Photos from HPWorld  - Courtesy of Tammy Roscoe, pictures and a short report from the HPWorld conference.

HPWorld: Roundtable Reports - A report from HPWorld by The Register.

HPWorld: Unix Roadmap - News report from Ashlee Vance of The Register.

Email Issues

Robelle has had some e-mail issues of late, mostly centered around our SPAM filtering software being too aggressive in marking some of your e-mails as being SPAM. This includes e-mails that were generated for requesting license codes.

Robelle has remedied the situation, but we would like to point out that if you e-mail us and don't hear from us within one business day, then something is definitely wrong. (Typically we respond very quickly, the one business day is just a broad guideline) We pride ourselves in being responsive to our customers, so if you don't hear back from us then either your e-mail did not arrive and/or was marked as SPAM.

There are three e-mail addresses that are monitored by Robelle staff:

ü       admin@robelle.com {licensing/billing}

ü       support@robelle.com {technical support}

ü       sales@robelle.com {pricing/new sales/quote issues}

We apologize for any inconvenience our e-mail issue may have caused.

The .Z problem on HP-UX

Some ftp clients do not preserve the case in the filename and end up upshifting or downshifting the filename depending on the settings of your ftp client. Some customers have ftp'ed the sxprod.Z file to their HP-UX server, only to end up with the filename as sxprod.z.

This impacts our installation, as compress does not find the file to decompress; or worse, if a file of the same name exists that does have the capital Z at the end, then that (typically older) file is used and you end up installing an older version.

To insure that the following steps work properly please double check that the file you just ftp'ed is placed on the server with the proper name and has a .Z (dot Capital Z) and not the small ".z".

Homesteading and MPE Tips

More Feedback from the Front lines

Last month we heard from Paul Edwards and had a detailed discussion of RAID drives on MPE. This month we feature feedback from three consulting firms: Fluent Edge, Ron Horner, and the IT Consulting Consortium. For example, Ron Horner writes:

 “My client base ranges from people are in the process of migrating to other platforms, to clients that are homesteading. The homesteaders are not looking to upgrade to the larger systems, or the latest releases of MPE. They have contracted with 3rd parties to handle their hardware and software needs.“

OpenMPE at HPWorld

Stephen Suraci of Pivital Solutions sends this report on the OpenMPE session at HPWorld.

HP 3000 Bugaboos

Deadly embrace! Instructors drilled into new 3000 programmers that MR (multiple RIN) capabaility opened the door to deadlock. This is true, but seldom happened in the real world.

Qedit Tips

Qedit for HP-UX Visual Mode Issue

We have discovered a problem with Qedit Visual Mode when editing Cobol files. The problem only occurs on HP-UX 11.x or when you force Block mode emulation with Set vis Blockemulation On. After you have marked a block of text to move or copy, (with a cc or mm) and then attempt to paste in on another page, you will receive an error:  “NO UPD:  bad format in left 4 columns (see qscreen)” We have patches and updates for Qedit/UX version 5.4 and version 5.5.

Debugging Qedit for Windows Connections   

QWIN is a client/server application and is a good example of the fun of debugging such applications. Step 1 is to verify that the client can find the server program, and that Qedit on the host is enabled for server mode: If you get stuck at "Waiting for Host Response", there are a number of possible causes, including firewall problems.  To read our full tech support note, click link above.

Suprtool Tips

How To "STExport" Beyond 2GB

Recently we have a few tech support calls from people wondering when STExport was going to handle large files. Well the answer is, it already does; so of course customers will then ask why can't I export large files; I keep getting an error message about files over 2GB.

The answer is actually quite simple. STExport, by default chooses to build variable length files. (We did this as most import facilities are capable of handling variable length files and they are smaller to ftp to other systems.) MPE however, does not support large files that are variable length, so therefore the solution is to add "col fixed" to your script. Click the link above for examples.

Fastread and Empty Datasets

Reading Eloquence datasets in Suprtool/UX did not detect end-of-set condition on datasets with no records. Suprtool would continue to process as if there were records in the first block. This has been fixed in Suprtool 4.8.02 and has been put up on our web site. You can request codes and download the software from:

www.robelle.com/forms/request-prod-release.php

If you don't know your account number, just put in a dummy number but please provide enough information so we can look you up and generate codes.

HP-UX and Migration Planning

Help for Powerhouse Users

In 2003, The 3000 Newswire discussed the future of Cognos' Powerhouse and Core Migration, a company that offers to migrate Powerhouse apps. In Summer 2004, we interviewed David From at Core Migration about the state of HP 3000 migration. Click the link above for his comments.

HP-UX Tips - Micah Altman at Harvard offers tips on HP-UX to supplement his more general Unix handouts.

A.P. Lawrence Unix Pages - Improve your Unix knowledge with the great site, including most common questions when you are new to Unix, and lots of articles and tips. Oriented mainly to Linux and SCO, but still very applicable to any Unix system.

Speedware Gets Migration Contracts

Press release states: Speedware Ltd. announced that it has signed 15 new HP e3000 migration contracts worth over $4 million in the past three months. These software and services revenues which will be recognized over the next several quarters, primarily related to the sale of licenses of Speedware’s migration toolset, known as AMXW.

Links/ Resources/ Industry News

3000 Resource: Pivital Solutions

Here is a firm in Newton NH that offers a wide-ranging solution to 3000 sites: Pivital Solutions. They provide 3rd-party hardware and software support and IT consulting, plus they buy/sell/rent HP equipment (3000 and 9000). Any questions, contact Sherri Erickson (603-382-3345, serickson@pivitalsolutions.com).

Need Help With Oracle?

Here are a number of useful web sites where you can look for help using Oracle, particularly the forums.

q       ittoolbox

q       orafaq

q       otn.oracle.com

q       forums.oracle.com

q       dbaclick

q       Oracle 8 documentation: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/doc/oracle/

q       Oracle 9 manuals (and some 10): http://otn.oracle.com/documentation/index.html

Speedware and eXegeSys

Speedware has acquired the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) assets of eXegeSys Systems, Inc. The eXegeSys web site points out that Speedware has also " hired all associated staff members". This will be part of a Speedware division, www.openerpsolutions.com, whose web site now links to the eXegeSys site.

HP Announces New Conference for Sep 05

From Computerworld: HP described it as the "first conference to deliver qualified, consistent education and training opportunities across HP's broad base of customers, partners and employees." Interex will continue to hold its HP World in 2005 and continue to evaluate its involvement in the new conference.