Robelle Papers

Over the years, Robelle has produced many papers, reflecting our research and experiences in software development and quality. Our web site also contains tutorials.

Transforming TurboIMAGE Data for Eloquence, Oracle, and More.

This PDF file contains Bob Green's paper for HP World in Atlanta. It presents practical tips on how to transform TurboIMAGE data so that it can be used on other databases: HP Eloquence, Oracle, SQL Server, mySQL, and PostgreSQL.

Living with 400 I/O's per Second By Neil Armstrong. PDF Format.

The slowest link in the performance chain will always be physical mechanisms, i.e. disk and tape drives. Where CPU transactions are measured in millions or billions of instructions per second and logical memory I/O's measured in tens of thousands per second, physical I/O's are still measured in dozens, or perhaps hundreds. Neil explains software and database strategies for improving I/O performance, but he also details his explorations of HP's new PCI backbone and what it suggests for increased I/O performance.

Project Management Via the Web By Bob Green.

Now that the HP 3000 computer platform is reborn as the e3000, it is time to consider innovative new uses for the system. This paper will teach you Internet techniques that can improve the management of your software development projects, and any other projects that your group, department or company may have. It shows you how to use your browser, a web site, and some basic tools like Qedit for Windows to simplify project management.

Building Better Software By Bob Green.

As long as there has been software, there has been a software quality problem. Software continues to be less reliable than hardware, and may even be getting worse, at least for PC and Web software. Programmers seek solutions to making software more reliable and closer to what the users want. In this paper, Bob gives you strategies and techniques for software development that provide a promise, not of perfection, but of improved quality.

Creating a widely accessible web site By Dave Lo.

How accessible is your web site? As browsers load-up with more and more new features, it becomes more and more common to see web sites that are accessible to fewer and fewer users. Yet accessibility is important and easy to achieve, and this paper includes tips on increasing your website's accessibility.

Converting Qedit to the Client Server Model By Bob Green.

Bob talks about the creating of our Qedits for Windows editor, concentrating on the experience of going from a host-based model to a client-server model.

Improving Software Quality By Bob Green.

In this classic paper, Bob answers the questions: What is quality? Why does so much software have low quality? What can we do about it?

A Pop Quiz on Quality By Bob Green and David Greer

Everyone is in favor of software quality, but not everyone is producing quality software. How can you tell if a software group has gone off the track? It could be your DP department, your computer manufacturer, or even one of your software suppliers. The ideal software group uses feedback and repeated development cycles to find out what users really need. But it also uses rigorous software engineering. Despite the constant changes, the ideal software group ensures that existing features continue to work and future changes are possible. We have organized our ideas into a non-threatening Pop Quiz, consisting of tell-tale phrases that you may recognize, phrases that warn of a troubled software project, phrases such as "that's not my job" and "it's against our policy."

Client/Server, the Internet, and WWW By David J. Greer

Much of the Internet was made possible by client/server computing. The World Wide Web (WWW) is a means of providing hypertext access to the Internet using client/server protocols. The WWW allows you to point at links to text, pictures, music, or video located on servers anywhere in the world and then play the files on your local client PC, workstation or terminal (along with more links to related information). You never need to know where the information is located or learn any obscure commands to access it.

Programming the Command Interpreter By Ken Robertson (An Introduction, A Dog, and New Tricks)

Many tasks can be performed without the need to write a 3GL program - all that is required is some basic knowledge of how to program the Command Interpreter (CI). The built-in "language" of the CI is not mysterious amd can be deciphered with a bit of help. In addition to the basics of CI programming this paper shows how to simulate arrays, store variables across sessions, and manipulate files. It also explores the value of combining CI command files with a third-party tools such as Qedit from Robelle.

Typical problems to be solved include: listing only the currently executing jobs, doing file searches, displaying user spoolfiles, and accessing of the Cierror return code remotely over NS. Knowing a 3GL is not a prerequisite for this paper.

The MPE/iX System Debugger By David J. Greer

MPE/iX comes with a powerful debugger. But, like all new software, there is a learning curve in understanding the new MPE/iX debugger. Attempting to find the dozen or so most useful features in the three-inch stack of paper called the System Debugger Reference Manual is impossible, unless you have three spare months. In this article, we summarize the features we've found most useful.

We also provide a file of macros that can be loaded into Debug with the use macros.group.acct command. These macros can be used to show the parameters of hpfopen, etc.

Porting Qedit from MPE to HP-UX By David J. Greer

Robelle ported its Qedit full-screen editor from the MPE environment to the HP-UX environment. David Greer headed the team doing the migration. This paper describes the problems they faced and the resulting solutions. Qedit is written in SPL and was ported to HP-UX using the SPLash! compiler from SRN. The paper covers both the gory details of how Robelle does cross-development using SPLash! and the theoretical problem of how to make UNIX look like MPE. Most of the Qedit source code is identical for the two systems, but the MPE file system differs radically and is more complex than the UNIX file system.

Adopting Self-Describing Files By David J. Greer

For years, Query's Save Command has been able to create a file that is self-describing. A self-describing file is one that contains the information about the fields in the file. Normal MPE and KSAM files are not self-describing. In general, we know nothing about the structure of the fields in each record.

In this paper we do the following:

Describe the different self-describing formats.
Show how to create a self-describing file.
Give a programming example that can understand and provide a "form" listing of any self-describing file.
Describe KSAM self-describing files.
Speculate on what an "open system" self-describing file would look like.