HP Visualize c3600 hp visualize workstation - Migrating UNIX Technical Environ - Page 5
Migrating Some, of the UNIX, Environment
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Hamilton Laboratories). Tools like XEmacs and MKS also provide UNIX style editors and some portions of a development environment. The risks involved in this path are associated with the costs of rewriting applications to ensure maximum performance levels under Windows NT. Currently, NT requires more network infrastructure out-of-the-box, due to such items as browsing and domain replication. All end users and IT staff will need training for the new applications and systems environment. This will require budgeting for training classes. In addition, systems procedures and processes need to be rewritten to accommodate the Window NT environment and GUI style. Since this is a total conversion to NT, all necessary legacy technical data will need to be converted and moved to the NT workstation environment. This not only requires developing data conversion applications, but also the test suites for this conversion. Migrating Some of the UNIX Environment Porting and migrating only the necessary portions of the Technical Desktop Environment to Windows NT workstations requires all of same types of tools used for migrating the entire environment. However, less code needs to be rewritten. A decision must be made as to which standards of communication, such as DCE/RPC, will be utilized between software in the NT and UNIX environments. Along with communication must come a standard data format so that each environment retains and transfers the required technical data. For example, by default, HP-UX uses a byte ordering known as big endian and Windows NT uses a byte ordering known as little endian. This issue can be addressed in HP-UX applications by using the "swab" routine to adjust the byte ordering of the data. This migration path allows for continued use of the UNIX Technical Desktops while phasing in the Windows NT workstation environment. The challenge becomes one of providing a development environment that can produce applications and environments applicable to either UNIX or NT. In this area the trend is to develop code on a Windows NT workstation and "port back", that code to UNIX. There are a few tools that can assist in this arena, such as OpenStudio and MainWin. These development environments provide a tool set to create C++ application from a single source stream for both platforms. Besides the cross-platform development challenge, an opportunity exists to reduce the migration costs by ensuring that cross-platform system management tools are in place. That is, System management tools that can operate from either environment and manage either Windows NT or UNIX. This may reduce the required amount of training increases productivity, lowering the impact to system procedures and processes. Omniback, JetAdmin, and Openview provide tools to span either NT or UNIX for system wide backups, printers or networks. The risks involved in this path are similar in nature to the risks involved in migrating all of the UNIX environment to Windows NT. However the magnitude of the risk is lessened. That said, the network infrastructure will still need to be expanded and application code will need to be rewritten. Training will still need to be provided to those developers, administrators and users effected. Following this migration path is less costly and risky since fewer UNIX technical desktop systems and applications are being ported and all personnel are not effected by the change. Some new system procedures and processes will most probably need to be created for the technical NT environment. 02/04/00 HP VISUALIZE WORKSTATIONS 4