I am rather new to D3, I'm an old hand at UniVerse, Revelation and R83.
Can someone please enlighten me on what the difference(s) are between
VME and FSI? I came across these terms in another thread and piqued my
interest. Is there a version that works more like UniVerse and allows
me direct file system access from Linux?

Also, what are the gotchas in moving from D3 to UniVerse?

Marshall Lucas
MF Lucas Enterprises, Inc.

The VME (Virtual Machine Environment) emulates the "native" R83/AP data
model; that is, all user data is contained in what's called a BLOB (Big
Lumbering Ol' Bear). This insulates the VME from the rest of the underlying
file system. If you run out of VME space, you have to increase the size
(relatively easy). You can also decrease the size (relatively less easy),
but more is usually better.

The FSI (File System Interface) uses the underlying file system for the data
files. This allows the D3 system to use the hosted operating system for some
or all of the data manipluation. This also has implications for using some
of the file tools available in D3. Some old favorites (hash-test, item etc.)
don't work in the FSI, but there are sometimes other tools which you can
employ to achieve similar results.

Others will no doubt have information about migrating. Not a slam dunk, but
it's been done often.

It's possible that BLOB stands for Binary Large OBject, but I like my
version better.

Ed

"Marshall Lucas" <mlucas67 (AT) cox (DOT) net> wrote

Not to detract from Ed's description of a BLOB, the fact that you
mentioned "Linux" means that, for the time being at least, you can
ignore the terms "VME" and "FSI" (and probably BLOB to for that
matter). In the context of D3/Linux. there is only the VME (currently)

In terms of differences, a "biggie" might be the fact that you DON'T
need to worry about the 2Gb file restriction of UV (I'm doning some
"playing" at present with a 1Tb under D3) - but the differences between
UV & D3 are similar to UV vs R83 - a few minor syntax issues.

(Assuming your UV experience is after 9.6, then things like CALLHTTP,
xml handling etc are devoid in D3. I'd recommend downloading the D3/NT
7.5 documentation set though - lists *nix differences and is a better
reference than we have had for a while)

If you want top directly reference the file system from D3, just use
something like

open "","unix:/mydir/path" to dirfile else stop "couldn't open dir"

The "unix:" component loads a unix native file driver that will convert
@FM to LF on *nix. If you want to work with binary data in D3 for some
reason, use the "BIN" driver (prefix), which will escape "nasty"
strings like CHAR(255) so they can be read/written AOK

You can execute *nix commands by prefixing with a "!", eg:

!dir /etc | more

There ARE lot's off differences between the environments, but I'm not
aware of any "D3 for UV developers" style texts or guides ...


Marshall Lucas wrote:

On 3 Sep 2006 18:09:57 -0700, "Ross Ferris" <rossf (AT) stamina (DOT) com.au>
wrote:

way....

Wonder why that'd be?????

Regards,

Bruce Nichol
Talon Computer Services
ALBURY NSW Australia

http://www.taloncs.com.au

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is....