Revitalizing the Internet and VMS

Da Beave writes "Similar to the "Going Back to the Past of the Internet" /. post, these guys want to not only revitalize the Internet, but the OpenVMS Operating System (Started by Digital, then to Compaq, now to HP....). They have a cluster of VAXen (32 bit) and Alphas (64 bit) for public (non-commercial) usage.... With more compilers than you can shake a stick at, and it's considered one of the most secure OS's around....." VMS was one of the first operating systems I learned to use. This page really brings back some memories, both good and bad.

Comments

Re:VMS didn't leave

[skuenzli]

"It never overwrites old files..." Many like this feature: by putting those hooks in at the filesystem level, all commands automatically inherit file versioning. When you're certain you don't need the old versions any longer, you can clean up with a single command. And, finally, if you really don't like it, you can turn it off.

Do you know how the versioning is implemented? I am a 'casual' user of VMS 7.2-1/7.3 at work, and this I think the automatic file versioning is a really cool feature. However, I've always wondered if I make a small change to a large file, does it copy the whole file? I'm guessing there are some configurable limits on file size for what gets versioned and what doesn't. I suppose you could use some sort of diff/patch implementation, but that would get a bit messy if you have (to borrow an example from elsewhere in this thread) foo;1 foo;2 foo;3 and delete foo;2.

Another feature I really like about VMS is the performance reporting tools that are built (??) into it. Every time I run load tests without telling my admin, he starts sending me graphs about what I did to the machines and do I know anything about it, plus if I can ask him for data from 2 months ago, and he's likely to have it.

Stephen

P.S. I say 'casual' because I just can't get into the 'set def mylogical:[sub_dir]' sort of stuff that our applications require.