Expect 3000 Internet news from HP early next month

We've been told to expect a briefing on news about the HP 3000 and Internet developments in time for the new HP 3000 Solutions Symposium, set to kick off on February 9. While we don't know what's being offered yet, we've heard about an coupon book that the 3000 division has been building with the help of third party suppliers. This HP 3000 e-Tools Coupon Book will feature key HP 3000 vendors with unique product offerings and varied promotional offers. HP has been inviting third-party application development, deployment, and infrastructure vendors with Web/e-commerce offerings and HP-CSY offerings. Other vendors along the HP 3000 value chain have also been invited to participate. HP will be mailing the hard copy coupon book and promoting it in other places like the Web, with a delivery date of Feb. 7.

Advice for DBPUTing to avoid aborts

SIGIMAGE Chair Ken Sletten reported on a TurboIMAGE abort while running a job that was copying a fairly large (something over 2 million) number of records from one IMAGE database to another:

"The job had been running for a number of hours when all of a sudden I got this in the deferred spoolfile (fully qualified database name masked out):

ABORT: DBPUT ON DATABASE xxxxx.xxxx.xxx
TURBOIMAGE/XL ABORTS ON DBB CONTROL BLOCK

"We are running TurboIMAGE Overall VUF C.07.14. Note that no database damage of any kind resulted from the above abort as far as we can tell. As soon as I got all other users out of the database to clear the resulting "ONLY DBCLOSE ALLOWED" message, all appeared to be well with the database.

Fortunately we had database DUMPING enabled (recommended for everyone), so the HP RC was able to log on and analyze the PRIV mode "I" and "J" files that TurboIMAGE creates on those rare occasions when the DBMS itself actually aborts. The RC has now pretty much conclusively determined that we ran into a known problem that was fixed in C.07.21 and follow-on versions of TurboIMAGE. Here's the summary of the problem as I understand it:

If you are DBPUT-ing a large number of records without any intervening operations like we were -- in such a way that the 16- bit read counter for individual datasets does NOT get reset by the program doing the work -- then when you max out that DSET counter, DBPUT will abort with the above message (I don't know exactly what all causes reset of this DSET counter).. What we were doing was apparently a textbook scenario for running into this bug: Read a couple million records out of one database, and do continuous DBPUT's to one dataset in a target database.

Note that the latest GR version of TurboIMAGE for MPE 5.5 is C.07.25. That is what I will have in my hand tomorrow, for system update tomorrow -- after which we will re-run our big job to copy all those records..... one more time in the test account, of course; just to be sure C.07.25 cures our specific problem (confidence level is high). For additional details on this problem, contact the HP RC and / or see SR numbers 5003-447-912 and 5003-453-944"

How to work around a minor Powerhouse Y2K glitch

John Dunlop reported from the UK on a workaround that Powerhouse users might encounter related to the Y2K shift:

"I have recently discovered a small Y2K glitch with Powerhouse, more of a programming style problem. It probably applies mostly to countries outside the US using the dd/mm/yy system, and it occurs when using the SYSDATE assigned to a numeric or DATE field which is then translated into an ascii variable and the month, day and year sections split out. The problem occurs if the ascii function is used without specifying the ,6 parameter to ensure that 6 characters are used in the character variable (e.g. zerofilled). For values such as "991230" etc. the value is not a problem. But for "000101" or dates after that point, the numeric value gets reduced to "101", e.g. no leading zeroes -- and the result is that the date manipulation function ends up with nonsensical values. This came to light because of a screen which constructed a jobstream and then used the STREAM command with a DATE= parameter. As I said, as long as the character variable is zerofilled, the problem does not occur."

Get the Apache Web server on a CD for free

HP is making a free CD available that contains everything you need to get the Apache Web server running on your HP 3000. The disk can eliminate long download times from Web sites, especially if your Internet connection isn't the very fastest. HP's Lars Appel reports:

"You might also want to check out the CD that CSY Europe offered during a recent/current mailshot regarding e-Services and HP 3000:

http ://www.businessservers.hp.com/europe/news/mailing.html

"It not only contains a collection of data sheets and white paper material, but also copies of various packages that can be large downloads when pulled from the Web. For example, Java/iX version 1.1.7 and 1.2, Apache JServ for MPE/iX, handout material from a Java/Apache/MPEiX seminar (sorry, no fancy slides ;-) and a collection of small Java examples, general utilities (TapeCopy, GnuZIP, InfoZIP, etc) and the like. The "Golf Shop" demo of the Enhydra web app server is quite cute, if you want to impress people with open source Java software that can be run on the 3000 "out of the box" ;-)"

Get on 6.0 for Apache support

It appears that the latest version of the Apache Web server won't be able to work with MPE/iX 5.5. HP engineer Mark Bixby reported that "The Apache 1.3.x versions found an unpleasant bug in POSIX signal/errno handling that is only fixed on 6.0 by [patch] MPEKXT3B. There is no corresponding 5.5 patch, and therefore Apache 1.3.x will not work reliably on 5.5."

The only HP-supported version of Apache/iX available at the current time is 1.3.4 for 6.0.

Customers who have downloaded the latest version from the Jazz Web site (http://jazz.external.hp.com) report the online package is well constructed and fast. "First, the installation and configuration instructions are very easy to follow," said Chuck Ryan of State Volunteer Mutual Insurance, a Medical Malpractice insurance company. "Aside from an incorrect stream command under the Run Apache section, it is excellent.

"Once I got it up and running, which took me all of 10 minutes, I was immediately able to load the sample web page. Talk about fast! The default Web page and documentation pages load immediately, I cannot wait to see how well it performs under a load. Excellent piece of work by the Apache team.

"Initially I see our use of Apache as an inquiry/reporting interface for our Policy and Claims system. I will have to spend some time getting to know Apache before I can make any definite plans beyond that.
"As for support, I have found the HP3000-L [Internet mailing] list to be the best source of support for the posix side of the HP 3000. The HP Response Center seems to be lagging behind in its ability to support the growing number of posix applications. Also, it appears that the majority of people involved in porting Posix applications, like Apache, to the HP 3000 are active members on this list, and are more than happy to answer any question they can."

Using the right function to get dates on a 3000

Tom Brandt of Northtech Systems offers a primer on how to get an 8-digit date (the only safe kind to use, now) from an HP 3000 with COBOL:

"Use the CURRENT-DATE function to get an 8-digit date, as follows:

In WORKING-STORAGE:

01 FULL-CURRENT-DATE.
05 FCD-DATE.
10 FCD-DATE-YYYY PIC X(04).
10 FCD-DATE-MM PIC X(02).
10 FCD-DATE-DD PIC X(02).
05 FCD-TIME PIC X(04).
05 FILLER PIC X(09).

In your procedure division:

MOVE FUNCTION CURRENT-DATE TO FULL-CURRENT-DATE.

FCD-DATE will contain the current date in CCYYMMDD format.

Be sure to add the compiler directive POST85 to your source file. See the latest COBOL manual for more information on the CURRENT-DATE function. If you don't have one, you can read it at http://doc.hp.com "

Tips on downloading the latest Patch/iX

HP is now distributing a new version of the MPE/iX 6.0 Express 1 Powerpatch, rebuilt to include the new version of Patch/iX (specifically, the Linkeditor AUTOLED). This new PowerPatch is already in use in the division's systems preloading environment and is shipping to existing customers who request it. This new version of Express 1 won't be coming your way automatically if you already have received Express 1. You have to ask for it.

Other than the new Patch/iX, there is no difference between the previous PowerPatch and the new one. Both PowerPatches contain the same patches, and any installation behavior would be exactly the same for each PowerPatch -- i.e. you can still veto or force patches.

You can download this software using FTP protocol, at least from the Jazz Web server, but there's a few tricks to making it work. Michael Dovano of HP explained:

"People normally use ASCII or binary mode to transfer files, and different ftp applications seem to use different terminology for byte mode. We've found that using binary mode at least in some cases truncates records in the file (you may see a message like this on your MPE/iX ftp: "Some records were truncated during transfer. (FTPWARN 15 )" ). I'm not sure what the technical reasons are (maybe someone else can speak up here), but I've never seen a problem with transferring Patch/iX and patch files using byte mode."

Dovano went on to explain that to use byte mode on MPE/iX, use the "byte" command before transferring files. You should get the response "200 Type set to L (byte size 8)" from ftp. Stan Sieler pointed out that as far as he could see, the HP 3000 was the only platform that supported the byte command.

"I also use Reflection software on my PC," Dovano added. "In [WRQ's] Reflection, I use specify "tenex", or click on the "8" symbol for byte transfer mode.

The latest version of the Express 1 patch includes an A.06.03 or better version of AUTOLED.INSTALL.SYS (the Linkeditor used by the patch/installation tools). Dovano noted that "AUTOLED also has a catalog file, ALKEDCAT.INSTALL.SYS. The versions of both these files are included in both the Patch/iX B.01.02 and B.01.03 downloads (from Jazz and HP IT Response Center)."

Hear about Java's future at SIG 3000 next month

The upcoming SIG 3000 meeting promises to give attendees to the $100 meeting lots of news about upcoming enhancements for the HP 3000. (The fact that there's a $100 meeting covering three days is news all by itself, in our opinion). One of the highlights will be the SIGJava meeting, chaired by Gavin Scott, who provided this update:

"SIGJava will meet as part of the "Languages" day of activities at SIG 3000 (a.k.a. IPROF 2000) on Thursday, February 17 at the Sunnyvale Hilton Inn in Sunnyvale, Calif. (four miles from HP's Cupertino site). For more information on the SIG 3000 conference, and to register, go to:

http://www.i nterex.org/advocacy/sig3000/index.html

"The full conference runs Tuesday the 15th through Thursday the 17th, and registration (which includes lunch) for all three days is only $100. You can also attend at the single day rate of $50/day.

"At the SIGJava meeting we will be talking about enhancements in the latest release of JDK 1.2.x for MPE/iX, HP's future plans for Java on MPE, what some of our customers are doing with Java on the 3000 today, and some of the exciting things that people are developing now that Y2K is out of the way.

"Plan to attend to join in the discussions, ask questions, and provide feedback to HP on the directions you would like to see Java take on the 3000, and what enhancements would enable you to better utilize Java in your HP-3000 environment."

Celebrate 40 years of COBOL next week

How does a computer language get a United States Navy warship named after it? One way is to stick around long enough to get honored. COBOL celebrates its 40th birthday next week, and one of the suppliers of COBOL compilers is organizing a party for the language in San Diego. SIG COBOL chair Jeanette Nutsford reports:

"I wanted you to know about the special day to celebrate 40 years of COBOL which is being planned for Friday January 21 in San Diego. This is to honour the founder of COBOL 40 years ago, the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. The US Navy have named a warship in her name so they are participating in the celebrations. The main organisers are Acucorp.

"You can see the details at <http://www.cobol40years.com>. If you are interested in attending you can register on the web site. I am in New Zealand now for Christmas and the New Year but I will be making a special trip to the USA for this day to represent Interex's SIGCOBOL members. Ed Witkow has been appointed by the board to represent them. I expect Bob Karlin and Michael Watson also to join me there. The only person from HP that I am aware of will be Walter Murray from Roseville."