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3000 NewsWire Online
Extra
Welcome to our 25th edition of Online Extra
-- the electronic
update of articles in the January 1998 3000
NewsWire, plus items
that have surfaced since we mailed our
latest First Class issue.
This service is an exclusive to our paid
subscribers. We also
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. If you
want to get the Extra
by e-mail, drop us a line to update your e-mail
address.
Editorial: Why annual
reports don't matter
HP recently posted its fiscal 1997 Annual Report to
its Web site, and there's been some muttering about the absence of the
HP
3000 in the document. Some customers have
noted this is the second
straight year their main business product
from HP has gone unmentioned
-- and they don't like the message this
absence sends to their
upper-level managers.
We admit that having the HP 3000 mentioned
in the Hewlett-Packard
annual report would make us feel good. This
kind of communique
is a good move in the interest of
reinforcing satisfaction in
your investments.We've already made our own
investment, like our
readers, in the future of the 3000. We
point to our commitments
to offer a product over a term of years
that relies on this computer's
sustained success. We don't hold any HP
stock here at the NewsWire,
because we think that might create a
conflict of interest. We
know that sometimes the things we have to
say about the 3000 might
not be the healthiest for the stock's share
price, but they need
to be said on behalf of the installed base.
We think looking for a mention of the 3000
in the Annual Report
is a specious barometer of the system's
future. And sometimes
such a mention can be unintentionally
misleading. We recall a
string of years in the early ‘90s when
you could find the HP 3000
paragraph or sentence in the report, years
that were dark indeed
for the product. HP was saying to its
shareholders that the 3000
was important enough to mention. Customers,
however, were hearing
little about the product from HP, as the
managers and the sales
force were busy investing in and selling
buzzword-rich Unix products.
Fortunately for HP, some of its most loyal
3000 customers of that
period didn't put much stock in annual
reports, meanwhile gritting
their teeth while those Unix solutions got
a lot of attention.
In more recent times HP management seems to
have learned the lesson
that its 3000 customers taught it.
Solutions that work, scale
and need little fiddling are going to stay
online. It helped that
the division became adept at using customer
contact to win influence
for what HP's top managers liked to call a
legacy product.
We don't think it's our place to tell a
prospective buyer of HP
equipment which bits of information are
most important to consult
before buying. Our job is to point out bits
they haven't heard
about. We would like all HP 3000 customers
to remember this, though
– an annual report is a piece of
marketing, just like a press
release or an advertisement. The report
feeds on the public's
perception of what will make a company look
stronger. So far we
haven't seen an annual report author who's
clever enough to point
at 25-year-long customers of a product to
show a company's strength
and longevity. Not in the computer
industry, anyway, where having
the latest technology is too often,
mistakenly equated to providing
the most productive products.
We'd like to discount one argument that we
heard -- that decision
makers are looking at HP's annual report to
determine if they
are dealing with a vendor who is stable. We
think that HP being
one of 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average
securities says a little
about the company's stability, regardless
of what system is missing
from a few annual reports.
Nevertheless, it's obvious that some
customers are still looking
for signs of how serious HP management has
become about the 3000's
renaissance. We think it's a little early
to look for such a sign
in the HP annual report. This year's
indicator might be better
found inside HP's own communications, where
the division was named
this year as a winner of the President's
Quality Award, given
each year to the HP operations which show
themselves to be an
example of how things should be run in the
$43 billion company.
The 3000 group was the only product
division so named. If I were
a shareholder, I'd put more stock in this
than any sentence in
a glossy report.
Once HP can embrace the concept that
retaining products which
are profitable is good business, regardless
of their legacy, we
expect we'll see some mention of the 3000
again in that annual
report. As HP continues to go toe-to-toe
with rival IBM, Hewlett
Packard report writers might do well to see
how Big Blue trumps
its "legacy" big iron in its
yearly stockholder message. If you'd
like to nudge HP a bit into admitting at a
shareholder level that
long-lived products like the 3000 make you
a more secure investor,
send an e-mail message to financial_online@hp-p
aloalto-gen20.om.hp.com.
Look for new 3000s before
too long
HP mentioned a new Series 9x9 system in its
patch documents again,
the 989. Called Bravehawk, the computer
will be available in one-way
through six-way configurations, although HP
hasn't made any announcement
of when the 989s will roll out the door.
Want a peek at what its
will look like in hardware? Just check out
the spec sheets for
the K370/K570 HP 9000s. That's an
PA8200-based system
IBM steps up the
competition to a low-end 3000
After we reported in our January FlashPaper
that HP is setting
its sights on luring away AS/400 customers
to the benefits of
the 3000, HP may have to rethink pricing
decisions about the 3000
in the face of recent AS/400 announcements.
Last week IBM announced
an AS/400e Server 150 that handles more
attached devices and increases
storage capacity. It's an entry-level
server priced well below
$10,000 that is supposed to support up to
50 users of Lotus Domino,
the web-enabled version of the Notes
workgroup collaboration tool.
CSY's officials say they have been studying
the prospect of offering
an under-8-user HP 3000 for more than a
year. If the plan is to
attract AS/400 customers on the lower end,
finding a way to meet
IBM's entry level pricing would appear to
be a good lure to getting
some of that business. It's not much of a
challenge to get a lease
from IBM Financing for such an AS/400
system of that size at less
than $250 a month
Express 4 tips to get key
software installed
Customers who are waiting to install
Express 4 tapes for MPE/iX
5.5 might want to make sure they've got
subsys tapes for the Express
release as well while they're waiting on
delivery. Word was circulating
on the Internet late last week that Express
4 is arriving without
a subsys tape, the media that contains
updates for things like
HP's compilers, TurboStore backup
application and other non-operating
system software. Express 4 apparently
arrives without the subsys
tape if you receive it from the Response
Center instead of by
submitting the HP order form for Express 4.
According to one account
from HP Response Center engineers,
customers can apply Express
3's subsys, then Express 4, but can skip
the patch portion of
Express 3. Express 4 has also been arriving
without instructions
and the standard Communicator, the printed
documentation on how
the release's contents will affect your
system.
Terminology can be misleading on the
documentation, users report.
One tape is called an Add-On SUBSYS,
implying you're "adding on"
something. Add-On SUBSYS actually means
"Update SUBSYS," the tape
of your updated SUBSYS products.
Our contributing editor John Burke reported
that getting the set
of patches on Express 4 is considerably
easier than getting a
subsys tape for the release. "If you
need a subsys tape, then
it must be ordered either with the order
form or through your
contracts administrator," Burke
reported. "I've tried more than
once to speed things up by going through
the RC only to be told
this same story. For many people, the
PowerPatch tape may be all
that is needed, especially with Express
4."
If you're updating, you'll want to make
sure that your HPPATH
contains the current group (!HPGROUP). You
can add this manually
(INSTALL.SYS) to ensure the process creates
the CSLT. At least
one customer has reported the install
process can appear like
a loop in some places. After applying the
CSLT (and booting from
an alternate path and bringing up the
system), the process instructs
you to put the CSLT back on line and run
Patch/iX again, which
correctly detects you are now starting
Phase 2 of the process.
It then asks you to reply to the CSLT mount
request, and then
skips over the SLT and restores the
"HP supported product files."
When it finishes, it asks you to remount
the CSLT, reply to the
mount request, then restores the HP
supported product files again.The
process then proceeds correctly to the
installation jobs after
the second restore.
Could Merced mean more
trouble for Unix?
In a twist of strategy that HP may not have
forseen, the arrival
of the Merced based systems using the chip
HP helped create with
Intel -- sometime next year -- might spell
trouble for HP's own
Unix business. Analysts are predicting that
Microsoft could make
a version of NT for Merced-based systems
available on the first
day that suppliers ship the initial,
high-end Merced systems out
the door. Since Compaq announced plans for
a friendly acquisition
of Digital in late January, few doubt that
some of the earliest
Merced systems, using chips from Intel,
will be delivered bearing
the Compaq logo.
Those Merced-NT systems, with lower prices
for customers and margins
for suppliers, will no doubt be aimed at
corporate customers looking
for some price relief from Unix-based
systems. HP makes less profit
from its Unix systems than from HP 3000s,
but its NT offerings,
currently in third place in market share,
generate even less profit
than its Unix systems. HP has already faced
a downturn in its
Unix workstation business as a result of
NT. The higher processing
power of Merced is expected to give NT a
bigger wedge into commercial
Unix sales.
Unix divisions at HP – and other
multi-environment suppliers like
IBM – say NT will never be able to
close the performance gap between
itself and Unix. This sounds like what HP
used to say about MPE
when customers wanted a comparison with
Unix. As for a pairing
of MPE and Merced, CSY has announced no
definite plans announced
yet for that marriage. But if Unix is
faster than NT, and MPE
is faster than Unix, such a marriage could
produce even more competition
for HP's Unix offerings. All it would need
is applications...
Oracle shifts its stance
while the 3000 community waits
While some in the HP 3000 community remain
on watch for news of
Oracle8 support on MPE/iX, Oracle is busy
making other changes,
these to its product line. Oracle is moving
all of its client/server
applications to a Web-based, server-centric
architecture, pledging
its faith in the power of a centralized
server as part of its
Network Computer fealty.
The shift away from client technology
leaves thousands of companies
holding the bag on expensive investments in
PC-based Oracle applications.
At the same time they'll be trying to get
their arms around a
severe technology change in the Oracle
database itself with Oracle8.
The database, which hasn't come close to
being installed on 10
percent of HP 3000s, is taking on
object-oriented abilities in
its newest version, largely at the cost of
major changes in its
structure. Users are saying that Oracle8 is
a big leap from the
7.x versions of the database, which CSY is
still working on for
another release to the 3000 sites running
it.
Analysts are saying that large database
investments like Oracle
are becoming less important to IT shops as
companies put their
applications in the driver's seat. CSY has
dedicated some modest
resources to developing Oracle ports to
MPE/iX for more than five
years, largely in the hope of bringing
applications to HP 3000s
through the database. With database
importance waning in favor
of applications and Web-based computing, HP
could be looking to
revise its attachment to Oracle on the 3000
with good reason.
Don't hold your breath
for Allbase-free ODBC
As database investments get pondered
through the 3000 community,
more word has surfaced that the included
ODBC middleware for MPE/iX
is just about as good as it gets. Interex
recently released some
new answers to old questions on the HP
World roundtable of last
summer, including an official comment on
Allbase-free ODBC. This
was the number one enhancement request from
the IMAGE Special
Interest Group members last year, but HP
database manager Jon
Bale brushed it off in discussion at last
year's IPROF meetings.
Bale pointed to the two commercial ODBC
offerings which need no
Allbase/SQL as an ample supply of this kind
of solution.
One of the recently-released Interex roundtable
followup answers makes this point once again. HP's answer says that
"Our policy
is to promote the use of third-party
products that complement
HP's overall offering. This allows us to
focus our resources on
core technologies that only HP can provide,
such as IMAGE." The
answer seems to suggest that work on any
solution that has its
own third-party development -- perhaps even
Oracle -- is a poor
use of HP's special database talents.
SIGIMAGE leader Ken Sletten pointed out
that while the enhancement
request for Allbase-free ODBC will remain
on the SIG's ballot,
you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for
CSY to change its mind.
"The above," Sletten said,
"in combination with statements made
by various HP managers at IPROF-97 and HP
World Chicago seem to
constitute a pretty clear company policy
statement that they are
not going to bundle ODBC direct to
TurboIMAGE any time soon, if
ever."
PatchWatch: Making
Predictive Support work in 2000
HP sent into general release its patch
OSPKX47A, which gives part
of the HP Predictive Support application
for HP 3000s Year 2000
capabilities. This part of Predictive takes
a software inventory
of MPE/iX. Installing the patch with
Patch/iX is a little tricky,
since the patch can't be installed with the
tool unless the PSTEMPDB.SYS
group exists with capabilities of
IA,BA,MR,PM, PH and DS. If the
group PSTEMPDB does not exist, HP says the
PATCH/iX installation
of OSPKX47A will fail. The patch isn't part
of the Express 4 MPE/iX
5.5 release.
Installing the patch allows Predictive
to work after the Year
2000, since some of the HP code was based
on the false premise
that Year 2000 isn't a leap year. HP also
reported many of Predictive's
year fields encoded only the last two
digits of the year so they
couldn't represent years after 1999 and
couldn't calculation differences
between dates accurately.
TurboStore woes caused by
Express 4 version
HP doesn't intend to introduce problems
with its Express patch
tapes, but TurboStore users are reporting
that the backup application
supplied with the Express 4 susbsys tape is
causing problems with
backups. On systems with Express 4
installed, using TurboStore's
ONLINE;START: option for a full backup of
databases with logging
enabled delivers a "write failed to
user log file; could not quiese"
for all databases. The Response Center says
the data bases are
stored but not recoverable. NewsWire
subscriber Cecile Chi reports
that "The immediate solution is to
either disable the databases
for logging or to use the ONLINE option but
not the START or END
option."
Once you've got your TurboStore and
database settings safely adjusted,
the next step is to get the patches from HP
which will back out
the Express 4 patches to TurboStore and to
IMAGE to get back to
the Express 3 level.
There's more: a partial backup of
databases using a cutoff date
delivers "cannot quiese" messages
and "status = -237" messages.
The latter means the database did not
qualify for backup because
it did not meet the date cutoff, and it was
not backed up. One
solution to this problem is to add the
PARTIALDB option which
eliminates the error messages and stores
the proper data sets
are stored. Patch MPEJXY2 will fix this.
Watch out for the new
QUERY and b-trees
Express 3 and Express 4 delivered one of
the first ready-to-use
applications for the new b-tree indexing
for IMAGE, but users
report that b-trees are an all-or-nothing
proposition for your
databases if you want to use the new QUERY.
The problem is that
the new and improved QUERY doesn't work
with any non-indexed datasets
in a database if the database has one
dataset that has been b-tree
indexed. You can restore the old QUERY
program and it works fine,
but that version doesn't know about using
the b-tree on an indexed
dataset, so you won't get the benefit of a
quick lookup. It's
QUERY version N 3.11 that has the b-tree
capabilities, and the
problem. One temporary workaround,
according to HP, is to add
a b-tree index to all master datasets.
It didn't take HP long to provide a new
version of QUERY that
would work with databases that had only a
few datasets with new
b-tree indexes. The problem, which
customers installing the Express
3 or Express 4 MPE/iX are reporting, is
that those releases' QUERY
-- version N 3.11 -- doesn't work with any
non-indexed datasets
in a database if the database has one
dataset that has been b-tree
indexed. HP is supplying a new QUERY,
version N.3.13, in patch
number QUEKX48A for 5.0 systems and
QUEKX48B for 5.5 systems.
Patch/iX is bound to get
enhancement-friendly
In a season heavy with system patching --
two Express releases
shipped within six weeks of each other in
late 1997 -- it's a
natural that lots of pressure-testing of
Patch/iX would occur.
One frequent complaint about Patch/iX --
usually delivered along
with comments like "we still find
patching easier even with these
problems" -- concerned the Patch/iX
facility to install enhancements
like ODBCLink/SE. Scott McClellan, the CSY
engineer in charge
of Patch/iX, reported that he's been taking
in all the feedback
and expects to be improving Patch/iX as a
result.
"We are investigating a more complete
solution for the future,"
he said, "including a probable change
to the Patch/iX interface
to make it easier to use with respect to
enhancement patches."
In case you hadn't heard already, things
like the new LISTF CI
improvements in Express 3 and ODBCLink/SE
are marked as enhancement
patches, and enhancement patches will not
qualify for installation
(via Patch/iX) automatically. "If you
want to install 'enhancement'
patches with Patch/iX then you must use the
'force' feature,"
McClellan reports. "We have received
plenty of feedback that this
interface is not very user friendly and we
are looking into the
appropriate corrective measures."
A free tool for
router-to-3000 logging
If you've got routers whose data you'd like
to collect onto your
HP 3000, there's a freeware port of a
standard Unix tool that
can help in this kind of application. Mark
Bixby of Coast Community
College has ported a syslog server for
MPE/iX that will work for
this kind of task. You can download Bixby's port of
Syslog/iX.
Rating relative
performance of the HP 3000s
If you're one of the many readers who are
planning to purchase
upgraded HP 3000s this year, you'll
probably want a relative performance
chart to get an idea of how to measure your
power increase. HP
has started to include the relative
performance of its systems
as part of its system data on its CSY Web
site. You can browse
to performance numbers for the new
979s and the
997s. We still like Wirt Atmar's relative performance site best, since
it includes all HP 3000s ever sold, not
just the numbers relative
to Series 918s. Steer yourself to the AICS Research
lineup of HP 3000s.
Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire.
All rights reserved. |
