daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU (Mr Background) (03/16/89)
Our lab, like many, has vaxen running VMS 4.x and also Sun 4s running SunOS 4. Getting them to "talk" (defined below) to one another has been less than thrilling. We are considering acquisition of some major instruments which are controlled either by Microvaxes running VMS or else Suns running SunOS. In either case, we are going to need to achieve a higher level of integration than we have now. I'd like to know if integration is possible. The "talking" we need to go on consists mainly of sharing data files (actually magnetic resonance image files, consisting mostly of short integers but also some floating point data). We have some software on the vaxen as well as the sun 4s which we would like to use to analyze these data files. We aren't (yet) looking to port code back and forth (although if that's doable...). I would like to know what collective experience the "net" has had in sharing data and applications between VMS and SunOS. Our limited experience shows tricky conversions between the two in terms of byte ordering, especially in terms of floating point. Specifically, does X help with this? I was hoping so from the construct of XImage... How about NFS? Is it really a "seamless" integration of the two? How about general DEC-Sun interaction? In a related vein, does (or will) DECwindows ever run on a Sun? From what little I've heard, DECwindows is more than an X toolkit, ergo less portable (?). Thanks for your help. Greg Sorensen From: sorensen@hstbme.mit.edu (Gregory Sorensen) Path: hstbme.mit.edu!sorensen sorensen@mgh-rnmr.harvard.edu