Conference virke::mrmemo

203.0. "Common problems when using MR/S instead of MEMO?" by CHGV04::SEELEY () Thu Aug 25 1994 15:34

    My apoligies for not scanning this conference if any of the below is
    already covered, but we're in a time crunch.

My customer (Kennametal--Pittsburgh, PA; USA) has several problems attempting 
to transfer Veramation's Memo documents to/through our MR/S gateway.  Yes, I
know that they are basically on their own on this. 

I am attempting to convince my customer that getting Memo to/through MR/S
gateway (and visa versa) will be a dead-end for them.  I think they agree.
What they are looking for is a temporary solution, or at least a reason for
the causes of the below problems, so they may take the issues to upper 
management, et cetera, prior to a plan and design for an X400 solution.

Does anyone have an idea if the below problems are similar to those encountered
when attempting to use MR/S and Memo?

Current problems sending Memo documents to MR/S:

Delayed messages (up to 10 hours for those that *DO* get through)
Users received a MR Non-delivery notification, even though the
        message was delivered
Intermittently sending vmsmail to memo (MRG-MRS) gets "unable to transfer"
VMSmail reply from a Memo-originated message gets "invalid parameter"
Character conversion of a dollar sign ($) converted to angstrom (small a with
        dot/circle on top), # converts to umlaud (spelling?)
Message queue on IBM clogs with a message on top, holding other messages
        back--this effect crashes the MR/S gateway (bugcheck error log)
Messages lost intermittently

Also, there are files in the disk:[mb$.mrs$.mrs$mr_out] directory with
filenames of MBG$RET19AUG1994*_CONT.NBS and MBG$RET19AUG1994*_ENV.NBS--anyone
know what these files are?  My customer says he recognizes one of the "lost"
messages and one of them as being successfully delivered.

Is there anything that can be set on the IBM side or our VAX side to elliviate
any of the above or do they all sound symptamatic?

They are very frustrated with the knowledge of the Veramation folks in the 
US as they stated that this product works well with DEC's MR/S product.  The
customer is now finding out that this is all but a flat-out lie, as Veramation
is finding it difficult to provide another customer that has this very setup
working consistently.

My bottom line ??  Of the most recent version of our ASSET package (MR/Memo??)
what version of Veramation's Memo product will work?  Our customer has V4.2
of Memo, and V1.2-002 of MR/S.  Do they even have a chance of successfully
running MR/Memo?  Where do I tell the sales rep to get memo?  How much does
it cost, etc.?

They do plan a migration to X400 in near future, but Memo doesn't seem to
have a decent solution for that--your comments please.

Any logical and accurate information on this will help my customer (yes, we do 
still care).

Thanks,  Jesse Seeley @PHX

Hi Jesse,

First of all, I don't have any answers on the problems with MR/S. I have never
even seen MR/S, all I know is that it's not supported with MEMO, and the only
detailed reason for that that I know of is that Message ID's from MEMO are too
long for MR/S which leads to problems when handling notification messages.

>My bottom line ??  Of the most recent version of our ASSET package (MR/Memo??)
>what version of Veramation's Memo product will work?  Our customer has V4.2
>of Memo, and V1.2-002 of MR/S.  Do they even have a chance of successfully
>running MR/Memo?  Where do I tell the sales rep to get memo?  How much does
>it cost, etc.?

Technically you should be OK with MRMEMO and MEMO V4.2, I think the latest
version that I've heard running OK is with MEMO V4.1 (should not be any
significant difference)

MRMEMO can be found in the European Assets library, see notes conf 
CLARID::EOASSETS (note 84.* is dedicated to MRMEMO). I'm sorry I don't have a
name of the current ASSETS contact, it'll be somewhere in the conf.

In addition to MRMEMO on the VAX side they'll need software from Verimation:

- MEMO/GATEWAY (which they probably have already, it's sort of a general
gateway thing)
_- MEMO EXM (I've always wondered what this software does)
- MEMO MRGATE (I'm not joking :-( ) specifically for talking to MRMEMO

>They do plan a migration to X400 in near future, but Memo doesn't seem to
>have a decent solution for that--your comments please.

The problem with their X.400 solution is that it's -84 and X.25 only (ie no
support for X.400 -88 or ethernet, let alone TCP/IP). It's also allegedly
expensive.

There are a lot of requirements for a better X.400 solution for MEMO. In
theory, one could be provided using MAILbus 400 and XAPI. This has attracted th
attention of large customers such as Ericsson and ABB here in Sweden, but the
critical mass is simply not there to employ such a major engineering effort.
Engineering (MIG) are instead claiming that a future SNADS/MB400 gwy will be
the way to support MEMO connectivity.

cheers,

	Stefan