On  4 May 96 at 8:52, Bruce Toback wrote:
 
> How about a CI variable that can be interrogated to find out how much time is
> left before the protective shutdown? If a site runs only applications that
> take advantage of that feature, they can be assured that no logical
> transactions were in progress at the time of the shutdown. This could avoid
> the need for a data base recovery cycle and make the recovery significantly
> faster. It can also prevent problems with distributed applications, since
> applications which are about to go down can initiate graceful terminations of
> all connections before the failure occurs.
 
Very interesting idea, Bruce.  Additionally, some of your applications
might be able to shut down gracefully, if they new the machine would be
down in, say 10 minutes.  Big apps wouldn't be able to, but the more
you have gracefully shut down, the easier (faster?) a startup would be.
You might also be able to lower the limits and shut down all users at the CI prompt,
disallowing them to start an app during the power outage.  There could
be several useages for this CI Variable.  It probably wouldn't be too
helpful to a 995/800 with hundreds of users, but...
 
> operating on emergency power. I suggest HPSECSTOMIDNIGHT :-).
 
Hmm.  It's always darkest before dawn.  HPSECTOBEFOREDAWN :}.
 
Larry Boyd    <[log in to unmask]>
"Each problem solved creates the opportunity to solve the next problem
          that the last solution created." - Richard Pascale
(These opinions are my own and not those of Hewlett-Packard.)