In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
computing and business IT.

My employers used it as a software development system, producing
mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.

What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?

John

Den 2022-10-13 kl. 19:09, skrev John Dallman:
> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> computing and business IT.
>
> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?

Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system

>
> John

On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 5:26:10 PM UTC-4, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2022-10-13 kl. 19:09, skrev John Dallman:
> > In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> > computing and business IT.
> >
> > My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> > mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> > Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> > compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> > 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> > x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
> >
> > What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
>
>
> >
> > John
I have direct clients in banking, manufacturing, medical lab information systems and other industries.

Through my job supporting emulation environments, I reach many other industries.

All working with systems powered by OpenVMS of various versions from V4 up to current VSI versions.

Dan

On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> > What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>
> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system

Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
running VMS.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 10/13/2022 1:09 PM, John Dallman wrote:
> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> computing and business IT.
>
> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?

VMS is practically gone at work - I am only here as a hobbyist.

My impression from various posts here is that a typical VMS
system anno 2022 are:
* either running an inhouse developed custom application or
running a very specialized external application
* the application is either keeping track of money or controlling
some processes (read: it is important!)
* the application was originally created before 1995
* most of the application is Cobol/Fortran/Pascal/Basic
* older small pieces may be in Macro-32
* newer large pieces may be in C
* newer languages (C++, Java, Python, PHP) and other
newer technologies like Apache/WASD/OSU are only used for
supporting functionality
* frontend is either applications running on Windows/Linux
or terminal emulators running processes in captive mode
* persistence is either index-sequential files or Rdb

Arne

On 10/13/2022 1:09 PM, John Dallman wrote:
> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> computing and business IT.
>
> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>
> John
>

For me and the people I've worked with, it is what's now called ERP applications.

I've always known that VMS has been used for more types of work than I can
imagine. Don't know what it's used for today.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

On 10/13/2022 6:49 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>
>> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
>
> Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
> running VMS.
>

I believe one of Jan-Erik's customers is Husqvarna.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 6:09:34 PM UTC+1, John Dallman wrote:
> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> computing and business IT.
>
> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>
> John
I know of systems in healthcare, insurance and and aerospace.

Den 2022-10-14 kl. 02:09, skrev Dave Froble:
> On 10/13/2022 6:49 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
>> On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>>
>>> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
>>
>> Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
>> running VMS.
>>
>
> I believe one of Jan-Erik's customers is Husqvarna.
>

Not that it really matters, but yes. :-)

Some years ago I was close to sign for a work at IKEA
as part of their Alpha to IA64 migration at all stores.

In article <81cd12d8cc86d8f6f137638da64d2548473bec0c.camel@munted.eu>, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> writes:
>On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik S=C3=B6derholm wrote:
>> > What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>=20
>> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
>
>Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
>running VMS.

Clean your ears..

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

In article <ti9vpf$1sfgh$1@dont-email.me>,
=?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_S=c3=b6derholm?= <jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com>
writes:

> Den 2022-10-13 kl. 19:09, skrev John Dallman:
> > In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> > computing and business IT.
> >
> > My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> > mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> > Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> > compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> > 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> > x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
> >
> > What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?

I still use it for essentially all computer-related stuff, though sadly
except for much browser-related stuff these days.

In article <81cd12d8cc86d8f6f137638da64d2548473bec0c.camel@munted.eu>,
Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> writes:

> On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> > > What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
> >
> > Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
>
> Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
> running VMS.

A big user. One of the last? Maybe an exaggeration.

In article <tibgba$21co2$1@dont-email.me>,
=?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_S=c3=b6derholm?= <jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com>
writes:

> Den 2022-10-14 kl. 02:09, skrev Dave Froble:
> > On 10/13/2022 6:49 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2022-10-13 at 23:26 +0200, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> >>>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
> >>>
> >>> Production support and control. What is called "MES" today.
> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_execution_system
> >>
> >> Would that be IKEA? I heard they are one of the last hold-outs still
> >> running VMS.
> >>
> >
> > I believe one of Jan-Erik's customers is Husqvarna.
> >
>
> Not that it really matters, but yes. :-)
>
> Some years ago I was close to sign for a work at IKEA
> as part of their Alpha to IA64 migration at all stores.

I once applied for a VMS job at IKEA, and got as far as an interview in
Hälsingborg. We scheduled it at the end of a two-week holiday in
Sweden, during which my wife and I spoke only Swedish. :-) (Both of
us learned Swedish as adults and neither had ever lived in Sweden,
though I've probably spent about a year there altogether, spread out
over many years.) I told her that I would ring her when I'm finished
and we could meet where we parted and during that time she could walk
around the harbour or whatever. Thought maybe 45 minutes or at most an
hour. I came back five hours later (and convinced that my Swedish was
usable). I didn't get the job; I have a feeling that I was no. 2 on the
list but no. 1 accepted the offer.

John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>
>My employers used it as a software development system, producing
>mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
>Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
>compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
>2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
>x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.

In the eighties we did a lot of this, and we did this in spite of VMS being
badly-suited for scientific computing. We did it because the DEC hardware
was the fastest for the dollar and the DEC fortran compiler was the best and
most advanced. But we spent a lot of time fighting features in VMS that were
advantageous in a commercial data processing environment.

When Sun machines started having better floating point performance for the
buck, we dropped VMS quickly as a scientific programming environment in
favor of SunOS which was sort of unreliable and worse in a lot of ways
but nobody cared because the machines were fast.

>What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?

Large scale data processing applications that benefit from the heavyweight
filesystems but aren't totally transaction-based.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 10/15/22 02:35, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
>> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
>> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
>> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
>> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
>> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> In the eighties we did a lot of this, and we did this in spite of VMS being
> badly-suited for scientific computing. We did it because the DEC hardware
> was the fastest for the dollar and the DEC fortran compiler was the best and
> most advanced. But we spent a lot of time fighting features in VMS that were
> advantageous in a commercial data processing environment.
>
> When Sun machines started having better floating point performance for the
> buck, we dropped VMS quickly as a scientific programming environment in
> favor of SunOS which was sort of unreliable and worse in a lot of ways
> but nobody cared because the machines were fast.
>
>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>
> Large scale data processing applications that benefit from the heavyweight
> filesystems but aren't totally transaction-based.
> --scott
>

I ran a microvax II GPX for a for a few years, but the first Sun 3 in
the lab here ran rings round it performance wise. Using a crude Tex
source processing benchmark, the uvax II managed 4 pages per minute,
while the Sun managed more than 20. Tcp/ip networking, nfs, a wide
selection of tools and even a basic C compiler to get started, made
it such good value for money and reliable with it as well. Didn't
return to the DEC fold until Alpha, but by then, it was too late...

Chris

Op donderdag 13 oktober 2022 om 19:09:34 UTC+2 schreef John Dallman:
> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
> computing and business IT.
>
> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>
> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>
> John

Hi,

VMS is still used to host quite some MES solutions and material handling solution in quite some car/engine manufacturing plants.
Applications developed in Java, Fortran, C and Python are running fine.
I worked with microvax, vax stations, VAX 7000, Alpha's (GS1280 was a nice machine) but the Alpha Server 1000's did also a good job.
After that we replaced our oldest Alpha servers with Rx6600 Integrity Servers and now we are running Integrity i6 servers with VSI OpenVMS on it and migration is started to run our applications on OpenVMS on x86.
It is still a stable platform and easy to monitor and manage.

//Toine

chris <chris-nospam@tridac.net> wrote:
>I ran a microvax II GPX for a for a few years, but the first Sun 3 in
>the lab here ran rings round it performance wise. Using a crude Tex
>source processing benchmark, the uvax II managed 4 pages per minute,
>while the Sun managed more than 20.

That's not exactly the zippiest vax around, and a Sun-3/50 might be a
fair match for it although at lower cost. Sun's more serious
offerings would blow it away but to be fair so would DEC's more serious
offerings.

>Tcp/ip networking, nfs, a wide
>selection of tools and even a basic C compiler to get started, made
>it such good value for money and reliable with it as well. Didn't
>return to the DEC fold until Alpha, but by then, it was too late...

That was a lot of it... BSD Unix came with everything included, and
VMS really didn't.

A few years later we got into a situation where people could run jobs
on their Sparcstation 10 faster than they could run them on our Cray-2.
Sometimes it took a couple days for a job to sit in the run queue
on the Cray before it got executed. The Sun took a lot longer to run
the job, but you could run the job immediately without having to fight
for time.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Den 2022-10-15 kl. 23:32, skrev Toine:
> Op donderdag 13 oktober 2022 om 19:09:34 UTC+2 schreef John Dallman:
>> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
>> computing and business IT.
>>
>> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
>> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
>> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
>> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
>> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
>> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>>
>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>
>> John
>
> Hi,
>
> VMS is still used to host quite some MES solutions and material handling solution in quite some car/engine manufacturing plants.
> Applications developed in Java, Fortran, C and Python are running fine.
> I worked with microvax, vax stations, VAX 7000, Alpha's (GS1280 was a nice machine) but the Alpha Server 1000's did also a good job.
> After that we replaced our oldest Alpha servers with Rx6600 Integrity Servers and now we are running Integrity i6 servers with VSI OpenVMS on it and migration is started to run our applications on OpenVMS on x86.
> It is still a stable platform and easy to monitor and manage.
>
> //Toine

I see your mail address has "volvocars" in it, so I understand what
you wrote. Apart from IKEA, Volvo is one of the large users of VMS,
at least in Sweden.

Den 2022-10-15 kl. 23:49, skrev Jan-Erik Söderholm:
> Den 2022-10-15 kl. 23:32, skrev Toine:
>> Op donderdag 13 oktober 2022 om 19:09:34 UTC+2 schreef John Dallman:
>>> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of technical
>>> computing and business IT.
>>>
>>> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
>>> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other platforms.
>>> Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it became expensive
>>> compared to doing development on Windows. We had dropped it by the year
>>> 2000. We'd resume support if there was significant demand for it on
>>> x86-64, which is why I joined this newsgroup.
>>>
>>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>>
>>> John
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> VMS is still used to host quite some MES solutions and material handling
>> solution in quite some car/engine manufacturing plants.
>> Applications developed in Java, Fortran, C and Python are running fine.
>> I worked with microvax, vax stations, VAX 7000, Alpha's (GS1280 was a
>> nice machine) but the Alpha Server 1000's did also a good job.
>> After that we replaced our oldest Alpha servers with Rx6600 Integrity
>> Servers and now we are running Integrity i6 servers with VSI OpenVMS on
>> it and migration is started to run our applications on OpenVMS on x86.
>> It is still a stable platform and easy to monitor and manage.
>>
>> //Toine
>
> I see your mail address has "volvocars" in it, so I understand what
> you wrote. Apart from IKEA, Volvo is one of the large users of VMS,
> at least in Sweden.
>
>

This leads me to another question...

This secrecy about who runs VMS and who doesn’t, does that help VMS?

Shouldn’t it help VMS if it was known publicly who actually use VMS?

=?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_S=c3=b6derholm?= <jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>
>This secrecy about who runs VMS and who doesn't, does that help VMS?

It certainly does not.

>Shouldn't it help VMS if it was known publicly who actually use VMS?

It would, but it might not help the people who actually use it. If I talked
about what systems we use at work, the security people would be on me in a
minute. I think most companies have the philosophy that talking about any
of their systems would just call the attention of hackers.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 10/15/2022 5:55 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> This secrecy about who runs VMS and who doesn’t, does that help VMS?
>
> Shouldn’t it help VMS if it was known publicly who actually use VMS?

No and Yes.

But:
- companies does not want to provide details on their IT
environment to the public
- VSI cannot publicize such info without the companies
consent

But who use VMS can leak via job ads. If a company
is advertising for VMS skills, then it is fair to assume
that they use VMS. And anybody can quote a public job ad.

Arne

On 10/15/2022 5:45 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Tcp/ip networking, nfs, a wide
>> selection of tools and even a basic C compiler to get started, made
>> it such good value for money and reliable with it as well. Didn't
>> return to the DEC fold until Alpha, but by then, it was too late...
>
> That was a lot of it... BSD Unix came with everything included, and
> VMS really didn't.

As I recall it then DEC prices on compilers, TCP/IP
etc. was pretty high especially for larger VAX'es.

Sure they made a lot of money short term on that, but
maybe they reduced revenue long term.

Arne

On 16/10/2022 5:49 am, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2022-10-15 kl. 23:32, skrev Toine:
>> Op donderdag 13 oktober 2022 om 19:09:34 UTC+2 schreef John
>> Dallman:
>>> In its glory days of the 1980s, VMS got used for all sorts of
>>> technical computing and business IT.
>>>
>>> My employers used it as a software development system, producing
>>> mathematical modelling code for VMS, plus a wide range of other
>>> platforms. Demand for the code on VMS shrank in the 1990s, and it
>>> became expensive compared to doing development on Windows. We had
>>> dropped it by the year 2000. We'd resume support if there was
>>> significant demand for it on x86-64, which is why I joined this
>>> newsgroup.
>>>
>>> What do you use VMS for in the 2020s?
>>>
>>> John
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> VMS is still used to host quite some MES solutions and material
>> handling solution in quite some car/engine manufacturing plants.
>> Applications developed in Java, Fortran, C and Python are running
>> fine. I worked with microvax, vax stations, VAX 7000, Alpha's
>> (GS1280 was a nice machine) but the Alpha Server 1000's did also a
>> good job. After that we replaced our oldest Alpha servers with
>> Rx6600 Integrity Servers and now we are running Integrity i6
>> servers with VSI OpenVMS on it and migration is started to run our
>> applications on OpenVMS on x86. It is still a stable platform and
>> easy to monitor and manage.
>>
>> //Toine
>
> I see your mail address has "volvocars" in it, so I understand what
> you wrote. Apart from IKEA, Volvo is one of the large users of VMS,
> at least in Sweden.
>
>

I was about to query whether volvo cars were actually manufactured by
Ford and "Volvo" only made trucks now. But Google tells me it's much
worse and "volvocars" are actually made by Geely

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> chris <chris-nospam@tridac.net> wrote:
>>I ran a microvax II GPX for a for a few years, but the first Sun 3 in
>>the lab here ran rings round it performance wise. Using a crude Tex
>>source processing benchmark, the uvax II managed 4 pages per minute,
>>while the Sun managed more than 20.
>
> That's not exactly the zippiest vax around, and a Sun-3/50 might be a
> fair match for it although at lower cost. Sun's more serious
> offerings would blow it away but to be fair so would DEC's more serious
> offerings.
>
>>Tcp/ip networking, nfs, a wide
>>selection of tools and even a basic C compiler to get started, made
>>it such good value for money and reliable with it as well. Didn't
>>return to the DEC fold until Alpha, but by then, it was too late...
>
> That was a lot of it... BSD Unix came with everything included, and
> VMS really didn't.
>
> A few years later we got into a situation where people could run jobs
> on their Sparcstation 10 faster than they could run them on our Cray-2.
> Sometimes it took a couple days for a job to sit in the run queue
> on the Cray before it got executed. The Sun took a lot longer to run
> the job, but you could run the job immediately without having to fight
> for time.
> --scott

Comparisons over time are goofy. I started programming in the spring
of 1966, with my first job as operator/programmer (putting myself
through undergrad school) in the fall of 1966. At that time there
were ~35,000 computers worldwide, and to say half a mip each would be
generous. So my one little i7 desktop has somewhat more than twice the
processing power that existed on the entire planet Earth at that time.
And disk, memory comparisons are pretty much similar. Moore's law at work.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

In article <tifqop$10nq$1@gioia.aioe.org>, Richard Maher
<maher_rjSPAMLESS@hotmail.com> writes:

> > I see your mail address has "volvocars" in it, so I understand what
> > you wrote. Apart from IKEA, Volvo is one of the large users of VMS,
> > at least in Sweden.
>
> I was about to query whether volvo cars were actually manufactured by
> Ford and "Volvo" only made trucks now. But Google tells me it's much
> worse and "volvocars" are actually made by Geely

Sic transit gloria mundi. I think that it was the beginning of the
1990s when GM bought SAAB, and maybe a bit later that Ford bought Volvo.
Then a while later Geely bought Volvo. Volvos are still being
manufactured, but they no longer have many unique features which they
(and Saab) had back in the day. I think that SAAB cars are no more.
Both companies made things other than cars, and at least some of that is
still intact, perhaps some of that even under Swedish ownership.

To me, the demise of Volvo and SAAB is just one aspect of Sweden
changing from a really different and innovative country into one with
fewer differences to other European countries, in many cases a turn for
the worst.