Subject: PostgreSql and VMS operating System

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 09:59:29 +0530

With some apologies fpr a third mail on the same day I would like to
suggest
postgresql port on VMS if it is not already there.

Going into some background DEC has it's Rdb and both Ingres and Oracle ran
on VMS with VMS initially being the platform of choice at a high expense.

The sudden dot com boom, intel platforms,low end hp and sun servers all lead
to speedy move to Unix.

But I believe Ingres and PostgreSql have lot of commonality probably
there migth be some advantages in runing it on VMS architecture.
If porting was to be attempted I could spend whole lot of time on doing the
builds
and testing it on VMS.

Noawadays probbaly VMS might be closer to Unix in pricing than it was in
the olden days.

I hope this could be reviewed and  someone could let me know if I
could join the efforts in anyway.

Sincerely,
Pkv Raju ( Vish Penmetsa)

---

From: Daniel Gustafsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 09:29:00 +0100

> On 24 Jan 2025, at 05:29, Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> With some apologies fpr a third mail on the same day I would like to suggest 

If you are interested in running postgres on OpenVMS you should probably get in
touch with https://vmssoftware.com/, they had postgres on their roadmap in the
past but I don't see it there anymore.

--
Daniel Gustafsson

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:33:35 +0530

Probably I might have misunderstood the purpose of the group or the
workings of the postgresql group.

I thought the group will look at suggestions on a voluntary basis review
them and if found useful will approve to carry forward with the suggestions.

In this case vmssowftare group provides the os copy on VM's but I thought
the group leadership will do some communications.

Sincerely,
Pkv Raju

---

From: Christophe Pettus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 01:07:56 -0800

> On Jan 24, 2025, at 01:03, Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Probably I might have misunderstood the purpose of the group or the workings of the postgresql group.
> 
> I thought the group will look at suggestions on a voluntary basis review them and if found useful will approve to carry forward with the suggestions.
> 
> In this case vmssowftare group provides the os copy on VM's but I thought the group leadership will do some communications.

The organization of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is not like the organization of a commercial software organization.  It is up to the general developer community to propose, advocate, and see through any changes (including ports).  The "leadership" reviews and approves contributions to the primary core PostgreSQL code, but it is up to the person or organization that wants a feature to do the work to make it actually happen.

So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either drive the project yourself, or find others who will.

--
Christophe Pettus / [email-masked]
Chief Executive Officer / PGX Inc. / 24x7 Support, Consulting, Development / pgexperts.com
See us at: SCaLE, March 6-9, Los Angeles / Nordic PgDay, Copenhagen, March 18

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:09:01 -0500

> So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either drive the project yourself, or find others who will.

This email thread from 2003 says VMS probably doesn't work anymore
because of lack of testers:

	https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/200301071531.h07FVWI08147%40candle.pha.pa.us#0dbc1439f51ec7842125fb8ae200b6da

I think we worked on VAX/Unix-Posix for many years after that but
we eventually removed it.

Our normal development flow is:

	https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo#Development_Process
	Desirability -> Design -> Implement -> Test -> Review -> Commit

so I would focus on Desirability at this point.  The next question is
whether the demand justifies the code changes.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <[email-masked]>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.

---

From: Christophe Pettus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 08:20:30 -0800

> On Jan 24, 2025, at 08:09, Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]> wrote:

To expand on this just a bit, you do not need anyone's permission to just take the existing PostgreSQL code base and get it running on VMS.  PostgreSQL is much more truly open-source than a lot of "open source" projects.  However, what you then have is a fork, rather than the mainline PostgreSQL codebase.  Since it is extremely unlikely that you can just compile the current code on VMS and have it work, some patches will be required to do conditional compilation and provide support code for VMS, and perhaps some additions to and modifications of the documentation and test suite.

The part where you need to negotiate with the community is whether or not to accept those changes back into the mainline.  To be extreme, if the difference is one small conditionally-compiled primitive and the code otherwise runs just as it did before (including performance) on the currently-supported platforms, the chance is pretty good; if there is extensive surgery that requires a lot of changes, or if those changes have performance or maintenance impact on the mainline, the chance is much lower.
--
Christophe Pettus / [email-masked]
Chief Executive Officer / PGX Inc. / 24x7 Support, Consulting, Development / pgexperts.com
See us at: SCaLE, March 6-9, Los Angeles / Nordic PgDay, Copenhagen, March 18

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 17:09:37 -0500

> 	https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/200301071531.h07FVWI08147%40candle.pha.pa.us#0dbc1439f51ec7842125fb8ae200b6da

I doubt we ever had a working VMS port.  There are precisely zero
references to VMS in our commit log, so certainly there was never one
that got removed.  It's barely possible that PG "just worked" without
any patches under their POSIX emulation layer, but I could not find
any indication of successful users of PG-on-VMS in the mail list
archives either.

What I did find was occasional suggestions that we port to OpenVMS [1].
But nobody ever showed up to do the work, and the last such discussion
was in 2011.

Given that, I really doubt that there is critical mass to support
a port to VMS.  It's not enough to just show up with a patch for
such a port: there has to be an ongoing commitment to fix problems,
run buildfarm animals, and so on, and that takes multiple interested
people over a long period.  (I think it is pretty much exactly this
point that is the stumbling block for the current discussion about
whether to reinstate the AIX port [2]: there's nearly zero community
enthusiasm about AIX.)

Feel free to prove me wrong, but it's going to be a uphill climb.

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/search/?m=1&q=openvms+port&l=&d=-1&s=d
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/[email-masked]

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 04:51:31 +0530

I used to work in Ingres support and one of the things was teaching
Architecture of Ingres( seminar so just theory without handson ) .Coming
from a trainer( dong tech support training on site consulting etc) people
might have seen as shallow my discussions about advanced features of VMS.

I will try to start working on this and probably note the features which
justify
the port with some comparative findings) and see if that could get more
people interested.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 03:39 Tom Lane <[email-masked]> wrote:

> >> So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either
> drive the project yourself, or find others who will.
>
> [2]
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/[email-masked]
>

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:49:11 -0800

On 1/24/25 15:21, Vish Penmetsa wrote:
> from a trainer( dong tech support training on site consulting etc) 
> people might have seen as shallow my discussions about advanced features 
> of VMS.
> 

I think it would be more useful to establish first whether there are 
existing users of VMS that would like to see a port of Postgres. What 
you are proposing, trying to get people to adopt a new to them OS as way 
to get a port is quite a hurdle.

-- 
Adrian Klaver
[email-masked]

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 08:06:24 +0530

The people who have responded are - Bruce,Christophe,Adrian,Tom,Daniel and
I hope one of you can volunteer to track my mails in the initial stages

I hope to pursue the VMS and the reasons are as follows
1. It is (probably) the best operating system - Virtual Memory Mgmt
2. As I had mentioned there could be a good combination with Datascience &
Python
3. Probably it will keep me away from being meddlesome with PostgreSql
until some contributions are reviewed and signs of positive progress
are noticeable.
As a first step I try to prepare myself for reading postgresql code .
FYI my efforts go on these lines -

First is a learning reference tool second is a Code editor both picked from
Python.

The work look may not look very sophisticated as I had been a jack of all
dabbling in too many activities.

I look forward to one of the long term members to keep a focus on my emails.

Sincerely,
PKV Raju ( Vish Penmetsa)

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:39 AM Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> I hope some people who have worked on VMS can get me started on VMS like
> providing me a VM I ( So I could focus on postgresql and vms
> not losing the initial enthusiasm by working on sysadmin part of it).
>
> My intention is to provide PostgreSql Solutions (advocacy) which provide
> value to the client such as an out of the box Directory Server and a
> similar network server bundled with PostgreSql.
>
> Linux had really changed the whole dynamics of the Unix operating system
> Usage which has been a boon to development communities
> but I feel even OpenVMS could be a tremendous benefit to development
> community if it is available on the samelines of Linux.
>
> I could try to write justifications but I feel we need to take some small
> steps first with proof for suggested reasons for doing things.
>
> I would feel like a clown saying that I have a hunch that we could strike
> it rich ( like in mining) by mixing Datascience,PostgreSql,Python & VMS( A
> strategy for advocacy).
>
> This would be first starting point for me. As we go forward things might
> whittle down.
>
> Perhaps as a starting point I think there is some assembly line thinking
> and machine thinking built into VMS architecture so there could be a
> natural fit
> for Deep Learning etc.
>
> I am not a computing expert ( I was a mgmt graduate) but the starting
> points of performance for me are systems optimization,machine
> tuning,assembly line optimization ( Mfrg) and VMS has been traditionally
> strong in these areas in terms of usage.
>
> We could probably do a survey of existing VMS clients if there is a way
> and if there are experts who could join that will be great too.
>
> The way I look at it is out of liking to spend time on PostgreSql,Unix &
> VMS I am looking to contribute sometime if it could be useful to the
> community.
>
> Step1 of pgsql-advocary is to port applications onto pgsql or develop new
> applications. As part of this I am trying to
>
> On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 5:19 AM Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
>

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 10:02:05 +0530

I can try to add some simple tools or such or a trng or two for pgsql if
there is a place or need one of these. My early efforts in Python so code
might have to be spruced up and standardised quite a bit.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 2:38 PM Christophe Pettus <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> > In this case vmssowftare group provides the os copy on VM's but I
> thought the group leadership will do some communications.
>
> The organization of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is not like
> the organization of a commercial software organization.  It is up to the
> general developer community to propose, advocate, and see through any
> changes (including ports).  The "leadership" reviews and approves
> contributions to the primary core PostgreSQL code, but it is up to the
> person or organization that wants a feature to do the work to make it
> actually happen.
>
> So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either drive
> the project yourself, or find others who will.
>
> --

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 21:32:56 -0800

On 1/25/25 18:36, Vish Penmetsa wrote:
> The people who have responded are - Bruce,Christophe,Adrian,Tom,Daniel 
> and I hope one of you can volunteer to track my mails in the initial stages
> 

1) Just to be clear I have no knowledge of VMS. Also, to be honest I am 
not interested in learning it.

2) Per Tom Lanes post there has been no discernible interest in a VMS 
port of Postgres. Until such time as there is some critical mass pushing 
for a port I don't your efforts going anywhere. Personally I think if 
the interest was there it would have manifested itself already.

3) My suggestion would be to carry your project on as blog posts 
submitted here:

https://planet.postgresql.org/

Then you could see if the a fore mentioned critical mass can be reached.

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:17:58 +0530

Thanks for the advice.  Most appreciated. I was myself very apprehensive
about my mails.

---

From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2025 20:24:17 +1000

> any indication of successful users of PG-on-VMS in the mail list

As a data point, when the recent incarnation of VMS Software announced
their intention to allow Community sign ups a few years ago, I went
and created an account on their system to investigate.  VAX VMX being
one of the first multi-user systems I learned back in the day, before
learning *nix. ;)

Anyway, it went... poorly.  Their system is so crap that users can only
have a very specific set of "special" characters allowedin user 
passwords:

   $#@!%*&

Any other symbols are accepted at password setting time, but actually
cause the user login to fail.

When I attempted to file a bug about this problem, they literally told
me it's not a bug and it working as intended.

So frankly, VMS Software are so completely clueless that I strongly
recommend no-one waste their time and effort on them.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2025 17:17:55 +0530

Unix is a programmer's operating system and obviously programmes like it.

About VMS there is a bit of history that Bill Gates from Microsft had hired
Bill Cutler from the VMS Team to build Windows operating system.

And obviously at that time the focus was more on Windows interfaces rather
than the VMS like OS which was more of a server.

And when it comes to PostgreSQl whe will be really loking at the server
side of things rather than it's user interface capabilities where one
migth Windows to be far more
useful and easy.

DEC had lost of the following Industry leading Advantages - DECNet -> TCP/IP
OSF - Linux
Alpha architecture - Everyone caught up with 64 bit chips while DEC Alpha
was the first 64 bit chip.
Cluster Architecture -> Oracle & RAC & Unix

And in all these we have'n t looked at the core strengths of how the
operating system was built for server operations.

Probably one has to start with the assumption that it is somehow extremely
good and try your best to prove it.

One example I could give as to why I am keen on VMS is something about the
OS learning about exeutable images to make the startup fast.

Then coming to teh user accounts there is something abour working sets for
tuning and these were advatages when you were talking about 32 MB of memory
or 64 MB of memory
for large no of users rather than 32 GB or 64 GB for few uers ( I have 32
GB on my Windows PC just for myself)

Then there will be more.

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2025 18:34:56 +0530

Anyway probably it might be good for postgres hackers to go thru some
strengths of VMS with an R&D Engineer rather than my speaking - I also
worked in presales and I am not an R&D Engineer so...

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 5:17 PM Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> About VMS there is a bit of history that Bill Gates from Microsft had
> hired Bill Cutler from the VMS Team to build Windows operating system.
>

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2025 18:53:57 +0530

There was a book called Thriving on Chaos around eighties or nineties which
took VMS as an example of Technology Industry Leaderhsip and said their
technology  leadership might
be taken for granted  for only 18 months by which time Competitors could
probably catch up.

But then I had said that VMS seems to have become a small
userbase operating system not for competitors catching up but sudden boom
for small servers where everyone went for Unix
so I felt that it might be worth  taking a relook again for postgresql and
python and combination.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 6:34 PM Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>> And obviously at that time the focus was more on Windows interfaces
>> rather than the VMS like OS which was more of a server.
>>
>> Probably one has to start with the assumption that it is somehow
>> extremely good and try your best to prove it.
>>
>> One example I could give as to why I am keen on VMS is something about
>> the OS learning about exeutable images to make the startup fast.
>>
>> Then coming to teh user accounts there is something abour working sets
>> for tuning and these were advatages when you were talking about 32 MB of
>> memory or 64 MB of memory

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2025 06:55:11 +0530

I also need to mention that When DEC Alpha servers were released we could
see their performance advantages ( amazing speeds) while setting up demo's
etc
but VMS was still running on VAX architecture. By the time VMS was ported
onto 64 bit Alpha most people would have seen Unix speed on 64 bit
architecture and probably it was difficult to convince prospects about
advantages of VMS operating System.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 6:53 PM Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> There was a book called Thriving on Chaos around eighties or nineties
> which took VMS as an example of Technology Industry Leaderhsip and said
> their technology  leadership might
>>> Alpha architecture - Everyone caught up with 64 bit chips while DEC
>>> Alpha was the first 64 bit chip.
>>> for large no of users rather than 32 GB or 64 GB for few uers ( I have
>>> 32 GB on my Windows PC just for myself)
>>>
>>> Then there will be more.
>>>

---

From: Laurenz Albe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2025 10:31:32 +0100

On Tue, 2025-02-04 at 06:55 +0530, Vish Penmetsa wrote:
> I also need to mention that When DEC Alpha servers were released [...]

Perhaps this should go on the pgsql-nostalgy mailing list.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2025 17:14:06 +0530

I have expressed my opinion and if more people agree with you that would be
simple. Even without anyone else agreeing with you probably I am not
pushing it further.

I have posted in VMS forum and if nobody responds it is closed anyway,
Anyway I would not call it nostalgia as I was not attached to VMS but
Ingres at that time.

Anyway I think Python is already available on VMS so that could probably
just fulfill my liking for an opportunity to work on VMS again if there is
a way.

---

From: Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2025 17:25:31 +0530

Probably it was wrong of me to send the mail on VMS. I was under some
confusion and kind of under some impression that there might have been a
port which no one was
using and probably the port might have been outdated until I think Mke or
Bruce  checked and said that it was never ported on VMS.

On Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 5:14 PM Vish Penmetsa <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> I have expressed my opinion and if more people agree with you that would
> be simple. Even without anyone else agreeing with you probably I am not
> pushing it further.
>

---

From: Achilleas Mantzios - cloud <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2025 10:58:07 +0200

> Perhaps this should go on the pgsql-nostalgy mailing list.
Exactly !! We can talk about SUN microsystems, Digital, Silicon 
Graphics, NN, archie, gopher and rest of goodies from the 80s!