Robelle | Products | Library | Support | Partners | Contact Us | Site Map
|
January 2003
To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP e3000 and Robelle Our newsletter publication has been monthly for over a year now. Publication has been on-line, with an email notification to each customer. Each issue is jam-packed with articles, but if you get as much email as I do, you may have missed this valuable service. Back issues can be reviewed at http://www.robelle.com/newsletterThe Robelle newsletter really needs to be read on-line, since the headline of every story is actually a web link to the full story or more information. In the interest of keeping the newsletter short and readable, the details are often to be found in the web links. The on-line newsletter is at http://www.robelle.com/library/newsletter/latest.html Table of Contents: |
All Robelle product manuals are available on-line, from our web site, in both PDF and HTML-Help format. This includes Qedit for HP-UX (and MPE), Suprtool for HP-UX (and MPE), plus Qedit for Windows. Take all you need as our holiday gift to you.
2003 Canadian Public Holidays
Here is a list of 2003 holidays that the Robelle office will be closed:
Wed. Jan 1, 2003 New Years Day
Fri. Apr 18, 2003 Good Friday
Mon. May 19, 2003 Victoria Day
Tue. Jul 1, 2003 Canada Day
Mon. Aug 4, 2003 B.C. Day
Mon. Sep 1, 2003 Labour Day
Mon. Oct 13, 2003 Thanksgiving Day
Tue. Nov 11, 2003 Remembrance Day
Thu. Dec 25, 2003 Christmas Day
Fri Dec 26, 2003 Boxing Day (not "official stat", but our office will be
closed that day)
Solutions Symposium
March 26 - 29, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (East)
April 23 - 26, San Jose, California (West)
Interex is offering four days of sessions on migrating or continuing operation of an HP 3000, repeated on the East and West coasts. Robelle is not planning to attend - follow our web site for the latest information on running a great 3000 shop, or migrating to another platform.
This article by Bob Green explores some of the internal data structures of the TurboIMAGE database and shows how knowledge of them can help you improve the database performance. This is part of our series of IMAGE tips, which also include Are adjacent detail entries likely to have the same key value? and Can you increase your capacity too much?
New HP Newsletter
The old "e3000 Advisor" has been replaced by "Customer First Times", a quarterly newsletter that covers all of the HP server business (HP-UX, MPE, OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX). MPE topics covered are the recent "Transition Road Show", the "Investment Protection Program", "Easy web access for HP transition resources", "Transition training", and the migration of HP's NA Logistics group from MPE to HP-UX. Note: the link sent out by CSY via email did not work for me, but I found another link from the main server web page that does work.
There will be a new webcast on January 21, 2003 at 8:30am Pacific Time. Topics include budgeting, planning and application selection, recorded from the road show stop in Cupertino. To register for this session, go to www.hp.com/go/e3000reg
The HP 3000, as a proprietary system, has some features that are not exactly the same as on other systems. One of them is flow control. To learn about MPE flow control, read this article from our HP Encyclopedia.
HP 3000 in Europe, Middle East and Africa
This HP web page contains HP 3000 information for Europe, the Middle East and Africa: news and events, promotions, case studies, channel partners, sales and marketing material, etc.
"I hate to do anything on an HP e3000 without QEDIT.
It's the first thing I install whenever I re-build one of our systems."
Michael Hensley, Allegro
Suprtool Deals With Non-Standard Dates
How do you do greater-lesser comparisons on dates where the Month comes before the Year? You use Suprtool's $Stddate function! $Stddate converts dates from any of the formats that Suprtool recognizes to a common standard format, ccyymmdd. With this conversion, it becomes possible to compare two dates that are not in the same format. And because $stddate puts century and year first, you can reliably do greater-than and less-than comparisons. For much more on this useful function, click the headline above.
HP 3000 User Survey
Interex has posted the results of their Fall survey of 340 HP 3000 sites. Some interesting results:
25% of sites plan to homestead instead of migrate. Most common reason why: "it works, no need to replace". The most important thing that HP can do for them is allow one or more 3rd parties to provide MPE software support
About half of those planning to migrate are likely to select HP-UX servers.
56% of those who do not include HP in their migration plans say they don't trust HP.
Eloquence import/export format
This web page on the Eloquence web site describes a common file format is used by Eloquence's dbexport and dbimport utility programs. All data (fields) are saved as a text. This makes it possible to use a text editor (such as Qedit) or common UNIX tools like grep to evaluate or operate on the data.
Automated Testing: Why and How
Here is a classic paper by Eugene Volokh, of VESoft, with lots of good practical tips on building automated testing into your software from the start.
ScreenJet/AcuCobol Migration
ScreenJet has prepared a COBOL/VPLUS to AcuCOBOL migration demonstration. The demo includes a small working HP3000 COBOL and VPLUS program, complete with all the sources and objects needed to run and/or compile it on your own HP3000. Also included are evaluation copies of the ScreenJet VPLUS migration software, instructions on how to convert and migrate the application into Acucorp's AcuBench, and how to compile and run the application on a windows platform. They also have a cool "movie" that demonstrations the entire migration.
Have you had as much problems with PC tape drives as we have? The backups weren't working half the time for 3 months and no one noticed! For the last 6 months, we have used a new, simpler system for backing up our PC data in our Anguilla research lab: disk to disk copy. We use a product called Second Copy (click link above) which copies your critical directories to another PC on the LAN, including new files as you create them and old files as you modify them. The backup copies of the files are easy to find and use because they are in a regular Windows folder, with all your subfolders and files looking just like they do on your home PC. With the price of disk drives and PCs being so low, we find it very cost effective to backup disk to disk.
We use a simple piece of Windows software from www.addelete.com which blocks most ads from appearing in your browser. The free version does a good job, but the $15 "Lite" version also blocks pop-up windows and the $30 "Full" version can do cookie filtering and much more. A very few web sites do not display correctly with the ads blocked - in this case you right click on the AdDelete icon and disable AdDelete for a few minutes.
Robelle Solutions Technology Inc. provides the What's Up, DOCumentation? newsletter as a service to our customers. The newsletter is available on the web: in HTML format for browsing and PDF format for printing. Visit www.robelle.com/library/newsletter/
Comments about this issue, as well as ideas for future issues, including news, tips, and suggestions for articles, can be sent to bgreen@robelle.com.
The December 2002 issue of Robelle's What's Up DOCumentation newletter is also available. Some of the highlights from this issue:
* Why Europeans may need to keep their HP 3000s for at least 7 years.
* Are adjacent IMAGE detail entries likely to have the same key value?
* Qedit Visual for HP-UX Brought Back from Retirement
* Suprtool 4.6.02 power beta release
* Suprtool/iX: How to quickly find where the bad data is?
* Marxmeier takes full control of Eloquence
* Firmware Patch for original A-class MPE servers
Browse the HTML issues at the link above or download the PDF issue.
Update Your Account