REVIEW: The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer

[seasoned_geek]

Ian Miller, OpenVMS.Org - OpenVMS News and Information
Reprinted from: http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=06/04/02/4453076

After I got over the surprise of seeing a new book on OpenVMS Software
Development I wondered
at the title - this is an 800 page book with a CD! The book is
intended for people who are familiar
with programming on another platform and are faced with maintaining an
application on VMS
written using classic OpenVMS software tools. Perhaps a better title
would be “What a person
unfamiliar with OpenVMS should know to maintain an OpenVMS
application”.

Hughes describes uses of: the MMS and CMS tools from the widely used
DECSET OpenVMS
software development toolkit; CDD; FMS; the RDB and MySQL databases.
He also mentions other
tools often found in the OpenVMS application development environment
such as VMSMAIL,
PHONE etc. Parts of OpenVMS which will be unfamiliar to a person
transferring from another
platform, such as logical names and DCL symbols, are introduced as
they will often be
encountered when maintaining an application on OpenVMS.

The book is based around a single application which is developed in
each of DEC BASIC,
FORTRAN, COBOL, C and C++ using a variety of tools. Full source code
is provided on the CD. By
repeatedly implementing the same thing in different languages the
programmer familiar with one
language can learn about another. The presented code is not suitable
for a production
environment but is intended to illustrate something being described in
the text. For example the
error handling is not always fully implemented except when Hughes
wishes to describe dealing
with errors.

Hughes describes building the application and typical ways of
organizing the development
environment and highlights common pitfalls for programmers coming from
other platforms. The
book is written in American English and in a casual style. Although it
is easy to read some people
who are not native English speakers may not recognise some of the
colloquial terms used. I don’t
think this will significantly hinder understanding.

Hughes has opinions about how things should be done and is not afraid
to state them! Personally
I find an opinionated book easier to engage with because there is
something to argue or agree
with. The final chapter is Hughes opinion on the state of the IT
Industry.

The key to appreciating this book its specific focus. I think the
target audience will find this a useful
resource to sit alongside the OpenVMS Documentation. However the
material is also useful for an
OpenVMS developer faced with an application in a different programming
language to the one they
usually use.