HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 5 POSIX/Open Solutions
General POSIX Release Shipping with MPE/iX 5.0
by Phiroze Petigura
Commercial Systems Division
MPE/iX Release 5.0 is the first general release of the Open MPE/iX
operating system to all HP 3000 customers. Release 5.0 of the operating
system provides HP 3000 end-users and developers access to POSIX 1003.1
interfaces, POSIX 1003.2 commands and utilities, as well as other
industry-standard operating system features.
With release 5.0 HP 3000 customers can install POSIX-compliant
applications, built for open systems environments, on their HP 3000
machines. Application developers can use MPE/iX release 5.0, in
conjunction with the MPE/iX Developer's Kit (36430A), to develop new,
POSIX-compliant, open systems applications for their HP 3000 systems.
Interfaces and Services
MPE/iX Release 5.0 supports the following industry-standard interfaces
and services for HP 3000 end-users:
* Run-time support for the POSIX 1003.1 interfaces.
* The POSIX 1003.2 commands and utilities.
* The AT&T SVID Interprocess Communication (IPC) API.
* X/Open Curses.
POSIX 1003.1 and 1003.2 are industry-standard operating system
specification, closely related to UNIX, that enables applications to be
easily ported across different hardware and operating systems
implementations. By supporting these specifications, the HP 3000 becomes
open to supporting applications prevalent on other, open systems
including UNIX. The MPE/iX Developer's Kit (36430A) available with this
release enables the development of new HP 3000 applications to the POSIX
specifications.
Ported Applications
Release 5.0 supports a number of new applications that have been recently
ported to the HP 3000 using POSIX. These applications include (among
others):
* MANMAN/X from BAAN Software
* Unicorn from Delta Management Systems
* Rescue from GTE GIS
* GEMMS from Datalogix
* Progress DBMS and 4GL from Progress
* N-Dimension from Computron
* The ADABAS and Network products from Software AG.
* NFS (support for POSIX files). NFS is available from Quest
Software.
POSIX and MPE/iX
MPE/iX Release 5.0 also includes enhancements to the standard MPE/iX
interfaces and command interpreter to permit MPE/iX-based applications to
seamlessly coexist with POSIX-based applications. For example,
MPE/iX-based applications can access data stored in the UNIX-like file
structure supported by POSIX (and vice-versa).
As with all revisions of the HP 3000 operating system, the enhancements
made to the operating system to support the new functionality provided in
release 5.0 are completely compatible with all existing HP 3000
applications and will have no impact on your ability to run them without
modification.
MPE/iX Developer's Kit
The MPE/iX Developer's Kit (36430A) is designed for solution suppliers
and customers who want to develop POSIX applications or port POSIX
applications to the HP 3000. The kit includes all the software and
documentation for application developers.
POSIX application developers such as Value Added Businesses (VABs) and
Value Added Resalers (VARs) will need the MPE/iX Developer's Kit which
includes, among other things, a relocatable library (RL) /lib/libc.a .
The Fundamental Operating System (FOS) contains the core of the POSIX.1
functions available, but this RL provides the necessary C language
interfaces. Once the object files have been linked with this RL, end
users can run the resulting POSIX application on an HP 3000 Series 900
system.
End users who wish only to install and run applications do not need the
MPE/iX Developer's Kit since the POSIX 1003.1 interfaces and POSIX 1003.2
commands and utilities are supplied as a part of MPE/iX.
The MPE/iX Developer's Kit includes the following software:
* POSIX 1003.1 Interfaces
* ANSI C Standard APIs
* C/iX Compiler
* AT&T SVID Interprocess Communication (IPC) API
* X/Open Curses API
The MPE/iX Developer's Kit includes the following documentation:
* HP C/iX Reference Manual (31506-90005)
* HP C Programmer's Guide (92434-90002)
* HP C/iX Library Reference Manual (30026-90001)
* MPE/iX Developer's Kit Reference Manual Vol 1 & 2 (36430-60001)
* The POSIX.1 Standard: A Programmer's Guide (36430-90003)
* MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual Vol 1 & 2
(36431-60001)
* MPE/iX Shell and Utilities User's Guide (36431-90002)