INFO-VAX Fri, 23 May 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 287 Contents: Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Re: Easiest text processing on a Windoz PC ? Re: Easiest text processing on a Windoz PC ? Re: FTPand SSH security Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? MAIL , unread messages and IMAP Re: Odd backup corruption Re: Odd backup corruption Re: Odd backup corruption Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Re: OT: air-con redundancy? Re: OT: air-con redundancy? OT: Emacs bindings, was: Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Re: VMS 30th anniversary 'Oldest VMS system' contest ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 18:23:45 +0800 From: "Richard Maher" Subject: Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Message-ID: Hi Peter, Well done! Let's hope more people take up an interest. Cheers Richard Maher PS. Apparently those on Bootcamp just paid $1500 to have the IMM team tell them about a "new" technology called AJAX. Well they were 10 years after everybody else with Web Services so the time lag is getting shorter :-) Maybe next year HP/VMS will announce Flex/Flash to the world? "Peter Weaver" wrote in message news:02f601c8bc86$041df1d0$2802a8c0@CHARONLAP... > I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It is > not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example. > Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe > someone reading this will take the task on. > > I took an old Fortran program I had (IIRC it came from DSNLink) that dumped > out the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file and modified it to dump the data in XML format. > Then I created the .mxml file that shows up to 20 rows (depending on the > size of your web browser's window) of the file in a table. > > The Fortran program and .mxml file were both created using plain old > EDIT/TPU, the .mxml file was compiled into the .swf using the free flex > program loaded on my IA64 system. The IA64 system can compile the code in > about 35 seconds, my Alpha 800 5/500 takes over 3 minutes to do the same > job. > > As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click on > a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click on > the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK, there > are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone > figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns by > clicking on the boxes in the detail area. > > Depending on how big my accounting file is it may take a while to load the > table. I was testing this using a file with over 4,000 records and it took > 30 or 40 seconds to load on my LAN. Since the XML file for 4,000 records is > over 4 MB it may take a while to download. > > Just for privacy sake I replaced the first seven characters of the usernames > with the characters "private" but that modification would be easy to take > out if anyone wants to try this on their own system. > > If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at > http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on your > own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the > source code. > > Peter Weaver > www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com > www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com > > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 18:43:18 +0800 From: "Richard Maher" Subject: Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Message-ID: Hi JF, > You have to specify Array.NUMERIC when you call the sortOn Array method. > for example: myarray.sortOn('item', Array.NUMERIC); I think the problem Peter's experiencing is on the default Flex datagrid column sort. (ie. Just clicking on the column header). I don't use the gratuitous waste of bandwith that is XML myself and am not sure how one would distinguish a numeric from a string (although if you look at the Adobe Dashboard example for a while it can't be too hard to figure out as it (with XML) certainly works there.) Me? I use the FABridge with Javascript and cast any designated numeric columns as NUMBER as in : - function buildEmployee(buffFields,employeeRec){ var newEmp = new Object(); var fieldValue=""; for (i = 0; i < buffFields.length; i++){ fieldValue = employeeRec.substr(buffFields[i].offset,buffFields[i].size); if (buffFields[i].numeric) { newEmp[buffFields[i].name] = Number(fieldValue) } else { newEmp[buffFields[i].name] = fieldValue.rTrim() } } return newEmp; } I'm sure the dataSource for your grid has column attributes, one of which is isNumeric (sorry, too lazy to look up the manual at the moment :-) The above works for me with Salaries in my example so that $12,000 dollars doesn't come before $2,000. Cheers Richard Maher "Jean-François Piéronne" wrote in message news:48364f5a$0$5856$426a74cc@news.free.fr... > Peter Weaver wrote: > > [snip] > > As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click on > > a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click on > > the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK, there > > are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone > > figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns by > > clicking on the boxes in the detail area. > > > > You have to specify Array.NUMERIC when you call the sortOn Array method. > for example: myarray.sortOn('item', Array.NUMERIC); > [snip] > > > JFP ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 16:29:51 +0200 From: "Gorazd Kikelj" Subject: Re: Another Flex/VMS example - Browsing the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file Message-ID: "Peter Weaver" wrote in message news:02f601c8bc86$041df1d0$2802a8c0@CHARONLAP... >I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It is > not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example. > Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe > someone reading this will take the task on. > ... > If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at > http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on > your > own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the > source code. > > Peter Weaver > www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com > www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com > > Very Very nice. I immediately see a very good use of it in few of my own applications, currently writen in pascal and cobol. Best, Gorazd ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 09:17:49 -0700 (PDT) From: already5chosen@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Easiest text processing on a Windoz PC ? Message-ID: <2409db03-227e-4406-bb3d-3cac3851095d@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On May 6, 6:24 pm, Didier_Toulouse wrote: > Today, when I need to remove duplicates from an EXCEL sheet 30.000 > lines long, I have to build a .csv, upload it to a VMS machine, do a > sort, then a merge/nodup then bring back the resulting file to my PC > and load it back to EXCEL. > > What would be the easiest tool/language to use to do text processing > on a Windows machine pls? > > Thanks, > > D. All options mentioned above will do the job. I didn't try vba scripting but that should be the easiest way. However I want to point out to one often forgotten part of the Windows - it's native scripting language. Yes, .bat scripting inherited from DOS. With the new extensions it is more powerful than most people realize and could handle your task with relative ease: rem --- remove_repetitions_from_cvs.bat @echo off rem Lets assume that the names of input and the output files are supplied on the comand line goto :start_here rem This part serves as a subroutine rem %1 - output file name rem %2 - first token of input line rem %3 - quoted string with the remaining part of the command line :skipRepetitions if *%2==*%prevToken% goto :EOF set prevToken=%2 echo %2,%~3>>%1 goto :EOF :start_here rem sorting of the input file sort <%1 >%1.tmp rem now process sorted file line by line set prevToken=zzzzzzz del %2 2>1 >nul for /F "eol=; tokens=1,* delims=, " %%i in (%1.tmp) do call :skipRepetitions %2 %%i "%%j" del %1.tmp rem it is possible (through back-quoting syntax) to jam sorting and parsing into a single line rem but I'd rather stay at least somewhat readable rem --- That's all. Are you happy? The syntax is weired but at the end the job is done in surprisingly small number of lines ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 09:33:54 -0700 (PDT) From: already5chosen@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Easiest text processing on a Windoz PC ? Message-ID: Oh, Google groups client wrapped long line affecting the syntax. Particularly, that is a single line: for /F "eol=; tokens=1,* delims=," %%i in (%1.tmp) do call :skipRepetitions %2 %%i "%%j" ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:29:19 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: FTPand SSH security Message-ID: In article <_ZGdnZTxssXMZajVnZ2dnUVZ_qHinZ2d@posted.internode>, Gremlin writes: > And, without wishing to start a war, it does the same about most OS - it > is just a tool, it requires intelligent analysis, which is where COV > comes in.... I take security fairly seriously. I cannot take a tool that lies to me so much seriously. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:02:37 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: <7KrGVs6JuN8p@eisner.encompasserve.org> In article , Real Gagnon writes: > JF Mezei wrote in news:1fbd8$46563c1c > $cef8887a$1838@TEKSAVVY.COM: > >> So, if NASDAQ gets its hands on OMX, there is no telling what will >> happen to the VMS software. Not long ago, I had heard on ainterview with >> the president of OMX who stated that the software business was very >> important to OMX. > > NASDAQ trading technology runs on Java. > > At the last Javaone in SanFrancisco, Anna Ewing, CIO of NASDAQ gave a talk > about the system which process 150,378 transactions per second and their > long-term partnership with Sun. I guess that if VMS is still present it's > not in the core business. Having a partnership with Sun does not rule out running parts of your system on VMS, even Java based. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:08:03 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: In article , "Main, Kerry" writes: > > Don't have to. An OS is an OS is an OS. Security patches are security > patches. They are not like bug fixes which you can decide to do when you > feel like it. LOL. How many months have I waited for some security patches to get promoted to a production system. Sigh. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:10:08 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: <1JVs$Unof0kI@eisner.encompasserve.org> In article , "Main, Kerry" writes: > > Saying "Customers do not want this platform or that platform" any more > is really IT's way of promoting their own agenda and OS religion as a > means to justify whatever their favourite program of the day is.=20 > Customers who are willing to pay Gartner to tell them VMS is dead will come back and question any use on new systems, as well as make plans to get rid of it on existing systems. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:11:54 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: In article <465B0C8D.BF2FFE9B@spam.comcast.net>, David J Dachtera writes: > > Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that has not been true since the > Alphacide. See the concurrent thread titled, "Anyone know why the Alpha market > is so so quiet?". > Same reason the Ford Galaxy market is so quiet? It's hard for a market to heat up on a product that is no longer produced. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:13:58 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: RE: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: In article , "Main, Kerry" writes: > > Yes, but most are ignoring the monthly security patch issues. I can = > almost guarantee that most senior IT managers have no idea that there = > are so many monthly security patches for Linux. And those in the IT shop = > that are promoting Linux as their new big thing are certainly not = > raising any alarms either. > The are not ignoring it. They've been told by their security folks that it is a requirement and they've budgeted to do it. So where's all the adversizing for systems that prove it's not true? ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:18:30 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also? Message-ID: In article , Ron Johnson writes: > > And how things used to on Unix. Remember, it *is* a timesharing OS, > just like VMS. Wrong. VMS is a general purpose OS. It has designed-in timesharing and realtime capabilities. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 12:55:36 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: MAIL , unread messages and IMAP Message-ID: <4836f843$0$31227$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> I've been, as it as been suggested, using an IMAP client on a non VMS owrkstation to access my VMSmail store/account. While thunderbird has the correct number of unread messages, VMSmail thinks I have a gazillion emails. And this means that if I try to access my mailbox via my handset (pop or imap), the system tries to feed me a gazillion emails. Has anyone else encountered this issue ? How can it be solved ?\ When I have done in the past is manually login to VMS and do a move of my inbox to a "READ2" folder which then causes those messages to not download on the POP interface. I'd like a more elegant way. Is there one ? ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 07:06:42 -0500 From: clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) Subject: Re: Odd backup corruption Message-ID: <+r18wi8zZZs$@eisner.encompasserve.org> In article , glen herrmannsfeldt writes: > Tom Wade wrote: > >> $ backup temp-input.ps temp-backup.ps > > Are you comparing the original file to the backup output > file? If so, is that supposed to work? I believe you have > to restore the file to get the original back again. > > If that isn't what you are doing, then ignore this. My VMS > system is currently not running, so I can't look up the > HELP for BACKUP. > VMS Backup includes the ability to copy a file in the same way as COPY does. The above command is copying the file, not placing it within a saveset. You use /SAVE_SET after the target filename to create a save set (with the name of the target file) when the target file is located on a disk. Simon. -- Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:38:31 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Odd backup corruption Message-ID: <4836bb8f$0$12335$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Has anyone ever experienced even backup coruption ? If not, isn't it odd that there would only have been odd backup corruptions ? I smell a conspiracy theory here. I think we should blame Palmer for that. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:12:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: Re: Odd backup corruption Message-ID: <90d1f328-2cff-45e2-85b3-09883b290cd8@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> On May 23, 7:38 am, JF Mezei wrote: > Has anyone ever experienced even backup coruption ? > > If not, isn't it odd that there would only have been odd backup > corruptions ? I smell a conspiracy theory here. I think we should blame > Palmer for that. No, its due to "Global Warming" (TM) There was a problem with backup corruption with a release some time in the V5 range; it would get caught in the verify step if you had verification enabled, but otherwise could silently produce unusable backup savesets. That would have bit us but we never needed to restore from one of those savesets (there wasn't time to do verification on every backup... after that we made time but it sure hurt the backup schedule). ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 07:09:26 -0500 From: clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) Subject: Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Message-ID: In article <48363e73$0$7288$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei writes: > Not sure if this has been mentioned already. > > suspends an interactive process and returns control to parent. Note that a program can override this use of Ctrl-Z if required. For example, I have emacs configured to exit on Ctrl-Z (like EDT/EVE) instead of returning to the shell. > "bg" from the parent reactivates the suspended process and brings it to > foreground. > I think you mean "fg". :-) Simon. -- Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 07:45:00 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Message-ID: On Fri, 23 May 2008 05:09:26 -0700, Simon Clubley wrote: > For example, I have emacs configured to exit on Ctrl-Z (like EDT/EVE) > instead of returning to the shell. Most people use ctrl-z and Meta-z to scroll up or down. -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 13:34:19 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Message-ID: In article , "Tom Linden" writes: > > Most people use ctrl-z and Meta-z to scroll up or down. > Most people? None of my emacs bindings have that, it doesn't sound like vi or Word, so what is it that you think most people are running? Maybe most people in a certain small part of the world. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:23:41 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: OT: air-con redundancy? Message-ID: David J Dachtera wrote: > "Richard B. Gilbert" wrote: >> Anton Shterenlikht wrote: >>> Our supercomp (bris.ac.uk/acrc/hpc.htm) is out of service once again: >>> >>> "Dear all, the MVB machine room suffered a total air-con failure >>> this morning leading to BlueCrystal effecting its automatic >>> shutdown procedure. Estates are currently tracing the cause and thus >>> we can't at present give an expected time for resumption of service." >>> >>> I wonder, in the disaster tolerant world, do you budget for the >>> air-con redundancy as well? If yes, do you put a second, redundant >>> air-con system in the same machine room, or just failover to another >>> air conditioned machine room? >>> >> Most of the places I worked at had redundant, either dual or N+1, air >> conditioning systems. It doesn't always work! One place had two >> failures in the same day. Naturally, it was the hottest day of the year! > > Naurally, because if one system is designed wrong, chances are the > backup system has the same faults or worse. > Does it surprise you to learn that both units were identical Liebert machines? > Where I'm at, the condensing units are in a west-facing wall and get the > afternoon sun rather directly for the last four hours of the day. Guess > what happens to us around "quitting time" when the OAT heads into the > three-digit range ... ? > > D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:09:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: Re: OT: air-con redundancy? Message-ID: <8320d11a-5b30-4502-8d6a-cfb574e4740d@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com> On May 23, 7:23 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" wrote: > David J Dachtera wrote: > > "Richard B. Gilbert" wrote: > >> Anton Shterenlikht wrote: > >>> Our supercomp (bris.ac.uk/acrc/hpc.htm) is out of service once again: > > >>> "Dear all, the MVB machine room suffered a total air-con failure > >>> this morning leading to BlueCrystal effecting its automatic > >>> shutdown procedure. Estates are currently tracing the cause and thus > >>> we can't at present give an expected time for resumption of service." > > >>> I wonder, in the disaster tolerant world, do you budget for the > >>> air-con redundancy as well? If yes, do you put a second, redundant > >>> air-con system in the same machine room, or just failover to another > >>> air conditioned machine room? > > >> Most of the places I worked at had redundant, either dual or N+1, air > >> conditioning systems. It doesn't always work! One place had two > >> failures in the same day. Naturally, it was the hottest day of the year! > > > Naurally, because if one system is designed wrong, chances are the > > backup system has the same faults or worse. > > Does it surprise you to learn that both units were identical Liebert > machines? > > > Where I'm at, the condensing units are in a west-facing wall and get the > > afternoon sun rather directly for the last four hours of the day. Guess > > what happens to us around "quitting time" when the OAT heads into the > > three-digit range ... ? > > > D.J.D. The place I used to work in Nevada had two Lieberts in a raised-floor room; one was older, the second was added to supplement it when new equipment came in (before my time). Both units were more cooling than needed, but one alone could not support the room. We had regular outages of one or the other unit and occasional emergency stops on one when its condensation pan overflowed and started dripping on the offices below. With an actual outage our option was to get it running again within 10-15 minutes (sometimes a reset did bring it back up) or start shutting down equipment to try to maintain service on the rest. If the room temperature got too high anyway we'd have to shut down the cluster and disks (RA81/82/90 on HSCs) since that was where most of the heat came from. If both units went down all we could do was shut down immediately. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2008 12:53:56 -0500 From: clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) Subject: OT: Emacs bindings, was: Re: OT: Unix equivalent of SET PROC/SUSPEND? Message-ID: In article , "Tom Linden" writes: > On Fri, 23 May 2008 05:09:26 -0700, Simon Clubley > wrote: > >> For example, I have emacs configured to exit on Ctrl-Z (like EDT/EVE) >> instead of returning to the shell. > > Most people use ctrl-z and Meta-z to scroll up or down. > $ set response/mode=good_natured Modern keyboards have these things called cursor keys. :-) And really modern ones have keys allocated to allow you to jump whole screens at a time. :-) Seriously however, I've never come across the use of Ctrl/Meta-Z to scroll up or down. Which bindings are you using ? (Whenever I use emacs out of the box, without any customisation, Ctrl-Z _does_ actually return to the shell.) Simon. -- Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:02:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: Re: VMS 30th anniversary 'Oldest VMS system' contest Message-ID: <6dc02b95-684c-4181-9c33-5d8e05d06f9b@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On May 22, 8:48 pm, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: > Rich Jordan wrote: > > On April 22nd, HP supposedly selected the winner of an Itanium server > > based on the age of the oldest running system registered with them. I > > didn't expect to win with my VS3100-30 but I did get nudged early in > > April to validate the entry, which I did, so I know things were moving > > at the time. > > Did you get your T-shirt? I got mine. I didn't really > expect to win, but the shirt didn't seem a bad prize. > > -- glen Glen yep, I got my T-shirt. Still waiting to hear what kind of system won, even if they don't announce who it was. Rich ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.287 ************************