[Sanchez-gtm-core] GT.M questions

[Eli R. <el...@pd...>]

I have printed out the GT.M manuals and recently began reading them.

I am discovering that the entire platform of the GT.M system is quite different
than the DSM, MSM, VAX DSM and DTM systems I have been accustomed to.  (For
example: the routines are stored in an operating system directory as OS files
rather than in an M database).  At first I started reading the Administrators
manual, but then when I felt that it assumed some pre- requisite knowledge, I
went back to the Programmer's Reference manual.  I have been going back and
forth.

When an idea or curiosity strikes me, I wind up looking around the manual for
information.  So though I am basically reading straight through the Programmer's
manual right now, I have also peeked ahead in both books as questions arose.

Do you mind if I ask a couple of questions?  I am an MSM user currently and
that's where I am coming from.

1. I did not see any documentation on the MERGE command?

2. I did not see any documentation on the $QS or $QS functions?

3. Does GT.M support any type of DDP (Distributed Database)
     a) between GT.M and other M's like MSM?  communicate with each other's
        Global requests (using a TCP or UDP link of course).

     b) Does GT.M support any type of DDP between GT.M and GT.M on another
        system?  Let's say I have two computers running Linux and GT.M - can
        they share globals with each other?
        I wonder if you'll be telling me that I would just have to rely on the
        OS level networking and build some settings in the Global Directory
        pointing to a file on the other machine?  But what about in the
        traditional method of extended global references?   (I know I read
        somewhere that GT.M does support extended global references, but I can't
        find that now.)

4. Global Compression - MSM has this OLC (On Line Compress) utility which
   compresses UCIs live.  That does a great job and has saved me oodles of time
   and effort over the years.

5. Host File positioning.  I did not see any USE command setting for the
   capability of being able to set the file pointer to a specific position in
   the file.  I use this in our ZMODEM routine to support file transfer recovery
   to be able to resume sending a file beginning from a starting point within
   the file. If GT.M does not support this, I guess I could accomplish this feat
   by using a READ#number_of_characters from the file to get me to that file
   position, though that would be much slower.

6. Before Image Journalling - does the system automatically detect and recover
   from a crash at the next reboot or does a programmer need to start the system
   up and specifically run this utility to fix the database after a crash?

7. On Line Backups?

Take care,
Eli Reidler
el...@pd...