u8551087@ucsvc.dn.mu.oz (03/03/88)
In response to a long article by Barry Shein which gets heavily into the Unix-VMS war, I'd like to make the following comment. Barry seems to view a campus as an organisations which supports the department of Computer Science. While it may be true that a Unix environment is the most appropriate for teaching Computer Science this is not necessarily the case in other departments. Also although Barry may not realise it there are a myriad of administrative computing requirements, you know, Payroll, Alumni, Student Records. Choosing computer equipment is no an easy task, but I would suggest that the method should be to forget any pre-concieved ideas about systems you would like, work out what is needed and then look for the system which will best meet those needs. There are one or two points Barry raises that I feel can't go unanswered so... In article <2235@bsu-cs.UUCP>, bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > Unix is the premiere system for compute intensive areas, such as the > sciences using Fortran. I find this hard to believe, that is if you're talking about good old F77. A good compiler is essential to produce efficient code and to provide a good development environment; "Syntax error - line xxx" isn't very helpful. Try benchmarking it sometime! Unless you buy a decent Fortran compiler for your unix machine, chances are you've got something which takes much longer to do a: DO 10 I = 1,100000 X = Y + Z 10 CONTINUE type loop under Unix than it would under VMS (on the same VAX 750) (and thats without optimization under VMS) A VMS Fortran compiler has all these nifthy "extras" like useful compiler error messages and OPTIMIZATION!!! - It doesn't matter if your CPU rates half the MIPS if you only have to do a quarter of the instructions because your compiler has been clever enough to optimize. Its true that many of the utilities you take for granted on a Unix system cost a lot of $$ for VMS, but sometimes you get what you pay for. > The typical claim by the campus administrator is to point at all the > myriad applications and big-name software that runs on VMS and doesn't > run on Unix. ...No one on the campus has any need for any > of the big-name applications the person is bragging about, you're > running an academic environment, not a bank! I think you're talking about Computer Science here, Admin certainly need a few "big-name" applications. Its suprising how useful a database can be if you want to keep track of a few thousand staff members and tens of thousands of current and past students. And you've no idea how nifty an accounting package can be when your turnover is hundreds of millions of dollars. Spreadsheets also come in handy if you want to do some budgeting or forward planning. Admin aside, you may be suprised how often departments such as Psychology, Medicine and Engineering would use a statistical package. > VMS itself is not an interesting operating system to learn or study. Most non computer science students (accounting, psychology etc) don't want an interesting OS, they just want something that they can use easily. > The claim that Unix is somehow less secure than VMS is a red herring. > Unix offers sufficient security for campus systems, you're not the NSA. OK, but would you want students (or other staff) messing with your payroll records? > There's some on-line help in VMS but it's designed to sell > manuals or supplement them, the details are always missing > (purposely.) This is starting to get ridiculous, perhaps its all a conspiracy? :-) > Decnet nearly completely locks you out of wide-area networking, such > as the arpanet. > > And you can forget uucp and usenet entirely, which means no e-mail > to vendors etc. Thats funny, I would have sworn I'd logged into a VMS machine this morning. > This is not a religious flame Well you could have fooled me. Sue McPherson U8551087@xvax.dn.mu.oz (VMS VAX 8650) or sue@murdu.mu.oz (Unix Vax 750) Software Contracts Group University of Melbourne
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (03/05/88)
>Barry seems to view a campus as an organisations which supports the >department of Computer Science. While it may be true that a Unix environment >is the most appropriate for teaching Computer Science this is not >necessarily the case in other departments. Also although Barry may not >realise it there are a myriad of administrative computing requirements, >you know, Payroll, Alumni, Student Records. I am manager of systems (non-ibm) for the entire campus here, including the College of Liberal Arts, College of Engineering etc. Although I do not manage any IBM hardware now I have worked as an IBM programmer. I have also managed VMS systems (eg. Harvard Chemistry), most of my 10+ years experience is certainly in Unix. The original question (as many people disagreeing with me seem to have missed) was whether or not VMS was an appropriate campus standard for academic computing. Here at BU we (actually, they) use an IBM3090 for administrative computing. Whatever a campus uses as a standard it should not affect the choice for administrative computing (VMS would probably be fine for that, so is MVS and other systems, there are some very good Unix packages like CARS available also, that's a very specific systems analysis.) I would generally argue that a campus must use a separate facility for administrative computing, mostly for security and integrity reasons. I believe that is how most campuses of any size are set up (I am sure some tiny campuses have one computer for everything, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.) >> Unix is the premiere system for compute intensive areas, such as the >> sciences using Fortran. > >I find this hard to believe, that is if you're talking about good old >F77. A good compiler is essential to produce efficient code and to provide >a good development environment; "Syntax error - line xxx" isn't very helpful. >Try benchmarking it sometime! Unless you buy a decent Fortran compiler >for your unix machine, chances are you've got something which takes much >longer to do a: DO 10 I = 1,100000 > X = Y + Z > 10 CONTINUE >type loop under Unix than it would under VMS (on the same VAX 750) >(and thats without optimization under VMS) Aha! I guess I was addressing issues other than computer science! Computer scientists rarely have compute intensive activities. You miss the whole point in this, yes, given F77/Unix on a Vax750 and VMS Fotran I would get better/faster code using VMS. No argument. The point is that if I use Unix I wouldn't consider using a 750. You do realize that it's nearly impossible to buy anything as slow as a 750? For $3800 I can buy a Sun3/50 which runs about 3X as fast as a 750, for example, I suspect that even with a mediocre code-generator my code would run faster on that Sun. The point being; what good is a great code generator if it locks you into a slow machine? Re-read my note and see if that isn't what I was really saying, I think it was. You're setting up a straw-man. >A VMS Fortran compiler has all these nifthy "extras" like useful compiler >error messages and OPTIMIZATION!!! - It doesn't matter if your CPU rates >half the MIPS if you only have to do a quarter of the instructions because >your compiler has been clever enough to optimize. Oh please, are you honestly claiming a 4X speedup just from the VMS fortran optimizer? I hardly believe that, perhaps 25% in extreme cases. I've benchmarked code on both and done hand inspection on generated code, the typical advantage the VMS fortran code has is that it generates very good Vax code for loops, keeping critical variables in registers and using very good choices for the loop instructions. But hardly 4X. However, the assumption that I would run Unix on a Vax is a red herring and not germaine to the issue at hand. >I think you're talking about Computer Science here, Admin certainly need >a few "big-name" applications. Its suprising how useful a database can be >if you want to keep track of a few thousand staff members and tens of thousands >of current and past students. And you've no idea how nifty an accounting package >can be when your turnover is hundreds of millions of dollars. Spreadsheets also >come in handy if you want to do some budgeting or forward planning. What I was doing was answering the original question, you're posing a different question entirely (is VMS better than Unix for administrative computing?) and claiming that I haven't answered this question properly, that isn't very fair, is it? Besides, for main administrative computing they'll probably choose a large IBM for reasons too complicated to go into here. Price performance is a very small part of the picture for these installations. Things like I/O speed, availability of very specific applications, transaction speed, reliability etc tend to outweigh other factors, and DEC is (relatively) very weak in these areas although I suppose smaller campuses can get away with their stuff. >Admin aside, you may be suprised how often departments such as Psychology, >Medicine and Engineering would use a statistical package. No I wouldn't, I did stat programming for years in epidemiology, I would use an IBM usually. It's just plug and grind anyhow, XEDIT and SPSS or SAS are fine by me for this sort of stuff. Although these packages run on other systems it's not really an area where those systems' advantages are much exploited (unless you use graphics, in which case IBM mainframes are hopelessly brain-damaged.) Don't get me wrong, I dislike IBM mainframes immensely, but for chores like this it really doesn't matter much. >OK, but would you want students (or other staff) messing with your payroll >records? The point was there's nothing special about VMS in this regard, it's claim to security has to do with other things very few people are interested in, meeting Orange Book specifications, military security (all security is not equal, nor equally useful.) Like I said, I would (and do) keep my payroll records etc off the student systems, so this is irrelevant. Unix doesn't present any special security problems which VMS solves. Anyhow, in summary, you seemed to have missed the point of the original question I was answering so most of what you say has its merits but is irrelevant. You really should stop thinking the entire world is a vax, it's become a minor machine architecture. You're limiting yourself. >Sue McPherson > U8551087@xvax.dn.mu.oz (VMS VAX 8650) >or sue@murdu.mu.oz (Unix Vax 750) > >Software Contracts Group >University of Melbourne -Barry Shein, Boston University
hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh) (03/15/88)
In article <45@ucsvc.dn.mu.oz> u8551087@ucsvc.dn.mu.oz writes: > >A VMS Fortran compiler has all these nifty "extras" like useful compiler >error messages and OPTIMIZATION!!! - It doesn't matter if your CPU rates >half the MIPS if you only have to do a quarter of the instructions because >your compiler has been clever enough to optimize. > Also there is the CICS vs RISC issue. 10sun MIPS == 4 VAX MIPS (Source: Digital Review. uVAX 3 is three times uVAX 2, while SUN 4 is 4 times a uVAX 2!) >Its true that many of the utilities you take for granted on a Unix system >cost a lot of $$ for VMS, but sometimes you get what you pay for. > The Fortran and C compilers I have used on UNIX aren't worth the disk space they take up if you are trying to learn the language! However, Pipes are very nice, too bad VMS doesn't have this feature. Would make looking at LONG directories MUCH easier...among other things.... >> There's some on-line help in VMS but it's designed to sell >> manuals or supplement them, the details are always missing >> (purposely.) > >This is starting to get ridiculous, perhaps its all a conspiracy? :-) > Well, the online help is MUCH MUCH better than all those blessed MAN pages. If you are a new user, you can't even find out what all of the commands that have documentation on them are. (If you are an expert, and don't need this information, there is always 'man -k \*' which nobody ever tells any new users about.... >> Decnet nearly completely locks you out of wide-area networking, such >> as the arpanet. >> >> And you can forget uucp and usenet entirely, which means no e-mail >> to vendors etc. > Says who? There are several DECnets that span the ENTIRE GLOBE! Please check your facts before random flaming. :-) >> This is not a religious flame > >Well you could have fooled me. > Me too. Sounds like sour grapes to me. > U8551087@xvax.dn.mu.oz (VMS VAX 8650) >or sue@murdu.mu.oz (Unix Vax 750) You have a choice ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Unix vs. VMS holy Wars. Just Say No. Both have their merits. Both have their faults. There is no "ideal" operating system yet (except may GNU :-) -- bitnet: losh@nmt.csnet M. Warner Losh warner@hydrovax.nmt.csnet ! Don't know if this works, let me know. csnet: warner@hydrovax.nmt.edu uucp: ...{cmcl2, ihnp4}!lanl!unmvax!nmtsun!warner%hydrovax