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What's Up, DOCumentation? 2000 # 4
September 2000
From: Technical Support
To: Users of Robelle Software
Re: News of the HP e3000 and of HP-UX, 2000 #4
What You Will Find in This News Memo:
Operating System: MPE/iX 6.5 and Performance
New XP256 Disk Arrays
Operations: Backup Horror Story
Suprtool Tips
Adding hpvariables to List Headings
Selection by Day-of-Week
Qedit Tips
Adding Color to Windows Client
Inserting Lines
Next Suprtool Training Class
Newsletter Options
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MPE/iX 6.5 Power Patch 1 Performance Problems
Recently a customer called to report that Suprtool extracts were
considerably slower since moving to MPE/iX 6.5. This was contrary
to our experience at HP when we worked on Suprtool support for
large files on MPE/iX 6.5.
Dave Lo suggested that the customer turn prefetch off and do some
comparative timings, because we have seen memory pressure
increase when moving from one O/S version to another if the
system was already memory-bound.
We didn't expect performance to improve, given that the system
had 3.75 GB of memory. Surprisingly, performance did improve with
prefetch turned off in Suprtool. To investigate, I began testing
on our MPE/iX 6.5 system to see if I could duplicate the results.
Surprisingly, in my first attempt I recreated this anomaly on our
system and generated results that were contrary to the
performance indicator I had when we did the work to make Suprtool
support large files.
Obviously, we needed to investigate this further. As it happened,
I was scheduled to go to HP CSY to do some other testing, so I
made an appointment with my good friend, and programmer
extraordinaire, Craig Fairchild to show him what I was seeing and
try to discuss some plausible reasons for this.
Craig and I set up an MPE/iX 6.5 test machine, I restored my test
environment and we began to run some comparative tests. To make a
long story short, we could not reproduce the problem. At this
point we decided to apply some patches to see if we could
duplicate the results.
After acquiring and applying the patches we did see the anomaly,
but it was not as dramatic as I had seen in my lab. I set up some
comparative tests for Craig and he worked very hard to identify
the point at which this anomaly showed up. What he found was that
sorting, with either Suprtool or Sort.Pub.Sys, was slower on
MPE/iX 6.5, starting with patch MPELX66. Things were slower in
Suprtool no matter what the setting of prefetch. It just so
happened that a higher level of prefetch made the problem worse.
At this point, however, PP1 (which contains the MPELX66 patch)
was already released. Craig organized a team within HP to fix
this problem and they are working on a patch ID of MPELXB0, which
will be available any day now.
Because of how the patches work, this problem will occur if you
have Power Patch 1 or any of the following patches in
Hpswinfo.Pub.Sys:
* MPELX66
* MPELX70
* MPELX75
So if you are on MPE/iX 6.5 and have installed either Power Patch
1 or any of the three patches above, we recommend that you
install patch MPELXB0 when it is released. Until then, you can
temporarily add the following line to your Suprmgr.Pub.Sys file:
set prefetch 0 { <<- a zero}
I would like to mention that many people at HP helped investigate
this performance problem. People such as Kevin Cooper, Steve
Macsisak, Bill Cadier and, of course, Craig Fairchild were
invaluable in investigating this problem. I'm certain that many
other engineers were involved, but these four were my main
contacts. It has been a pleasure to work with them and I am happy
that they are involved with the HP e3000 and its community.
[Neil Armstrong]
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User Pleased with New XP256 Disk Array
For those of you interested in HP's new XP256 disk array, here
are some early results on its performance. We recently installed
an array to replace our poorly performing Model 12H (AutoRAID)
arrays. The new array is still being tested, so these are merely
indications of what final performance might be. However, they are
relatively equal comparisons, as the tests were done on each
machine in (mostly) exclusive access mode.
AutoRAID XP256
Re-omnidex of MACORD 45 minutes 16 minutes
Vertex process 25 minutes 5 minutes
Just for fun, I also created four jobs that used Suprtool to read
our largest data file (ORDER-ACTIONS, at 5.8 million records) and
direct the output to a flat file. I submitted all four jobs at
the same time. All four processes completed in under four
minutes.
These are just preliminary results, but I'm very encouraged!
[Originally posted on MACS-L by Randall Davis, Director
Enterprise Operations, KBkids.com]
Editor's Note: The XP256 disk array has a maximum capacity of 9
terabytes!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
What To Avoid When Your Backups Need Two DATS
In a local turnkey, essentially operatorless, HP e3000 operation,
backups were done nightly without fail on a two-week retention
cycle. Everything was fine until one day the systems management
consultant asked the secretary-cum-operator to restore files from
a few days prior to a failure. The restore did not work for the
following reason: when the backups went from one to two nightly
tapes, the appropriate people were not informed. Instead of
purchasing an additional 14 DDS tapes, only a single tape was
purchased and it was used every night when the system prompted
for volume #2. The unfortunate result: they only ever really had
the previous night's backup, not two weeks worth!
[Mike Shumko]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Displaying a Date Range in a List Standard Heading
With Suprtool 4.3 you can read hpvariables on the List (or any
other) command. This is quite useful, for example, when you want
to display a date range in a List Standard heading.
To accomplish this task, first create a one-line file by
extracting the two dates, then turn the contents of the file into
an hpvariable.
>get d-sales
>num 1
>def a,1,8
>item a,date,ccyymmdd
>EXT a = $DATE(*/*-3/FIRST)
>EXT " - "
>EXT a = $DATE(*/*-1/LAST)
>out varfile
>x
Warning: NUMRECS exceeded; some records not processed.
IN=2, OUT=1. CPU-Sec=1. Wall-Sec=1.
>:input myvar < varfile
>:showvar myvar
MYVAR = 20000501 - 20000731
>
>g d-sales
>set varsub on
>if a >= $DATE(*/*-3/FIRST) and a <= $DATE(*/*-1/FIRST)
>list standard title "Range : !myvar"
>x
Aug 09, 2000 15:57 Range : 20000501 - 20000731 Page 1
CUST-ACCO DELIV-DATE PRODUCT-N PRODUCT-PRI PURCH-DATE SALES- SALES-TAX
...
[Paul Gobes]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Selecting on Day-of-Week
Recently, on the MACS discussion list, Katherine Mantis asked:
HI! Does anyone have a quick way in Suprtool (version 4.2) to
determine the day of the week based on the date? I need to do an
analysis on any orders entered on a Saturday, but I have a
feeling I will need to look at each day of the week...
Well, there's no way to do this with version 4.2, but it does
showcase two of the new features in version 4.3, the $days and
Mod functions. The $days function converts any supported date to
a Julian day number, that is the number of days since 4713 BC
(...its a long story...:-). The Mod operator returns the
remainder between a dividend and a divisor.
It happens that Julian day 0 was a Monday. So if we divide any
Julian day value by 7, any Monday would yield a modulus of 0. And
any Saturday would yield a 5.
> get D-Orders
> item ord-date,date,yyyymmdd
> if $days(ord-date) mod 7 = 5
...
Suprtool version 4.3 was distributed to supported customers in
North America in May 2000.
[Hans Hendriks]
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New Color Schemes Offer Rainbow of Possibilities
Color schemes, one of the most popular enhancements, has been
added to Qedit for Windows version 4.9.11. You can now configure
Qedit to use different color schemes for document windows. Each
color scheme allows the configuration of certain window elements.
You can select a default color scheme for all files, for each
file type (local, UNIX and MPE), as well as for individual
connections and files.
To configure these settings,
1. Select Preferences from the Options menu.
2. When the Qedit Preferences dialog box appears, go to the MPE
tab and set your Default Colors to the desired scheme.
3. Go to the other UNIX and Local tabs to set different color
schemes.
4. Click the OK button to save your preferences. With the
latest version of Qedit for Windows, you can use the new color
schemes to make your Qedit work space both more comfortable and
convenient.
[Paul Gobes]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Inserting Lines Between Every Line in a File
Recently a customer needed to convert his file into a Reflection
script that needed these two lines
Transmit "^M"
Hold For "^JMD.VOYNERM>"
between each of his file's existing lines.
Here is one solution that uses Qedit's Append and Divide
commands:
/append '|Transmit "^M"|Hold For "^JMD.VOYNERM>"' all
/divide "|" all
/change 1/1 "" "|"(1/1)
/divide "|" all
/change 1/1 "" "|"(1/1)
The first line appends the two new lines to each line, plus an
extra vertical bar character (|) to help manipulate the new
lines. The second line divides each line on the first vertical
bar. The third line removes the vertical bars that are in the
first column. The fourth and fifth lines repeat this process for
the second new line.
This approach would only work if your file is wide enough to
accept the appended columns.
[Dave Lo]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Training Opportunity for Suprtool Users
The next off-site Suprtool training class will be held October
11th, 12th and 13th. The three-day class, led by Jeff Kubler,
will be held at the office of Lund Performance Solutions in
Albany, Oregon.
To sign up or for more information, phone Jeff Kubler at Kubler
Consulting, Inc. , (541) 745-7457 or e-mail him at
jrkubler@proaxis.com.
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Newsletter copyright (c) 2000 Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.
Suprtool and Qedit are trademarks of Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.