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 Pro*C) 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
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