Number 65 (Update of Volume 6, Issue 10)

Correction, or anticipation: what is the Perl support plan?

In an item from our June FlashPaper, we reported that HP is planning to support Perl on the HP e3000, although a firm date on that support hadn't been announced yet. Although we were working from official HP information on a Web site -- one that answered questions from the May 15 CSY Webcast -- it looks as if support for the handy scripting language and Web utility hasn't been given the green light yet.

Our FlashPaper item said "Perl is going to cost something to be supported," and then added that "Official HP support is currently planned for a future release of Perl, to be bundled with a future release of the extra-cost HP WebWise MPE/iX Secure Web Server product."

We got the information from HP. A few weeks after the Webcast, HP posted this text, replying to questions about supporting Perl:

"Perl 5.6.0 is available today as unsupported freeware from <http://www.bixby.org/mark/perlix.html>. HP is currently working on porting 5.6.1 as unsupported freeware, and will submit the MPE changes from that code base forward into what will become Perl 5.7.x." Then HP went on to say:

"Official HP support is currently planned for a future release of Perl, to be bundled with a future release of the extra-cost HP WebWise MPE/iX Secure Web Server product."

The information on the HP Web site was drawn up by a committee between CSY marketing and engineering. Even though it seemed clear that support which is "official" and "currently planned" was a step forward beyond the customary "we will see if our customers think this should be done" phase of new software's lifespan on the 3000, not everything was as HP presented it at its Web site.

The "currently planned" is a milestone of note in the life of any HP work for the 3000. When something is planned, it's gonna be done. What is usually not known at that stage is when the work begins, or will be completed. The lab-speak goes in these steps: considered, planned, staffed, completed, tested, released. Getting from step one to step two is the significant leap, an HP commitment.

Mark Bixby -- the CSY engineer likely to be in the forefront of anything Perl-related on the e3000, since he did final packaging of Perl 5.6.1 to respond to the "supported Perl as a part of WebWise" request finished in the Top 10 of the SIB -- weighed in when a reader asked about the support. Not so fast, Bixby reported. HP apparently didn't mean to confirm Perl support for the platform, at least not right now.

"An HP-supported version of Perl is merely "under consideration" at this time," Bixby wrote. "Note that this does not yet mean "yes" or "no". If you come to my Perl presentation at HPWorld, I will see if I can have a firmer answer by then."

"The Perl distribution I am working on is just basic vanilla Perl. It will not come bundled with Ted Ashton's TurboImage module, or any other non-standard module. If you want to play with the TurboImage support, you will have to download it separately and build it yourselves.

"HP support for the Perl TurboImage module is not currently under consideration. However, the initial CSY plans are to distribute Perl 5.6.1 via Jazz as unsupported freeware. This will be an upgrade from the bixby.org 5.6.0 version, and all diffs have been submitted back to the official Perl developers and are currently included in the 5.7.2 developer release (which will eventually become the 5.8.0 public release)."

To his credit, Bixby owned up to the CSY miscommunication about its Perl plans. A great advocate of the language, he still had to clarify that it isn't qualified for HP support on the 3000 yet.

"The Webcast Q&A materials were a group effort in which I participated. Answers were submitted by many different lab authors and the final Web pages were put together by Marketing. It appears that there was a miscommunication somewhere between the lab and Marketing.

"I remember the Perl answer was discussed as a group, and my recollection of the Perl statement wording was "being considered" instead of "planned". I just double-checked my already submitted HP World Perl slideset which was finalized at about the same time as the Q&A, and I do use the "being considered" language there."

"So I apologize for this miscommunication. I personally am still a big fan of Perl, and still speaking personally, I would love to see it as a supported product someday. :-)"

Like Bixby, we hope its status reverts to that on the HP Web site report soon. Customers are reporting it to be a powerful tool for e-services, a thing HP has a lot of interest in. We also believe supporting it with TurboIMAGE, somehow, is a good thing too, since there's very few 3000s that don't need to connect with TurboIMAGE.

Bixby will give the latest and truest answer he can at HP World. We'll be there to hear the news ourselves.

HP World kickoff nears, hopes to buck industry trends

Bixby's report is just one reason HP World is the place to be next week. As we write this, the show is less than a week away. It's the biggest conference for the HP e3000 world, and this year marks the 17th time in a row I've attended the Interex North American show for HP users. It's hard to remember a time when the IT industry as a whole, or HP itself, was under such economic pressure.

Last month we noted that signs were pointing to an HP World with fewer attendees, and more room to roam the booth space on the Expo floor. Interex's Kathy Herzog, who over much of those 17 years has built up a perennial juggernaut of a conference that is the user group's biggest moneymaker, begged to differ. She said attendees were ahead of last year's numbers for the conference, but she didn't say if those numbers were paid registrants or those on hand for the free expo.

"Even in light of the tough economic conditions in the high tech industry and with HP, the good news is that conference attendance is currently ahead of last year at this time!," Herzog reported. "We are very hopeful that we can continue this trend, and keep attendance better or equal to last year. This is good news for all of us, especially for HP." Of course, even the Interex chairman Ed Witkow noted that conference attendance is down industry-wide this year. The user group is hoping to buck this year's trend, and continue its growth.

Make no mistake: we're glad to know the conference is performing well for the user group. We hadn't wished for anybody who works as hard as Herzog's conference staff has to fall short of goals of continued growth, each and every year. The conference business is a hard one, and this year's stalled economy can only make the challenge harder. Some vendors have reported the show floor size has contracted from initial floor plans, giving them a better spot in the reshuffled floor map. That's one thing we meant by more "room to roam." To be realistic, very little of business is performing at its Year 2000 rate.

For some, watching who appears at a conference is a barometer of its importance -- or that of the attendee. A few weeks ago CBS MarketWatch posted an article on its financial Web site about HP CEO Carly Fiorina's absence from this year's HP World. This year the top officer in HP won't attend, as she did in 1999 in San Francisco, or even present in a video link, as she did last year. "Confirmation that HP's top executive will be a no-show at HP World, one of the company's largest yearly events, comes as Fiorina's leadership skills have increasingly been called into question," the MarketWatch item said. "Criticism of Fiorina's escalated last week after the company announced a third-quarter profit warning, along with HP's largest round of layoffs ever." For MarketWatch, the question of Fiorina's disappearance cast concerns about the CEO, not the show. It's an event that's proved itself.

For those of us who commit to the show as necessity, the venue will present some challenges, though not quite as many as we alluded to in our last Extra article. The Hyatt hotel is connected to Chicago's sprawling McCormick Place, where the show is set up in the North hall. But even after adding a hotel to the complex, McCormick hasn't become any easier to get to on foot, and there's very little around the center. The Unofficial Chicago travel guide reports that the center has no lobby, and nary a clock in the place. This kind of casino arrangement will probably serve to focus everybody on the news and discussions while they're working.

The HP 3000 community in attendance will be missing some familiar faces, but those who are there will be breaking new ground. At SIG-Client-Server's meeting on Friday at 8AM, leaders Ken Nutsford and Brian Duncombe hope to present reports from users employing Message Oriented Middleware. Vendors of products delivering MOM are also invited.

MPE Pocket Guide gets an update

One thing HP World will deliver is the first appearance of a new edition of the ORBiT Pocket Guide for MPE/iX. Engineer Paul Taffel, who's led the effort on the prior versions of the indispensible guide to commands and syntax for MPE, said the version coming out at the show will be up to date, right up to Express 1 of MPE/iX -- a release that HP isn't even shipping yet for the e3000. We expect news on that Express 1 ship date, too, since it makes the new N-Class systems capable of multiple processor computing and larger memory sizes.

If you're not attending the conference, you can still get the updated pocket guide at the ORBiT Store on the Web, www.mainstreet-stores.com/ORBITSW.

COBOL World postponed

Things could be much worse in the conference business. SIG-COBOL chair Jeanette Nutsford was sorry to report the first COBOL World conference has been postponed until next spring. "I hope those of you who were planning to attend will not be too inconvenienced, and that you will still be interested to participate in the conference next year." Nutsford had arranged a discount for HP customers registering for the show, which was to be held in October. "I am personally very disappointed as the program was going to provide a most varied cross section of technologies with special focus on the COBOL developers needs."

Conference organizers said "The recent downturn in the economy has wrecked havoc in almost all areas of business. In particular, the slashing of travel budgets has extracted a significant toll from conferences with many being cancelled and others being poorly attended."

"COBOL World 2001 is also feeling the effect of this downturn. A just-completed intensive telemarketing effort by us and by one of our primary sponsors found very strong interest in the conference. Unfortunately the economic downturn reared its ugly head. Although our efforts produced modest returns, we saw an unusually high percentage of individuals with responses such as: "Can't now because of budget problems, but count me in, after our budget picture loosens up."

Some DDS tapes struggle to boot on 3000s

HP is confirming that a problem in tape drive firmware prevents some Cold System Load Tapes from booting up HP e3000s. The problems appear to occur with any DDS cartridge other than a 125-meter tape. Some HP 3000 managers use shorter DDS-2 tapes to save money and tape capacity, and the HP Response Center is recommending using only 125-meter tapes.

"The problem is in firmware," said Dave Birbeck of HP, "and has been fixed within the past few weeks." Birbeck offers more details, perhaps including the firmware revision, for customers who e-mail him at dave_birbeck@hp.com.

"I can vouch that this can be a real problem, as I was on a customer site backing out of a 6.5 update and all their SLTs were on 90m tapes," Birbeck noted in an Internet posting. "I somehow conned the machine into thinking it had a 125m tape in the drive when it was a 90m tape. Mount any 125m tape, take the machine down, and while down dismount the 125m and replace with the 90m CSLT, and it worked. Cannot guarantee that this will always be successful."

Others at say there might be more to the problem than just firmware. "I believe it's actually a combination of the firmware and the code that loads the tape," said Matt Shade. Posting from the HP Atlanta operations, Shade said, "the customer has been saved simply by trying BO ALT three or four times. One of those times might just make it past the code, and everything runs smoothly from there (once you're past the problem, you're past it)."

"However, many times we haven't been able to ever boot off the tape, so the workaround is usually to boot back up PRI, then either recreate the tape (rerun AUTOINST, AUTOPAT, or PATCHIX) using a 125m tape, or some people have been able to use SLTCOPY and just copy the tape. TCPY might work there, also. Bottom line, tapes <125m MAY have a problem booting."

Another HP manager advised "If you are going to use a DDS-3 drive to create an SLT, then you need to use a DDS-3 tape. I have yet to have a system boot from a DDS-2 tape that was created on a DDS-3 drive. [It] really doesn't have anything to do with the O/S version as I have experienced this on 5.5, 6.0, and 6.5. "

Doug Werth of Beechglen Development, suppliers of support for many HP 3000 sites, said "It obviously has something to do with the creating of the SLT on DDS-2 media by a DDS-3 drive (as opposed to a problem with a DDS-3 drive reading a DDS-2 SLT.) I conclude this for several reasons. First, we have created many DDS-2 SLTs that have been used to load on DDS-3 drives. Second, the factory SLTs are still delivered on DDS-1 60 meter tapes. Consequently, DDS-3 drives have no inherent difficulties reading non-DDS-3 SLTs. The only problem appears to be reading a non-DDS-3 tape specifically created on a DDS-3 drive."

Ecometry users can use a security bootstrap

There's no substitute for experience when configuring an HP 3000, but many times that's the attribute in shortest supply at the Ecometry/MACS sites running catalog and e-commerce operations. These can be customers starting up their first HP e3000s, and they rely on the experience of the community to help them. Chris Bartram, an HP 3000 veteran who moved into Ecometry system management through a consulting contract, recently gave advice on how to improve security and configuration on the 3000.

Consulting at the US Mint, Bartram said, "One of the first things I did when I got here was audit security on the systems. SG/Ecometry left the system wide open, with lots of capabilities granted and files released because they obviously didn't understand how the OS works.

"In short, if set up properly, users DON'T need OP.. which does allow global access to spoolfiles (and BACKUPS! Among other things). The first week I was here a user playing around accidentally fired off a full-system backup in the middle of the day.. knocking everyone off the system. It didn't help that for some reason "BACKUP" was a selection on some user's menus...

"We went a bit overboard in securing the system; and even brought in a separate box just for printing, where users get a dedicated menu when they log on that gives them control of THEIR reports for printing/deleting/etc, along with a Web interface (using Apache/iX) to allow control of printing reports from their desktops. It does work well, but some of the principles could be accomplished on a single box.

"All MACS users really need (cap-wise) is IA (BA if they'll stream jobs under their OWN IDs, which MACS doesn't usually do). Since pretty much all reports are generated in batch jobs, ND isn't usually needed, except for users that might have access to Suprtool/query to do ad-hoc reports. Ditto SF capability.

"OP is SG's lazy way of allowing printer control.. but ends up granting way too much control. A better approach is selectively using ALLOW commands to specific users and ASSOCIATE permission for printers in their areas, and providing a printer-control menu (that both makes the task easier and keeps people from tinkering where they shouldn't).

"One problem we encountered with the way MACS works is that all jobs log on under the ID JOBS.<account>... which makes managing them a little tougher... since they don't "belong" to the user ID that streamed the job. We remedied this using Espul [From RAC Consulting, <http://www.racc.com>] to rename reports as they get created, changing their creator to the same user ID of the user that streamed the job, and the device to a device corresponding to their department or area. This lets users see "their" reports more easily, and allowed us to give them control over "their" reports and their specific printers (allow the user to ASSOCIATE the printer(s) in their area, giving them control over starting/stopping/etc that printer but no one else's)."

Tech Group unveils fall 3000 training schedule

Hard-working training school owner Jon Backus has put out a new set of fall courses for HP 3000 instruction at Tech Group University. The catalog now has over 90 MPE-related training classes, with over 30 initially on the schedule, including database tools (Adager, DBGeneral, Omnidex, Suprtool, Query and DBGauge), languages (COBOL, Speedware and Powerhouse 4GL), reporting (Quiz, BRW), security (Fundamentals and Advanced), performance, spoolfile management (NBSpool/Vista, byRequest, Sheetmate, & Espul) and others. Please visit the virtual campus www.TechGroupMD.com to see which classes might be right for you.

3000 updates highlight MARUG fall meeting

Experts from Outer Banks Solutions will lead several sessions on new features of HP 3000s at next month's Mid-Atlantic Regional User Group (MARUG) meeting, Sept. 19-21. The meeting at the Wyndham Myrtle Beach Resort in Myrtle Beach, S.C. includes an update on MPE/iX 6.5 and 7.0 on Thursday Sept. 20, and an MPE roundtable and a one-hour briefing on the new A-Class and N-Class e3000s on Friday Sept. 21. A Thursday-Friday pass is $170, while Friday-only is $90; early bird registration ends Sept. 10. Details on conference registration are at the MARUG Web site, www.marug.org. Aug. 19 is the deadline to sign on for $109 ocean-view rooms at the resort: call 843.692.3131 to make a reservation.