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From: WOLF@BBNG.ARPA (Jerry Wolf)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: VMS archiving
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]20-Jan-86.11:47:12.WOLF>
Date: Mon, 20-Jan-86 11:47:00 EST
Article-I.D.: <[G.BBN.COM]20-Jan-86.11:47:12.WOLF>
Posted: Mon Jan 20 11:47:00 1986
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I want to add a couple of comments to the exchanges on archiving under
VMS -- sorry I dodn't get around to it last week, when it'd have been
more timely.

1. "Archiving" appears to mean different things to different people, and
   you need to be sure of the other guy's interpretation.

   To me (and to
   TOPS-20 veterans), it means for the user to be able to specify that
   a file is to be moved off-line (somehow), but don't bother me with
   the details; at a later time, user can learn what files are offline
   and request files to be retrieved.  This all is possible without
   consulting operations staff or knowing which tape(s) or saveset names
   are involved.

   To some others, (Unix background, I think), "archiving" seems to mean just
   to copying files to offline media, to free up disk space.  In this case,
   user needs to know what tapes, savesets, etc. are involved, so if
   he wants something back, he'll know where it is.  (Of course, BACKUP does
   all this.  I, and obviously others, want something more on the TOPS-20
   level.)

2. I've looked at the documentation for Strategic Information's ARCHIVER,
   which was mentioned earlier.  At least as of about a year ago, it seemed
   to do a lot of the TOPS-20 kind of thing.  For our use, however, it
   had a BIG drawback -- it's strictly a "personal" archiver.  User can
   archive only files he OWNS and he can see (find in the online database
   and request retrieval for) only files that he OWNS.  This is fine,
   but severely limiting for a group of users sharing files.  I've suggested
   to SI that a more general concept that follows the VMS protection
   mechanism (e.g., let user archive files he has write or delete access to,
   and let user see and retrieve files he has read access to) would be just
   the ticket, but so far, they don't seem to have acted on that.  

   Other comments were on ARCHIVER's own, non-BACKUP tape format.  They
   claimed that theirs is as "good" (from the point of view of error
   protection), but that it works 8-10 times faster
   than BACKUP, and that was the motivation for doing it that way.  If you
   push them, they'll reveal their tape format.  I admit
   I'd be more comfortable with tapes that BACKUP could read in a pinch.

   Another comment said they lacked a "merge" facility for copying archive
   tapes, flushing files that were no longer useful.  The ARCHIVER 1.7
   announcement, Jan. '85, says they now have this; I know no more
   details, however.

Naturally, I'd also appreciate learning of a product that worked more like
TOPS-20.  ARCHIVER seems almost, but not quite as good as I'd like.

Cheers,
  Jerry Wolf
  BBN Laboratories