HP’s Software Services Division (SSD) will be paying for at least one improvement to MPE/iX this year, as the support group moves cautiously to develop a process of funding HP 3000 enhancements.

The SSD announced through the Interex user group that a new Command Interpreter (CI) evaluator function has been selected for the first enhancement. The completed function will allow programmers to easily test whether a job exists, and then determine its state, spoolfile and CI pin number.

The engineering for the enhancement, called JINFO, is being done by HP 3000 division (CSY) CI expert Jeff Vance. JINFO was first designed to operate like the existing FINFO function used for files, but HP was taking feedback at presstime on its final specifications.

SSD’s liaison to CSY, Sue Bennett, promised last fall that HP would investigate which enhancements would give the greatest short-term impact to the 3000. The SSD plan transfers some revenues that customers pay for HP 3000 support to the 3000 division, to pay for projects which don’t make it onto CSY’s near-term to-do list.

After taking input from customers, Vance circulated a list of potential enhancements on the 3000-L mailing list in November. HP then invited balloting from 3000 customers who use the Internet on which enhancement would be most useful.

Vance said the JINFO enhancement was chosen as a project that could be completed quickly. According to an Interex volunteer who didn’t want to be identified, this SSD-funded enhancement program is not yet officially an ongoing process. The JINFO project passed through the Interex MPE Forum for approval, along with the review of the HP 3000 division and SSD. The Forum is not a user-level organization at present. A brief published report on the Interex Web site announced the JINFO enhancement as an Interex-SSD-CSY project.

Vance said that JINFO “was voted fifth highest with 18 total points and got the second most votes —18 votes, so 18 people gave one vote each to this enhancement. We also chose JINFO because the effort to implement is lower than the other items that got more votes.” It will be used by customers who are capable of writing CI scripts, he explained.

“Knowing a job exists may let you decide to stream the next job or not stream the next job, or not do a backup,” Vance said. “The uses are many. I don’t see JINFO spurring any new application development, though.” In late December Vance was taking additional customer input on specifications for the project. HP expects to have the enhancement ready in mid-February. Customers must be running MPE/iX 6.0 to use JINFO, as it will be released as a patch to that version of MPE/iX.

Part of this JINFO project is designed to test the customers’ acceptance of the new enhancement process. Early response to the announcement over the Internet was appreciative, but customers were anxious for more from HP.

“We feel that this is a great way to get some of the much needed projects for MPE done,” said Joe Geiser, chairman of the special interest group for HP Web server customers. “HP can’t be all things to all people, and with the number of requests coming in the door, [this] is a perfect vehicle to get some of these done.” Geiser’s group plans to ask HP for additional enhancements at February’s MPE IPROF conference.

Other HP 3000 community leaders expressed some impatience at the pace of the enhancement process — a project Bennett formally announced in August 1998 at the HP World conference. Ken Sletten, who chairs the annual IPROF conference and the IMAGE special interest group, noted that alternative funding for such enhancements has been discussed for three years.