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Solaris Live Transcripts Index February 6, 2001Chat Title: NT Migration This is a moderated forum LizA: Welcome to Solaris Live. Today we are joined by Amjad Khan and Eric Reid, who are ready to answer your questions on NT Migration and the NT Migration Kit that they have recently released. Amjad is a Member of the Technical Staff at Sun. He has been a part of Sun's NT Migration group since it's inception and was involved in the development of the NT Migration Kit. He has also been involved in the porting of applications for Sun's ISVs. Eric Reid is a Staff Software Engineer and has been with Sun for over 13 years. He has been a part of Sun's NT Migration group since its inception -- most recently helping to develop Sun's NT Migration Kit. Let me open the questions by asking, "Just what is 'migration'? Isn't it the same as 'porting'?" Amjad: LizA, we've found that 'porting' really involves changing or rewriting source code... Amjad: ...while migration is a more all-encompassing term, which includes porting, performance tuning, sizing, and testing. Zartaj: From your experience with ISV's, do you recommend a native port, or a port using some kind of emulation package or using an abstraction layer like ACE? Amjad: Hi Zartaj. From our experience, we strongly recommend native ports, for several reasons... Amjad: ...We find that performance is much better, there are fewer ‘moving parts’ to break, however the entire migration process tends to take longer. Amjad: When native porting is not an option, we strongly recommend recoding or rearchitecting using Java-based technologies. LizA: What kind of porting issues might we face during the migration of an application from NT to Solaris? Amjad: LizA, you could face some common and fundamental differences between the Windows NT and Solaris operating environments, for example: filename syntax, end-of-line markers, multithreaded programming, process differences, read-write structures, shared-memory model, little-endian versus big-endian, storage order and alignment, etc. Zartaj: Some comments on the NT Migration Kit: Good start but needs a lot more work to make it a preferred choice: Add internationalization, thread-saving, and some advanced I/O stuff like I/O completion ports. On the web page, again great start but add: bigger list of equivalent tools on Solaris, e.g. replacement for NuMegaBoundsChecker; list equivalent compiler/linker options; emphasize optimization opportunities on Solaris missing on NT like feedback-based optimization etc. EricR: Hi Zartaj (one of our valuable Pilot Testers for the Migration Kit)... EricR: For those of you who haven't seen it, the NT Migration Kit is a freely-available collection of tools and information to help NT developers move over to Solaris. As to your feedback... EricR: ...We're in the process of rolling in early feedback (thanks!). Send us any pointers to these tools and info!... EricR: ... also, speaking of I/O, note that we've just added an NT driver to the Solaris driver paper: "Solaris Device Drivers for Windows NT Device Driver Programmers" at http://soldc.sun.com/ntmigration/device_drivers_nt.html Zartaj: NT applications are commonly based on COM even when it isn't clear all benefits of COM (like binary compatibility) are required. Can you give examples where COM wasn't really needed and a simpler solution worked on both NT and Solaris? If so, any examples? Amjad: Right now we don't have any direct solution for converting COM objects to Java or any other language for Solaris... Amjad: but we are developing technologies to assist in migration from Com based applications to Java based applications. LizA: Tell us more about what we will find in the Migration Kit. EricR: LizA, the Migration Kit contains tools, whitepapers, case studies, code samples, culled from within Sun, from developers, and from third-party migration experts... EricR: ...We also provide ways to solicit assistance from the aforementioned third-party migration consultants... EricR: ... All of this content, which is being constantly updated, can be read and downloaded for free... EricR: ...We do recommend that developers join the Solaris Developer Connection, to take advantage of developer programs, discounts, etc. (but it's not required). haed2000: Do we need, when migrating from NT to Solaris, to recreate the users previously created on NT? Or does the migration kit have a tool which automates this process? Amjad: Haed2000, We don't have any automated tool to recreate the users created on NT. Presently you have to ... Amjad: ...recreate the user accounts manually on Solaris using the admin tools provided. Zartaj: Does Sun put out an ODBC driver for Oracle? Amjad: Zartaj, the ODBC driver is available from third-parties, and... Amjad: ... the developer does have to get it under license.... But even easier for developers, Oracle provides it with their distribution. Zartaj: Re: haed2000's question about NT users, we are using MS Services for Unix, which has NFS and NIS, and it has some automatic conversion built into it. I think Sun also has a similar product. EricR: Great, we'll look into this!!!! LizA: Let me pop in with a question here: Is there any way to evaluate the efforts needed to port the application before we start porting? Amjad: LizA, Yes, the Migration Kit contains a free downloadable tool "JScore" that analyzes the feasibility of porting C and C++ source files from Windows NT to Solaris. Please visit http://soldc.sun.com/ntmigration/tools/jscoretool.html for more detail on this tool. LizA: Thanks. Another question: What are the pros and cons of using emulation platforms such as MainSoft's MainWin as part of a migration? EricR: LizA, we've found that emulation isn't the best way to migrate, but it does have some advantages... EricR: ...applications can be migrated in less time, and require fewer developer resources. These advantages are outweighed, however, by the drawbacks inherent in emulation... EricR: ... As I've mentioned, performance usually suffers when not using native calls; platforms such as MainWin also add additional costs... EricR: ... and there are testing and QA issues introduced with more 'moving parts' in the system. There may be a small set of cases for which emulation is a clear win, but in general we don't recommended it. LizA: I've heard of the Win32 Emulation library...what is it? Amjad: LizA, Win32 Emulation library is a thread-safe emulation library which ... Amjad: provides Solaris emulation for a subset of server-based Win32 APIs. Please visit http://soldc.sun.com/ntmigration/nttech/win32emulation.html for the detail of supported Win32 API on Solaris. EricR: If I may interject... we already have developers using the Library, and they have even suggested improvements and additions (thanks, Zartaj! ;)... EricR: ... we're happy to see this ‘community source’ mindset in the earliest stages of the Migration Kit! Test: Can Sun help with the migrations from Windows NT 3.5 or Windows 2000 or Windows 95? EricR: ... That said, because of shared lineage (NT 3.5 -> NT4.0 -> Win2000), much of what we encounter (and much of what the Migration Kit addresses) is applicable in those environments as well. Zartaj: Eric, Have you thought about organizing the source into a web-based CVS-like control open to everyone? EricR: Zartaj, we find that an excellent idea... we're seeing more and more web-based CVS source archives, and will be proposing this to Those Who Run the SolDC portal.... EricR: ... there are, of course, all the issues surrounding read/write access for source code in such a community-based environment, but this one potential direction we'd like to explore further. LizA: If we have an application that uses ActiveX technology, is there anything available to help us migrate? Amjad: LizA, the Migration Kit currently references a tool on Sun's Java portal... EricR: ... Correct, Amjad... take a look on the Kit's "Tools" page for the pointer. Test: I'm ready to migrate but don't yet have the resources to tackle it fully. What other options can Sun show me? EricR: Thanks for the question, Test. Sun wants to ensure that all developers who wish to migrate will succeed. The NT Migratiion Kit has a page where you can request further assistance... EricR: ... Requests can be made for migration assistance (via approved third-party consultants)... EricR: ... for training help from SunEd, or for developer technical support from Sun. neal: Will there be a Win32 emulation library for Solaris Intel? This might seem more natural so companies can preserve their investment in PC hardware. EricR: Neal, because the developers coming to Sun are looking for the benefits that Solaris *and* SPARC provide... EricR: ... our initial focus is Solaris, SPARC and Java. We will eventually have a version for Solaris/Intel; WinTel to Solaris/Intel is indeed a natural path to consider, and will be part of our future plans. LizA: We're just about out of time for today. Eric and Amjad, do you have any closing comments? Zartaj: Thank you all for your good work on this excellent development resource and for the chat today. Amjad: I appreciate the opportunity and thanks to all of you for participating and asking nice questions and giving us good suggestions. EricR: Just that we're looking forward to helping developers migrate, and keep in mind a couple of addresses: http://soldc.sun.com/ntmigration for the NT Migration Kit, and nt_migration_queries@sun.com for email queries. Thanks for having us today! LizA: Many thanks to Amjad and Eric, and to all of you who joined us today. Be sure to join us again on Tuesday, March 6, when we'll be hearing from Chris Baker on "Using Your PC to Develop for Solaris"...10 a.m. PST. February 6, 2001 | ||||||||
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