[comp.os.vms] New

a.Jiml@GSB-WHY.STANFORD.EDU (Jim Lewinson) (12/24/87)

A friend of mine asked me this question, and I didn't have any good answers,
so I figured I would ask the list and see if anyone else had a good answer.

He has an application where several FORTRAN applications open the same file
for shared access, and one of them writes to the file, while the others only
read it.  Whenever the Writer GET's a record, RMS locks the record, and
no-one else can read it, unless the Writer immediately does a PUT and
re-writes the (still unchanged) record.  The FORTRAN UNLOCK command produces
a "Record not Locked" error.

This, uhh, feature, appeared in 4.4, and DEC at one point claimed that it
would be fixed in 4.6, but it wasn't.  I think the concept was to prevent
Readers from seeing a record that might be about to change.  He couldn't see
any sign of it in the Release Notes and I didn't see any way to turn it off
in the RMS OPEN documentation.

Reply to me, NOT the list, and I will summarize if there is enough interest.

						Thanks,
						Jim Lewinson
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