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Power Tools 1993 November - Disc 2
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Power Tools Plus (Disc 2 of 2)(November 1993)(HP).iso
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decmigr.txt
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DECUS TRIP REPORT (12/92)
-----------------
SESSION: CONVERTING YOUR VMS APPLICATION TO OPENVMS ON ALPHA AXP
Presented by: James A. McGlinchey of Computer Methods
Corporation, a consultant dealing in
VMS performance management and systems
programming.
Session Significance: DEC's sales strategy is to sell "Alpha Ready"
VAX systems today, since full commercial production
environments for Alpha will not be ready until 1994.
This session points out the problems in moving from
these VAX systems to an Alpha system from a software
migration perspective. We can competitively use
this information where "Alpha Ready" VAX systems are
being bid.
Highlights: This session was presented by an independent consultant,
not a DEC employee, and was much more objective (and
critical) than the run of the mill DECUS presentation
touting the "company line". Some highlights follow:
. There is now a lot of contention in and outside of
Digital as to what operating system is better, since
Alpha runs OSF/1, OpenVMS, and WindowsNT. Expect
alot of company in-house politics regarding R&D
resources, sales strategies, etc.
. One of DEC's primary porting tools, an image translater
called VEST, is not 100% effective. Running a program
through VEST will not qualify it to ship. This is
important since alot of 3rd parties claiming to have
made the port from VAX to Alpha have used this tool and
have not gone through the necessary verification testing
required to insure the code actually works on Alpha.
. Programs run through VEST will run on Alpha only as fast
as they did on the VAX, best case! In some cases the
code may actually run slower than it did before the
port! In the December 7, 1992 Digital News and Review
Lab Report, translated VAX code using VEST ran only
1/3rd as fast as the same code recompiled on a
comparably priced AXP workstation. Furthermore,
using tools such as pre-processors will only have
a significant effect on natively compiled Alpha
code. (8% performance improvement on translated
images versus 60% performance improvement on
natively compiled Alpha code).
. 3rd parties also need to be asked by customers whether
their code has been actually run on Alpha or if it was
ported using an early emulator. In some cases, 3rd
parties may not have even verified their code on an
Alpha system!
. Binary translation, using VEST, is only a temporary
porting measure. All code should be recompiled if
it is to be permanently ported to Alpha. This means
finding the original source, if its still around,
and running through it with a fine tooth comb for
places which could cause synchonization or performance
problems. Data alignment and shared data between
multiple processes can present serious data corruption
and performance problems for ported code.
. Migration of a suite of existing applications to Alpha
should not be under-estimated. Planning involves several
stages such as application qualification for
recompilation or translation, verification and
interoperability testing, etc. The planning and
migration of a company's application suite may take
8 months or longer.
High-Level Summary
------------------
In summary, in selling against DEC where an Alpha system is being
proposed to an existing DEC customer considering other RISC alternatives
such as PA-RISC, emphasize:
. The migration effort is comparable to migrating to another vendor
like HP.
. Customers should beware of 3rd party applications that have
supposedly ported to Alpha. 3rd parties should be asked if the code
has actually been recompiled or simply translated, whether it was
ported using an Alpha emulator or on an actual Alpha system, and
what verification and interoperability test suites the code has
been run through after the port.
. There are no performance guarantees after the Alpha port. DEC has
not released any OLTP benchmark results such as TPC-A. In addition,
HP OLTP performance is expected to grow at a faster rate than the
60% yearly performance growth on Alpha.
. Alpha application availability is very poor. Beware of 3rd parties
software vendor commitment claims to Alpha...most of these 3rd
parties have not yet ported to Alpha. DEC is only forecasting 500
applications by the middle of this year and 1000 at year end. Only
1/3rd of these are expected to be OSF/1 based, with the rest based
on OpenVMS. (Note: In the February 1993 Unix Review, in an
article titled "Currents" by the magazine's editor, Andrew Binstock,
DEC claimed at Alpha system introduction that 50 to 100 vendors had
products ready to ship. In the author's discussions with vendors
committed to Alpha, none has product ready due to the lack of working
Alpha hardware!).
-Lou Petrella
CSO Competitive Program