I am reposting this here as the LinkedIn.com group page is not globally accessible to everyone.

Well, one member of the OpenVMS Community, Colin Butcher of XDelta in the UK, has an idea:

"I'm not sure that HP knows just how big the OpenVMS customer base really is. Most OpenVMS systems out there today are mission-critical on one form or another and because the systems "just work", they tend not to get much attention. They also tend to run very specific applications (often bespoke in one way or another), be fairly static over time and have risk averse owners. One consequence of all that is that OpenVMS has a fairly low profile, even within the organisations that rely on it.

The revised roadmap announcement is likely to get quite a lot of attention within such companies, now that it's happened. So, if this badly affects your business and its future plans, why not get your board level people to talk directly to HP at board level and explain why it's bad for your business and for HP's business."

So, have a discussion with your senior management about this impact this is having on your business and how they might be able to have a discussion with people on your company's board! Find a way to get more discussion going from all angles.

After posting this initially I had a conversation with a colleague, Bob Gezelter. He presents another tack on the HP OpenVMS Poulson Fiasco, is HP a reliable partner for enterprise computing? Here is his letter to HP on this subject.

Bill.

OpenVMS Webinar Series – 2013

Agenda DCL - Tips and Tricks

Digital Command Language (DCL) is the standard command language used on the OpenVMS operating system. DCL provides versatile facilities to perform various tasks such as file handling, system monitoring and scripting. This presentation discusses various lesser known and some undocumented techniques to help the users perform routine tasks efficiently and enable effective administration of the OpenVMS system.


Speakers:

                Nimish Pawar, OpenVMS Engineering
                Ishan Srivastava, OpenVMS Engineering

Delivery Dates/Time Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Session 1: 12:00pm-1:00pm India Standard Time (UTC/GMT + 5:30 hours)
or
Session 2: 9:00pm – 10:00pm India Standard Time (UTC/GMT + 5:30 hours)

To find determine the delivery time of the seminar in your local time zone: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Attendance Logistics To attend this meeting, you will need access to a telephone line for the audio portion of the session and an Internet connection to access the HP Virtual Rooms

Session 1: [Time zone1- suitable for APJ and part of Europe]
HP Virtual Room Login: https://www.rooms.hp.com/attend/default.aspx?key=EP6JVUJQX3

Dial-in Number: Please refer to Dial In Numbers

Conference ID: 3931252657

Session 2: [Time zone2- suitable for Americas and part of Europe]
HP Virtual Room Login: https://www.rooms.hp.com/attend/default.aspx?key=EPJDK7XMDH

Dial-in Numbers: Please refer to Dial In Numbers

Conference ID: 3931252657

Questions Contact: amit.chanchlani@hp.com

Dear Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Customers,

We are happy to inform you that registration is now open for the 2013, Burlington, MA, USA Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Technical Forum.

To register, go to:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/datab ... 01986.html

As was previously announced, the date and location for this Forum is:

March 21-22
Oracle Network Drive Campus
1 Network Drive
Burlington, MA
USA

We are also pleased to announce that on Saturday, March 23, JCC Consulting is offering a no charge JCC LogMiner Loader workshop. At this workshop, you will learn everything you need to know to publish changes in your Rdb database to another Rdb database or other data stores. The JCC training will also be held on the Oracle Network Drive Campus. To register for the JCC workshop or pose questions click go to http://www.jcc.com/SeminarRegistration.htm.

Note that the Burlington Forum will be held the same week as the Connect OpenVMS Bootcamp in Bedford, MA which is a short driving distance to the Oracle Network Drive Campus. The Bootcamp begins on Monday, March 18th and ends on Thursday the 21st at noon, The Forum begins on the morning of the 21st so there will be a slight overlap between the 2 events. We will be presenting an Oracle session at the Bootcamp, however, to get an in-depth understanding of the latest Oracle related developments on OpenVMS we highly recommend that you attend the Forum as well.

A sampling of the Forum session topics includes:

• Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Product Status and Direction
• HP OpenVMS Update
• Update for Oracle on OpenVMS: 10.2.0.5 and 11g
• How You Can Use RAT to Improve Your Oracle Database Performance
• A DBAs Guide to Implementing 11 Years of Rdb Performance Features
• Tricks and Gotcha's with Oracle Rdb Large Transactions
• Auditing with Oracle Rdb
• Oracle Rdb Query Re-Write
• Oracle Rdb Connectivity Update
• Rdb’s New Frontier: Extending Rdb Applications to Modern Mobile Platforms
• Demonstration of New Web-Based Rdb Management Tools

The full Forum agenda is being finalized and will be posted soon on our registration web page. Attendance will be opened to those who cannot join us in person. Remote attendees will be sent the information needed to join us in a live online Forum web conference. To receive this information, remote attendees must send an email to InfoRdb_US@oracle.com after they have registered indicating that they will be attending remotely. Remote attendees are welcome to attend any or all sessions.

Burlington will be the first of our 2013 Forums. The other Forums are being planned for later in the year. Registration details for those Forums will be sent to you in the coming months.

These Forums are offered at no charge and present a series of sessions conducted by acknowledged technical specialists from our development staff and the Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS community at large. They should be considered a requirement for anyone wishing to remain up-to-date with all the latest enhancements and optimizations in either of these two product families.

We are very excited to be bringing the 2013 Technical Forums to you. I hope you will be able to join us.

Best Regards,

Kevin Duffy
Senior Director, Software Development
Oracle Rdb
Oracle Database on OpenVMS

Yes, that's right we have the 35th Anniversary of the introduction of VMS (or as HP now calls it "HP OpenVMS"). Where were you? What were you doing?

At that time I was a graduate student in Computer Science at San Francisco State University. I was also employed as a Research Engineer and working for the Dean of Science at the University on his research projects - studying ocean upwelling. We used PDP-11's, RSX-11M, RSX-11S, RT-11 and IAS in our projects. We ran the world's largest non-military portable computer system - an air-conditioned 20 foot shipping container with a raised floor and shock mounted racks for the "time-shared" PDP-11/45!

On going to DECUS that year we already knew what was happening by way of on-going discussions with DEC Software Engineering. But we had not be able to get exact details. Out of an interest in what was happening and how this "new" system would handle existing software I took a tape containing a MACRO-11 program - CHESS-11.

During the week I arranged to get some time on the system. A friend and former colleague of mine - Eric Pollack was in Software Engineering although his interest was in another area but he helped me get the time. And so we loaded the tape.

Sorry, no MTAACP yet!

But we could DUMP the tape to a file with ASCII format. Ok, but it was still a mess.

Hey, TECO - I was such a TECO hack. Had taken the IAS TECO written a TECO program to process a HELP file format for our "time sharing" system used by the scientists all across the country. So with a bit munging here and there we finally had clean MACRO-11 source.

The RSX emulation code of the VAX-11/780 (also known as the Application Migration Executive - AME) was working. So we had MACRO and TKB and PIP - hey it was still early the system did not ship for another 4 months.

We did assemble and build the image and ran it. Just like it was supposed to do. True we did not do it in native mode but we as students and customers did not yet have exposure to the MACRO-32 or LINKER. On the other hand we also showed that the 32-bit ports of the VMS were there and running. The device drivers, the disk ACP, the job scheduler were definitely doing their job as the new and interesting computer and operating system were born and introduced to the world.

To the best of my knowledge this "port" was the first other than what I am sure had been happening behind the scenes with large institutions and those universities who were known to have close relations with Digital Equipment Corporation.

So, where were you 35 years ago this week?

Tell your story. Join the celebration. Check out the OpenVMS 35th Anniverary Memory Page!!!

Also there is live audio session on Thursday, 25 October 2012:

On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of HP OpenVMS, HP invites you to join us for live audio session as we proudly mark the beginning of the celebration.

Agenda:

• Opening Remarks John Egolf, OpenVMS Lab
• Keynote Shobha Benakatti, Director, OpenVMS Lab
• Guest Speakers Susan Skonetski
Norman Lastovica

When: 9:00pm – 9:45pm India Standard Time
(10:30am-11:15am EST, 11:30pm-12:15am SGT, 5:30-6:15pm CET)

To determine the delivery time of the session in your local time zone:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Logistics for attending:

• Dial-in Numbers: 877.675.4345 (USA)
877.675.4346 (Canada)
(See "Bridge 2" list for others)

• Conference Code: 8840257

Well, if you were not at the West Coast DECUS convention in San Diego then you were not involved with the launch of OpenVMS...

Let's start a conversation here!

HP OpenVMS has started a project to celebrate this event!

Check out the OpenVMS 35th Anniversary!!!!