Welcome to PINet for PI3.
PINet is OSI's Interface Node Software
for the open VMS Operating System
running on VAX and Alpha Processor Platforms.
You may have PINet as part of your PI System
collecting data from your instrument or distributed
control systems. You may also be using PINet to
provide support for custom, or in-house
developed applications, or applications you have obtained from third
parties which require the VMS Operating System.
If this were a traditional classroom
situation, at this point we would go around the room
and introduce each other. I will start.
I am Chuck Thompson. I am part of the Field Service Group at OSI.
I also help with training, documentation,
and special orders related to our products running on Open
VMS. I have been working with OSI since
December, 1987. We will be working
with PINet version 2.3
and 2.4 during our course. And, we will
be using Open VMS versions 7.2
and 7.3. Our PI3
version will be PI 3.3 Service Release
2 plus a number of patches which are available from
the OSI Tech Support Website.
I would like to take a moment to welcome you to our class.
This course and its materials are intended for people
implementing or supporting PINet Nodes running
under Open VMS with PI3 Servers as
their Home Node. So, prerequisites are assumed.
First, that you are comfortable as a Windows
NT and Windows 2000 or XP user.
Next, that you are comfortable as a user of the PI Clients including
ProcessBook, DataLink, and the PI System Management
Tools, especially the Tag Configurator Applet
which runs inside XL
and the PI HealthCheck Utility.
You also want to have previously
completed the PI3 System Administrator Course.
For the System Administrator Course, we are looking at System Management I,
the Central Skills. It's helpful but not
required to also have a background in Windows
NT or 2000 or XP System Administration and
Open VMS System Administration,
PI2 Applications, the PI2 Data Archive,
PI2 Point Building, and also
all the Database Attributes in the Databases
on a PI2 or PINet Node. I keep
referring to PI2 because PINet is based
on the PI2 Architecture
which ran on Open VMS.
I should cover some gr... -- I --
ground rules before we get started too far.
We will refer to Windows throughout the class, and, generally, that means
Windows NT 4.0 and probably means
Windows 2000 as well. However,
if in doubt, ask us. A lot of vendors
have software, such as from your
Instrument Vendor or your Distributed Control System Vendor, that may
not fully support Windows 2000 or Windows
XP or Windows 2003 Server yet.
So, if in doubt, check with the vendor.
We will refer to Tags and Points pretty
interchangeably during this course. You can assume that
they mean the same thing unless we tell you differently.
Note that each PINet
is custom-compiled for the server it works with. You must
have a matched set for anything to work well
or to work at all. Note that there's some slight
difference in operation when PINet is connected to a PI2
Server instead of a PI3 Server, and
one of the things we will explain during this course is that the PINet we make
for PI2 is very different and not exactly
compatible with the PINet that we make for PI3.
So, we will point these differences out to you as we
encounter them. We will refer to the VMS
Operating System often during the class and, generally, you can
assume that we mean Open VMS, and
that will be Open VMS version 6.1 and later.
However, OSI does not support
Open VMS 7.0, and there are some
limitations to our being able to support VMS
7.3 on the Alpha Platform.
However, we do support VMS 7.3 on the VAX Platform.
Generally, you can assume that
VMS is VMS. We have taken steps to take
take advantage of the commonality and functionality
and operation of the VAX and the
Alpha Platform with the VMS Operating System.
So you can assume that everything is the same. All the features
and functionality are the same on both platforms unless we
tell you differently.