jr@amanue.UUCP (Jim Rosenberg) (12/08/87)
I will soon be specifying a new system for a company with both DP needs and
software engineering needs. The software engineering stuff is all in C. We
are currently using ROMmed OS-9 on the target 68000 system tied to a (pardon
my vulgar language) PC-compatible as a user interface system. The PC machine
is running QNX. DP needs are the usual sort of thing, with Order Entry and
Inventory being the big items -- plus some things that will certainly be
custom. The current system for DP is (no one laugh, please, I didn't do
this!) an old IBM System 34, with all the code written in RPG.
The owner of the company is a pretty interesting guy. He was very upset that
one of the managers under him had that typical IBM-Mainframe culture disease
that a Berlin Wall must be erected between software engineering and DP, and my
mandate is to create a unified platform for both. I'm delighted, of course.
My tentative plan for the DP is to buy horizontals written in a 4GL like
Progress or Informix-4GL and then write the custom stuff in that same 4GL.
Some type of workstation like a Sun would sure be nifty for the software
engineering, but is this a reasonable platform for DP? How many terminals can
you put on a Sun file server? Maybe I should be thinking in terms of a more
DP oriented machine running NFS and ethernet a couple of Suns to it.
A box like an Altos is an obvious candidate, but I've used full-screen virtual
terminals for years, have windows of a crude sort on a 3B1, and can't stand
the thought of nothing but vanilla ttys. A friend told me the new Altos
literature mentions some kind of windowing or virtual terminals on ordinary
terminals. Does anybody know anything about this?
How many terminals are people running on Suns? I realize most people are
networking Suns rather than trying to hang terminals from them, but a Sun for
Order Entry is a bit extravagant. Are there any unusual problems doing DP on
such a system? 4GL's often cause havoc with standard UNIX methods of system
administration. I'm told for instance that the universe according to Progress
is *ONE* UNIX file. Does this pose any particular performance problems in a
highly networked environment? Are the usual 4GLs available for workstations?
Will be happy to post a summary rather than consume net bandwidth if you'd
like to send me mail. Please be kind and mail rather than flame if this is
the wrong newsgroup. My "official" link is only feeding me a few newsgroups.
(Anyone want to donate him a Fujitsu Eagle for his spool directory? :-)
--
Jim Rosenberg
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