NonStop Systems Introduction for H-Series RVUs

NonStop Systems Introduction for H-Series RVUs—540083-001
6-1
6
The NonStop Operating System
Sections 3, 4, and 5 examined the NonStop application system environment and its
major components:
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Application development and integration
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Transaction control
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SQL/MX relational database management
•
TMF transaction management
You saw that this environment provides powerful support for your applications by
automating many functions that you would otherwise need to program explicitly. You
also observed that the NonStop application environment handles distributed
applications as easily as local applications.
This section and the next section examine the software and hardware foundation on
which the NonStop application environment is built:
•
This section describes the NonStop operating system and the Expand network
extension of the operating system.
•
Section 7, Integrity NonStop NS-Series Server Architecture, explains the
multiprocessor design of NonStop NS-series servers and describes major
hardware components of an Integrity NonStop server.
These two sections show that a NonStop system is designed as a single entity in which
hardware and software work together to provide fault tolerance, modular expandability,
efficient networking, and other important functions.
Application Services
Programs can access a variety of services provided by the NonStop operating system.
These services make it possible to write applications that support the transaction
processing functions and perform other tasks necessary for process execution, such
as input/output and memory management. You access these services through one of
the two environments provided by HP.
HP provides two environments for developing and running applications on a NonStop
system: the Guardian environment and the Open System Services (OSS)
environment. Both environments provide commands, tools, and a set of procedure
calls (the application programming interface, or API) that enable an application
developer to access the services of the NonStop operating system.
Figure 6-1 on page 6-2 shows the relationship of the two environments to the NonStop
operating system and to each other. The two environments are not themselves
operating systems but are layers that reside on top of and provide access to the