I wish to thank PARSEC Group, and especially Paul Williams, for developing/porting OpenVMS v8 IA64 software drivers for the GE Intelligent Platforms PCI-5565 (reflective memory) and the Symmetricom bc635PCI-V2 (IRIG) cards. These cards supply the high-speed inter-processor communication and precise timing/time-stamping cornerstones for the Data Acquisition and Control Systems (DACS) used at NASA's White Sands Test Facility (WSTF).
Your extensive knowledge and expertise in OpenVMS and IA64 allowed you to rapidly develop/port these software drivers. Your willingness to accept our suggestions/requests and make customizations to your drivers and their interfaces has resulted in very robust, deterministic, and usable drivers.
Darwin P.
Senior Systems Analyst at WSTF
Porting and Migrating Applications
Migration to OpenVMS Itanium/Integrity platforms can be somewhat difficult and/or relatively easy. The primary issue is where you are starting from:
- Some compilers on the VAX did not enforce ANSI compliant programming. The Alpha and Integrity compilers are generally more strict in their enforcement; therefore their may be more source coding issues that need to be addressed. This is affected most by the C and COBOL languages.
- Data alignment issues always affect the performance of applications. This is greater on Alpha, and significantly greater on Integrity than it was on VAX.
- The default floating point data formats is different between Alpha and Integrity. This can have anywhere from no impact to significant impact to the porting.
- HP does provide a lab for customers to use to accomplish their migration projects. Please note that PARSEC Group uses its own Integrity lab when performing migration projects for customers.
Migration projects need to be assessed to determine just how much source code migration, floating point and data alignment issues need to be addressed. PARSEC Group provides services to assess the issues that need to be addressed and also offers services to perform the migration. Because HP has done such a great job in implementing the OpenVMS Integrity environment some migrations can be completed in one week or less, while others may take longer to complete as you move forward and become more standards compliant.
This is where our depth of real-world experience really comes into play on your behalf; we apply our understanding of the operating system internals to create code with integrity and reliability.
Some of the projects PARSEC Group has done include the following environment migrations:
- VAX OpenVMS to Microsoft Windows
- VAX OpenVMS to Alpha OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX
- VAX OpenVMS to Integrity OpenVMS
To discuss how we can help you, or to request information for porting and migrating projects, please contact us at 888-4PARSEC, send an e-mail to experts@parsec.com or use our inquiry form.