On 28 Aug 2002 at 7:18, John Burke wrote:

> True, the Vax 11/780 was introduced in October 1977, BUT Oracle was
> not available until 1980 (V2, V1 was never officially released). Even
> then it was still written in PDP-11 assembly language and would take a
> number of years to catch on, especially for transaction processing
> commercial loads. So I would still argue

But Cincom's Total DBM was available for both the PDP-11 under
RSX-11M  and RSX-11M+ and the VAX-11/780 under VMS.  Total
had features in 1979 that Image still lacks in 2002, composite key
items for one.  DCL was prototyped / field-tested under RSX-11M
/M+, as were a number of other system enhancements and utilities
that found their way into VMS . DCL was far ahead of anything HP
had for a command language until the introduction of MPE/XL.

I would say that, after bundling Image with the OS, the greatest
single advantage of MPE on the HP3000 over RSX on the PDP-11
or VMS on the VAX was the absence of the need to perform a
sysgen to upgrade system software.  This is really where the system
management of the HP3000 saved its owners the big bucks.  New
OS tape in mail, STORE system, CLT tape on drive,START
COLDLOAD, volia, new OS and system is back up, always within
hours, frequently in less than one.  By way of comparison,  a sysgen
for RSX-11M / M+ was a weekend affair, that all too frequently
ended with a Sunday night reload of the old system tapes to be
followed by another go-round the next weekend.

At least, that is how my feeble old brain cells recall it.

Regards,
Jim
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James B. Byrne                mailto:[log in to unmask]
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
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Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3

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