ted@nieland.DAYTON.OH.US (Ted Nieland) (05/25/90)
Fall 1989 VAX/L&T SIG Tape Reviews
Earle Ake
Science Apllications International Corporation
Todd Aven
COmputer Associates International
E. Loren Buhle, Jr.
Univeristy of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Geoffrey Brunkhorst
Mayo Foundation
Tom Comeau
Space Telescope Science Institute
David Hittner
Pioneer Standard Electronics
Ray Kaplan
Ted Nieland
Control Data Corporation
Mark Shannon
Carnigie-Mellon University
Ric Steinburger
SRI International
This is part of the review of the Fall 1989 VAX/L&T SIG Tape.
Due to the large amount of overlap between the L&T and VAX SIG tapes, the
Tape editors decided to combine the tapes into one large tape with no
overlap. This SIGs tape contains many useful items for people with VAX
Computers and people interested in Languages and Tools.
The reviewers have scoured through most of the tape and have jotted down the
following notes on the material that is on the tape. Not everything on the
tape is reviewed due to the shear volume of material, but it is hoped that
this review will help people in deciding what on the tape might be useful to
them.
The SIG tapes are a project started by the SIGs a while back as a method of
distributing free software that might be helpful to others. Not all of the
material on the tapes are "finished" products.
This review is sponsered by the VAX and L&T SIGs and is coordinated by
the L&T Public Domain Working Group. Anyone wishing to help with future
reviews can contact the the Public Domain Working Group Chair, Ted Nieland. He
can be contacted on DCS at NIELAND or at TED@NIELAND.DAYTON.OH.US on the
Internet.
This is the fourth SIG tape to be reviewed. The VAX and L&T SIGs are
interested in your comments on the reviews and what can be done to improve
them. Comments can be sent to DECUS_REVIEWS@NIELAND.DAYTON.OH.US or
to NIELAND on DCS. Or contact any VAX or L&T SIG Steering committee member.
The material reviewed here is all part of the VAX section of the tape.
The encapsulated reviews are rated on a 1-5 scale with 5 being excellent.
[.AEPSC]
Ease of installation: 3
Documentation: 5
Intended audience: System managers/programmers
Ease of use: 4
Usefulness: 5
Sources included: Yes
- Drivers in MACRO-32
- Disk caching utilities and program examples in FORTRAN
Objects supplied: No
This is a maintenance release of AEPSC's Spring 1989 submission containing
VDDRIVER (virtual disk driver - no changes made) and CDDRIVER (disk data
caching driver - bugs in the original submission have been fixed and the
caching algorithm has been rewritten to use a "block-set associative-mapping"
tehnique.
I had successfully installed and used the two drivers on a VMS V5.2 system.
(Using CDDRIVER on V5.3 produced strange results.) The VDDRIVER operates like
other file-based "virtual disk" drivers and worked well. The CDDRIVER is the
star of this submission, providing you with disk caching abilities which, in
some tests, resulted in a 70% decrease in elapsed time on a disk I/O testing
program. Both come with excellent documentation including information about
the algorithm as well as the programming interface. (Users in a VAXcluster
should take care when using CDDRIVER on different nodes in a cluster caching
the same disk as CDDRIVER does not recognize when another system modifies data
on the cached disk.)
[.BLOSSER]
Ease of Installation: 5
Documentation: 3
Intended Audience: general,programmer
Ease of Use: 4
Usefullness: 2
Source Included: Yes, Basic (compiles under VAX BASIC 3.3, VMS 5.2)
DCL
Objects Supplied: Yes
This submission provides the following:
DIR_NAMER - (Yet) another Set Default utility, using
some DEFINE/KEY stuff
HELLO - Poor DCL Eliza look-alike
HIGHIQ - A VTxxx graphics number game
NUMBER - Vtxxx graphics numeric conversion (to/from hex,
octal,decimal,binary)
TASK - DCL procedure to compile and link BASIC programs
TRANSFER - DCL procedure to move compiled code to execution
directory
Generally, this code is quite trivial (and wrought with poor coding). The
Number program did take a little effort, and it is kind of useful, as it does
a decent job of converting numbers to different bases, as well as doing
arithmetic shifts and ANDs and ORs of numbers. It uses some VT100 screen
graphics which makes the presentation cluttered.
[.BRUREAD]
Installation: requires priviledge to install .CLD
Documentation: 2 Sparse, sufficient if knowledgeable about RSX11 BRU tapes
Intended Audience: any VMS user needing to read BRU tapes without
RSX emulation
Ease of Use: 4
Usefulness: 2
Sources Included: Yes
Source Languages: PASCAL
Objects Supplied: Yes
This is a PASCAL program was written by Adrian Weiler of West Germany
and is designed to READ a tape or (disk based) RSX11 BRU tape. This utility is
of interest to those users without the RSX emulation software (formerly bundled
with VMS, now a layered product). Simple tape operations, such as listing the
tape directory, rewinding the tape and placing the contents of the tape into
directories specified by the tape (i.e. FILES11, ODS-1 UICs) are possible. No
BRU tape can be written.
I do not have a PASCAL compiler present and was disinclined to use the
BRU.CLD as presented. I "assume" the software runs, but I have not actually run
it! This software may be useful for occasional reading of BRU tapes or tapes
copied (e.g. via TPC). It does parse the BRU tape directory very nicely and
thus is a valuable contribution to DECUS. On the other hand, it is
unidirectional, no allowing BRU tapes to be written. For those with even a
meager budget, I would suggest the occasional reader of BRU tapes on VMS to
examine the DEC layered product for RSX11M.
[.BZL]
Ease of installation: 5
Documentation: 5
Intended Audience: System Managers, General
Ease of Use: 5
Usefulness: 5
Sources included: Yes, DCL, TPU, C, MACRO
Objects Supplied: No
[.MAIL] has programs which use the MAIL call interface.
[.NETWORK] contains some DCL procedures for keeping our network
running, and to pick up error counts from DECnet and
LAT facilities at regular intervals so we can track
down times when the network isn't working right.
[.COMMANDS] contains a number of command files and one TPU file which
does stuff I've found useful one way or another.
The mail program examples provide a programmer some good examples of
how to use the 'undocumented' mail call interface. Anyone who wants to try
their hand at interfacing with VMS mail may want to start by looking at these
programming examples. The network subdirectory has some command procedures to
keep track of DECnet and X.25 errors. If your network isn't stable, you may
use some of these command procedures to help you narrow down problems. The
[.commands] subdirectory is my favorite. Everything you wanted some of those
lexical functions to report is here. Execute the GETJPI.COM and find out some
things you never knew about your process. GETSYI.COM and GETDVI.COM are also
VERY informative!
[.CDVMS]
Ease Of Installation: 5
Documentation: 3
Intended Audience: General
Ease Of Use: 4
Usefulness: 5
Sources Included: Yes; Fortran, Macro
Objects Supplied: Yes
This submission allows one to read ISO 9660 or "High Sierra" format
CD-ROMS. Three programs are included: CDDIR, CDCOPY, and CDTYPE. These
programs perform the same function as their VMS counterparts. The programs
are easy to use for a person familiar with VMS. Documentation is sparse
but adequate under the assumption that you know how to effectively use VMS
counterpart commands. Simple and invaluable for those who need to read
non-dec CDROMs.
[.CI]
Ease of Installation: 4
Documentation: 5
Intended Audience: general,programmer, and system mgr
Ease of Use: 4
Usefullness: 4
Source Included: N (except for the DCL routines)
Objects Supplied: N
Submission contains:
CLOSE_VMS_ACCT - A simple routine to close accounting files.
Looks bug-proof and simple to follow.
CONCATENATE_SIXEL - A set of routines to place two sixel graphics on one sheet
of paper.
COUNTREC - A program to count the number of records in a file.
A DCL shell is provided for wildcarding.
DIALUPINI - A DCL and a EXE to setup and reset dialup ports to so they
can be used as both inbound and outbound access points,
without the login chatter that normally occurs, or
forcing dial-out users to type blind.
DROIDS - The Droids game
ENPAGE - LN03 document-formatting program
FORCEX - Stop a process by 'force-exit'. Good for stopping
infinite loops
LOCK_TERMINAL - Terminal Password Lock
REMINDPRT - Print reminders (for the AT&T REMINDER DECUS submission)
REMRESCHD - Moves Reminders from calender to a to-do list when date
has passed. Good for people like me who never finish
anything on time.
SHUT_LOGS - A DCL file to close your Operator.logs nightly
SYSTATUS - System Status Program
Avery good submission. My only complaint is the lack of source code (although
the exes all appear to be COBOL programs), since these programs have been tuned
to work in particular environment. They are flexible, through the use of
logicals, and worked here, as far as I could test them (I do have have the
REMINDER program on my system). SYSTATUS is a decent program, however, I
wish it would work with the new VMS 5.2 clusterwide system-services (it just
looks at one node). The ENPAGE routines are the same from previous tapes (same
link date). The DIALUPINI routines work as advertised, although I had the
exact same modems, so I can't tell if they will work as well with other
Hayes-compatibles.
Overall very useful.
[.DISKCHARGE]
Ease of installation: 3
Documentation: 5
Intended Audience: System Managers
Ease of Use: 3
Usefulness: 4
Sources included: Yes, DCL, FORTRAN, MACRO
Objects Supplied: Yes
Diskcharge is used to assign an account or charge number to a disk
file or files. It is also used to display the account numbers on
files in a directory (or directory tree), replace existing charge
numbers with a new one, and display current summary usage.
This is a VERY complex package meant to provide a front-end to charge-back
accounting systems by providing the disk charge information. This is the
package that was presented at the Fall 1989 DECUS session VA130. It is not
meant as a working package. It does provide a framework for interfacing with
your own accounting scheme.
[.DTRSIG]
Installation: 5. Easy. Shouldn't take more that 5 - 10 mins.
Documentation: 5. Very good. Numerous help (.hlp) files provided.
Intended Audience: General. Some DATATRIEVE stuff for sys mgrs.
Ease of use: 4. Everything I looked over seemed fairly self-
explanatory.
Usefulness: 5.
These programs are designed for users of DATATRIEVE,
ACCENT-R and/or RALLY. Some portions require
Fortran, C, Basic, or Macro-32. Many functions
are provided for DATATRIEVE users: ALL-IN-1
definitions, DTR functions, programs from MAGIC
sessions, DTR plots, and more. General users
will find a utility to convert VMS accounting
records, machine-readable copies of past newsletters,
transcripts of Symposia sessions.
Almost as a 'bonus', a program that convert's ReGIS
to SIXEL is available. Many vendors support ReGIS,
but not SIXEL (Everything DEC invents doesn't catch
fire!). This could be used as an alternative to
RETOS, a DEC utility that does the same thing.
Sources included: Yes. Many users will probably not need specific
compilers to use most of what is in this set of
utilities.
Objects supplied: Yes.
This seems to be a well thought-out package. Most DATATRIEVE (and RALLY
or ACCENT-R) users will find something helpful here. System managers will
find tools to help with diskquotas, installing processes, UAF maintenance,
and VMS Mail. The Regis to Sixel tool will allow users with third party
software that creates Regis files to convert them to Sixel and print them
on many DEC printers.
Almost every directory has an AAAREADME.1st file; some even have AAAREADME.2nd
files. There are ample .hlp files. Recommended. ****
[.DEC_WINDOWS]
Ease of Installation: 5
Documentation: 5
Intended Audience: System Managers.
Ease of Use: 5
Usefulness: 4
Sources Included: Yes, as an optional part of the installation.
Objects Supplied: Yes.
Robert Heller's DEC_WINDOWS submission is a small set of utilities for
system managers with workstations running DECWindows. There are four
utilities, a Menu Manager, the Performance Meter, Show Netusers,
and a program to create DECTerms.
The MM and PFM packages use VMSINSTAL, work beautifully and look
just like something from Digital. Installation of sources is optional.
Installing the PFM and Menu Manager takes about five minutes each.
The Show Network Users program shows what users come from what networks nodes.
The sources are well written and internally documented, and a help file
is included with each utility. While useful in themselves, they are
especially good for the system manager who wants to get familiar with
DECWindows programming.