Download: VAU-2007-01-30_04.mp3
Length: 31 minutes
VMS Audio Update Episode 4
In this our forth episode, we'll cover some of the latest news highlights, get tech tips from Bruce Ellis and Steve Lieman and a story from Colin Butcher.
News:
A new issue of the OpenVMS Technical Journal has been released, with five articles in this issue for your reading pleasure.
Bruce Ellis has written an excellent and detailed article on "OpenVMS Mailboxes: Concepts, Programming, and Troubleshooting." Among other things, this article describes what mailboxes are and how OpenVMS implements them and describes implementation considerations and common problems.
Ted Saul has written an article "OpenVMS Backup Products: ABS/MDMS and Data Protector Compared." HP offers two backup applications for the OpenVMS operating system at this time: the Archive Backup System/Media and Device Management Services (ABS/MDMS) application and the Data Protector application. This article will point out the similarities and differences between the two, in order to help in the selection process between the products.
Once again, Guy Peleg has written an article, this time with the provocative title: "Alignment Faults - What Are they and Why Should I Care?" The article explains what alignment faults are, describes how alignment faults impact application performance, presents ways to detect alignment faults on a running system, and provides a few ideas on fixing them.
Speaking of alignment faults, one of our engineers from the DECnet team, Ajo Jose Panoor, has written an article on "Methodologies for Fixing Alignment Faults." This paper describes the methods followed to fix the alignment faults in OpenVMS DECnet Itanium. Because DECnet-Plus is a networking protocol, any performance degradation arising from the protocol stack has major implications on overall system performance and utilization.
And last, but by no means least, Bruce Claremont has written the article "Simplifying Maintenance with DCL." Expedient problem resolution is an important element of effective software application maintenance and a crucial component of job retention. Key to resolving a problem is effective identification of its cause. A couple of decades (!) ago Bruce also developed a standardized wrapper for OpenVMS DCL procedures that proved an effective assistant in locating processing problems.
HP have published updated information on changes needed to java due to the new 2006/2007 Daylight Saving Time rules that are going into affect for the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
The following Java software releases support the DST changes.
* OpenVMS Itanium: JDK 5.0-2 (U.S., Canada, Melbourne, Perth), and JDK 5.0-1 (U.S., Canada, Melbourne)
* OpenVMS Alpha: JDK 5.0-2 (U.S., Canada, Melbourne), and SDK v 1.4.2-5 (U.S., Melbourne)
In addition, a new time zone update tool (TZupdater) will be available in February, 2007 to give customers the most flexibility in updating currently-installed Java 1.4.2-x and Java 1.5.0-x releases with current time zone information changes.
The tool does not work with Java 1.3.1 installations.
For more information visit the HP DST web site:
www.hp.com/go/dst
After a prolonged absence due to software problems the VAMP (VMS-Apache-MySQL-PHP) site is back online. This site contains forums for discussing running Apache, MySQL, PHP, ImageMagic and various Content Management Systems on OpenVMS.
There will be more downtime as the site owner intends to temporarily move platforms and install updates. He thanks everyone for their patience and hopes the site will continue to be useful.
Visit the site at http://vamp.issinoho.com
Nic Clews: Speaking of VMS sites that have been offline recently, it looks like Deathrow is getting some of their problems worked out.
Tech Tips:
Bruce Ellis of Bruden OSSG discusses some of the default parameters settings changed in V8.3 that affect memory allocation.
Steve Lieman, of TrendsThatMatter.com discusses how to use T4 and friends to do performance evaluation. In this tech tip he discusses TLVIZ.
Featured:
Colin Butcher (XDelta): As well all know VMSclusters provide a certain level of disaster tolerance. Sometimes though, you need more than just a great OS...
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We'd like to thank, in no particular order, Colin Butcher, Nic Clews, Bruce Ellis, Steve Lieman, and Sue Skonetski for contributing to this podcast.
Special thanks to Jeff Palmer and Greg Freeman of the band Checksum for letting VAU use cuts from their CD Grey Ghost royalty free.
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