From: hoffman@xdelta.zko.dec.nospam
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 2:44 PM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: VMS Vs any other OS


In article <COAi5.819$yq6.73088@cletus.bright.net>, "Mike E. Fackler" <mfackler@bright.net> writes:
:  My reading has recently taken me out of the Intel world and into other
:type systems. (OS/400 and OpenVMS) I don't mean for this question to start a
:war, but being so indoctrinated in a Win type OS (Win/2000) I am having a
:hard time seeing the advantage to the VMS OS. What exactly are it's
:strengths over other OS? Why would an industry choose it over anything else
:in general and W2K in particular?

  In no particular order, here are some of the salient features of the
  OpenVMS operating system...

  Multi-user interactive user support, full shared-resources clustering, 
  uptime, robust file system with individual volume limits circa one TB
  (and thousands of volumes), huge system performance and application 
  scaling, networked GUI interface, 64-bit flat virtual addressing, 
  built-in tools for local BACKUP and recovery, far better "DLL-like" 
  support for modular coding and distributions, built-in record management 
  support (heirarchical database), rolling upgrades of layered products 
  and the operating system in cluster environments (continuous uptime, 
  even with software upgrades), built-in batch-print capabilities, support 
  for a variety of networking protocols (COM, SMB, NFS, IP, DECnet, X.25, 
  http, etc), remote network system logins, built-in system dump and analysis 
  facilities, built-in multi-user security and auditing, built-in multiple 
  and mixed-language programming capabilities, good documentation, orderable 
  CD-ROM source listings of the operating system internals and source code, 
  process and engineering that targets the avoidance of introducing security
  problems and typical virus infection paths, built-in system tuning tools,
  built-in application debugging and application dump tools, support for 
  symmetric multiprocessing environments of up to 32 CPUs in a single
  system (and up to 96+ nodes in a cluster), built-in standard product 
  installation tools and associated product installation packaging tools, 
  a central goal of upward-compatibility of user-mode applications and 
  tools over OpenVMS releases, support for systems with 256 gigabytes of 
  physical memory, available full operating system and hardware support 
  from a single source, etc. 

  Continuous OpenVMS system uptimes of over ten years are not unheard of.  
  Some of these systems -- those configured in clusters -- can be running 
  current OpenVMS releases, with very long cluster uptimes, with the
  rolling-upgrade capabilties.

 --------------------------- pure personal opinion ---------------------------
   Hoff (Stephen) Hoffman   OpenVMS Engineering   hoffman#xdelta.zko.dec.com