The other groups within OLS are Data Aquisition Hardware and DA Software. Johnathan Streets in DA software put up a W3 server for the exitsing VMS-based "DOC-DB" system. This is a VMS server which looks at a flat file database -- in fact a set of flat files generated from a "proper" database (Datatrieve?). The server is written in VAX/DCL which was quick to write is sometimes slow to run when it has to parse a parge file. A small C server based on our skeleton server daemon which calls the DCL command file. This seemed to me to be a useful utility which should be generally available, so I have put the basic DCLServer code into our source tree. The server is not yet continuously available. It contains notes on OLS-supported software, hardware for data acquisitiom, and internal OLS notes. Ruth Pordes provided a lot on encouragement to get this service running. It took a long afternoon.
Janet Weber understands W3 well. She had already got the clients running before I came, and after watching Gary and me set up a HEPNET server, she made her own.
Farhad Abar-L is enthusiastic about W3. The group discussed the possible W3 support which they could provide within FNAL. There was serious concern about support levels from W3 developes outside FNAL (Why no Viola port to SGI?)
The port of Viola to the SGI will be a test case. If it can be done easily or Pei comes up with the goods, it will be taken as a good omen. FNAL has more SGI machines than anything else.
Art Keymer was the author of one of the long series of news schemes which FNAL use and are using. Art is a VMS enthusiast and now has www for VMS. He suggests a Viola port would be a good move.
Lynn Garren has a VMS machine with a color display which seems to fox Viola ... it complains "failed to allocate color 'yellow'" and loops! Lynn also is onvolved with CERNLIB support and ffels it is getting unwieldly in its size, though she wasn't sure whether fragmentation would improve it.
John Marrafino gets the CERNLIB distribution on arrival at FNAL, and is concerned that the releases have recently lost their cleanliness. He puts it down to the decoupling of CNL releases and CERNLIB releases, removing the hard deadline from CERNLIB releases. Whatever the reason, he has found that things have been released piecemeal, with fixes following, rather than in one neat lump.
TBC...
Dave sees image viewing as important and DRA have some experience in that area, all very DEC-specific. He feels FNAL needs to fulfil government "record management" requirements for email traffic for example. An email archiver and manager seems a useful project of general use and one which we all need (especially those whose mail accumulates while they go on trips!).
A W3 gateway for the library might be quite easy (write it in DCL?). Would DRA be interested?
There was a suggestion that Fermilab now has more W3 servers than CERN but I'm not going to count... :-)
Tim