Guardian Application Conversion Guide

Glossary
096047 Tandem Computers Incorporated Glossary–3
file system. A set of operating system procedures and data structures that allows
communication between a process and a file (disk file, I/O device, or another process).
filter. In the Event Management Service (EMS), a file that contains a list of criteria
against which incoming event messages can be compared. Messages are either passed
or not passed based on the list of criteria.
GMOM. See “godmother (GMOM).”
godmother (GMOM). A process that is notified when a process that is part of a job is
deleted. The godmother of a process is the process that created the job to which the
process belongs.
GPLDEFS file. A source file provided by Tandem that contains LITERAL and DEFINE
declarations and data structures that are available for applications to use with
sequential I/O (SIO) procedures.
high PIN. A process identification number (PIN) that is greater than 255. Contrast with
“low PIN.”
inherited force-low characteristic. A characteristic of a process that forces its child
processes into low PINs when set. This characteristic is inherited from the creator of
the process so that low-PIN processes can always communicate with their
descendents. The characteristic can be overridden.
input/output process (IOP). A system process that controls one or more I/O units
attached to the central processing unit (CPU) through I/O channels.
interprocess communication. The exchange of messages between processes in a system or
network.
IOP. See “input/output process (IOP).”
low PIN. A process identification number (PIN) that ranges from 0 through 254.
Contrast with “high PIN.”
management application. See “Distributed Systems Management (DSM) application.”
message. See “system message” and “SPI message.”
message system. A set of operating system procedures and data structures that handle
the mechanics of exchanging system messages between processes.
millicode. RISC instructions that implement various TNS low-level functions such as
exception handling, real-time translation routines, and library routines that implement
the TNS instruction set. Millicode is functionally equivalent to TNS microcode.
mom. A process that is notified when certain other processes are deleted. If a process
is part of a process pair, the mom of the process is the other member of the pair. When
a process is unnamed, its mom is usually the process that created it.
named process. A process to which a name was assigned when the process was created.
Contrast with “unnamed process.”
nested error list. In Distributed Systems management (DSM), an error list within
another error list. When an error in one subsystem or in a library procedure prevents