Hi all,

Based on the tactical SIB '04 results, vCSY has agreed to add to the CI
three new functions: SPOOLINFO, DEVINFO, and VOLINFO.  Collectively
these items received 1,380 total votes (which would put the group in 4th
place) and 223 individual votes (which would be 1st place by almost
double the new 2nd place item 'ftpusers and ftpaccess'). So, many people
voted a few votes each for these three items.

The ballot description for these three items explicitly states that the
new functions are to be integrated into the CI in a manner similar to
FINFO and JINFO.  We are willing to do that; but, integrated into the CI
means a patch, and though the patch will certainly target 7.5 and
probably (maybe?) 7.0, it probably will not target 6.5.  The absence on
6.5 being to conserve R&D and MPE Support resources.

Assuming most of the tactical SIB items are not backported to 6.5, do
you still wish to see these functions integrated into the CI, or would
it be more useful to do it another way? We could, as a group, define the
many CI variable names and types (string, int, bool) which apply to each
function, and then vCSY could write a program to return the desired
piece of information via the predefined variable.  This approach does
not require a patch and would work on 6.5 as well as the newer MPE
releases.  But this approach implies a process create each time the
function is invoked, thus, could not be used in break mode, and it is
less "natural" to invoke.

Examples:

Built-in functions:

1.0  while devinfo(1,'FreeSpace') < limit do ...
2.0  setvar x spoolinfo('o1234','aborted')
3.0  if volinfo('myUserVol','NumVolumes') < N then ...
4.0  echo Dev Ownership: ![devinfo(16,'owner')]


Program "functions"
1.1  xeq devinfo 1 freespace
     while hpDEVINFOfreespace < limit do
        ...
        xeq devinfo 1 freespace
     endwhile

2.1  xeq spoolinfo o1234 aborted
     setvar x hpSPOOLINFOaborted

3.1  xeq volinfo myUserVol NumVolumes
     if hpVOLINFOnumvolumes < N then ...

4.1  xeq devinfo 16 owner
     echo Dev Ownership: !hpDEVINFOowner


So, is it worth trading some ease of use, performance, and flexibility
to have these "functions" available on all releases, or do you still
prefer them to be integrated in the CI?  

Note: JINFO and PINFO have an optional 3rd parm which holds the returned
status. When present, the status parm suppresses the display of CI
errors and warnings, and prevents CIERROR from being set.  Production
quality scripts should pass the status parm to handle cases like the job
terminating, etc.; however, this makes the integrated functions less
simple to use.  

Same examples:

1.2  setvar x devinfo(1,'freespace',cierror)
     while cierror = 0 do
        ...
        setvar x devinfo(1,'freespace',cierror)
     endwhile

2.2  setvar x spoolinfo('o1234','aborted',status)
     if status = 0 then
        # okay to use x  

3.2  setvar x volinfo('myUserVol','NumVolumes',hpcierr) 
     if hpcierr = 0 and hpVOLINFOnumvolumes < N then ...

4.2  setvar x devinfo(16,'owner',status)
     if status = 0 then
        echo Dev Ownership: !x
        ...
     endif


Thanks for your feedback,
 Jeff Vance, vCSY