ftp.robelle3000.ai 2014/2014.06.ftp.robelle3000.ai.tar/ftp.robelle3000.ai/newsletter/1991/w1991-05.txt

Text File | 1994-04-12 | 22KB | 529 lines

        What's Up DOCumentation



       Robelle Consulting Ltd.
       Unit 201, 15399-102A Ave.
       Surrey, B.C.  Canada  V3R 7K1
       Phone:  [phone]
       Fax:  [phone]

Date:  August 26, 1991

From:  Robert M. Green, CEO
       David J. Greer, President
       Michael Shumko, Customer Support
       Jim Bird, Customer Support

To:    Users of Robelle Software

Re:    News of the HP 3000, 1991 #5

     What You Will Find in This News Memo:

       News Tidbits
       Technical Tips
       About Robelle
       Robelle Products:  Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions
       Fortune Cookie of the Month


                                 News Tidbits

AllBase Unbundled Too!

Instead of re-bundling TurboIMAGE, HP has decided to unbundle AllBase/SQL too.
You can now purchase series 900  systems  with  TurboIMAGE  only,  AllBase/SQL
only,  both databases, or without a database.  Until now, if you wanted to buy
a series 900 system with TurboIMAGE you also had to buy AllBase/SQL.  See  the
July 1991 edition of The HP Chronicle.

Open Systems: MPE XL vs UNIX.

Recent  statements by HP management have stressed that HP's strategic focus on
Open Systems doesn't mean that you have to trade your HP3000 system in  for  a
UNIX box.  HP's plans to add a POSIX interface to MPE XL by December 1991 (see
George Stachnik's paper "POSIX and the HP3000" in the June 1991 Interact)  and
the  announcement  of  10  new HP3000 series 900 systems show that HP believes
there is a strong future for  the  HP3000  in  the  Open  System  world.   Win
Roelandts,  vice  president and general manager of HP's Network Systems Group,
is quoted in the September 1991 InterexPress as saying "In Hewlett-Packard I'm
in  charge  of all our systems strategy...  And I've said it before and I will
repeat it again - for me MPE is a strategic operating  system."  Now  if  they
could only get this message across to the HP sales force.

Big Blue Too?

According  to  the  1991 UnixWorld magazine, IBM is planning to integrate OS/2
and AIX (IBM's flavor of UNIX) "so that applications written for each will  be
portable  and  have  the  same  look and feel".  The goal of this Open Systems
Architecture  Project  is  a  single  applications  environment  across  IBM's
proprietary  SAA  and  UNIX  lines.   There  are  also plans to make all IBM's
operating systems compliant with POSIX and version 3 of the X/Open Portability
Guide (someday).

News from San Diego.

HP  made  some announcements at the Interex conference in San Diego, including
the first of the high-end laser printers based  on  technology  from  Siemens.
Designated  the  HP  5000 Model F100, the printer will support PCL 4 (LaserJet
compatible), printing continuous-sheet forms at twice the speed and resolution
of   the   2680   it   replaces.    HP  also  announced  availability  of  the
three-processor 980/300 by the end of the year, with a four-processor  version
expected  by  this  time next year.  There are rumors of new high-end systems,
probably based on PA RISC 1.1, to  be  released  around  November  (code-named
"Emerald").

The  battery bunny was beating its drum at the Interex opening party on Sunday
night, proclaiming that MPE/V is still alive.  We saw many "I  [heart]  MPE/V"
buttons  at  the  show.  Meanwhile, customers on MPE XL 3.0 have reported that
the latest release of XL is stable.

Adager is now Qedit-Compatible.  Alfredo has enhanced the  latest  version  of
Adager to read and write schemas in Qedit files!

Management  Roundtable: HP has no plans to port the COBOL/XL compiler to HPUX.
MicroFocus COBOL is the suggested "open" choice.  HP  is  working  on  porting
TurboIMAGE/XL  to  HPUX,  but  it  is  a  complicated  problem.   They  have a
third-party helping them try to iron out the incompatibilities between the MPE
and  UNIX  file  systems  and  operating  systems.  By the end of the year, HP
should be able to announce the results, whether positive or negative.

Third-party Software Upgrade Pricing.

At the HPCUA conference in Glasgow, HP announced that  they  will  be  working
with  third-party  software  vendors  to  rationalize software upgrade prices.
Although the  price/performance  of  HP  systems  has  improved  dramatically,
third-party  software  vendors  charging  CPU-sensitive prices have not always
adjusted their prices accordingly.  HP is concerned that customers  have  been
prevented from upgrading their systems or making the jump from Classic systems
to MPE XL because of the software upgrade prices involved.


                                Technical Tips

KSAM/XL Copylibs.

Although  you can use native-mode KSAM/XL files as COBOL copy libraries on MPE
XL, you may run into some problems.   The  compatibility-mode  COBOL  compiler
treats  KSAM/XL files as sequential files rather than indexed files, which can
be very slow  if  the  copylib  file  has  lots  of  records.   As  well,  the
compatibility-mode  compiler  may fall into a loop if you have copylib members
that in turn copy other copylib members (there is a  patch  for  this  problem
from HP).

Another  problem  is  that prior to MPE XL 3.0, you cannot use COBEDIT to edit
KSAM/XL copylibs.  You either have to convert the copylib to KSAM/V format  to
edit it, or use a tool like Qedit that recognizes KSAM/XL copylibs.

Unique MPE XL Variable Names.

When  writing MPE XL command files, you often have to think of unique variable
names to store temporary information.  A customer noticed that  not  only  can
MPE XL variable names contain "_" (underscore) characters, they can start with
"_".  In fact, variable names don't have to contain anything  more  than  "_".
So you could, if you liked, have variables called "_", "__", etc.

More on Transaction Manager Tip.

In our May newsletter we mentioned a tip from the Masters conference on how to
improve performance on busy MPE XL  systems  by  configuring  multiple  volume
sets.   For  a  detailed  discussion,  see Rob Apgood's "Managing Performance"
column in the June 1991 edition of The HP Chronicle.

Listing a Batch Job Stdlist.

In our May 1991 newsletter we showed  a  Qedit  command  file  to  browse  the
$stdlist of a batch job on MPE XL without having to know the spoolfile number.
One of our customers, Rich Roemer, adapted this command file to work from  the
CI, using the MPE XL command language:

   USER DEFINED COMMAND FILE:  LJOB.CMD.SYS

   parm jnum=" "
   option nolist
   setvar lj_jnum ups("!jnum")-"J"-"#"
   if not numeric("!lj_jnum")
      spoolf o@;seleq=[filedes="$STDLIST"];show
      echo
      echo --- Select a JOBNUM from this list of job $STDLISTs.
      echo --- LJOB expects a job# (ie., #J50, J50, #50 or 50).
      echo
      return
   endif
   setjcw cierror 0
   continue
   spoolf o@;seleq=[jobnum=#j!lj_jnum and filedes="$STDLIST"]&
            ;show >LJOBTMP1
   if cierror = 0
      print ljobtmp1;start=4 >ljobtmp2
      input lj_spfline <ljobtmp2
      print o![rtrim(str("!lj_spfline",3,8))].out.hpspool
      purge ljobtmp2,temp
   endif
   purge ljobtmp1,temp
   deletevar lj_@


Nuggets Emerald Collection.

We've  been  using  the  Nuggets Emerald collection of utilities from Software
Research Northwest on our MPE XL systems for a while now.  Luckily, we did not
have the same Customs problems importing Emeralds into Canada that we did with
SRN's Gold Nuggets.  In Emeralds you get Magnet, which is very  very  fast  at
finding  strings in files, including Qedit files.  Betimes lets you change the
system clock on your XL machine online.   Blaze  is  a  quirky  PC-style  file
manager  with  pop-up  windows.   You  also get Redwood, the MPE XL version of
Filerpt to analyze file close records in the system logfiles, and if you  miss
Spook,  there's  Casper,  the friendly ghost.  Hackers will like Avatar, which
lets you decompile native-mode program files, XLs, object files, etc.

Although there are still some bugs to be worked out, Magnet alone is worth the
price of the new Nuggets collection.

                                About Robelle

Congratulations, Karalee and David!

Announcing the arrival of David and Karalee Greer's second child, Kevin  David
Greer, at 5:18 pm on Wednesday, August 7th, 1991.  Weighing in at 8° lbs, with
blond hair and blue-grey eyes, Kevin looks  a  little  more  like  Daddy  than
Mommy.   This explains David's absence from this year's Interex meeting in San
Diego.

What Are Those Letters You've Been Getting?

From time to time you should receive a letter from us asking  you  to  confirm
your  company  name, address, phone number, fax number and the contact name we
have in our database.  This letter is keyed on the expiry date of  a  product,
which  is  why  you  may  receive more than one letter during a year.  We have
recently added more information to this letter about the Robelle products that
you  are using.  This includes your maintenance expiry date, how many cpus you
are licensed for, the last version number we sent you and the date we sent it.
If  you  find  information  in the letter that is not correct, we ask that you
make whatever changes are necessary and return it to us so that we can  update
our records.

If  you  have questions about anything in the letter, please phone Jennifer at
[phone].

Glasgow Raffle Winner.

Milan Webb from Copygraphic walked home with a free bottle of fine Glenfiddich
scotch,  as  the  winner  of  the  Robelle  raffle  at the HPCUA conference in
Glasgow.

San Diego Tutorials.

We would like to thank those of you who attended our free seminars at the  San
Diego  Interex  conference.   At  Bob  Green's  Qedit  tutorial,  a  bunch  of
enthusiastic Qedit customers  took  the  opportunity  to  present  enhancement
ideas.   Five  lucky  people (in all the excitement we forgot their names) won
the draw at the end of the seminar and walked away with red Qedit golf shirts.

A  crowd of 108 attended Mike Shumko's Suprtool session.  Mike introduced some
of the new features in the latest release of Suprtool, then opened  the  floor
to  a  discussion  of  advanced  topics  like  Suprlink,  tables and the Chain
command.  The winners of the draw for blue  Suprtool  golf  shirts  were  Gigi
Thigpen  from  CompuChem  Laboratories,  Elbert  Silbaugh  from Boeing, Vaughn
Daines from Desert Mutual, Marc Giroux from Rolland Inc., and  Joanna  Majette
from Overton's Sports Center.

If  you enjoyed the sessions and have any suggestions as to how we can improve
them for next year (besides giving away more prizes) we  would  be  more  than
happy to receive your comments.

San Diego Conference.

At  the  DISC  booth,  people  were  putting for bunnies (Marie Froese and Bob
Green's wife Mary Ann were among the winners), and if you sat through  a  demo
of  Omniview,  you  got  two  bottles of Boulder Beer (since DISC has recently
moved to Boulder, Colorado.)

A funny thing happened on the way to the bar.  After a staff meeting, a  group
from  M.B. Foster  decided to head to the hotel bar to relax.  On the way down
to the lobby from the 23rd floor, the elevator jammed.  The thirsty bunch  was
rescued some 45 minutes later, and the hotel management decided to make up the
inconvenience by opening the bar to them.  First thing ordered: two bottles of
Dom Perignon champagne!  Our own Ken Robertson had the good fortune of sitting
at their table.

Goodbye, Jim.

Jim Bird has been doing a great  job  helping  Robelle  customers  with  their
technical questions for over a year and a half.  Alas, Jim has decided to move
back to Calgary.  Since we have no plans to open a Calgary office, we're going
to  have  to  do  without  Jim's  weekly  movie reviews, infectious laugh, and
in-depth knowledge.  Good luck in the Real World, Jim.

Hello, Paul.

Taking over Jim's position in tech support is Paul Gobes, a long-time user  of
our  products.   When  asked  to  describe  himself  for  What's  Up Doc, Paul
submitted the following: "I was born in Australia in the outback (well not  in
the city anyway).  I am the son of poor immigrants who came to this country 20
years ago.  I am the father of 2 children who listen to  me  occasionally.   I
was  a  programmer/analyst  of HP 3000 IMAGE software starting in Miami Beach,
working in Vancouver with Bentall Development  for  the  last  10  years.   My
programming  language of choice is Speedware."  Welcome to the Robelle family,
Paul.

           Robelle Products:  Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions

Calling for Support.

When  you  call  in  for technical help, we encourage you to ask for Technical
Support, instead of a specific person, unless you  are  already  working  with
someone  on  a  specific problem.  In the past, asking for Mike or Jim was the
same as asking for technical support.  As you can see, this is no longer true.
So,  the  next time you call Robelle for technical support, just ask for "tech
support for Qedit" (or Suprtool, etc.) and we will make sure you talk  to  the
right person.

Pre-Release Software Expires in 2 Years.

At  Robelle,  we  follow  the  step-by-step approach to development, packaging
incremental changes to our products in several "pre-releases"  throughout  the
year.   If  we fix a problem that you have reported or add an enhancement that
you have asked for, we will send you a pre-release tape.   This  gives  you  a
chance  to try out the changes that we've made and tell us what you think.  It
also gives you a chance to take advantage of new  features  months  before  we
distribute the annual update tape.

The  pre-release  tapes  have  a  2-year  expiry  period.   Once you receive a
non-expiring license tape, you should install it as  soon  as  possible.   All
pre-release products identify themselves in the program banner, along with the
version:

   :run suprnm.pubnew.robelle

   SUPRTOOL/XL/Copyright Robelle Consulting Ltd.  1981-1991.
   (Version 3.3.3 Pre-Release)  THU, JUL 11, 1991, 10:32 AM
   >


MPE XL 3.0 Compatibility.

If you are updating to MPE XL 3.0,  you  should  have  no  problems  with  the
following  versions of Robelle software: Qedit 3.9.1, Suprtool 3.3, and Xpress
2.7.

Qedit Version 3.9.1.

Copying Columns of Text.

You can copy columns of text from one position in a line to another by setting
margins  with the Set Left and Set Right commands, holding the columns of text
that you want to copy, setting new margins, and replacing the new column range
with the text in the hold file.  Here is a Command File file that works on MPE
V and MPE XL which will do all this for you:

   USER DEFINED COMMAND FILE:  COPYCOL.CMD.SYS

   parm fromcol,tocol,length,rangelist
   /set right
   /set left
   setjcw right = !fromcol + !length
   setjcw right = right - 1
   /set right !right
   /set left !fromcol
   /holdq !rangelist
   setjcw right = !tocol + !length
   setjcw right = right - 1
   /set right !right
   /set left !tocol
   /replaceq $hold !rangelist
   /set right
   /set left

For example, to copy text from columns 1/5 to column  30  in  all  lines,  you
would enter:

   /copycol 1 30 5 @

Creating Permanent Scratch Files.

By  default,  Qedit's Text command copies the contents of the Text file into a
temporary workfile called Qeditscr.  Of course, if the system  fails  or  your
terminal  is  disconnected before you can save your changes, the workfile will
be lost.  However, if you specify a workfile name on the Text  command,  Qedit
will create a permanent workfile for you:

   /t SGB610.WORK=SGB610.SOURCE

In this example, Qedit will create a permanent workfile called SGB610.WORK and
copy the contents of SGB610.SOURCE into it.  Not only  will  your  changes  be
saved  in  the  event  of a system failure, but you can also switch easily and
quickly between workfiles with Qedit's Open and Shut commands.  You will  have
to  remember  to  purge  the permanent workfile manually once you are finished
with it.

Here is an MPE XL command file called  TP  (for  Text  Permanent),  that  will
automatically  create  a permanent workfile by the same name as the text file,
in the group WORK.  If the workfile already exists, it will verify that it  is
okay  to  replace it.  You may want to write a command file that will Shut and
Purge the permanent workfile after executing the Keep command.

   USER DEFINED COMMAND FILE: TP

   parm text_file
   if pos(".","!text_file") > 0  {text_file name is qualified}
      setvar work_file str("!text_file",1,(pos(".","!text_file")-1)) + ".WORK"
   else
      setvar work_file "!text_file" + ".WORK"
   endif
   if finfo("!work_file","exists")
      listf !work_file,2
      if ![finfo("!work_file","fcode")] = 111
         echo !work_file,OLD Qedit file already exists
      else
         echo !work_file,OLD already exists (not a Qedit file)
      endif
      setvar reply ""
      input reply;prompt="OK to overwrite this file [no]: "
      if ups("!reply") = "YES" or ups("!reply") = "Y"
         purge !work_file
      else
         echo ---Text canceled
         return
      endif
      deletevar reply
   endif
   echo
   echo ---Texting !text_file into !work_file
   continue
   /text !work_file=!text_file
   deletevar work_file

Note  that  this  command  file will not work properly if you have a temporary
file with the same name as the workfile.

Stack Overflows in Pascal/V.

The Pascal/V compiler may stack overflow when compiling  large  source  files,
especially when it has been "Qedified" to read files in Qedit format.  This is
because when we "hook" the compiler to read Qedit files, we steal a couple  of
hundred words of global storage space from the compiler's stack.

One  of our customers, Gary Penick of Phillips Petroleum, recommends using the
$bigcompile$ directive, which may prevent the  stack  overflow  problem.   For
smaller  source  files,  this  will  slow  down  the  compilation speed.  This
compiler option is documented in the MPE V UB-Delta-2 Communicator.

Searching a Phone List.

Like many of us, Paul Taffel of VESOFT keeps a list  of  phone  numbers  in  a
file.   But  one thing Paul does differently is that the file of phone numbers
is also a command file which searches the list.

   parm key
   /set total off
   setjcw qeditcount = 0
   /lq phone "!key"(upshift)
   if qeditcount = 0 then
   echo "!key" not found in phone file
   endif
   return
   ***
   Robelle Consulting                      [phone]
   VESOFT                                  [phone]
   Jerry Beatty                            [phone]

To lookup a phone number, he simply types

   /phone robelle

Suprtool Version 3.3

Problem Sorting Large Records in Suprtool/XL.

Native-Mode Suprtool 3.3 cannot be used to sort files with records larger than
4k-bytes.  Suprtool/XL will fail as follows:

   Error:  Failure in HPSORTINPUT routine
   WARNING ** Message set 195, Error number 109 was not found in the system
   catalog.

This is because Suprtool/XL calls the  native-mode  HPSORT  intrinsics,  which
have  an  undocumented  record  size  limit  of 4k-bytes.  According to the HP
Response Center, this limitation will not be changed (PICS #W1608229).   Until
we  can  find  a  way  to  work around this problem, please use an object-code
translated version of Suprtool/V to sort files  with  extremely  large  record
sizes, and call our technical support team.

Omnidex Compatibility.

Users  of  Omnidex  from  D.I.S.C. may  run  Suprtool  in a mode known as Call
Conversion.  This permits Suprtool to keep the Omnidex index information up to
date  when  Suprtool  adds or deletes records from an Omnidex-ed database.  We
have discovered an incompatibility with the Omnidex  Call  Conversion  library
and the 3.3 version of native-mode Suprtool.

Suprtool/XL  will  abort  when  run  with  Omnidex Call Conversion.  The abort
occurs after the Exit or Xeq command and results in a Data  Memory  Protection
Trap.   The  simple  workaround  is to execute a BUFFER 16000 command any time
before the Output  command.   You  can  put  this  command  in  your  Suprtool
configuration file, Suprmgr.Pub.Sys, if you like.

Calling Suprtool2 from Native-Mode Quick.

In  the  Suprtool  reference  manual, we document how to call Suprtool2 from a
PowerHouse Quick program.  Unfortunately, because of data alignment  problems,
this  example  will  not  work with native-mode Quick.  You need to change the
Quick "do external" statement so that it does not pass  the  common  area  and
common area size parameters to Suprtool2.  Instead of:

   do external Suprtool2 passing SUPRFILE

you should call Suprtool2 with

   do external Suprtool2 (SUPRFILE)

Comparing Packed-Fields to Today's Date.

Suprtool's If $Today function lets you compare date fields to the current date
(with +/- offsets).  In order to do this, you have to first specify the format
of  the date field with the Item command.  Suprtool supports several different
date formats (YYMMDD, PHDATE, ASK, CALENDAR, etc.) and  storage  types  (byte,
zoned, integer and logical).  The Item command does not support packed-decimal
fields however.

If you need to compare a packed-decimal date field to the  current  date,  you
can  will  have to execute an additional step to generate the If statement for
Suprtool:

   >input    catalog.pub.sys
   >numrecs  1
   >define   todays-date,1,8,byte
   >item     todays-date,date,ccyymmdd
   >extract  "if sales-date="        {sales-date is a P8 field}
   >extract  todays-date=$today
   >output   seldate,temp
   >xeq

The Extract $Today function generates a constant value for the current date in
the format specified by the Item command (in this case, CCYYMMDD):

   if sales-date=19910718

Now, Use the temporary file to perform the date selection in Suprtool:

   >base     salesdb,5,readpass
   >get      sales-detail
   >use      seldate                 {created in previous step}
   >output   curtrans
   >xeq

$Today  accepts  an  optional  argument  which is the offset in days before or
after today.  The maximum number of days in  either  direction  is  9999.   To
extract yesterday's date, you would enter:

   >extract  todays-date=$today(-1)



   Fortune Cookie of the Month

   Life is like an analogy.