Conference help::decnet-osi_for_vms

At this time, there is no DECdns server on Alpha.

John Saunders
DECdns Engineering

    The reason as I understand it for DECdns not being ported to Alpha
    was the plan to replace DECdns with X.500.
    
    What is the current outlook for this happening?
    
    An answer of "contact product management" clearly means, "we're
    ignoring it hoping that we get a new job before some important customer
    raises the issue with Palmer, et al."

	My understanding is that about 5 years ago there was talk of
	replacing DECdns with X.500 --- That was back in the days when
	we still believed that OSI would take over the World ;-)

	Anyway, I think that that idea is long dead and gone. There
	appears to be absolutely no incentive to use X.500 unless you
	are using X.400, so all the reasons for replacing DECdns with
	X.500 have gone.

	Over the past 2 or 3 years there have been occasional requests
	for the DECdns Server to be ported to Alpha VMS (it already
	exists on Alpha UNIX). I have been led to believe that this would
	not be a massively complex project, but it is just a case of
	return on investment. At the time of the earlier requests, DECdns
	was so buggy that all efforts were directed to fixing the bugs.
	It appears to me that DECdns is now more reliable, so it would
	probably be a good time to re-raise the request for porting the
	Server to Alpha VMS.

	How much demand would there be? How many Customers? How much would
	they care? I only have one Customer at this moment. At least one
	of my previous Customers has migrated to using DECnet/OSI over
	TCP/IP so their naming is now DNS BIND, not DECdns ;-)

	Regards,

		John

>    An answer of "contact product management" clearly means, "we're
>    ignoring it hoping that we get a new job before some important customer
>    raises the issue with Palmer, et al."

An answer of "contact product management" means we don't have funding to do
this, and if you think we should be funded for it, then you need to contact
product management. And have your credit card ready.

I don't think DECnet-Plus differs too much from other Engineering groups: if you
want us to spend money, you've got to give us the money to spend. These things
don't happen by talking to Engineers in NOTES conferences, they happen by
bringing customer requirements to the attention of Product Management.

Thanks,
John Saunders
DECdns Engineering

    "management" has decreed that every effort be made to replace VAX sales
    with Alpha sales.  When a lower level of "management" fails to get with
    the program or exlain to the higher level that its isn't possible to
    replace vax with alpha, then it seems to me that the "management" is
    screwing up.
    
    Basically, "I shot the customer because that is the company policy" is
    not something that goes over well with the company stakeholders.
    
    And we're no longer operating on the principle of product decisions
    being made purely on a direct revenue impact.
    
    And I find it hard to believe that the cost of porting from VMS to VMS
    represents a significant cost, especially when we consider the time
    frame involved.  What's it been, five years?

The costs have been estimated, and they are considerable. These costs include
a change of C compilers, and (obviously) a change in development environment,
and a great deal of testing. Keep in mind this is a complicated product, one
which is non-trivial to test.

If it were as simple as a recompile, it would be done now.

Finally, you make some good points about one set of managers taking actions
another set might dislike. If you can excuse a Networking pun, "what we have
here is a failure to communicate" between the managers. If you know the "upper"
manager who has something to communicate to the "lower" manager, then perhaps
you should go right ahead and put them in communciation with each other.

You might find that the problem was a simple lack of communication. You will
probably find that the problem is something else more complicated.


Thank You For Your Support,
John Saunders
DECdns Engineering


P.S. I'd just _love_ to do an Alpha port of the server. Go get us the funds to
do that, and I'll even let you be the first on your block to test it!

    
>If it were as simple as a recompile, it would be done now.
    
    You might want to talk to Mark Olson about that... I thought that
    at least part of the migration had pretty much happened in an informal
    way.
    
    But as you implied, the issues were all around support, link with 
    concerns (at the time I was last asking for this, 2 years ago) around
    the longevity of DECnet.
    
    Now the future of DECnet-Plus in DIGITAL and the support has been 
    secured with the maintenance move to EDS then there maybe more 
    incentive to make OpenVMS Alpha DECdns Server support a reality.
    
    I've been round the loop of getting customer justifications together
    with two generations of DECnet-Plus product managers and am not in 
    a position to do this again, but I'd recommend anyone with current
    customers requests to get them to Barbara DELNI::KARTEN and see if
    the view has changed now?
    
    Good Luck - 
    
    Bob