Open System Services Porting Guide (G06.29+, H06.06+, J06.03+)

4 Interoperating Between User Environments
The Open System Services (OSS) shell and utilities let you manipulate Guardian objects such as
files and processes. Several commands and utilities have been implemented to enhance the
interoperability between the OSS and Guardian environments.
For porting and developing OSS application programs for the OSS environment, you need to work
with both OSS and Guardian files and processes, with the OSS command interface using the OSS
utilities and the Guardian command interface called HP Tandem Advanced Command Language
(TACL).
This chapter provides information for programmers and other users who need to interact in both
the OSS and Guardian environments. This chapter is intended for:
• Users of the OSS shell who need to access processes and files that reside in the Guardian
environment.
• TACL users who need to access processes and files that reside in the OSS environment.
You should have a basic understanding of the UNIX Bourne, C, or Korn shell.
This chapter includes information about the TACL command interface and the OSS utilities you use
to access and manipulate OSS and Guardian files and processes that you encounter as part of
your porting or developing tasks. For detailed information on the OSS shell and utilities and OSS
operations tasks for the user, refer to the OSS utility online reference pages, to the Open System
Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, or to the Open System Services User’s Guide.
The following topics are discussed in this chapter:
• “Purpose of Interoperability” (page 52)
• “The OSS User Environment” (page 54)
• “OSS Commands for the Guardian User” (page 59)
• “Guardian Commands for the UNIX User” (page 62)
• “OSS Pathname and Guardian Filename Conversions” (page 64)
• “Running the OSS Shell and Commands From TACL” (page 65)
• “Running Guardian Commands From the OSS Shell” (page 66)
• “Running OSS Processes With Guardian Attributes” (page 67)
• “Using OSS Commands to Manage Guardian Objects” (page 67)
Purpose of Interoperability
With the coexistence of the OSS environment and the Guardian environment under the NonStop
operating system, interoperability becomes an important requirement. HP defines interoperability
as providing:
• The ability of an application to use the application program interface (API) of either the OSS
or Guardian environment
• The ability of one API to access or manipulate objects of both environments
• The ability of utilities to access or manipulate objects of both environments
The primary objective of interoperability is to support and encourage the development of new
applications for the OSS environment and the porting of existing UNIX applications from other
platforms to the OSS environment. Another major objective is the migration of Guardian applications
to the OSS environment. All of these applications running in the OSS environment can take
advantage of the parallelism, fault tolerance, and scalability of a NonStop system.
52 Interoperating Between User Environments