HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION MPE/iX Release 4.5 (C.45.00) Overview by Gayla Kohlmoos Commercial Systems Division The Commercial Systems MPE/iX Release 4.5 (C.45.00) introduces some new products and contains performance enhancements to many existing products. SYSTEM PRODUCTS AND INFORMATION As a reminder, the support termination date for XL Release 2.2 is October 1, 1993. XL Release 3.0 and 3.1 support termination was extended to May 1, 1993. This release of MPE/iX provides POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) 1003.1 Run-time support for enhanced applications and POSIX 1003.2 Commands and Utilities, which provides enhancements that permit MPE/iX based applications to coexist with POSIX-based applications. Included as part of the Fundamental Operating System (FOS) is a new product called the MPE/iX Shell and Utilities. This new product is a command interpreter with an integrated collection of over 100 utilities and commands that comply with the POSIX standard. MPE and POSIX concepts are now integrated into a new Hierarchical File System (HFS). With the HFS you can create hierarchical directories and extend your file names to as long as 255 characters. The MPE/iX Developer's Kit is a new product designed for those who want to develop POSIX applications or port UNIX applications to the HP 3000. Curses, a defacto standard used to draw screens and collect user input from the keyboard, is now included as part of FOS as the Curses/iX Library. System V Interprocess Communication (IPC) is now provided in this release of MPE/iX. The interprocess communication facility provides message queues, semaphores, and shared memory, as defined by the AT&T System V Interface Definition. HP OpenView Console, a smart console for the HP 3000, is now available and can provide your operation staff with productivity gains. The graphical user interface provides a quick view to the source of problems and shortens the time it takes to resolve them. The AIF: OS enhancements include changes to support POSIX and AIF customer requests. System backup procedures have changed in order to support POSIX interfaces. System administrators must understand the new POSIX features such as the HFS, directories, longer file names, and lower case file names, in order to effectively and safely manage their HP 3000 systems. The MPE/iX file access and security model now includes POSIX.1 file permission bits. The integration of POSIX.1 and MPE mechanisms such as the file access matrix, capability lockwords, and access control definition (ACD) provide a cohesive environment for both MPE/iX and POSIX applications. AutoRestart/iX now provides the functionality to produce a mini-dump at the time of a system failure. This feature is useful for bypassing a full memory dump for system failures that have already been encountered. System Debug has been enhanced to provide the HFS file name recognition and changes to SAT that include several new commands required by AutoRestart/iX. Four new Command Interpreter (CI) commands are available to support the new hierarchical directory structure. You can now create hierarchical directories, change the current working directory, purge a directory, and look at the disk space used by such directories with these new commands: NEWDIR, CHDIR, PURGEDIR, and DISKUSE respectively. A number of MPE/iX intrinsics have been enhanced to support the features provided by HFS. A new command, SHOWUSAGE, has been added to the VOLUTIL utility. This command is mainly used for locating needed continguous disk space when preparing for a system update. HP OpenView System Manager has been enhanced to provide automated responses to console message through command files or programs, PC customization for reporting subsystem events, a one line summary display for events selected, as well as enhancements to the managed node installation, management session performance and Link Status Display (LSD). This version of VPLUS/Windows supports Microsoft Windows 3.0 in standard/enhanced mode as well as Microsoft Windows 3.1 with some memory considerations. Disk space requirements for this MPE/iX release and several subsequent releases are included in order for you to properly prepare for a system installation or update. Information on Hewlett-Packard system accounts is included in order to avoid any confusion with your user accounts. DATA COMMUNICATIONS HP SNADS/XL now supports full peer-to-peer electronic mail connectivity between HP DeskManager users and IBM AS/400 Office Users. NetWare/iX for the HP 3000 enhancements provide greater performance. You will see that under loaded conditions, NetWare/iX can out perform a native 386/486 server. The greatest performance gains are noticed during a file read or write. FTP enhancements include eight new FTP/iX client commands: site, mkdir, cd, rmdir, size, modtime, lcd, timeout, reset, and six new server commands: SITE, MKD, CWD, RMD, SIZE, MDTM. With the addition of these commands, FTP now supports both the MPE-space and the POSIX-space of the MPE/iX file system. LANGUAGES The HP C/iX compiler and libraries have been enhanced to support the new MPE/iX byte stream file type. Byte stream files are files that conform to the definition of a stream file as defined by POSIX. HP Link Editor/iX enhancements include a new maximum number of modules of 1000, LIMIT option modifications, and the addition of the POSIX bit setting display with the use of the LISTPROG command. DATABASE TOOLS A number of ALLBASE/SQL tools have been modified to support the POSIX.1 enhancement in this release of MPE/iX. These tools are ISQL, SQLGEN, SQLUTIL, C/PASCAL/COBOL/FORTRAN Preprocessors. ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE PRODUCTS Information Access Server/iX includes a number of enhancements that will increase your data accessing efficiency. HP GlancePlus for MPE/iX enhancements include 10 to 50 percent performance improvement and POSIX file name compliance. If you have been considering HP GlancePlus for MPE/iX, you will be happy to know that there is a free 60-day trial copy of it provided with this MPE/iX release. Transact/iX has been enhanced to include the following seven enhancements: Dynamic Rollback, LIST=(#) option, breakpoints for data items, inclusion of system name within runtime error messages, Architected Call Interface (ACI), INIT option of Define(ITEM), and TurboIMAGE critical item update support. HP BRW includes the following three enhancements: two digit 21st century date recognition, 10 percent runtime improvement, and a new field in the Global Values screen of the BRWSETUP program called number of decimals.