Infobase Section 1

	FAQ Contents HOME you are here Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12	The ISSUG Infobase contains archived postings from our on-line discussion forums. Nothing here may be quoted without the written permission of the author(s) of the original postings. The Infobase is organised into 12 sections concerning different topics. FAQ content: Ram Malladi

Part 1: Infrastructure, Training for New Projects 1.1) Composer and Organisation 1.2) Productivity Metrics 1.3) Composer Project roles : Technical Architect 1.4) blank 1.5) Teleworking and Composer developers 1.6) Composer 4 Training 1.7) Converting to Composer 4 / Cool:Gen 4.1a 1.8) Converting to UNIX from MVS 1.9) Composer 4 Technical Details 1.10) Composer 4 Installation on NT 4 1.11) C4.1a Problems ... 1.1 ) Composer and Organisation Piergiorgio Ardizzi Dated : 29 January, 1997 at 07:53 Subject: Composer and Organisation The introduction of a tool like Composer certainly has a great impact on the organisation of an IT department. Probably many of you, after having used Composer for a certain period, have had to review organisational measures and procedures that were perfectly working before the introduction of Composer. The aim of this message is to discuss on the experiences done by users that, like us, have felt the need to "change something" in order to improve the productivity in using Composer. Sample questions, on which to start discussions, may be: - Did you find necessary to review the organisation of your IT dept. after the installation of Composer ? - If yes, what kind of measures did you find useful/necessary to review/apply ? - What kind of tools did you find useful/necessary to supplement to Composer in order to improve productivity Regards Piergiorgio Ardizzi, Banca del Gottardo, Lugano Switzerland ===== George Hawthorne Dated : 29 January, 1997 at 14:47 Subject: Re: Composer and Organisation Interesting question, and a big one. Here are some tips on making CASE work, produced by The Barton Group several years ago. I think they are sensible and a useful starting point. - Establish a means of measuring results that addresses both short and long-term costs and benefits. Quantitative measures answer cost and schedule questions but take a long time to develop a base for comparison. The short-term goals should focus on qualitative improvements and job satisfaction. - Keep expectations realistic. Look for short-term improvements in communication and the quality of deliverables, but do not expect major productivity improvements until you have been using the products for at least three years. - Move slowly and carefully. All organizations resist even simple changes, CASE involves complex changes in organizations and tools. Therefore, a slow incremental process is required. - Scout the territory. Chances of success are improved by prior use of structured methods. Companies that understand the methods first will find implementing CASE easier. - Test Extensively. Organizations that are successful generally conduct at least four pilot projects over more than a year. Pilots should be conducted using portions of the tools and methods on any given project. - Forgive test errors. Expect to make mistakes on pilot projects. They are a learning experience. - Allow for post-purchase expenses. CASE cannot be successfully implemented with a onetime expenditure of capital on hardware and software. These expenses generally account for one quarter to one third of the final cost. - Splurge on training. The requirement for training is usually understated. Expect that 10 days of training will be required to gain proficiency in any given area. Anywhere from two to several months of experience are required to gain competence. - Supply coaching. These new tools are so different that project teams require expert assistance. Coaches can identify and correct problems before they become too large. - Focus on use and support. Allow only those projects that can be supported with training and coaching to use the tools. Inadequately supported use leads to confusion and frustration. - Encourage full use. The analytical capabilities of CASE tools are severely underutilized. Develop a team to investigate these capabilities, learn how to apply them and demonstrate their use. - Address organizational issues. Plan for and manage the changes that accompany the use of CASE products, including new skill requirements and the push for a consistent development approach that forces many people to change their work habits. This is perhaps the most important issue. - Make improvement a strategic goal. Improving the development process must be a part of the corporation's strategic plan. Without directed support for the use of CASE, project management has an easy excuse not to follow through. - Involve the project manager. Ensure that these people understand the impact on their role and how to manage CASE-based development. ===== Andy Ward Dated : 29 January, 1997 at 15:18 Subject: Re: Composer and Organisation Pier, On the products side of your question, we use the following:- - GuardIEn (IET) - Configuration Management/Change control etc. - IRIS (IET) - Report tool - Used mainly for batch type reports - CE-Access (Response Systems) - Analyse/View objects in encyclopaedia - Business Objects (Business Objects) - Ad hoc query tool - Playback (Compuware) - Testing Tool - FileAid/RDX (Compuware) - DB extract tool - used for creating test databases whilst maintaining RI. - DB Analyser (Platinum) - DB space information - Plan Analyser (Platinum) - DB/2 plan analysis - Strobe (Landmark) - Analyse transactions in flight. All of these are for a mainframe DB/2 environment, although some of these tools are available for client server. Check out the web pages! Hope this is of use. Andy 1.2) Productivity Metrics Jay Wiener / CorTechs Dated : 25 February, 1997 at 03:37 Subject: Productivity Metrics TI used to regularly measure the productivity, in function points, of first one, and then a second internal development group. As each group became more experienced with the tools, and as the tools themselves matured, the graphs they used to publish evidenced increasing productivity over time, and compared these to various industry "norms". I have not witnessed any updates to this data since Composer hit the street, nor have I seen the results of any detailed study of this topic. Is there anyone out there who has either software development or software maintenance productivity metrics of a reliable nature with Composer 3? Jay Wiener CorTechs 1.3) Composer Project roles : Technical Architect Kevin Bingham Dated : 11 March, 1997 at 09:05 Subject: Composer Project roles : Technical Architect Hi, Does anyone have documentation covering Composer project roles, specifically that of Technical Architect. I envisage that this role should cover issues such as implementation architecture design, communications etc. If anyone can supply such documentation, I would be grateful Thanks Kevin Bingham MBA (Pty) Ltd South Africa ===== Jay Wiener / CorTechs Dated : 13 March, 1997 at 16:07 Subject: Re: Composer Project roles : Technical Architect Just a brief note regarding the "Technical Architect" role. I suggest that we create a nice big muddy pothole which somebody eventually steps into, when we perceive this as a "Composer Role". The Technical Architect plays a role which transcends Composer, and within which, Composer represents but one of the technologies and approaches which must be integrated, albeit a significant one. Over the years, I've seen this role described many times, the best and most beneficial of which were not Composer-centric, as we in the Composer world occasionally tend to be. Kevin, I'm sorry that I don't have a good one readily available to post, but I suggest that you take a good generalized description of the TA role, and customize it for your culture and environment (including Composer). Two good newsgroups, a post in either of which would probably return some excellent suggestions for the generalized role description would be: alt.computer.consultants (recommended) and misc.business.consulting Regards, Jay Wiener / CorTechs 1.5) Teleworking and Composer developers John McIntyre Dated : 03 June, 1997 at 16:00 Subject: Teleworking and Composer developers We will shortly begin a teleworking pilot scheme in our IT department. The scheme involves (initially) 2 days in the office and 3 days at home per week. One of the participants is a Composer developer who will utilise an ISDN line to gain access to the corporate network.Have you any experience of working with Composer in a teleworking environment? I would appreciate some comments/hints/advice about using Composer in this environment. Many thanks John McIntyre ===== JoJo Calora Dated : 06 June, 1997 at 06:09 Subject: Re: Teleworking and Composer developers John, I was in a Composer project in NJ where part of it was developed in Bangalore, India. The Host Encyclopedia was in NJ and the people in Bangalore would checkout and checkin subsets succesfully. The file transmission took longer but it all worked out fine. JoJo ===== george simpson Dated : 11 July, 1997 at 16:01 Subject: Re: Teleworking and Composer developers One of the largest system ever built w/ Composer, MAXIMUS was built via telecommuting. It had like 600 entities. I'm not sure as to how many programmers there were. A lot I'm sure. Most of them telecommuted. The system was built by T.I.,, so Sterling should be able to give you the success story. Later, George 1.6) Composer 4 Training Alan Noake Dated : 01 August, 1997 at 17:57 Subject: COOL Training Can anyone recommend any other training providers for Composer 4 training? My project needs to have 6 people trained (preferably on our project site in Minneapolis USA. We are looking for a two week intensive development course like the one Sterling provide. ===== Pam Lakey Dated : 15 August, 1997 at 18:45 Subject: Composer 4.1 training Can anyone direct me to who to contact for training in Plano, TX for Composer 4.1? 1.7) Converting to Composer 4 / Cool:Gen 4.1a Ron Vidovich Dated : 21 July, 1997 at 20:51 Subject: Migration Rules with Composer 4 Does anybody know of any PTFs or SQL scripts that allow migration rules to be relaxed on a Composer 4 CSE running on Unix? I know Composer 3 had PTFs that allowed migration rules to be relaxed. ======== george simpson Dated : 22 July, 1997 at 21:08 Subject: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 I'm going thru this right now, and am interested in anyone else's experience, as a thread on the this bulletin board. Here's an email from me to someone asking these very questions and his response on the subject. --- ME: We have not encountered any show stoppers,,, but are kind of flying by the seat of our pants. We did find one in 4.0 which had to do with invalid SQL being genned sometimes when the default property on the read each's wasn't set to 'never gen a distinct'. We also wrote some SQL to update all of the Autoscroll properties to 'Y' for our system as the Microsoft Entry fields are 3 dimensional in version 5, and in so doing shrank by a few pixels, rendering some of our window's non functioning. We are at some risk because the user funnel and asynch daemon for our platform (AIX) is still at 4.0,,, so if there have been parameter changes in those functions we may be hosed. So far no problems though. Much of the reason we went is we're scheduled to go out Dec 1 this year and thought that the 5 month lead was enough to make it work. If we were going out earlier we would have stuck w/ Composer 3. --- HIS RESPONSE: Thanks for the info on 4.0/4.1.Here are my findings on 4.0 & 4.1. We are MVS & NT 4.0 using Composer for C/S. Only a few block mode. 4.0: Only major show stopper was the Default push-button(PB) not working. Also you have to click 3 times on a PB to get it to execute. Not good for our users (200 of them). I'm currently testing our 100 or so windows in 4.1. 4.1: - Bus sys fonts need changing to smaller font - prompts are chopped off. - a Window blows up in dialog manager after the SVR is done executing and b4 the CLT window starts executing. Sending .dat files to Sterling - The setcaption & setpromptcolor work on some PCs and not on others. - Get a inserted "Commif" parameter in the C code when generating. It isn't defined so I get a error in building it. This only happens for CLT with no server calls. I do have a WorkAround (WA). Got it off LinkFAQs. Will be fixed in General release of 4.1 on Aug 31. - C4.0 clts cannot link to C4.1 clts. I know we need to regen all windows but it would be nice if we could mix both versions. - Found out we needed a new version 5.0 C++ compiler for C4.1 As soon as I can get our windows not to blow up, then maybe we can convert to c4.1 in production. ======== george simpson Dated : 30 July, 1997 at 15:07 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 Found 2 more 1) The view sizes in C4.1 are slightly larger than in C3. TI has put a structure around each view declared. I think they did this to force a byte allignment because of floating point alignment problems in various operating systems and compilers. So if you just under the 32 k limit you may go slightly over. 2) If you unmarked generate missing flags in you C externals, you may need to put them back. TI seems to generate them in the caller. Regards, George ======== george simpson Dated : 03 September, 1997 at 21:06 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 We have found 2 more problems in 4.1a 1) A menu item's accelerator keys don't always work. We don't consider this one too severe. 2) After returning from a client to client the tab key doesn't work. We do consider this severe and have requested a fix. That's it for now George ======== John Grigsby Dated : 08 September, 1997 at 17:23 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 The C4 IT is the old 5.x "BATCHIT" utility. The Electronic Books documentation is not completely accurate. The install was a pain in the tail, so do it on a test box first to make sure that everything is working correctly first. ======== george simpson Dated : 09 September, 1997 at 16:47 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 John, I'm going to email this to our admin!!! We're currently having trouble w/ some environment variables 1) IEFCAS was working now it went south 2) IEFadEnv.def (what a name) we've never got working, so everything but the executable is landing in one directory. This all maybe because we're in AIX.... Any ideas anyone ??? Thanks, George ======== John Grigsby Dated : 09 September, 1997 at 18:54 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 Luckily, the human mind tends to erase bad memories. The tickets, going through my notes, that I created having to do with this subject, were 225878 226266 226532 I have no idea why three were open at various times. You have discovered what Electronic Books doesn't tell you -- that a ".def" file, instead of whatever the name in Ebooks is, is where the tokens that you would like to include from the C3 IT database -would- go (these tokens tell the product where to put source, object, etc), but you will find that essentially they are wortheless. I think that about two of them work. An "issue" was opened, meaning that at some point Sterling may fix this. I hope that the issue is listed inside one of the tickets I listed. Essentially, we now have two directories -- the one where everything goes except the executables, and the one where the executables go. As always, there is more than this, but I hope that this will help. John ps - you are right. IEFCAS doesn't work. Here is the line from our script: setenv IEFCAS /PROJECT/tram/tramd/v1/target/bin/libCASCADE.a; Notice that it points to the bin directory.. ======== Bryan McElderry Dated : 10 September, 1997 at 23:32 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 Item 2, the tab key problem, is a show stopper for us as well. We are told that it and several other problems will be fixed by a ptf in 2-3 weeks. ======== george simpson Dated : 11 September, 1997 at 15:10 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 Bryan, Thanks for the update, i'd reopened issue 71268, which was supposed to have fixed it previously, but sterling didn't let me know it had been accepted. The accellorator thing, issue 72201, was opened previously by another customer. I think we have 2 more of the annoying variety. 1) the enter key does not execute the double click event on a list box. 2) the escape key does not activate a button marked as: Cancel - Close without execution. Thanks, George ======== george simpson Dated : 11 September, 1997 at 16:01 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 John, Spoke to sterling,,, they really don't like to talk bout the it tool. They say btunx is much better,,, will give that a shot..., your 226266 about aeenv going to the wrong place is issue 74400, the move doesn't work issue 75572,, the problem w/ iefcas is issue 74400,, i suspect there's a boat load more told them that even the name iefad was stupid, as its only one vowel different than aefad... we renamed it... they have say there will be a major revamp,, and the documentation will be corrected, in the 4.2 release, though i cann't see any reason to tie the fixes to a release,, anyway their support is unhappy as well Regards, George ======== John Grigsby Dated : 11 September, 1997 at 17:50 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 btunx - is that motif? In that case, you can't just telnet off to the box -- which as the only advantage of iefad! ======== george simpson Dated : 11 September, 1997 at 19:02 Subject: Re: Upgrading to C4, C4.1 John, Yes it's an x window's thing,, basically,,it is the build tool for nt, which is written in composer, ported to unix. I cann't see how this is going to fix the location thing,, but i'll let you know if it does. on the last message i got the issue number for the aeenv thing wrong it's 74936... i don't feel like tracking a bunch of issues on this one,, they should,, Later, George ======== Mark Kinsman Dated : 06 June, 1997 at 00:21 Subject: C4 Conversion I'm looking for any information that could help me start planning for converting from 5.3.1 to C4. Our application is Client/Server, Sybase DB,Server HP UX10.10, Client Win95. Are there tips/point sheets/checklists available for estimating and putting a project plan together? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Mark ======== Chris Lukas Dated : 06 June, 1997 at 17:33 Subject: Re: C4 Conversion My TI representative provided a Composer 4 Upgrade Guide that discusses upgrade planning, considerations for upgrading the encyclopedia and tips for application conversion. It has some task lists, etc that might be a good start. If you cannot locate this I would be happy to forward this information. Regards, Chris Lukas itech@erols.com 1.8) Converting to UNIX from MVS* Andy Ward Dated : 07 May, 1997 at 11:48 Subject: From MVS To Unix We currently operate Composer by IEF 5.31 running on OS/2 workstations targeting MVS/CICS/DB2, using a host encyclopaedia and code generator. Over the longer term we are considering making our target platform HP-UX and Oracle,but in the interim we require to both upgrade our toolset version (to Composer 4 - necessitating an upgrade to NT from OS/2). At this time we wished to explore utilising a CSE based on HP-UX and Oracle and generating code targeted at DB2/MVS/CICS etc from there. This we would then upload to the mainframe and use an MVS IT to implement. This (we hope) would mean that we could entirely remove our host encyclopaedia, and move all development activity off the mainframe (we have to pay for mainframe cycles and disk space etc.). First of all , is this a viable option, or have I misconstrued the functionality of CSE's. If ok, has anyone done it. Any tricks to note. What is the MVS IT like (I half recall some bad press). Is it feasible to make the host encyclopaedia redundant in this fashion. In the longer term, does any one have any experience of moving from MVS to Unix. It would be our intention to move from 3270 block mode to VT100/VT220 block mode in the first instance via Reflections 2. We would just retarget our code at HP-UX/Oracle and regenerate on the mid range. Again all help and tips would be greatly apreciated. Also, does anyone have any experience of what is missing from Unix environments. For example, MVS is fairly sophisticated with several infrastructure type items included, whereas Unix seems to be fairly lacking in niceties. Any tips on minimum "extras" needed - e.g. Schedulers; monitors; editors; and the like. Thanks Andy Ward ==== Derrick Ackermann Dated : 08 May, 1997 at 17:14 Subject: Re: From MVS To Unix Hi Andy, We are just more than a year down the track in a project to move our production and development environments from MVS to HP-UX Oracle. This includes online IMS/DC transactions, batch procedures, and also an IEF 5.2 Host CE (using IEF 5.2 worksations on Warp Connect 3). Implementation is currently scheduled for September. As regards the encyclopaedia, we essentially use a single large model approach (1.6M objects) on the CE, and will, at least for the short/medium term, use the same approach on the CSE, which is currently Composer 3 running on an HP D250/2. Due to C3 CSE limitations, we will be converting to Composer 4 shortly. (The added functionality we require is mainly CSE cross reference reporting, and the ability to submit batch migrates). At the moment, with fairly limited developer access to the CSE, performance is satisfactory; we are concerned about the more restricitive concurrency on the CSE, and our ability to handle the volume of migrates we require. In general we find that "interactive" CSE access is reasonable, but batch utility type activities (model copies, migrates, etc) can be considerably slower. By the way, we have 23 IEF/Composer developers, of which 3 to 4 are currently active on this project; the balance are still working on the existing MVS environment. Until recently, we had stuck with Warp as our C3 workstation platform, but have taken the decision to switch to NT; this is in progress for our project, and will be rolled out to developers as they move to CSE development. The reasons for this are not related to Composer, but rather a requirement to run various other 32 bit Windows applications. I can't comment on the MVS IT, as we are targetting HP-UX. Retargetting online procedures to HP-UX Oracle has not provided too many problems; these are remaining as block mode, although we are using the AEFCN block mode client for user access, rather than AEFC via telnet as you propose. Batch is a challenge, though, as you have to cope with the infrastructural issues you mention, as well as building the shell scripts to drive the procedures. Online job submission requests and remote printing have been 2 issues we have grappled with; 3rd party tools being used to assist here are Control/M (scheduling) and Control/D (printing). Operating system level monitoring is via HP products, although we are still looking at the issue of transaction monitoring and Oracle database tools. Until now we have used the infamous "vi" editor, but still have a question about whether to provide something more friendly to ease the developers sudden switch to Unix. My response has obviously been fairly sketchy, but please feel free to contact me for any further information. We'd also be keen to keep up to date with your progress. Regards Derrick Ackermann Email: ackdd@safmarine.co.za Safmarine Cape Town South Africa ==== Tim Courtney Dated : 13 May, 1997 at 10:39 Subject: Re: From MVS To Unix Andy, Regarding the MVS/IT I think you will find that it is not as user-friendly as the application generation options of the CE. We have been using it here for the past 18 months and have found that the developers must be more aware of how it works than is the case with the CE option. There is a TI article titled Mysteries of the MVS/IT which appeared in the September 96 newsletter and is mandatory reading for the developers here. We are currently evaluating the C4 CE and will probably move back to using the CE generation options when we move our CE up to this version. We have also been involved in the model management tasks of a small project here which is using a v3 CSE. As with the IT, the functionality of this version of the CSE is a subset of what is available on the CE and this causes the DC team some inconvenience. Tim Courtney Old Mutual, Cape Town. tcourtney@oldmutual.com ==== Mark Howard Dated : 17 February, 1997 at 13:27 Subject: Converting: MVS/DB2 to UNIX/ORACLE We're in the process of converting all our block-mode Composer applications from an MVS/DB2 platform to a UNIX/ORACLE platform, using Composer 3. Has anyone out there done this before? Is there any gross deterioration is response and DBMS performance times that we should be aware of? What are the implications of running online and "batch" Composer applications in the UNIX environment simultaneously? Are there any implications/advantages/disadvantages in using Composer 4 as opposed to Composer 3 in such a conversion. Is there any difference for block-mode applications? Any recommendations with regard to a choice between dynamic and static linking of CABs/EABs in the UNIX environment? ==== Steve Aughinbaugh [Texas Instruments] Dated : 17 February, 1997 at 14:08 Subject: Re: Converting: MVS/DB2 to UNIX/ORACLE Mark, I have not done this, nor I have talked to many that have, but I do have a comment or two. Performance may be an issue and you should take the advice of HP in sizing the HP system that will run this application. Any time you move from one OS to another, there can be great differences in how a given application will perform. On the Composer 3/Composer 4 question, I would say that there is an advantage to using Composer 4. The main advantage is while that you are porting the system and re-testing the entire applications is the perfect opportunity to upgrade to the latest release. You can do both at the same time and save a great deal of effort over doing these separately. Cheers, Steve ==== Hkon Eide Dated : 20 February, 1997 at 15:46 Subject: Re: Converting: MVS/DB2 to UNIX/ORACLE Hi Mark. We've recently moved a IEF5.2/MVS/DB2 application to Composer 3/Win3.x/AIX/Oracle. In the process we've programmed a new GUI-interface on Windows-clients, - but as I understand, you plan on running the old block-mode screens on the Unix? (I thought you guys were finished by now ? :-) We're running Oracle and Composer server-modules on a R6000-SP2 cluster. That means we've got one node for the server applications and another for Oracle. Our response times are on average better than the old MVS/DB2-application. The clients are run from several different places, both on land and on oil-platforms. Users on platforms report great responses to, even those running over satelite-links. As is always the case with performance, - make sure your hardware is as fast as you can afford (it can always get better with more money :). As of yet we've not tried running online and "batch" Composer applications on the unix-box simultaneously, - but we plan to, so will keep you informed. We've not tried Composer 4, but since it seems that most renewal is on the GUI-side here (OLE2/OCX etc.) I can't really see the great benefits in upgrading if you're just using block-mode screens. We've linked all our server-modules/EABs statically, - but thats really just because we've once read on c.d.oracle.server that dynamically linked programs (when using ProC) sometimes tend to core-dump. Regards, -Haakon- ==== Darius Panahy Dated : 23 February, 1997 at 22:14 Subject: Re: Converting: MVS/DB2 to UNIX/ORACLE One point to bear in mind is that the generated application is not strictly block mode - it uses character mode telnet and therefore every character entered is echoed to the server. This gives poor results over a wide area network. One solution is to use the windows AEF client provided with the UNIX IT. This provides a local AEF client and uses TCP/IP to connect to server daemon (IEFAD) and thus offers much better performance than using telnet. You will need to resolve security though since the application runs under the userid that started the daemon rather than the user's own unix account. An advantage is that each user does not need a UNIX account. Regards Darius Panahy Information Engineering Technology Ltd 1.9) Composer 4 Technical Details* Praveen Kumar Dated : 21 April, 1997 at 07:55 Subject: Composer 4.0 technical details. We need to know which versions of COBOL,C,C++ is supported by Composer 4.0. Also which databases and their verisons is supported by Composer 4.0. We need this information urgently. If anyone there has this information please reply and oblige. ======== Ram Malladi Dated : 21 April, 1997 at 10:51 Subject: Re: Composer 4.0 technical details. Praveen, Practically you can deploy Composer 4 generated code on almost all platforms. Rather than Versions, your C++ or C or Cobol is dependent on the Compiler that you use in your environment. For ex. Composer 4 works on OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95,...for development and you can target DB2, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQL Server etc. If you mention your development/target environment, it is possible to say things in detail. For ex: in my previous project, we used... Workstation (for Construction): Operating System : Windows NT 3.51/ 4.0 Compiler : Visual C++ V4.2 Local Database : Oracle 7.3 for NT Production Server Environment: OS : HP-UX v10 DB : Oracle 7.3 Production Client Env. OS: Windows 95, Windows 3.11 If you need more info. send me more details. Ram ======== Enrico Martignetti Dated : 21 April, 1997 at 13:09 Subject: Re: Composer 4.0 technical details. Praveen, you can find the complete documentation of Composer related products in the January '97 issue of the Customer Support Newsletter. I receive it by mail, from my support center in Wiesbaden (from which we italian customers depend). If you don't have it, it should be available at the following URL: http://www.ti.com/software/docs/support/cses1.htm However, you must register to this site before being allowed to access. From the URL above (whose access is free), you can submit a registration form. Best Regards. ======== george simpson Dated : 06 May, 1997 at 14:30 Subject: Re: Composer 4.0 technical details. Talked to TI last week about the version of the microsoft compiler. Currently there are "No known problems" with microsoft version 5 of the C compiler (professional edition). Composer 4.1 will be released "Certified" (whatever that means) with version 5. 1.10) Composer 4 Installation on NT 4 John Pederson Dated : 21 February, 1997 at 18:07 Subject: Composer 4 Installation for NT Has anyone developed a way to install Composer from a script? We always used a batch file to copy the IEF/Composer software from a shared directory and then modified the config.sys parameters. I'm concerned that now there are registry entries that are needed on the NT platform. (I don't know that for a fact. I see some that are made during installation but I don't know if the toolset actually uses them.) The amount of code entry and configuration involved with TI's supplied setup routine gives me hives thinking about how to write installation instructions that someone can follow acurately the first time. Besides, who wants to spend a day at each machine installing Composer, MS Visual C++, a database, and configuring a mainframe emulator? If you've done some work in this area please let us know. ======== Wayne Brown Dated : 25 February, 1997 at 02:30 Subject: Re: Composer 4 Installation for NT John, I've just finished my tenth workstation installation and agree with you entirely. The installation interface supplied by TI is 'clutsy', (I'm not sure if thats the way it is spelt). It feels as though it was design for 3270 ISPF panels and simply regenerated for Windows. The number of times I've ended up with orphaned 'compclnt' directories with fully installed software is not good. I have to go into the system environemt and amend the variables after copying the orphaned directory into the composer directory. We have a standard where Composer is the root (2nd level after %SystemRoot%) and all the additional components are below it, eg. :\composer\compclnt,infobase, etc. I would really like to talk to the chaps who built the installation functions. A few simple changes and it could be a seamless process. We have moved to NT 4 and loving it, I can take a standard workstation and bring it up to be a fully installed developer workstation in 4 to 5 hours. Our product suite consists of NT4, SNA Svr 2.11, SQL Svr 6.5, MSVC ver4 (full installation) and finally Composer with four clients, Comms manager, tool set and build tools. There are some tricks with SQL Svr, set your master data base to 100 megs if you are intending to do any serious development. We have found SQL svr to be quite robust. It would be useful if there was an uninstall function on composer so you don't have to edit the registry to remove the entries if you need to move the licence to another workstation. I have some standards for directory structures if you're interested, but as you have already commenced installation you may not need them. Wayne Brown AUS + 0411244740 ======== Jeff Spector Dated : 25 February, 1997 at 15:29 Subject: Re: Composer 4 Installation for NT John, over the past few months we have been converting our shop to NT (both 3.51 and upgrading slowly to 4.0). Initially, I was having quite a few "challenges" brought on by the NT Registry. Basically, it is the old autoexec.bat, config.sys and .INI files of yesteryear. It is especially challenging when you're transporting Composer software from one machine to another. Recently, we purchased Quarterdeck's Cleansweep v3.0 (approx $30 USD) which provides the ability to export (and eventually import) portion's of the Registry. Cleansweep also has some nice features for uninstalling software and/or moving it to another machine. I'm sure there are other products out that provide similar functionality but I've been happy with Cleansweep's performance to date. Since the Registry is the "brain" of NT's operations, take care when performing surgery here... Regards, Jeff Spector CASE Masters ======== Douglas Tomb Dated : 25 February, 1997 at 16:54 Subject: Re: Composer 4 Installation for NT I am in the process of setting up a new workstation with the following configuration; Win NT 4.0, SQL Server 6.5, MSVC, and COMPOSER 3. I have applied the two PTF's, RTN3003 and RTN3004, as well as the ESQL/C pre-compiler upgrade. Any tips on how to configure the SQL Server, ie setting up userid's, etc, so that I can generate a database? Any suggestions or comments would be helpful. ======== Wayne L Brown Dated : 27 February, 1997 at 11:56 Subject: Re: Composer 4 Installation for NT Hi Doug, A couple of things about SQL Svr, ensure that SQL Exec is installed to run as a local system account on the workstation. Make the master data base at least 100 megs, this may seem extreme but I've had a developer fill it up on me and had to resize it on the fly to 110. Use the Multi protocol communications option as we as named pipes, this Microsofts name for TCP/IP, the other option shich has TCP/IP in its name is really winsockets. For expediency's sake we have set the login id and password in the build script to 'sa', later on I'll go back and work out how to use the user login id. But that will require the use of integrated security something I'm not using at this stage. All the data bases use standard security. After connecting to the DBMS server as sa with null password (the default), go to the logins and change sa to have a password of sa. DO NOT close down or leave the server at this stage as the id and password for the server are now different. If you do you will have to deinstall it and then reinstall it again. Go to the server entry and edit it, add the sa password and modify. You can now run composer and generate the test model. If you get any errors they will normally relate to either, path, inlcudes or library entries. The ESQL C as supplied by TI does not upadte the environment variables - include and library. These have to be done manually. If you want the machine to support mutliple developer all the environment variales must be moved into the system space. I have found it is best to install all software as the adminstrator of the work station. We are currently running 3 server level encyclopedia in MS SQL Svr and NT 351 with some developers also still in NT 351 and the rest in NT4 and composer 4. Be very carefull when copying the user environment variables to the system area, one missing semi colon cost two of us two days lost work. In a multi work station environment installing Composer by hand on each work station is wasteful. TI need to work on using unattended installation using scripts. Oh by the way, it is possible to do an MS SQL Svr unattended installation. I hope the above is useful! Regards Wayne 1.11) C4.1a Problems george simpson Dated : 24 September, 1997 at 15:51 Subject: C4.1A problems, problems, problems.... problems, problems, problems.... We are a way's out from production, so we're not quite into the QA of our cool:gen online apps,, but here's what i got.... we cann't see your tickets,,, only the issues,, MANY MANY thanks for participating 1) Version 5 of the Microsoft C resource compiler makes all the entry fields 3 dimensional. In order to do this they needed to use more real estate on the window. They had to steal the space from the inside of the control, so the amount of text displayed on the entry fields (w/ the margin box property) decreased. There is a problem if the amount of space is no longer big enough to type into and the autoscroll property is not set on. This may render you field, and window nonfunctional. The work around we used was to run some SQL against the encyclopedia, setting the autoscroll property on. 2) The enter key doesn't execute the double click event when a list box has an item selected, and it has focus -- issue 76157 3) The escape key doesn't activate a push button with the property 'Cancel - close w/ out execution' - issue 76158 4) Externals are always called w/ missing flags, so we remarked the poperty in the external's action diagram and fixed the views in the externals themselves. 5) The sizes of generated views are a few bytes larger, so if your right up against the 32k limit you may need to shrink your views slightly (very slightly). 6) The debugger still displays numbers less than zero with the patterns like 0.0x and 0.00x incorrectly - issue 75618 7) We are having trouble linking with the cascade.lib off of the LAN. The work around is to copy it to the workstation. The lib only (i.e. not the DLL). The ticket number is 236380. This may just be me being dumb dumb dumb 8) The IEFCAS environment variable isn't working in the C4 IT tool. This is important if you all want to use dynamic link libraries on the server side for the cascade library run and have seperate system's (components) under the same asynchronous daemon. I think we are going to find that we can get this to work. 9) The IT tool is much better in C4 than C3, but has so many issues we aren't tracking them. Sterling is promising to clean up that act in the 4.2 release scheduled in the December/January time frame. 10) The accelerator's on the menu items do not work - issue 72201 11) A show stopper, the tab key doesn't work after a return on a client to client flow. - a ptf is due out in weeks - issue 71268 12) We have one window whose sequencing (i.e. when your tabbing order) doesn't work. We haven't turn that into Sterling because the resource file that gets genned looks OK, so we think it may be in Microsoft's resource compiler or NT itself. There is a second service pack for the c compiler. We'll try that next......... 13) We have an extremely large procedure (250 action blocks) whose build file would get corrupted (thanks batchit.exe) . The work around was to take out some of the uneeded things from the intdbclm.scr file. 14) something stinks in the refrigerator and i cann't figure it out. ;-) george