3000 NewsWire Online Extra Welcome to our 23rd edition of Online Extra, the e-mail update of articles in the November 1997 3000 NewsWire plus items that have surfaced since we last mailed our last First Class issue. This service is an exclusive to our paid subscribers. We'll e-mail you this file between the First Class issues you receive by mail, updating the stories you've read and adding articles that have developed between issues. Call us at 512-657-3264 if you have any questions about Always Online. If you want to receive the Extra by e-mail in the future, just drop us a line at rseybold@zilker.net. Editorial: NT gets multiple processors, personalities After we reported on HP's Technology Close Up that connected HP's Netservers with HP 3000 habits, HP reported it is making the first NT system available that offers as many processors as the HP 3000 did two years ago. This "first to 8-way" claim was a bit spurious, since other manufacturers have shipped 8-way systems months ago. The earliest report of such a system came from Axil Computer, a Sun clone maker that in March rolled out the Northbridge NX 801. But wait, here it says that this new HP NetServer LXr Pro8 system is based on the new Adaptive Memory Crossbar technology, developed by Axil Computer. Now whose system is this, anyway? Maybe adding the words "Comprehensive Enterprise" in front of 8 way gave the HP system a first. You could argue that the $30,000 HP offering -- when it ships early next year -- comes from a supplier that knows a bit more about big-time IT than a Hyundai spinoff better remembered for locking horns with Sun to sell engineering workstations. Just as there seem to be multiple incarnations of first 8-way NT makers, there seems to be more than one personality an NT system takes in its duties at HP 3000 sites. Many HP 3000 sites are simply using Windows NT as a replacement for Novell's Netware. Having succeeded in this, some now want to see what else NT can do. Some of these companies, including some manufacturers who have relied on HP 3000s up to now, have it in their minds that NT can bring applications and feature support which these companies lack in their current MPE/iX solutions. It's true, applications are a catch-up point today for HP 3000 customers in some sectors. Depending on your need for targeted vertical applications and client-server integration, manufacturing can be one of those sectors. However, we know that middleware solutions from the likes of Bradmark (StarVision) and Minisoft (Middleman and FrontMan) are getting HP 3000 applications clients to go along with the servers. Nevertheless, we know of one HP 3000 manufacturing company where the MIS director is implementing an SAP NT solution -- or more accurately, looking for ways to do this ever-so-gradually, since the fellow knows that NT doesn't have the 25 years of maturity and stability the HP 3000 counts on. There are little snags along the way. The first attempt to put SAP online used the wrong system name, he said, so the company had to reinstall SAP to fix the problem. Another seven hours gone, perhaps as much R/3's fault as NT's. Despite having thousands of IT shops pounding on NT for the last several years, we believe that nothing only six years old will have the simplicity and durability of a solution that's performed more than four times as long, surviving all fads while embracing all new technologies. NT is a proven solution in some parts of 3000 enterprises, by many accounts from our readers. Office automation is a natural first fit. And less daunted readers are using NT as an e-mail solution, relying on Microsoft's Exchange or putting PC-based mail solutions on the NT boxes. Mail is a mission-critical application in many companies, but they are also used to unscheduled outages in e-mail. America Online's no-mail-for-hours woes of late seem to have accustomed us all to mail interruptions, if the postal service strikes in Canada hadn't done that already. We think it's important to remember two things if you're comparing NT to its more accomplished cousin in the HP solutions family, MPE/iX: 1. NT's millions sold may not matter against MPE's thousands. Not every NT system sold is doing the kind of transaction-heavy, months-of-uptime service that HP 3000s do everyday. Many serve files or offer spreadsheet and word processing access, and nothing else. In contrast, only the development systems in the HP 3000 world aren't doing heavy transaction service. 2. Just because things that sell by the millions doesn't mean they always yield their expected results. Many millions of copies of NT have sold, yes. The same can be said about the Unix systems that NT is now replacing. But installing NT on high-grade hardware -- like HP's offerings from the Enterprise NetServer Operation -- is vital to giving NT its shot at mission-critical application work. NT's lure, unfortunately, is the affordability of the hardware. (There's also that warm fuzzy of working with the Microsoft empire, but you can't take that to the bank). This cost lure leads the NT implementers to cut corners on prices while they're buying an application. Don't do it. If you can't afford the same kind of never-break hardware like the HP 3000, and the support from a major organization like HP, better buy lots of spares, design with redundant systems and keep people on hand to swap parts out. Buying a beeper you don't mind hearing at 2 AM wouldn't hurt, either. Besides, millions sold doesn't guarantee a successful solution at every site. America Online has millions of customers, but finding even a majority that are truly happy with AOL's mail service could be quite a challenge. Interesting note: AOL no longer will answer questions on what kind of computers it uses, but when they did talk about this in 1996 they were using HP 9000 systems. It would appear there are some "complexity of scalability" issues to be resolved at AOL -- something that the million selling Unix solution never presented as a potential problem while HP sold it as a mainframe alternative. The issue with NT isn't sales success, it's productivity in mission critical environments. Of course, you'll need more than the 4.0 version of Windows NT to make use of all those NetServer CPUs. Cortlandt Wilson of Cortlandt Software passed on a report from the Aberdeen Group that says in part, "Tests of CPU utilization have shown that NT 4.0 to be an inefficient operating system beyond two processors. While it can use two CPUs efficiently, for each additional CPU the operating system begins to soak up all the added CPU cycles for overhead tasks." You can look over the report "Windows NT Server 4.0: First Anniversary Review" at the Aberdeen Web site.) For full support of 8-way, you need the 5.0 version of Windows NT. There's caution in the winds on 5.0, however. We noted that Computerworld recently advised readers to wait out 5.0, because it's been delayed and is bigger than ever. NT's 5.0 features that are supposed to bring it up to speed with mainframe-class systems like the HP 3000, but those new features will have little field testing by the time they're available in mid-98. Delays in software deployment are pretty common. After all, MPE/iX 6.0 has slipped back about the same amount of time since HP first told us about it in early 1997. But field testing is a place where MPE/iX will always have seniority over NT. HP Q4 report shows OS diversity The latest financial results from HP show record revenues and profits for the computer maker, but an even more notable shift appears to be occurring. While HP reported sales that ballooned its fiscal 1997 to $42.9 million, there were simultaneous reports of the decline in Unix business at Hewlett-Packard. HP reported that Unix has slipped in its workstation sales for the second straight quarter, as NT continued to eat away at the desktop solution. We believe that attrition in the face of HP's overall success is a sign that HP is thriving with a new philosophy, one that doesn't mandate any single perfect operating environment for all business. Rick Belluzzo, the head of HP's computer business, noted in his HP World speech this year that HP would be pursuing a multiple-environment strategy -- although he admitted it would be more challenging to market than a "pure play" of all-NT, or all-Java. Nobody appears to be taking the ground of an all-Unix play -- not even Sun, once the keeper of the Unix standard. While it posted profits for the quarter of $806 million, HP reported "continued decline in revenues from Unix workstations," noteworthy in light of the HP 3000's renaissance. The 3000, known as Product Line 61 inside HP, was one of HP's most successful in this fiscal year when measured by profitability and against HP's expectations. Considering how tough it is to compete in the dog-eat-dog world of PCs, Unix servers and PC servers, winning new ground during the fiscal year is a real accomplishment for the 3000. Nobody's business is won forever, it seems -- but the tales of 3000 longevity at major corporations do seem to imply the 3000 has a good shot at earning significant new business in the coming year. Free stuff: reading IMAGE log files If you're looking for a program to help read IMAGE log files, there's a free one available that’s been written by an HP engineer. Holger Wiemann's CATCHLOG utility can help, and it is available at the HP CSY Jazz Web site Get an early look at new HP software capabilities Site managers who want to look over the documentation on the newest HP software without taking delivery on the tapes can do so over that same CSY Jazz Web site. If you're wondering how the new 32-bit ODBC driver works that's in the Express 3 release, or you want to see how HP is lining up the Year 2000 improvements it will be sending out the door this month for Express 4, the Jazz site has both resources online. For the ODBCLink/SE documentation, steer to http://jazz.external.hp.com/pape rs/odbc/ and to see the lineup for this month's Express 4, go to http://jazz.external.hp. com/papers/Communicator/ for a 400K Postscript file that's the Express 4 Communicator. It includes articles on COBOL II enhancements as well new date intrinsics and Year 2000 enhancements. Some companies may need Express 4 online by the end of this month to comply with auditor requirements that every system be Year 2000 safe by January 1, 1998. An HP SE reports that the company hasn't been as proactive in promoting Express 3 to its customers because Express 4 is following so closely behind. It would appear that Express 4 won't include the fixed versions of TurboIMAGE and IMAGE/SQL that repair the DDX bug we reported on in our November FlashPaper article. PatchWatch: Add a patch to read dumps post-Stage/iX If you're applying patches using Stage/iX, you may need a patch from the HP Response Center to get readable dumps from MPE/iX. Ask for MPEJXP9A, or apply the Express 3 release of MPE/iX 5.5. PatchWatch: Watch for a fix on dates with TurboStore True Online Customers are reporting that TurboStore True Online Backup is failing to do a complete backup in some cases. TurboStore produces a message that reads "ERROR QUIESCING IMAGE DATABASE", Status = -237 when the date option was specified and fails to quiesce some databases. Although HP introduced patch JXP4 to solve the problem, the patch introduced another problem: the quiescing mechanism was bypassed and returned the following message for each database: ********** ERROR, DATASET NOT QUIESCED ********** (Store listing) ********** ERROR, COULD NOT QUIESCE ********** HP's Mohan Das says "the ONLINE option (without ONLINE=START or ONLINE=END) still worked. However with JXP4 and the ONLINE=START or ONLINE=END databases were not quiesced." HP expects to release a new patch, JXY2, that resolves these problem by mid December. Until the patch is available, HP advises not to use the ONLINE=START or ONLINE=END options, but only the ONLINE option. If you've installed JXP4, you can undo it by installing patch JXY9. Synchronize your HP 3000s with a free utility Mark Bixby, the porting wizard at California Coast College who's built the only working Domain Name Server for MPE/iX, came up with another useful 3000 tool ported from the world of Unix. He's made the xntp Network Time Protocol (NTP) program available for downloading from his server. The software can be used for making both clients and servers in a heterogeneous distributed networking environment all be synchronized to the same time of day with a high degree of accuracy. If you run HP-UX systems alongside your HP 3000s, this software can synchronize all the systems. There's a few bugs still to be squashed in the software, according to Bixby's notes on the port. But the project is another proof of the bounty that the 3000 continues to reap from the C++ compiler delivered in 1995, as well as Bixby's considerable programming and porting talents on behalf of the HP 3000. MANMAN front ends to share source code Two of the GUI front-ends for MANMAN are being delivered from a single programmer this year, as Ali Sadat of Quantum Software offers both AdvanceMan and StarMan. One of the primary differences in the product is the middleware used in each solution. AdvanceMan relies on the Middleman software from Minisoft, and the product is installed and working in multiple sites. StarMan uses the StarVision middleware from Bradmark Technologies. We heard from Minisoft's Mike Sweeney after our StarVision story surfaced in the November issue, and Sweeney reported that Quantum will maintain only one set of source code for the two products in the coming year. The Austin, Texas based Support Group will sell both solutions in the coming year. PatchWatch: HP fixes AIF to keep your job and session tools stable HP released patch MPEJX44 to solve problems that were occurring with third party software products MPEX, HOTKEY and JOBRESQUE while calling HP's Architected Interface:PE functionality. The products can encounter a System Abort 1458 when they are installed on a system and many sessions and jobs bind to procedure handlers installed by HP's interface. HP reports that MPE/iX runs out of entries in an internal resource called the Binding Sequence Table; and does not handle the out of resource event correctly. The patch increases the table limits to accommodate large systems using multiple AIF:PE solutions. Included is an earlier fix (MPEJX79) that handles the out-of-resource situation gracefully, avoiding the system abort 1458. Year 2000 repairs for Netware/iX Okay, there's not a lot of it installed. But if you're making use of the HP 3000 as a Netware/iX server, HP has released a patch that will help make the software behave correctly with file dates beyond the Year 2000. NTWEDR7A makes NetWare/iX ready for the Year 2000. The patch includes the repairs that were available in versions B/C.11.11 to support hyphenated file and directory names which weren't working in the Posix environment. Copyright 1997, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.