,old;dev=disc /help >$lp on >news >$lp off >{press return enough times to get out of qhelp} This puts the description of new features into file X. You can then send this file to your Xpress users. This technique can be used with any of our products. For example, to get a list of the latest Xpress features, you would type a question mark at the main menu prompt to invoke the online help system. Navigate through the help system until you get to the level which offers NEWS as a choice, and do the commands shown above, starting with $LP ON. *c1950a390b5g2P*p-50Y Fortune Cookie of the Month Difference Between the Sexes: If Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle get together for lunch, they will call each other Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle. But if Mike, Dave, Rob and Jack go out for a brewsky, they will affectionately refer to each other as Bullet-Head, Godzilla, Peanut Brain and Useless. ________________________________________________________________ Feedback Loop Rate Your Favorite Enhancements Robelle welcomes user feedback on where our development efforts should be headed. At any given moment, we are considering many possible enhancements, only a very few of which can we work on. This is your chance to let us know what you would like to see. Could you please take a moment to complete and return the section below? Thanks! Here are some Qedit enhancement requests. Please rate them according to your interest on a scale from 1 to 10 (where 10 indicates the greatest interest and 1 the least). Circle only one per line: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Set Language Quiz (quick, qtp, etc.) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Four-up listings on LaserJet 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Split screen in Visual mode 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Undo changes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 PC frontend to Qedit - always linked to an HP 3000 session 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 PC editor that is usable with/without HP 3000 logon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Native-Mode version of Qedit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Faster links to NM compilers on MPE XL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Editing for Cobol compile errors (point to source code) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Support for variables on MPE V (already works on MPE XL) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Support HPPATH variable on MPE V (already works on MPE XL) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Editing of Cobol Copylib members 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Spelling checker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Other (please specify): ______________________________ Please clip and mail or fax to: Robelle Consulting Ltd. 8648 Armstrong Road, R.R.#6 Langley, B.C. Canada V3A 4P9 Fax: (604) 888-7731