What's Up DOCumentation Robelle Consulting Ltd. Unit 201, 15399-102A Ave. Surrey, B.C. Canada V3R 7K1 Phone: (604) 582-1700 Fax: (604) 582-1799 Email: support@robelle.com Date: August 30, 1993 From: Robert M. Green, CEO David J. Greer, President Michael Shumko, Editor To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP 3000, 1993 #5 What You Will Find in This News Memo: News Tidbits Qedit for HP-UX Has Arrived Calendar of Events Accessing the Internet Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions San Francisco Interex Events News Tidbits Book Review: UNIX Power Tools, by Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, and Mike Loukides, O'Reilly & Associates/Bantam, 1993. This is an excellent book for UNIX users of all levels. At over 1000 pages, the book may look intimidating. However, this book is really a collection of independent articles, each just one to two pages long, that talk about a specific topic or solve a specific problem. The book is not meant to be read in order. Instead, look up something when you need to, or just flip to a random page and learn something new about UNIX. For example, I learned the following two tips just from browsing: use tail -f to look at a file that is growing; use set notify to have background processes immediately tell you when they have changed states, instead of waiting for the next prompt. This book is filled with examples, and is well-indexed and cross-referenced. It is written in a light, conversational style that is easy to read and understand. The articles cover a wide range of topics, and are practical and useful without being either too technical or simplistic. A CD-ROM is included with all the shell scripts presented in the text. The binary executables on the CD-ROM ran on our Series 705 workstation immediately with no recompilation required. Very handy. Qedit for HP-UX Has Arrived About two years ago we started getting calls from some of our loyal Qedit users, asking if we would ever port Qedit from the MPE platform to HP-UX. Their organizations were moving into the UNIX world, where these seasoned HP 3000 professionals were suddenly without their familiar tools. We heard the same observations time and again: "The editor is difficult to use," "VI is weird," and "Hey! My cursor keys don't work!" It is with great pride that we announce Qedit/UX, Robelle Consulting Ltd.'s first new product in ten years. Qedit/UX brings to the HP-UX environment the speed, flexibility, and ease of editing that users have enjoyed on MPE for fifteen years. Full-screen mode works with HP terminals and popular emulators. Command mode is terrific for background tasks ("jobs" in HP 3000 parlance) and scripts. The entire user manual is available in the on-line help. All in all, Qedit is so similar on MPE and HP-UX that it is difficult to tell the two apart! We changed the default command prompt in Qedit/UX from "/" to "qux/" so you'll know where you are. Here are the prices in U.S. funds for the Series 800 HP-UX version of Qedit. Prices are guaranteed until December 31, 1994. $4000 First CPU license (unlimited users per CPU) $2000 Right-to-copy for each additional CPU (unlimited users) $800 One year of maintenance (included in first CPU license) Canadian customers add 20% for exchange. For all orders received by December 31, 1993, we will take a 25% INTRODUCTORY DISCOUNT off the entire invoice amount. The above prices are the same as those for the MPE version of Qedit. We are extending to HP-UX our MPE policies of no upgrade fees, 50% discount for right-to-copy to additional CPUs in the same company, and a single support fee for multiple CPUs supported from one location. However, Qedit/UX is a separate product from Qedit/MPE, so even if you have Qedit on MPE, you need to buy a new first license for Qedit on HP-UX. You will also have to purchase a separate maintenance contract in order to receive updates and support for Qedit/UX. See Qedit/UX on display at the San Francisco Interex conference in the Robelle booth. Call for a free trial. Calendar of Events September 1993*Robellian Neil Armstrong will be attending the ASKUS conference on September 13 and 14, at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Florida. ASKUS is the user group for users of ASK's ManMan software. Neil will be in the booth answering questions and displaying Robelle products. ASK him how Suprtool can speed up your Quiz reports dramatically. September 1993*Robelle will be at Interex in full force. This year's conference is being held September 19-23 at the new Moscone Center in San Francisco. Just about everybody from Robelle will be there, showing off our products (including the all-new Qedit/UX, now in final pre-release), and giving training sessions. See the "SAN FRANCISCO EVENTS" tear-off section at the end of this news memo for details. October 1993 * The third annual Cognos International User Conference, "Directions 93", is being held at the Stouffer Orlando Resort on October 5 and 6. Phone (800) 767-2336 to register. Ken Robertson will be presenting a tutorial on speeding up Quiz using Suprtool. Accessing the Internet by Paul Gobes There is a whole new world opening up and it's as close as your keyboard. With the right connections (e-mail, a central modem and the appropriate gateway), you could be "surfing in cyberspace". At Robelle, we use Xpress and Gateway/3000 from E-Mail, Inc. to connect to MCI Mail. From there we can send messages to any Internet address in the world. We also listen in and talk to many other shops who follow the "HP3000 Discussion List". This is a free forum bulletin board where users can ask questions, share knowledge and carry on running conversations about various topics. Quite often someone asks about a problem and four or five solutions and counter-arguments are provided within a day or two. There are some well-known contributors including Stan Sieler of Allegro, Chris Bartram of 3k, Isaac Blake of City of Tempe, Unison staff and many internal HP Labs and Support people. To join the list and start getting all the discussion messages, send a one-line message with the following command: "SUBSCRIBE HP3000-L firstname lastname". Address it to "listserv@utcvm.utc.edu", which is the university hosting the list. Once joined, you can send messages to the list at the address "hp3000-l@utcvm.utc.edu". To stop getting messages, send a one-line message "UNSUBSCRIBE HP3000-L firstname lastname" to the listserv address. This list is mainly HP 3000 related, but some HP-UX/Posix discussions appear. For more HP 9000 related entries there is a "news group" called comp.sys.hp that has even more traffic than the HP3000 "mailing list". For those shops with access to Internet via their HP 9000 I recommend this resource. People without e-mail should consider joining COMPUSERVE, PRODIGY or similar public access systems and use their e-mail to get hooked into these discussion groups. What other benefits are there to Internet access? You could send a message to Mr. Clinton (president@whitehouse.gov). Ask questions of WRQ about Reflection (support@wrq.com). Send enhancement requests and pscreens of 'bugs' to us (support%robelle@ mcimail.com). Or contact our distributor in Sweden to ask what the weather is like (ole%ole_nord@mcimail.com). Which brings us back to the original analogy: Surf's Up! Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Suprtool Version 3.5 Difficulty Reading KSAM/XL Files. Two issues ago we told you about a bug in Suprtool that occurs when reading data from KSAM/XL files of certain record sizes. Since then, we discovered that the problem occurs on some common, smaller sizes as well. All Suprtool customers were recently sent a letter describing this in detail. A fix is available, in the form of a new pre-release of Suprtool, version 3.5.01 or higher. You will not automatically be shipped the pre-release, but it is available for the asking. Send us a message by phone, fax, mail, e-mail, carrier pigeon or submarine and we'll send you the tape which corrects the problem. Qedit Version 4.1 Qedit Full-Screen Tip. What is an easy way to copy an external file into your text at a specific point? Put a Z Magic Marker in column 2 or 3 to mark the line before the spot where you want to copy the external file into your text, and then press Enter. That line will be enhanced, unless it is blank, and your status line will say 'Block Marked', unless you are at the start or end of your file. Now go to the homeline and do an Add command using ZZ: ===> addq zz = boilerpl The Boilerpl file has now been copied into your file, after the line that you marked with Z. Z is just a special case of ZZ that marks a single line. ZZ is normally used to mark a block of text so that you can perform some task on it, such as listing it to the printer. You mark the first and last lines of the block with a ZZ in columns 2 and 3; then you can use ZZ in any Qedit command to refer to those lines (for example, list $lp zz). If you use ZZ in a context that expects a single line instead of a range of lines, Qedit takes the starting line of the ZZ block (for example, add zz=file). This is why you can use Z to mark the spot where you want to copy in a file. Xpress Version 2.9 Internet Addressing. Using Xpress with Gateway/3000, you can easily send mail to users on the Internet. Configure an Xpress mailroom (e.g., "MCI") for sending messages to Gateway. After preparing a message in your Out Basket, enter the name of the mailroom as the user to receive the message. Enter one or more users: MCI Then, enter the Internet address at the next prompt, after the string "a=i;m=". Deliver this MCI message to: a=i;m=hp3000-l@utcvm.utc.edu Printdoc Version 1.1 LaserJet 4 Printers. We are looking for feedback from users who have the new LaserJet 4 printers with 600 dot-per-inch resolution. What experiences have you had with them, including but not limited to printing Robelle manuals using Printdoc or Prose? San Francisco Interex Events How do you locate the Robelle booth? Walk down aisle 200 about halfway and look for Robelle on your right, at booth 225/324. Pick up your entry form for the contest: guess Bob and David's combined height and weight! Robelle has prepared a full lineup of technical papers and training tutorials for the San Francisco Interex Conference. How Messy Is My Database? TurboIMAGE training with David Greer All IMAGE databases become messy (unless they never change!) HowMessy and DBLOADNG provide a report that lets you analyze the efficiency of your databases. Understanding the report is easy, once you understand some of the internals of IMAGE. This paper explains the information from the DBLOADNG/HowMessy report and suggests solutions for common database performance problems. David Greer is in charge of software R&D at Robelle. At last year's New Orleans meeting, David received one of the three Best Tutorial awards for his session on Suprtool Performance. Join David Greer in Room 307, 11:00 a.m. Monday. Tutorial: Thinking About Performance, by Bob Green A client's billing program was taking two days to process 18,000 accounts; it would have had to run continuously to process all 400,000 customers within the two-month billing cycle. The system had been designed by an expensive consulting firm, then programmed by contractors. The client had only a junior programmer to make the inevitable patches and fixes. The programmer didn't know the HP 3000 or the IMAGE database. He was told to create an audit module, but wasn't allowed to change the existing billing program. The young employee put a single COBOL Call in the main program loop and passed all of the record buffers to a new Audit subprogram. Now all he had to do was save those records in the new audit database. He looked up "writing" in the index of his IMAGE manual, found Dbput and coded a call to it. He got an error message on his first run: "database not open." He looked up "open" in the index, discovered Dbopen and coded a call to it. The program worked for a few transactions, then died with a "too many databases open" message. Back in the manual, he discovered Dbclose, recompiled, and retested. The program now worked in testing, so his audit change was complete. Of course, his audit code opened and closed the base for every transaction. That is, 18,000 Dbopens and Dbcloses. I moved the base name to the main module, opened it once, and passed it in to the audit subprogram. This simple change cut the elapsed time by 15 hours. Learn to improve batch and on-line with Bob in Room 305, 3:00 p.m. Monday. Suprtool Tutorial #1: Tips for PowerHouse Users Suprtool from Robelle and PowerHouse from Cognos complement each other. Suprtool does extracts and sorts quickly and efficiently, while Quiz and QTP have enormous flexibility for reporting and processing. So, you can use Suprtool to do the initial pass of the databases, extracting just the data needed for the final report or update. Then, you feed that file into PowerHouse. Suppose you maintain that file for your daily production report, and refill it every night with Suprtool. The rest of the report is identical: you will not have to change anything in the Quiz program except the access statement. Also, your PowerHouse user programs can invoke Suprtool and pass it commands. Call the Suprtool2 interface routine and ask Suprtool to do any of its normal tasks such as copy, extract, or sort. Sound interesting? Join Mike Shumko in Room 305, 10:00 a.m. Tuesday. Suprtool Tutorial #2: Multi-Dataset Retrievals "I need all invoices over $2000 for California customers, now!" You are a Suprtool user faced with the request shown above, which is typical of real-world requests. The data you need is located in more than one dataset. How are you going to satisfy this request? Start with the desired report and work your way back to find which files or datasets hold the information. Locate the fields that you will use as selection criteria. You want four fields from the customer master record, and three fields from the invoice detail record. The state in which the customer is located is in the customer master, and the invoice amount is in the invoice detail. You will use Suprtool to extract the information that you need from the customer record and the invoice record. But how can you combine those two separate extract files into a single report? To find out how, attend this tutorial in Room 305, 11:00 a.m. Tuesday. Suprtool Tutorial #3: Creating PRN Files for PCs This tutorial teaches a Suprtool user how to extract data from one or more sources (TurboIMAGE datasets, MPE files, or KSAM files) and format it into a PC-standard PRN file. The extracted data can then be downloaded to a PC and easily loaded into a Lotus spreadsheet for further action. PRN files can also be loaded into Paradox, Quattro Pro, and other PC tools. You can also convert Suprtool files for use on your PC with WordPerfect. Instead of the PRN option of the Output command, you use Output,ASCII or the List command to create the Suprtool file. You download to your PC using any of the terminal emulators, and then import the file into WordPerfect. Finally, you must create and run a macro in WordPerfect to convert the file for use. Then, for example, you could use the Mail Merge feature in WordPerfect to merge the Suprtool data with a "primary" file. For details, join Mike Shumko in Room 305, 2:00 p.m. Tuesday. Suprtool Tutorial #4: Problem-Solving with the Developer David Greer is the programmer in charge of Suprtool, and the President of Robelle. For San Francisco, David is coming out of the lab to show users what he has been working on, and to find out what they would like him to work on next. A Suprtool Enhancement Survey: Which Would Benefit You Most? - Arithmetic expressions on various commands - Report-writing module - Extract from Allbase databases - Easy screen interface - Suprtool on HP-UX Which would be the most valuable to you? Can you describe how you would see the feature being used? Do you have any other needs that are more important than these? Cast your votes with David Greer in Room 305, 3:00 p.m. Tuesday. Using Software to Automate Technical Support, by Ken Robertson Robelle's help desk started as a one-man operation serving a handful of customers with one product. Over the years it has evolved to two full-time people and a number of part-timers, answering questions from over 1300 sites with multiple products. Ken Robertson will talk about the tools that he created to keep track of all the information collected. This software, called Karnak, keeps the programmers aware of bugs and enhancements as they are reported, and lets the technical staff conference electronically, even though most of them work from home. Equally as important are the concepts underlying the help desk organization, including tight feedback among customers, support staff and developers. Ken Robertson is the MIS Director at Robelle and the author of last year's "LaserJet Lustre" tutorial. Improve your help desk with Ken in Room 305, 5:00 p.m. Tuesday. Qedit Tutorial #1: Tips for PowerHouse Users PowerHouse, the fourth-generation language from Cognos, and Qedit, Robelle's full-screen text editor, have long been complimentary tools. Qedit works well as a home base for PowerHouse developers for three reasons: you can run all of the PowerHouse modules from within Qedit, the Powerhouse tools can read Qedit workfiles, and they have the option to suspend. Qedit takes advantage of these features to give you an integrated development environment for PowerHouse, where you can switch instantly between editing source files in Qedit and compiling and testing in PowerHouse. Mike will talk about PowerHouse in Room 305, 10:00 a.m. Wednesday. Qedit Tutorial #2: Tips for COBOL Programmers Qedit aims to provide everything a COBOL programmer could need to write programs and prepare documentation. Here is a sample of what will be taught in this tutorial: If you would like Qedit to show you the errors in your COBOL source files and make it easy for you to correct them, try the :Coberr User-Defined Command. You activate :Coberr by doing Set Udc Udc.Catalog.Robelle. Instead of a regular compile command, use the :Coberr UDC, specifying your desired compile command as the first parameter and the source file as the second parameter. coberr cob74xl,myprog.source coberr cob85xl,* {current file} After compiling your source file, Qedit puts you into Screen mode with the cursor positioned on the offending word and the COBOL error message displayed in the homeline. For example, if you spell "data" as "date", Qedit puts the cursor on the word "date". You make the correction and press Enter. Then you can press F4 to see the next compile error. COBOL programmers meet in Room 305, 11:00 a.m. Wednesday. Qedit Tutorial #3: Writing Command Files This session not only teaches you the mechanics of writing Command files that mix Qedit and MPE commands, but it includes some useful sample Command files. For example: You have a batch job that may or may not print a certain message during execution of the job. If it prints the message, you want to abort the job. If it doesn't, you want the job to terminate normally, cleaning up after itself by deleting $Stdlist. The job will need to examine its own spoofle while it is running. Can you solve the problem with a few MPE and Qedit commands? Your solution should be packaged as a Command file named Jobabort.Cmd.Mis. Then it could be invoked in any job stream by putting these commands at the end: !run qedit.pub.robelle;info="jobabort STATUS";parm=128 !set stdlist=delete !eoj The Parm 128 option means execute the Info= string, then stop. Sharpen your skills with Mike in Room 305, 2:00 p.m. Wednesday. Qedit Tutorial #4: Problem-Solving with the Developer Bob Green, the programmer who created Qedit and still does most of the work on it, will be available to Qedit users for a one-hour tutorial. Bob will answer questions, accept enhancement requests, and reveal the latest work on Qedit, including an HP-UX version: The shell commands are like MPE commands, except that UNIX comes with at least three different command interpreters (i.e., shells). The default and oldest shell is the Bourne Shell, while the C Shell (csh) and the Korn Shell (ksh) have improved features. One advantage of ksh is that it keeps a history of commands (i.e., Listredo). Another is that you can change your prompt to show the current working directory (e.g., PS1='$PWD> '). Be careful of the 'mv' command--if you already have a file with the new name, it will be destroyed. As in DOS, most UNIX commands can take a 'set of files' as easily as a single filename -- be careful of typing 'rm *' unless you really want to purge all your files. If you want the Korn Shell, but aren't sure which shell you have, you can just type 'ksh' to start up a copy of the Korn Shell. Anywhere in Qedit where you can type a Qedit command, you can type a UNIX shell command (including the Line mode prompt and the Screen mode homeline). Shell commands issued while within Qedit may reference the environment variables you had before you entered Qedit. Bring your Qedit ideas to Bob in Room 305, 3:00 p.m. Wednesday.