Number 66 (Update of Volume 6, Issue 11)

3000 Perl support: It's waiting on HP 9000

The latest and truest answer from HP 3000 engineer Mark Bixby about HP's supporting Perl on the platform is "not yet." But another HP 3000 division staffer, Internet and Interoperability R&D manager Alvina Nishimoto, explained the delay at the HP World conference. The e3000 division is waiting for a Perl support plan from HP's HP-UX group. That's right, not even the world of Unix on the 9000 provides HP support of Perl. Since the Unix group's decision affects a much larger range of customers, the HP 3000 group doesn't feel it's an effective use of the company's resources to commit to supporting the scripting language on the 3000 without knowing the timetable for the Unix plans. Stay tuned: We hope for some kind of decision in time for the next HP e3000 Solutions Symposium.

Interex introduces its latest executive director, show dates

That Perl support wasn't the only mystery unveiled at the HP World conference. Interex showed off its newest executive director, Ronald Evans, in the spot of introducing keynote speaker and HP president Ann Livermore. Evans takes charge of the HP user group's staff on Sept. 10, adding experience in publishing, conferences, technology and business to the association.

Evans leaves a post as president of editSource.com, Inc., a business to business editorial content service provider which licenses US-based articles for use on overseas Web sites. Evans has been at editSource.com since 1999. Before that post, he worked from 1994 to 1999 as president and contract publisher for the Brookfield Group, a Boston-based contract management business that serves the publishing industry. He also served for four years as publisher of BYTE Magazine.

Evans, who has a BS in Industrial Technology from Northeastern University in Boston, is affiliated with the Turn Around Management Association, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Association for Corporate Growth.

The user group also released the conference dates for the next two meetings of note to the e3000 community. The 2002 HP e3000 Solutions Symposium will be held in San Jose, at the San Jose Hyatt, April 3-6. "We are very excited about the location," said Debbie Lawson-Kirkwood, Interex Director of Customer Advocacy and Technical Events. "It should be very nice, and the room rates are actually less than last year by $10 a night."

Lawson-Kirkwood said the program committee for the Symposium "will be getting together very soon to start planning the sessions. Please send me any feedback or suggestions so we can get right on it." Contact her at DebLawson1@AOL.COM.

Conference dates for next year's HP World meeting are Sept. 9-13, 2002 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. InterWorks, the annual meeting of HP's workstation community, will be held in an adjacent facility at the same time in a one-time experiment.

Cognos sends its latest to the 3000 base

Cognos has been sending the 8.39 version of its PowerHouse tools to customers in the installed base still on support, and sites are noting the newest release will be missing Architect support. Customers say that sites can move their PowerHouse Dictionary maintenance into Axiant. Compiling still generates problems indexing with sort items, however. Cognos' Joe Boyle reports that "Architect customers can continue to use the 8.19 version (running under the 8.19 version of PowerHouse 4GL) to maintain data definitions and generate PDL source code that can then be compiled under PowerHouse 4GL 8.39."

"In current plans for the PowerHouse 4GL 8.49 for MPE/iX release, it is hoped that it will be possible to include the ability to use PHD data dictionaries (together with the POW application for maintaining them) as well as the current PDC data dictionaries... giving MPE/iX customers the same choice that OpenVMS customers will have as they upgrade to PowerHouse 4GL 8.30. PHD with POW will allow for all of the functional aspects of Architect in terms of dictionary management, less the reporting side."

"Since PowerHouse Architect 8.19 is built on PowerHouse 4GL 8.19, and PowerHouse 4GL 8.19 will only receive development support for 12 months following the release of PowerHouse 4GL 8.39 (sometime this month), this means that development support for PowerHouse Architect 8.19 will be available for that same 12 month period following the release of PowerHouse 4GL 8.19, which in turn means that both PowerHouse 4GL 8.19 and PowerHouse Architect 8.19 will probably be supported only until the end of June 2002."

"However, as indicated earlier, it is thought that PHD will be available in PowerHouse 4GL 8.49 which will be released in the timeframe, December 2001 to February 2002."

No lack of utilities for the 3000

While the 3000 community remains hungry for new applications, there's no lack of utilities being offered for the platform, a nod to the computer's rich community of developers. From Poland's PMS Labs we hear of XPR/iX software for preparing and viewing and printing reports, and XTP/iX archiving software that handles backups on tape devices. XTP/iX checks accessibility of all files scheduled to be backed
up, and if a file is locked by a user, XTP/iX unlocks it and starts a copy. The software also does automatic data verification. The company's Jacek Piskorz reports, "When a backup has completed, our program switches the tape device to on-line mode and starts verification." XPR/iX lets users prepare reports, "deciding whether a report must be printed out or it is enough to view its contents. The majority of reports can be printed directly by a user on a printer connected to its terminal. A menu-driven interface executes all commands through function keys. For more information about XPR/iX or XTP/iX contact the Labs at +48 32 279-22-50, or send e-mail to pmslabs@pmslabs.com.pl

The old HP lives on in new e3000 install

Duane Percox, one of the founders of K-12 application vendor QSS, recently posted a note about his experience getting a new e3000 purchased and installed. QSS opted for the very lowest end of the new line, an A400 to replace a Series 937, and Percox was satisfied with the installation experience through the vendors' Computing Solution Provider Program (CSPP), the organization that aids HP developers with discounts and support.

"As members of CSPP we ordered/configured the A400 directly with HP. HP was helpful in getting our order placed and making sure the configuration was correct. We did have an incorrect cable, which was corrected after the system was delivered. It was good that we knew what we wanted, however.

"The system was factory integrated into a 1.25m rack. We didn't like the placement of the disk enclosures, but otherwise the integration was good. MPE was pre-installed along with all our ordered software. This saved considerable time in getting the system up and running. The system arrived one week early!

"HP sent out an experienced MPE person to install the system who did a great job. It was nice to have an experienced MPE person on hand so I was able to do less configuring and explaining! He also moved the disk enclosures per our request to make the racking make more sense. During the installation it was determined we had one incorrect SCSI cable (wrong terminator on one end). The CE went out of his way to get us a cable so the install was complete that day!"

"We ordered third-party memory (2Gb) to install and it arrived in the time frame the company said it would. We install the memory today so I can't say how its working, but we installed the same memory in another system (not ours) recently with no problems. The HP CE was nice enough to show me how the system is accessed when installed in the rack in order to get the memory installed. He also made sure the cables were installed such that the CPU chassis could be moved without having to remove any cable ties."

"We have relationships with six third-party software vendors, and here is a summary of the upgrade policies we encountered:

"One had no upgrade fee, as the server (HP e3000) component is fully distributable and license is by client (PC). Two had no upgrade fee, and no support fee increase.
Two normally have a license transfer fee, but waived for us as a developer, and no support fee increase. One had an upgrade fee, and no support fee increase.

"We computed we would get about a 65 percent CPU performance boost, and test COBOL compiles have verified this number.

"Our final performance test will be to see how our backup (DLT) improves. We have a DLT that is rated at 1.5Mb/sec that gives us about 1.2Mb/sec on the 937 (640Mb memory). Now that we have 2Gb and fast SCSI drives on fast SCSI channels, we are expecting to get the max out of the DLT.

"We followed through and changed our order to return the wrong SCSI cable and get the correct one. It was handled professionally and quickly by HP. The HP installation group refused to have me replace the cable they installed, and said I was free to keep cable. Who said the 'old' HP is no longer?"

Backup while the network is up

HP's James Hofmeister recently offered advice over the Internet on making HP 3000 backups while Network Services (NS) are still running.

"Two changes have been made that may make the possibility of performing backups with the network up more successful. The first is NETCP, a file which is required on system bootup is now written as a system program to a CSLT and second (though this is out of my area of expertise), "STORE" seems to no longer require exclusive access of the files it is backing up.

"The most common problem with performing backups in the past was the network configuration files are held open for READ/WRITE when the network is up. Frequently sites found they had no backup copy of the network configuration file NMCONFIG.pub.sys when it was time to install (reload) from backup tapes. I tested this on 7.0 building a CSLT and storing @.pub.sys,@.mpexl.sys,@.net.sys,@.arpa.sys on the same tape, and verified all of the network files including the configuration files were backed up.

"Another problem from the past was NETCP.net.sys was frequently found missing in action following a install (reload) and after it was recovered and restored from another source, then another system reboot was required to initiate NETCP. NETCP has been included on a SLT since some time prior to MPE/iX 5.5 and this is no longer an issue.

"Will the network function normally while backups are in progress? The answer to this is YMWV - "Your Mileage Will Vary". The building of a CSLT and the STORE process (though this is again out of my area of expertise) seem to consume significant CPU, Memory and I/O resources.

"From a networking perspective, TCP/IP networks are not guaranteed to maintain network connections in the event of severe system performance degradation. An acceptable level of CPU and IO performance is required to support TCP's ability to acknowledge the packets it has received (if a packet is not acknowledged it will be retransmitted as per the remote hosts configuration). Also, an acceptable level of system bus performance is required to support the network hardware DMA to system memory -- if busy during a DMA attempt, the frame is dropped (store from disk to tape or from disk to disk consumes significant system bus band width). Many other factors are involved, but these are just a few to keep in mind."

Fire shows how essential the 3000 can be

John Lee of Vaske Computer Solutions offered up an incredible tale of how durable HP 3000 hardware can be in disasters -- one that seems to define the outer limits of any computer's capability.

"One of our customers had a fire in their headquarters last night, and it caused major smoke damage throughout the building, including the datacenter. The building lost power and their 968 powered down as it was supposed to. But the blackened, ash-covered beast booted up in the morning once power was restored, and they continued operations from their remote site (the manufacturing plant) which they are linked to via T1, and they're still running! "

Lee supplied the topper to the story later in the day. "The building has been gutted except for the computer room, which they're going to demolish last so the system can continue to run," he said. "So here sits a burned out, gutted brick building with an unrecognizable 968 in the middle of it, still running the company. That would make for almost as good an ad as the HP garage!"