IDMS/SQL
News 9.2
Vol 9.2
Technical Information for Mainframe and
IDMSâ Users August 2000
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This page at http://geocities.datacellar.net/idmssql/idms92.htm
IDMS/SQL News apologizes for any spelling/grammatical mistakes.
There is simply not enough resources to do a thorough editing!
| The
Last attempts for Jasmine! After taking over Ingres, CA transferred
many IDMS Devlopers to Ingres (Computerworld 1995 News).
And there were several attempts to convert the large IDMS
base to Ingres. There were vain attempts to sell the
Ingres Gateway to IDMS Client base. All failed miserably!
For the last 5-6 years CA has been touting an object
oriented circus called Jasmine. This product doesn't have
any serious production or support problems becacuse less
than a handful are really using it! Unless you use the
product you won't get any production problems. Now the
attempt is to tie up IDMS and Jasmine. An uneven match.
One is a tested database in critical production for more
than 25 years. The other is a playing tool to match the
industry circus around 'object oriented' databases!
Incidentally in the internet
site for CA World proceedings the database section
doesn't list Jasmine at all!
Here is the screen 
Probably by next CA World, we
might stop hearing about this ultra flop! But by then CA
might have acquired another toy and another buzzword to
market anyway!
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IDMS/SQL Old Issues
IDMS/SQL was started in 1992 as a simple
newsletter for IDMS users. There was no internet edition for
those copies. Considering requests from users (esp.in Benelux
countries), we are happy to put the original issues on the net
now. Here is the first batch starting with the year 1992.
SQL News 1.1 The first issue from 1992
SQL News 1.2 from 1992
SQL News 1.3 from 1992
SQL News 1.4 from 1992
Depending upon the availability of the later issues, they may
also appear on the Web.
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IDMS History Continued . . .
From: "Eric Waddell" ct: IDMS History Date:
Sat, 22 Apr 2000 00:50:49 -0700
I read, with interest, The History of IDMS (IDMS/SQL News - Dec 1999)
You failed to mention the negative impact that David
Chapman had on Cullinet. It was David who heralded the
death knell of the company. (Use this if you'd like - I
was employed by Cullinet Canada between 1982 and 1987.)
Prior to coming on board, John Cullinane had been
desperately trying to fin a successor. He had other
interests - namely the JFK Library in Boston. (John was
friends with the Kennedy's... in fact one of the last
sales conferences (1987) was held in Hyannisport and good
old Ted dropped by to invite Cullinet people over to the
compound for tennis.
John had been trying to groom internal people but no
one was really suitable. Frank Chisholm, Executive VP,
was the strongest of the team, but was far too aggressive
for his own, and the company's good. Bob Goldman, who had
been President for a few years, was weak.
Then came Chapman. John spoke of him as a savior. He
was a Data General alumni and taught at the Sloan School
of Management. John dropped him into place and promptly
disappeared. Chapman then proceeded to squander the
company's $80 Million war chest and future Gold Course on
all sorts of strange business applications. The first big
one was a company based in Mississauga, Ontario called
Cancor. They had a VAX applications development product.
Ron Zambonini, now with Cognos, was the project leader at
the time. Unfortunately, Tom Corr, who started the
company, was a V.P. of Cullinet for a few months, but
dropped after it was found out that he had been running
the company as a tax scam. He was arrested at Pearson
International Airport on his way to the Cullinet annual
sales conference in Boston in 1986.
The product would have worked, but Chapman bought the
VAX Database engine from Dr. Kapali P. Eswaran's Esvel
Inc in August 1986. Chapman proceeded to dictate that the
entire Silicon Valley development team move to Boston.
The team swiftly abandoned ship, including the good
doctor himself. The product was left swinging in the
breeze. The other problem was that Boston also dictated
that the two acquisitions be made to work together. A
dumb idea and one that put two almost market ready
products far behind schedule.
In retrospect, the earlier Computer Pictures
acquisition was the stupidest. We spent $14 million
buying technology we couldn't use. The monitors leaked
radiation well above acceptable limits and the system was
woefully complex to use. I asked one of Cullinet's VPs at
dinner one night why we bought them. He enthusiastically
told me that it wasn't for the hardware (thankfully!),
but that it was really for the development team. I didn't
want to argue with him, but the reality was that and all
we ended up with was a handful of misfits who thought it
was cool to sleep under their desks in the development
center and shower in the gym. The team went on to develop
the ill conceived GoldenGate.
There were many other acquisitions to come, none of
which made any sense. Jeff Papows (now in Lotus) came on
board through the acquisition of DMS of Cambridge, MA.
Jeff's claim to fame was an Expert System he had
developed... written entirely in Cobol. It was more of a
research project and not even close to being a real
product. (For the record, Jeff lied during his career
about his personal history and embellished his military
record - Wall St Journal, April 1999.) This was madness.
The sad thing about all of this was that no one felt able
to blow the whistle. I was on a lead time that tested the
infamous Release 10 before it was released. We
unanimously called for it to not be shipped - it was the
buggiest thing I ever saw. I also recall a gala dinner
event (spouses invited) where we were all to enjoy an
evening with David Chapman... our savior. I remember
thinking that he spewed out worthless pap. Others were of
the same opinion. We were invited to ask questions to the
floor and I pointedly asked what the company planned to
do to alleviate the perception that IDMS was an out-dated
product. He immediately turned the question around and
asked me what I was prepared to do about it. I was
dumbfounded. In fact, he answered most questions that way.
He made it seem that he was empowering the peons at the
bottom to solve the company's problems. He had no ideas
of his own. (In fact, he didn't.)
By the spring of 1987, the technical heavyweights had
already started jumping ship. By summer, it was obvious
that most of the brains had already left. (I departed in
August, 1987.) Stories of strange management decisions
and behavior, including rumors of wild sexual liaisons in
the headquarters parking lot abounded.
By the spring of 1988, John Cullinane walked back into
the office and began firing everyone in sight. I heard
that David Chapman was one of the first to leave the
building. John could have saved Cullinet. But he was
tired. The company was sold for something like $320
million. It had been worth a lot more. (The stock hit a
low of $4 after reaching $32.)
IDMS/SQL adds:
IDMS/SQL News express our deep gratitude and appreciation for Eric Waddell's comments. Here are some comments from us:
Eric Waddell's letter highlights the drama which
was played in the upper circles of the company. The most
important factor here is the stupidest acquisitions made
by Cullinet in the later half of the eighties! All except
Esvel were totally useless products! (The fact that
Esvel's SQL engine went on to survive in IDMS SQL option
as well as was used as the foundation database for CA-Unicenter
development proves this point). Not that other companies
did not have useless products. Others knew when they were lying and were
clever enough to take care of the lies! In a way, though
they all cheated the client base, they did not fool
themselves! The difference was that Cullinet failed to
accept and realize the fact that these products were only
worth for marketing. You needed something real behind the
scene, which was sadly missing.
Goldengate was not a bad product
for 1984! It was as good as the other products in the DOS
market (Lotus, dBASE,123,Symphony) and even better.
Goldengate was the first product to link PC to a
mainframe database in a transparent way. The LU2
connectivity allowed the PC user to look at a group of
IDMS LRF records (the ASF tables and views) as a virtual
disk. This was remarkable for 1984. Two things spoiled
Goldengate as a PC product. It was difficult to copy.
There was this 'key' business. Copying was a tough job.
Products like Lotus and dBase, it was easy to make pirate
copies. Ashton Tate once admitted that it was the 1
million pirate copies which helped them to make the 1
million business sales! Later Bill Gates echoed the same
sentiments in the PC market when he indirectly hinted
that Microsoft is less concerned about private people copying
the product for home use, they were happy if no one sells
the pirate editions on a commercial basis. Secondly,
Cullinet didn't target the ordinary users, but only the
corporate customers for the product (a mistake repeated
later by IBM for OS/2 with disastrous end results). In the PC world, the popcorn
users rule, the corporate follows! In
any case, Goldengate did not play any role in the fall of
Cullinet. So let's leave the product.
The worst product Cullinet had
was the VAX-Generator. This was a pure hype. It boasted
to generate applications for you within minutes! VAX-Generator
took all the marketing time and resources. The sales people failed to notice the
VAX database product, which was, as noted elsewhere, a
System-R offshoot and a superior relational database
than anything on the market at that time with the
possible exception of Ingres! All the emphasis was on the
Generator! It is a mystery why a leader in database
technology ignored the SQL database product of VAX,
especially when SQL was THE issue of the times! But then
the top echelons of Cullinet was occupied by the imported
people from other companies who didn't know any damn
about IDMS database or any database for that matter!
The next useless product was the
Application Expert on VAX. Precious time and money were
wasted trying to port this rubbish to IDMS! Believe it or
not there were even working versions with manuals of both
Generator and the Expert Systems for IDMS! Management
guys from the Generator and Expert Systems occupied the
VP posts in Cullinet for too long time. IDMS was
sidelined. Today we can say that IDMS never recovered
from this lack of attention and positioning! This was the
real reason for the fall of Cullinet, and not DB2 or Unix
databases as some people prefer to believe. DB2 was a
totally useless product running only on TSO/E at that
time, maturing only sometime in 1993-94 with the Version
4.3! [In many cases where DB2 replaced IDMS, later Oracle
replaced DB2 in the late 90s]. Unix databases were not there
in the mid-eighties, they were just being born out of the
original VAX products - Oracle and Ingres. As Prof
Michael Stonebraker pointed out in 1996 in an Informix
presentation Cullinet allowed the relational startups
to prosper, in spite of enough time and
warning!
Experts miss
the point!
One thing which is consistent
with the computer industry today is that experts always
the miss the point! Experts are basing their arguments on
experience, which does not make any sense in a field
which is changing every day and even every second.
Computer Guru and talker of the early 80s, James Martin
once admitted that he completely missed the PC revolution!
Today's analysts are not honest enough to admit any
mistakes or misses!
So if anyone believes that the
fall of Cullinet was related to the fall of mainframe,
there is no truth in it. The last decade saw the
collapse of companies which had nothing to do with
mainframes - digital, Tandem, Wordperfect, Ingres, Gupta....
And Informix and Sybase might join the fallen list too
soon. Of these the most amazing is the digital who was
the pioneer in the mini computer field. Unix and C
language were born using digital's PDP-11 mini machines!
Oracle and Ingres were initially devloped and sold on digital machines.
Is it not ironic the same Unix and related systems are
the cause of the demise of digital?
Nothing comes out of
nothing!
If we take the four most
successful companies, we see an amazing fact! 3 out of 4
are headed by CEOs who were once technicians. Microsoft
by Bill Gates who was the wizzard programmer of Gw-Basic
for CP/M (or QDOS) operating system. Charles Wang of CA
programmed and wrote CASORT documents for IBM mainframe,
Scott McNealy of Sun is basing the success on the
technical strength of Unix and Java. All this underlines
one point: the technicians can beat the pure marketing
guys in their own game!
Ellison of Oracle is an
exception, but is compensated by the manpower usage in
the company. Many think Oracle's success is solely
because of their marketing! Oracle owes its success to
its 1000s of technical consultants who managed to
implement the sub-standard database at various sites
masking the shortcomings and justifying the company's
marketing claims. Oracle realized one fact very early: a
database cannot be just sold, it has to be sold and implemented.
A client spends at least 10 to 100 times money on
programming than the original license fee of the database
product! Oracle participates in this implementation - it
serves two purposes: one, it helps the client and avoids
faliures; two, it creates a hell of a lot revenue for the
company. [IDMS's own big success in Finland in the
eighties was very similar: Finnsystems (not Cullinet)
sold and implemented IDMS there making it the biggest
database). In short, the marketing claims were defended
by the hardwork of an 'army' of technicians!!!
Human
Factor is the basis!
In all these examples, one thing
is emerging: human factor, not automatic tools, is the
root casue of success, even when the vendor boasts the opposite! Without 'human factor', companies
won't make it even if the bases product is very good! The
fall od Cullinet, failure of OS/2, the failure of Ingres,
even the late failure of Digital VAX are clean examples
of good products not able to make it! Oracle's success
story alongwith the successes of huge consulting
companies like Andersen and Cap Gemeni proves the other
point. Total failure of CASE Tools and traditional client-server
are example of the fact that buzzword alone is not enough!
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As has been the
case over the last few years, IDMS customer base has been
targetted with arrows ranging from OPAL to the new
Platinum and Sterling tools. For a change there was not
much talk about CA OpenIngres and Gateway. Or rather, has
the failed Gateway reincarnated in some other form now?
The following comments in IDMS-L by one IDMS client
summarize the tempo:
"Which brings up a
niggling little something... On Monday, we had a couple
of CA people come in to give an overview of the
capabilities of Jasmine, Opal and all that stuff. On the
way out the door, they happened to mention that a handful
of current IDMS customers have an 'x-year' plan to
eventually ween themselves off IDMS to move to something else. We all know that this is occurring
all over the place, and this has been the case for ages.
But... there was no indication from these two CA reps
that Computer Associates has any thought other than this
is an irreversible trend worldwide, and basically 'oh,
well'. "
What is that "something
else"? Having totally failed to convert IDMS
client base to Ingres the vendor seems to be happy if
that "something else" is something
where they can sell the newly acquired tools! It is too
much to expect from the vendor who with the yellow
journals believed in the "trend" and
the death of the product by 1995! It's no secret that in
many countries the CA sales force who do not know ABC of
the product, have accelerated the "trend!"
Attempt to link Unicenter and
Jasmine (who in the world is using Jasmine?) with IDMS
continues. By the click of the mouse a red button changes
to green and all your journal and startup problems are
solved with the omnipotent Unicenter! [DBAs watch out,
your jobs are threatened!] . One doesn't have to be an
industry analyst to predict that Jasmine is in the end
phase to dustbin and the vendor will come up with a new
name/product by next year!
There was no talk about how to
make SQL in IDMS usable. In fact, the industry does not
perceive IDMS as relational database. Without SQL, there
is no future for a database system today (Well, you may
come up with performance and even ease-of-use of the
nonSQL product etc.. well, all these have been the
arguments in the eighties and nineties and it did not
work well with the industry positioning.. no reason to
think it will work today]
In fact a recent slide by Michael Stonebraker at Informix tells the story almost correctly.[
Incidentally Stonebraker is the father of Ingres at
Berkeley, one of the best products on mini machines then,
which used QUEL instead of SQL, and was a superior
product, but later failed in the marketing and ultimately
ended up as a frozen bit in CA basket!]
 "Almost"
because, Cullinet had the SQL product almost ready in
1987 (IDMS R 11), but it was not born until 1991! Late,
but not too late in fact, but CA failed to market the
product and customers failed to use the SQL 'Option'! As
a follow-up to IDMS History published in IDMS/SQL News 8.1, we have
received some new information about the fall of Cullinet
from an ex-person in Canada. Details appear elsewhere in
this issue of IDMS/SQL News.
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Access Module
and COBOL
If you forget to create access module
for a COBOL program, you may get SOC6 abend at runtime. The SQL error
message says the program module cannot be found. You won't be told that access module is
missing. Also the compilation of the cobol program goes through without any warnings.
SQL against
Network
"For a network database, is there
any way to use SQL to select records that do NOT belong to a set?
Here is my problem: The path is REC1 -> REC2 -> REC3.
Only REC1 has a calc key. REC2 is stored via set REC1-REC2, and
REC3 is stored via set REC2-REC3.
I am trying to select instances
where REC1 has REC2 members, but no REC3 members." [source:
IDMS-L]
Search criteria where "REC2-REC3" is valid syntax, but
where "not REC2-REC3" is not valid syntax.
select * from rec1 r1a, rec2
where r1a.key = 1234
and "rec1-rec2"
and not exists (select * from rec1 r1b, rec2, rec3
where r1a.key=r1b.key
and "rec1-rec2"
and "rec2-rec3");
The above select with the NOT EXISTS sub
select is traditionally known as OUTER JOIN in SQL terminology.
Note: A similar issue appeared in IDMS/SQL News 8.1. There it was mentioned that IDMS was wrong in
returning 'record not found'. This is not true. IDMS was right.
The problem was with NOT EXISTS usage. Though it raises questions
on the where clause and the predicates of the = operators of SQL
sub select, the correct query should have been as follows:
SELECT *
FROM B
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM A
WHERE A.ID = B.A_ID ) ;
*+
*+ A_ID NAVN POSTNR
*+ ---- ---- ------
*+ 4444 DIFF 1081
*+
*+ 1 row processed
[IDMS/SQL 8.1
version used the following query instead:
We tried the following in IDMS SQL 14.0
SELECT * FROM B B1
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM A, B B2 WHERE A.ID = B2.A_ID) ;
Row not Found! ]
SEND TABLE in
OLQ
SEND TABLE for IDMS Processing
SEND TABLE = sql-table-name req
schema.sql-table-name
REPORT=report-name opt
USER=report-user-name opt
DICTNAME=dictionary-name opt
TYPE=CREATE / APPEND / REPLACE opt
COLUMNS=MAXIMUM / field-reference,... opt
SUMMARY / DETAIL opt
AREA=segment-name.area-name opt
INDICES=(field-name,...) opt
ASCENDING / DESCENDING opt
NOT ALLOWED opt
SEND TABLE stores information from the current (or named report)
in
an IDMS SQL table.
To specify a report other than your current report, use the
REPORT
and USER parameters.
To specify the location of the table, use the DICTNAME parameter.
To specify the columns to be included, use the COLUMNS parameter.
To specify whether summary or detail lines are included in the
table, specify SUMMARY or DETAIL. The default is DETAIL. Using
SUMMARY excludes detail lines from the table.
To specify the table type, use TYPE:
o CREATE -- a new table
o APPEND -- an addition to an existing table
o REPLACE -- a replacement table
To specify an alternate area, use the AREA parameter. The area
parameter consists of 2 parts: segment name and area name.
To define index characteristics, use the INDICES parameter and
spec-
ify:
o One or more single or concatenated keys with field-name
o Sort order with ASCENDING (default) or DESCENDING
o Whether or not to allow duplicate values
Example:
SEND TABLE EMP-INFO INDICES=(EMP-LAST-NAME-0415) ASCENDING
(EMP-ID-0415) DESC
Temporary
Tables
Questions from IDMS-L: The SQL option includes the
capability of creating "temporary tables". Can
anyone tell me where a temporary table is actually stored
during its brief existance - memory, scratch area, other?
Answers also appeared on IDMS-L: "Temporary
tables go in scratch right along with all the
intermediate results and the final result sets from each
SELECT. When we first really started using SQL here we
had to expand our scratch area as our system was locking
up during large SQL
sorts.
That's right. Temporary tables are 'alive' only for
the duration of the run unit. There is no index for the
temporary table. Another point to note is that a
temporary table can be created even if the transaction is
read only.
SQL clients should obviously have a larger scratch
area, that too in a high-speed device or in XA. Batch
jobs should have a SYSIDMS parm syaing XA_SCRATCH=ON.
[IDMS/SQL acknowledge Kay, Leslie and Alan for this
discussion on IDMS-L]
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Null
Problem
The concept
of NULL has been sometimes broadcast as a nice feature of SQL
based databases. NULL means unknown and is different from 0,
spaces or even binary zero (X'00'). Every column of an SQL table
can allow null values unless you define the column as NOT NULL.
Allowing NULL takes more spaces in the database. Also in order to
handle null SQL /SELECT FETCH statements must have indicator
variables defined.
Even though
the relational writings by Dr Codd & Co amplifies the
relevance of NULL, in practice this is a total nonsense. The
concept of unknown might be philosophically high-sounding, but
worthless in commercial data processing. It creates head-ache in
programming, inconsistent results and uses more space in the
database. Besides the above mentioned problems with programming
for NULL, we take another simple example where NULL support in
SQL contradict common sense.
CREATE TABLE
IDMSSQL.NULL_PROBLEM (
IDENT CHARACTER(10) NOT NULL,
BELOP DECIMAL(6) ) ;
Let's
populate the table with values and 100, 200 and null. SELECT
gives the result as:
SELECT * FROM NULL_PROBLEM
IDENT BELOP
----- -----
VALUE1 100
VALUE2 200
NULL VALUE <null>
3 rows processed
But
SELECT AVG(BELOP) , SUM(BELOP) / COUNT(*) FROM NULL_PROBLEM ;
(EXPR) (EXPR)
------ ------
150 100
1 row processed
The AVG SQL function does not count null
values or rows in calculating the average whereas the aggregate
function SUM ignores the NULL values (or rather take it as 0) and
COUNT (*) is not aware of the null value. Changing the query as
below may solve this issue. But it is still ambiguous .
SELECT AVG(BELOP)
, SUM(BELOP) / COUNT(BELOP) FROM NULL_PROBLEM ;
(EXPR) (EXPR)
------ ------
150 150
1 row
processed
Also the null
comparison is done in the following way.
SELECT COUNT(*) AS
"NULL BELOP ROWS"
FROM NULL_PROBLEM
WHERE BELOP IS NULL;
*+ NULL BELOP ROWS
*+ ---------------
*+ 1
*+ 1 row processed
Some Useful Displays in OCF
- DIS ATTR OCF : to get a list of all SQL
command files
- DIS ALL SCHEMA : will list all schema headers in the CATALOG
- Dis schema idmssql ; : lists the definition of schema IDMSSQL
- Dis schema idmssql all; : lists all tables under schema
idmsssql
- SELECT NAME, TYPE, TABLEID, TIMESTAMP FROM SYSTEM.TABLE : list
of tables with timestamp etc
| SNAP
IDMS STATUS! One of the ways to debug an
abnormal situation in an ADS or DC Cobol program is to
SNAP memory areas to the log. In ADS there are today
easier methods of debugging using ADS/ALIVE. There is no
COBOL/Alive! The Online debugger is the only method left
to COBOL programs. Snap has the following syntax.
SNAP TITLE
IS SNAP-TITLE
FROM WS-START TO WS-END.
This works
fine for most. But look at the following statement.
* SNAP
TITLE ' SUBSCHEMA CONTROL'
* FROM SUBSCHEMA-CTRL TO SUBSCHEMA-CTRL-END
* ON ANY-STATUS
* NEXT SENTENCE;
What
happens here is that SNAP itself will overwrite the error-status
field! After the SNAP the error-status will be set to '0000',
if SNAP was successful! More interestingly during the
SNAP only the major code will be overwritten! That is if
the error-status had been 0302 before, what the snap will
show will be 4020.
10:02 P212O150 SUBSCHEMA CTRL
10:02 MOST RECENT USER MODE REGISTERS.
10:02 R0 R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6
10:02 0F2F08CC 0F2F08CC 0F2F08A0 0F1F676E 0F1F5254 00000000 0F27FBB8
10:02 R8 R9 R10 R11 R12 R13 R14
10:02 00000000 0F2F02D0 0F1F52B0 0F1F713A 0F1F5280 0F2F0030 0F2F07D8
10:02 0F2F07D0 40404040 40404040 D7C3D6C2 D6F2F0F0 * PCOBO200*
10:02 0F2F07E0 F4F0F0F2 0000FF08 40404040 40404040 *4002.... *
10:02 0F2F07F0 40404040 40404040 40404040 40404040 * *
10:02 0F2F0800 40404040 40404040 40404040 40404040 * *
. . .
If you
have looked at the IDMS-STATUS Section expansion, you may
see that this issue is alreday taken care of there. Here
it is:
MOVE ERROR-STATUS TO SSC-ERRSTAT-SAVE
MOVE DML-SEQUENCE TO SSC-DMLSEQ-SAVE
* SNAP FROM SUBSCHEMA-CTRL TO SUBSCHEMA-CTRL-END
* ON ANY-STATUS
MOVE 0 TO DCNUM1 DCNUM2 DCFLG1 DCFLG2
CALL 'IDMSCOBI' USING SUBSCHEMA-CTRL
DCBMSCOM (22)
DCSTR1
DCSTR1
DCSTR1
SUBSCHEMA-CTRL
SUBSCHEMA-CTRL-END
DCBMSCOM (1)
IF NOT ANY-STATUS PERFORM IDMS-STATUS;
ELSE
NEXT SENTENCE.
The ERROR-STATUS
and DML-STATUS are moved further down in the subschema-control
before the SNAP is done. Note the original code of SNAP:
SNAP FROM SUBSCHEMA-CTRL
TO SUBSCHEMA-CTRL-END
ON ANY-STATUS
NEXT SENTENCE.
|
Unlinked
Indexes, Schema Source and Restructure
Normally unlinked indexes do not affect the existing Schema or
the database structure. ie Unlinked indexes can be created and
dropped at will. But there is one thing to be aware of: if you
add a new unlinked index to an existing record type which is
compressed (IDMSCOM /DECOM or Presspack) you may need to
restructure¨, after all, if the index key (or part of it) is in
the compressed part of the record.
ADS and System
Supplied Data Fields
11.3 System-supplied data field names
Purpose: System-supplied data field names specify variable data
fields
supplied by the CA-ADS runtime system.
Syntax:
>>--------- + ------- DIRECT-DBKEY
-----------------------------------------><
+- - --+ +- DB-NAME -----------------¦
+- NODE-NAME ---------------¦
+- agr-data-field ----------¦
+- amr-data-field ----------¦
+- $RESPONSE ---------------¦
+- $PAGE -------------------¦
+- LENGTH (map-field-name) -¦
+- CURSOR-ROW --------------¦
+- CURSOR-COLUMN -----------¦
+- ERROR-STATUS ------------¦
+- JULIAN ------------------¦
+- JULIANX -----------------¦
+- DATE --------------------¦
+- DATEX -------------------¦
+- TIME --------------------¦
+--- $ERROR-COUNT ----------¦
¦ +- $ERRCNT ------+ ¦
+--- $INPUT-COUNT ----------¦
¦ +- $INCNT -------+ ¦
+--- $OUTPUT-COUNT ---------+
+- $OUTCNT -------+
Mapping
Question
We got a maping external picture
question, which was graciously answered by on of the IDMS
Consultants. More on this in the next issue of IDMS/SQL News.
Here is a short writeup.
The field in the record is defined as
02 NEGATIVE
PICTURE IS S9(5)V9(2)
USAGE IS DISPLAY
MAPC external picture is to be modified
as
Element name: NEGATIVE
In record WS-STEST300
Edit Picture ++++++9.9(2) (floating + or - sign)
On the next page remember to edit justification. It seems the
deafult is coming sometimes
as 'Right' which is not right always! Also for numeric field it
is better to specify 0 as pad
characater.
Justify data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1. Left 2. Right
Pad character format . Display . . . . 0
Hexadecimal . . F0
The final map will display values such as :
NEGAITIVE FIELD: +0.60
NEGAITIVE FIELD: +5454.00
NEGAITIVE FIELD: +17262.90
'+' sign in the first position of an
external picture, indicates signed data, and appears as either a
minus sign or a plus sign. On the other hand a '-' sign in the
first position of an external picture, indicates signed
data and the sign appears as a blank if the data is positive and
as a minus sign if the data is negative.
The table below illustrates how an external picture is
constructed for a field when automatic editing is enabled:
________________________________________________________________________
| Internal | Usage Mode | External Picture |
| Picture | | |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| XXX | DISPLAY | X(3) |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| A(8) | DISPLAY | A(8) |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| S99V99 | DISPLAY | +99.99 |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| S9(4) | COMP (Half word) | +9(8) |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| +9(4) | S9(8) | COMP (Full word) |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| S9(16) | COMP (Double word) | +9(4) |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| | COMP-1 | +9.9(7)+99 |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| | COMP-2 | +9.9(16)+99 |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| 9(7)V99 | COMP-3 | 9(7).99 |
|_________________|___________________________|__________________________|
| Note |
| |
| Internal pictures cannot be specified for COMP-1 or COMP-2 elements. |
| The above external pictures for COMP, COMP-1, -2 and -3 elements are |
| the default external pictures for these elements when automatic |
| editing is enabled for a field. |
|________________________________________________________________________|
DME QUEUES
Though the oldtimers still use IDD for
simple editing of process modules, DME - Dictionary Module Editor
- is the favoured editor of the new comers, because of its
similarity to TSO editor and IDD's own lack of 'CHANGE' command.
DME is not without blemishes. One thing it is far heavier than
IDD. It takes more resources and so support less users
concurrently than IDD, in practice. As a plus point DME remembers
the name of the last module you edited. This is in fact kept in a
QUEUE record attached to your user-id. On the negative side
again, this retention period of this QUEUE record is forever - it
will never get deleted. If you do QUED you will see several of
them hanging around, though no one might be using them!
DME_PRF2USR6889 0000001 99.112 255 PRM KEPT
DME_PRF1USR5432 0000001 00.070 255 PRM KEPT
DME_PRF1USR5643 0000001 98.342 255 PRM KEPT
Here the last one is created in 1998 and
is still there. Retention period of 255 is also misleading.
Because here 255 (=2**8 - 1) means forever! It will be a good
idea for DCA/DBA to go through the QUEUES once in a while and
clean the stagnant ones, so that QUEUE area is not filled up with
junk information.
There seems to be a PTF which will allow
you to change this 255 into some other number.
A
summary of Modules in the dictionary
Now that the dictionary is not maintained well (because of
lack of resources on mainframe or otherwise) it is time to take a
look at the modules - processes, qfiles, … - you have
accumulated there over the last 20 years!. Here is a simple OLQ
command sequence to do the job. One can make this into a QFILE
and add some more features to avoid area sweep if that gives
better performance for a large dictionary. Also it might be wise
to run this as an OLQBATCH job, since the online may exceed the
scratch requirements because of the size of the report.
SET ACCESS OLQ
SIGNON SS IDMSNWKA DICTNAME SYSDIRL DBNAME your-dictionary
SELECT MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067 AS V, COUNT(*) AS SUM-LINES -
FROM MODULE-067, TEXT-088 -
WHERE MODULE-TEXT AND MOD-VER-067=1 -
GROUP BY MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067
MOD-NAME-067 V SUM-LINES
----------------------------------
AUTOSTATUS 1 14
BATCH 1 15
PROCA100-RP1 1 459
. . . The above QFILE can be modified to get a final summary
too. Easy but tricky code, not that clear from the manual!. Also
the version can be given as parameter input, 1 taking the default.
Here it is:
MOD
QFILE NAME IS MOD-SUMMARY VERSION IS 1
PUBLIC ACCESS IS ALLOWED FOR ALL
QFILE SOURCE FOLLOWS
&P1=1
SET ACCESS OLQ
SET UNDERLINE '-'
SIGNON SS IDMSNWKA DICTNAME SYSDIRL DBNAME your-dict
OPTIONS ALL HEADER ECHO NOFILLER FULL WHOLE INTERRUPT OLQHEADER -
NOPATHSTAT NOSTAT COMMENT VERBOSE NODBKEY PICTURE CODETAB NOSYN
SELECT MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067, COUNT(*) AS SUM-LINES -
FROM MODULE-067, TEXT-088 WHERE MODULE-TEXT AND -
MOD-VER-067=&P1 GROUP BY MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067
EDIT MOD-NAME-067 -
ALIGN LEFT -
PICTURE 'X(22)'
EDIT MOD-VER-067 -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZ9'
EDIT SUM-LINES -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZZ9'
PAGE HEADER BLANK LINES AFTER 1 -
LINE 1 'MODULE-067 REPORT' CENTER -
LINE 2 '$DATE' CENTER
PAGE FOOTER BLANK LINES BEFORE 1 -
LINE 1 '- ÅPAGE -' CENTER
COMPUTE SUM-LINES-TOTAL-ALL=TOTAL(SUM-LINES) GROUP BY ALL LEVEL 1
EDIT COMPUTE 'SUM-LINES-TOTAL-ALL' -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZZZ9'
DISPLAY LEFT EVEN COLUMNS = MOD-NAME-067 MOD-VER-067 SUM-LINES
MSEND
String Searching within ADS
Source
Recently there was a question in IDMS-L news from Brian Brown
of McGraw Hill. The question was on how to find out what dialogs
use a particular DC-COBOL subroutine. The idea was to search the
process source. The above QFILE can be modified to accomplish this.
IDMS/SQL News could not give the ful solution here. We will fill in
as soon as we get a proper response from one of the readers! Here is one suggested
by one of the readers:
It is rather easy to convert the above QFILE to include a search with LIKE operator.
MOD
QFILE NAME IS SEEK1 VERSION IS 1
PUBLIC ACCESS IS ALLOWED FOR ALL
QFILE SOURCE FOLLOWS
&P1=1
SIGNON SS IDMSNWKA SCHEMA IDMSNTWK( 1)DICTNAME SYSDIRL DBNAME TESTDICT
SELECT MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067, COUNT(*) AS SUM-LINES -
FROM MODULE-067, TEXT-088 WHERE MODULE-TEXT AND -
MOD-NAME-067 LIKE '%100%' AND -
MOD-VER-067=&P1 GROUP BY MOD-NAME-067, MOD-VER-067
EDIT MOD-NAME-067 -
ALIGN LEFT -
PICTURE 'X(22)'
EDIT MOD-VER-067 -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZ9'
EDIT SUM-LINES -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZZZZZZ9'
PAGE HEADER BLANK LINES AFTER 1 -
LINE 1 'MODULE-067 REPORT' CENTER -
LINE 2 'ÅDATE' CENTER
PAGE FOOTER BLANK LINES BEFORE 1 -
LINE 1 '- ÅPAGE -' CENTER
COMPUTE SUM-LINES-TOTAL-ALL=TOTAL(SUM-LINES) GROUP BY ALL LEVEL 1
EDIT COMPUTE 'SUM-LINES-TOTAL-ALL' -
ALIGN RIGHT -
PICTURE '-ZZZZ9'
DISPLAY LEFT EVEN COLUMNS = MOD-NAME-067 MOD-VER-067 SUM-LINES
MSEND
DBNAME
Mapping Revisited
Now that almost everyone is running Release 12.0 or 14.0,
gone are the days when DBNAME mapping from an ADS dialog-process
was handled solely by the dbname table mapping of
subschemas. ADS process written new, should contain
MOVE 'dbn1' TO DB-NAME.
so that the dbname is resolved at run time. If not one ends up getting 149x errors.
Another way some customers have avoided this situation is to define a default dbname
(say DEFDB) and put all the existing subschemas references there. And at the bottom of
DBNAME Table, add
SUBSCHEMA ???????? MAPS TO ???????? USING DBNAME DEFDB
as a catchall for all these subschemas.
Example:
*** DBTABLE DBTB0000 COMPILED 98-12-21 AT 13.42.32 ***
DBNAME *DEFAULT MATCH ON SUBSCHEMA IS OPTIONAL
SUBSCHEMA IDMSNWK? MAPS TO IDMSNWK? USING DBNAME SYSDIRL
SUBSCHEMA IDMSCAT? MAPS TO IDMSCAT? USING DBNAME SYSDICT
. . .
SUBSCHEMA SUB001 MAPS TO SUB001 USING DBNAME DICT001
SUBSCHEMA SUB002 MAPS TO SUB002 USING DBNAME DICT001
SUBSCHEMA ???????? MAPS TO ???????? USING DBNAME DEFDB
DBNAME DEFDB MATCH ON SUBSCHEMA IS OPTIONAL
SEGMENT EMPDEMO
SEGMENT SEGM001
SEGMENT SEGM002
SEGMENT SEGM003
SEGMENT TSEGM001
. . .
This way any subschema not found in the top mapping will be matched with
DEFDB if all the available segments are included there.
|
Linux Story, 'Deprecated', Frames or
Noframes?
[IDMS/SQL 9.1 carried an article on
Linux by student Pekka Salminen. Now an IDMS veteran replies to
the article here from a cmmerical viewpoint]
Linux is freely distributed. "Free"
here means the source code is freely given to you and there is no
copyright on either the source or the whole Linux Kernel as such.
In practice, one has to pay for the packaging and the book to the
vendors like SuZe, Red Hat, Celdera. This is understandable. The
price you pay is worth it and somewhat amounts to the Windows
license you would have to pay when you buy a PC. Even with all
this, Linux is not entirely 'free' as 'perceived by the user' if
we borrow a term from the relational gurus. There are 2-3
versions coming every year. Then you have to upgrade to the new
all the time. There you end up paying more, for an ever-changing
product. Being a free product there is no guarantee or technical
support. Even with all the stability it can offer, this will
intimidate the ordinary non-technical users.
End Users !
End users, rather "stupid end users"
decide the fate of a PC product now! In this respect, Linux box
is still far away from the user-friendliness an end user is
expecting. Though X Windows has improved a lot in install and
ease of use, still it is a nightmare for a non-technical user to
make full use of Linux. Obstacles are there in every step - from
a simple diskette copy to install of a new product you just
downloaded from the net -
So though Linux is a far superior
operating system than Windows9x, until the 'stupid end user'
demands are satisfied, it won't be a threat to Miscrosoft in the
real market place. Yet again we are seeing the same situation
when DOS/Windows combination upstaged OS/2 from IBM in the eraly
90s.
Deprecated:
what is it?
Webster's Dictionary lists the meaning
as: "(obs) supplicate, (archaic) to pray against, to seek to
avert, to disapprove of , depreciate". The word is rather an
obsolete , but today you see this in many Java and html
documentations. The obsolete word has got a facelift with its
usage in the computer software now. Features which have been
broadcast as vital and userfriendly in an earlier version of the
new product, is all of a sudden, undeseirable feature in the new
version. So a lot of html features you see today are deprecated
in the new version!
Usage of font tags has been deprecated
in the new html. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) have been broadcast
as the new trend. This has been further changed by the advocacy
of XML - Extensible Markup Language.
The same is true for Java. This is quite
unlike the compatibility one has witnessed on mainframes -
operating systems, databases like IDMS and languages like ADS.
All the features of earlier IBM operating systems were carried over to the
new MVS. IDMS and ADS support all the code written as early as
1980 even today. In contrast the lifetime of a new all powerful
code is limited to a few years if you are lucky!
Java Too!
The new all powerful programming
language Java is not free from this syndrome. Many features of
Java SDK 1.1 are deprecated in Java SDK 1.2. The following
compilation messages give an example:
Javac SocketExample.java
Note: SocketExample.java uses a deprecated API. Recompile with
"-deprecation" for details. 1 warning
Javac -deprecation SocketExample.java
SocketExample.java:28: Note: The method void setEchoCharacter(char)
in class java.awt.TextField has been deprecated.
tf.setEchoCharacter('*');
^
SocketExample.java:33: Note: The method boolean action(java.awt.Event,
java.lang.Object) in class java.awt.Component has been
deprecated, and class SocketExample (which is not deprecated)
overrides it.
public boolean action(Event evt, Object arg)
^
Note: SocketExample.java uses a deprecated API. Please consult
the documentation for a better alternative.
3 warnings
Frames or
NoFrames?
Frames divide the browser window into
smaller segments and display a different web page in each one. It
also reduces the readable window of your display. One of the
overlooked evil effects of using frames is the fact that it
adversely affect the portability of the web page. Frames make it
impossible to download a site's contents to your PC. This is
required if you are browsing an instructional website, with
multiple html files.
Also it is a tough job to save the frame
pages on your local PC. You may save and everything seems to work
ok. Only later, much later, you will be disappointed to see that
what he has saved is only the cover page which refers to other
frames where the actual html is!
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The crazy site using frames</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<frameset rows="10%,90%">
<frame name="f1" src="frame1-index.htm"
scrolling=no>
<frame name="f2" src="frame2-contents.htm"
scrolling=yes>
</frameset>
<noframes>
Browsers which do not support frames can go to hell!
</noframes>
</HTML>
It is an extremely nasty feature. There
is no point in dividing your 17" screen into multiple
frames, when the whole purpose is to see and read something. So
sites like CNN, Microsoft, CA etc do not use frames.
One Size Fits
All Solutions!
Now and then we hear from the software
vendors and industry pundits that they have now the ultimate
software in hand - the software which solves all your problems,
the tool that does create everything for you, the language which
is THE language of all languages, the architecture which does
address all issues, the package which takes care of everything
including writing programs for you! This is not new. If you go
back to the 60s, you may note that PL/1 language was introduced
by IBM to replace both FORTRAN and COBOL. Nothing of that sort
happened. Later, languages like Pascal and in more recent times C
on UNIX tried to dominate the arena. But soon C++ was the
paradigm language. Now it is Java!
IBM even tried CSP (Cross System product
- an interpreted language) to be the commercial central point of
portable languages. It was another flop even on IBM mainfraims.
CASE Tools in the late 80s and early 90s
claimed everything. But the CASE tools were the biggest flop of
all. IBM's SAA (whatever they mean that) and AD/Cycle also
claimed a single point solution accomplishing nothing.
Web Window!
In today's WWW age it is
important to know the buzzwords. Here are a few :
PERL - stands
for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Perl is a
language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files,
extracting information from those text files, and
printing reports based on that information. It's also a
good language for many system management tasks. The
language is intended to be practical (easy to use,
efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny,
elegant, minimal). Typically, PERL had been the chosen
language for CGI script programming until now.
CGI - Common
Gateway Interface
CGI is not a language. It's a simple protocol that can be
used to
communicate between Web forms and your program. A CGI
script can be
written in any language that can read STDIN, write to
STDOUT, and read
environment variables, i.e. virtually any programming
language,
including C, Perl, or even shell scripting.
Java - Is the
language created by Sun Microsystems. Java claims to be a
truly object oriented language to such extent that you
can only write object oriented programs in Java. It's
like C++ but much simpler. Unlike C++, Java was born for
internet during the internet era of the 90s. One big plus
point of Java is the fact that the compiler is FREE -
Yes, it's free from Sun Microsystems and there are no
timebombs. In recent months IBM has been pushing Java
more than Sun.
Java has made big headway into
the commercial marketplace now. Enthusiasts claim Java to
THE LANGUAGE of the coming decade.
JavaScript - Is
the script language which runs under browsers and was
created by Netscape. It is independent of Java though Sun
allowed Netscape to use the word 'Java' to it.
|
I LOVE YOU - hits the World!
On 4th May 2000, "I love you" Virus hit
email Systems from Manila to Mexico and created havoc
forcing many to shutdown their servers. According to CNN
News
"I LOVE YOU" virus
infected computers around the world Thursday --
overloading e-mail systems, deleting files and causing an
$100 million in damage in North America alone. The price
tag would exceed $1 billion by Monday morning. More at 5th May News
on CNN
The estimated cost of the 'I
Love You' Virus was in fact more than 15 billion dollars!
Typically the virus gets activated if you use the Microsoft
Outlook which
triggers a chain reaction of eMAILs besides deleting some
files on your PC! affects scripting files common to
company networks. The email carries a Worm with the
subject "ILOVEYOU" and a message that says,
"kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me."
The attachment is named "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs."
The Worm also searches through the all subdirectories and
overwrites all files with the extensions .JPG, .VBS, .JS,
.JSE, .CSS, .WSH, .SCT, .HTA, .MP3, .MP2 with its own
copy. It only affects Windows 98 and NT operating systems.
The sites hit include banks, House of Commons in London,
newspapers, Pentagon and so on. Our short memory tells us
that this is very similar to Melissa which created
problem in March! Recall the news from March 1999
"On Friday March 26th, Microsoft was made aware of a
Word macro virus (dubbed "Melissa")
that has affected a number of users and companies. As
with all security issues we take this very seriously, and
because of the widespread nature of this particular
virus, Microsoft is taking steps to proactively notify
our customers to help minimize its impact. By taking the
necessary precautions you can ensure it does not affect
you."
Questions on
Outlook and 'Virus Products'!
Experts questioned the Microsoft Office Security. What
they should question is the whole philosophy behind the
Office Suite being used as the font-end for many 'xyz'
operations! Why on earth are people using the third-rate
mail system called Outlook? Products like Eudora are
faster and easier to use! The corporate policy of hooking
everything on to Microsoft Office is totally wrong.
Secondly, products like Word has been converted to
monsters activating all kind sof macros and scripts in
place and out of place, forgetting the primary purpose -
just to write a letter or note!
Last, but not least, when 'Melissa' attack came, many
virus vendors jumped on to claim remedies for the macro
virus! What happened now? Seems the virus has developed
immunity to the remedies! Virus vendors are hiding in the
hole! Recall it's only weeks since sites ranging from
yahoo, amazon to CNN have been jammed with junk traffic!
Once again, this should be warning to those corporate
clients who are captivated by the magic of modern
colorful solutions with triggered scripts and fancy
stuff, forgetting the reliability and security of the
existing solutions!
Gartner
Group says "Asia is vulnerable"!
A Gartner Group "expert"
appeared on CNN Business Asia(5th May) characterized Asia
as more vulnerable to virus attacks! The reason: Asian
network managers are not good enough in scrutinizing such
things! Then, why did the virus propagate in Europe and
America equally fast where the 'network managers' are
better equipped? Where did 'Melissa' originate? Gartner
Group make a living on talking stupidity on all sorts of
things about which their knowledge is close to zero or
even negative. Recall that this is the firm which wrote the
death of IDMS ever since 1988! One dies only once, not 10
times!!! So long as macros and scripts are executed from
eMAILs and Word documents automatic, so long as third
class firms like Gartner Group advise corporate managers
to standardize on third rate products like Office and
Windows, even a child can make a virus, sitting anywhere
in the world!
Variants from I Love
You!
Several varaints from ILOVEYOU appeared in the
following weeks .Not only the pundits and virus vendors,
but also FBI and the Justice department were out there to
warn people! CNN
says that "Mikko Hypponen, director of
virus research at anti-virus company F-Secure in Finland,
said that while this virus -- dubbed "NewLove"
-- can make a computer unbootable.. " On the
other hand the new bug may destroy your PC therbey
stopping it spreading further!
Time caption of "We are better prepared" is
misleading! No one is prepared! The virus does not spread
because in a way it destroys itself!
There is no point in putting all the blame on "Outlook"
or Microsoft or today's easier target, Bill Gates! The
programming methodology followed by Outllook and Windows
are not the creation of one person or one company alone.
Industry created monster companies (Software, hardware
and consultancy) which have dictated terms and
methodologies and fed the corporate executives (who don't
know anything other than making +20 on an18 hole Golf
Course) with what is right and wrong for them. (According
to a survey 80% of the EDP projects done between 1991 and
2000 are failures! An IDMS person will be shocked to hear
this because 90% of the IDMS projects done between 1982
and 1992 are huge successes!)
The philosophy of executing a .VBS or any other script
sent through a mail on your PC is simply wrong! This is
extremely dangerous even when there is no virus because
it is rather easy to substitute another name as a
'sender' on a mail! Mail is and should be just mail.
Macros running on mail and Word are totally hopeless.
Word does a lot of things automatic (several of it are
annoying - one of them is that when you open a folder in
Word it tries to associate every file with a product icon-
if he doesn't find a match, especially on a network PC,
it take ages to come back!)
Someone in a recent CNN forum claimed that all these
are end user friendly productive features! Well, now you
know how productive a single virus was - just $15 billion!!
Note: A related news item appeared in Web Attacks and the Whitehouse (IDMS/SQL
News 9.1)
|
| Not so lighter
side: Small Thing Matters! IDMS/SQL 5.3 (Aug 96) reported the $7
billion disaster of the the 'error-free' Arianne-7
rocket of the European Space Agency from French Guyana.
The rockets exploded on take-off due to a silly software
bug!
Now it is NASAs turn. The Mars
Lander crashed earlier this year and it has been revealed
that there was a software bug. NASA did not test all the
things because of lack of funds!
CNN-
Software, tight budget doomed Mars lander
A software flaw probably caused the Mars Polar Lander
to shut off its descent engines prematurely, sending it
on a fatal plunge into the red planet, according to a
report released Tuesday (28th March). "Spurious
signals were generated when the lander legs deployed
during descent," Young said. "It gave a false
indication that the lander (had) landed."
Regardless of the cause, Young suggested, similar NASA
missions should require more funding, better training and
more computer program testing.
"There was inadequate software design and testing.
The software should have been designed to prevent
premature engine shutdown," he said. "In space,
one strike and you're out."
There was a full-scale test of the suspect software
before flight, but some touchdown sensors were
incorrectly wired, Young said. After the wiring was
corrected, the test was not repeated.
Had the defect been known, a software correction would
have been simple and inexpensive, he said.
Late addition: The most recent Concorde disaster in Paris also underlines
the same concerns. The 25-year old plane had an overhaul in September 1999 and had 'passed' an inspection only three days
before the disaster. The engine 2 's thrust reverser was replaced minutes before the
takeoff during a 30 minute repair and delay! And during take-off, flames were already
shooting from this engine. Too late to abort the takeoff. The rest is the sad story.
Without any investigation, one can conclude that the plane should not have left the ground
with doubts on the engine 2. In any case, the 30 minute repair was too hasty and
unsuccessful and contributed to the disaster.
|
The PC World Gimmicks:
PC World is full of surprises. Here we
give an example of formatting a diskette from the DOS prompt.
Note that the diskette has write-protection on.
C:\bat>FORMAT A: /F:720
Sett inn ny diskett i stasjon A:
og trykk ENTER når du er klar...
Controlls the existing diskformat.
Controlls 720 kB
Formatting finished
Write protection Error
Formatting is cancelled
Do you want to format more(J/N)?
Write protection! Why doesn't he tell us
in the beginning ? On ther hand if you try ERASE A:*.* then it
gives an immediate message about write protection, before
actually trying to erase.
Just One More:
The Power and
Weakness of Search Engines!
The internet search engines are
incredibly powerful. You see this power when you use a keyword
search on altavista with your college classmate's name and hit
his profile at a site 4000 km away in a remote place. On the
other hand you also see the weakness when in the middle of the
Tennis tournament in June, you search on keyword 'wimbledon' and
fail to hit the home page of the Wimbdledon Tennis Tournament at
http://www.wimbledon.org!
In this Issue : Back to Top
Back to Main Page
This page at http://geocities.datacellar.net/idmssql/idms92.htm
IDMS/SQL is published on behalf of IDMS
WatchDog Group, Palo Alto-Helsinki-Oslo for free circulation
among IDMS Users Worldwide. IDMS/SQL News is not a CA publication.
CA-IDMS/DB, CA-IDMS/DC and CA-ADS are registered trademarks of
Computer Associates International Inc. CICS, IMS-DB/DC and DB2
are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation. Technical examples
are only guidelines and modification might be required in certain
situations and operating systems. Opinion expressed are those of
the authors and do not represent the views of IDMS clients or
related vendors. © Permission is hereby granted to use or
reproduce the information, only to IDMS Customers and
Consultants, provided the material is distributed free of charge.
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