On Thu, 27 Apr 89 12:40:42 EDT Herbert A. Huston said:
>Yesterday I attended the spring meeting of the Washington, DC, VM Users'
>Group where Tom Klensk of IBM spoke on, among other features, the list
>processor line driver (LISTPROC) for Version 2 of RSCS.  He admitted that
>at present there were no IBM applications for VM that make use of this
>feature.  (I refrained from asking the obvious question because of the
>standard answer; for readers on non-IBM systems, the standard answer is
>"I cannot comment on unannounced products.")
 
    The  LISTPROC feature  has  long  been a  part  of IBM's  internal
network, VNET.  It was released as part  of a set of VNET features, at
the urging of the SHARE VM Group.  It is widely used by other parts of
VNET,  like the  TOOLS conference/fileserver  network.  Mike  "Call me
REXX"  Cowlishaw has  spoken  about TOOLS  at SHARE  on  at least  one
occasion, but  there doesn't seem to  be any movement afoot  to pry it
out of IBM.
 
>                                              However, LISTPROC would seem
>to be a natural for LISTSERV, RiceMAIL, and MAILER to make use of, and I
>was wondering if there are any plans to do so.
 
   1) a) Yes.
      b) Maybe.
      c) Yes.
   2) No.
 
>                                                Just as a footnote, Version 1
>of RSCS was withdrawn from marketing on Monday and is to be withdrawn from
>programming support on February 28, 1990; it would seem reasonable to expect
>a higher growth both in absolute number and percentage of VM sites running
>Version 2 over the next several months (we're in the process of mi-
>grating right now).
 
    A mass  migration from V1 to  V2 might just poke  the right people
(Eric Thomas, Jown Wagner, and myself) into doing something to support
LISTPROC from LISTSERV  and MAILER.  RiceMail doesn't  really need it,
unless you run it without MAILER  (and noone does that, right?  ;{) ).
The main reason for the current lack  of interest is that all the good
work   of   the  LISTPROC   facility   falls   apart  at   the   first
non-(RSCSv2|JES2) site  along the transmission path.   To my knowlege,
only RSCSv2  and JES2 support  multiple Network Dataset  Headers (NDH)
per dataset.  This  basic NJE facility is the  underlying vehicle used
by the LISTPROC  code.  All other implementations I know  of (VS1, VSE
Power,  JES3, HASP,  UREP, JNET  (maybe not,  Joiner's a  pretty slick
operation)) "fan-out" the  job when they receive it.   This means that
you'll pass  one file with 50  addresses down the line  from RSCSv2 to
JES2  to RSCSv1,  and RSCSv1  will generate  50 files,  each with  one
address.   If you  think  LISTSERV  can fill  spool  fast, watch  this
process run.
 
Ross Patterson
Rutgers University