Unix vs Novell (HA..)

[Tim Campbell]

In article <42078 at cup.portal.com>, scarroll at cup.portal.com (Scott A Carroll) writes:
> 
>   Well this should spur a debate.  I need a little help convincing our more
> then brain dead MIS people to STAY with Unix.  Here is the problem, 3 years
> ago, when our budding (should have been killed then) MIS section decided to
> play with connectivity, they bought a copy of interactives Unix.  It was
> good stuff, but they did not know a thing about it, and wanted no OUTSIDE
> help installing, or building an applications base.  After fooling with it
> for over a year, and decideing C was beyond them, they ran out and bought
> VP/ix and clipper S87.  It gets ugly...The applications blew bad, but being
> that the guy who had commited the MIS section had moved on, and the guy who
> signed the check had NOT...they declared the project a success.  No one who
> uses the application (singular) likes.  No one who uses this system knew it
> had mail (what, you say!).  No one is given sh, rsh, or any privies outside
> the sigle application, cuz the MIS section said the "Terminal emulation will
> not support anything but the piece-of-s__t(oops, I added that)application".
> Of course I don't follow rules very well, so I have hounded them.  I have
> access to the box when I want it, and I have shot them in the face for there
> nasty little stories.

So far it sounds like you have PC's running a terminal emulation program to
(perhaps) telnet into your Unix machine which is running a database application
(just one) which runs under DOS.  It also sounds like you can't (are not 
even allowed) do anything else.

>   Hmm, new managment arrives. Computers and EDP are the newest buzz words for
> managment on the fast track (I am managment, but my heart is still in R&D).
> Well finnaly someone that will listen!  Things are rolling, wait, what!? Our
> MIS section has made a proposal for a new "LAN" (oh, god were do these guys
> go to school?).  Tear the old nasty box out, put new shinny box in?  Get ride
> of nasty user-hostile (MIS new word) Unix, bring in nice friendly Novell.

Are you familiar with Novell?  It's not an OS, it's a networking package.
It permits networking of (mostly) PCs running either DOS or OS/2, and although
I haven't checked recently, I understand it's supposed to be able to support
NFS to connect to other networks/systems.

> Hell guys, we are a world wide organization!  Our orginizations prime OS is
> Unix, along with Sperrys running god knows what, IBMs running who knows what,
> and every other orphan system and OS under the sun (no pun, really!).   How
> will we communicate with them?  You have all of a sudden seen the light, you
> want connectivity with the "Big World", and a "LAN".  But your gonna dump
> the great-white-hope of open operating systems for a NOS with limited scope!?

It's not really as a grim a picture as you've painted.  Novell isn't an OS,
and there is a reason it's the most popular network software available.  
If it does support NFS now (and I think it does, but I sure wish somebody
could comfirm this for me) it actually would be "better" for you DOS based
application than running under VP/ix under Unix connected through a LAN to
DOS boxes running terminal emulation to execute a non SQL based database
application across a network (gosh, I just can't imagine where the problem
could be in this solution).

>   Off soap-box mode.  You get the picture?  I need some help.  What ever these
> Bozo's commit too, this time, is gonna stay with us for a long time (cringe).
> This is a world-wide (and brother do I mean world-wide) kinnda operation.
> So Unix (done right, for christ sake) is the answer.  There is a strong
> following here for unix, but the guys signing the checks don't know Unix from
> tinkerbell.  They want results.  If you have any thoughts, comments, flames
> or your wanna jump on the old Unix revival band wagon...Make em good, I gotta
> do this, and do this fast.

Doesn't sound like your unix is "done right" at all.  Unix certainly has it's
share of problems and is by no means the "do all to end all" of operating 
systems.

You've painted an extremely limited picture, however, here are some 
observations...  you've indicated that you have only one application running
under DOS - fine.  You've also indicated that the application was written
in Clipper.  So it's fair for me to assume that this is a database.  You've
also indicated that this is "world wide".  The immediate problem that I 
see is that Clipper performs poorly on large databases because it doesn't
use the server/client relation employed by SQL databases.  Consequently, 
searches... especially accross database relations over a network - and 
really compounded if the network has a number of active users and parts
of the database are not on the same server, can take forever - so can 
reports and a number of other things - and naturally DOS has no way to 
"background" the task to allow you to keep working.

But alas clipper is a 4th Generation language used primarily for database
purposes and it's technically possible to write an application in such a
way that this wouldn't be a problem - technically, but I sure wouldn't want
to be the one to do it - it'd be a bloody mess.

Frankly I think you'd be happier trashing VP/ix, and your Clipper application
and switching to a database more suited to your hardware environment.
Both Oracle and Ingres are popular choices.  Although I'm personally slightly
biased to Ingres, Oracle has the advantage of having a version of their 
software written for every Tom, Dick & Harry's operating system and hardware
platform on the planet (not really, but it seems that way) - so connecting
your databases to other machines with alien OSs is less of a problem (but
naturally I haven't found anyone who _really_ does this well.

> ******************************************************************************
> *                    Hey, I would love to tell ya who I work                 * 
> *                    for, but hell, you would never belive it                *
> *                               {I know I don't}                             *
> ******************************************************************************

Try me
	
> *      Scott Carroll                            scarroll at cup.portal.com      *
> ******************************************************************************

	-Tim
-- 
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