On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 09:51:33 -0500 Tony Furnivall <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm wondering if Diogenes has any current value, or if the XM makes it
>un-necessary? Could I ask your collective opinions, please?
>
>Tony
>PS Diogenes wanders through databases seeking out broken chains and the like.

Since I didn't see any public answers to this one (and since database
therapy is my life :-)) I thought that I would post my feelings on the
subject.

As Tony mentioned, Diogenes is a tool provided by HP which can scan IMAGE
databases looking for any broken chains.  It is usually found in the
Telesup account.  Unfortunately, when the Spectrum machines came out HP
stopped providing it on all MPE systems which was a big mistake in my
opinion because some diagnostic tool is better than none.

Tony wondered if the Transaction Manager (XM) makes this diagnostic tool
unnecessary and I have to respond: NO!

The XM is a wonderful tool which MPE uses and we all benefit from its
existance but it does not mean that you will not have broken chains in your
databases.  The largest percentage of database corruption that we see can
be attributed to human error with partial stores and restores of IMAGE
databases.  No XM is going to prevent this from happening.

With the advent of the Spectrum machines and the XM we were told by HP that
broken chains within IMAGE databases were a thing of the past but this is
not the reality that we (Adager) are seeing.  Broken chains are still
ocurring because of hardware problems and other oddities.

Having some kind of diagnostic tool is very important in my opinion and
having as many as possible is even better because different tools have
different pros and cons.  I have some of my papers which talk about this
topic on our website at www.adager.com.

Hope this helps,


+---------------+
|               |
|            r  |  Ken                             [log in to unmask]
|          e    |                           http://www.adager.com
|        g      |  Ken Paul                      Tel 208 726-9100
|      a        |  Customer Support              Fax 208 726-2822
|    d          |  Adager Corporation
|  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000            U.S.A.
|               |
+---------------+