An interesting metadiscussion where an old codger can put in his 
perspective.  Thanks for the prompt, Oliver, and apologies to all for 
jumping on the soapbox.

The specific reason for using BATCH files on NT is simplicity.  No worry 
about making sure that all the appropriate directories are specified in 
the path when executing programs when you have no native environment.

Two reasons I don't use TCL:

1) After 27 "language of the day/year" efforts I gave up.  Tivoli can't 
make up its corporate mind on the language of choice among REXX, 
BASH/KSH, PERL, TCL and JAVA depending on the product and platform in 
use.  The only Tivoli product using TCL is NetView so it isn't worth the 
effort to me.  (NetView for OS/390 uses mostly REXX.  Framework is 
primarily BASH/KSH.  PERL is holding the same ecological niche in 
Framework and NV-Unix that TCL does in NV-NT.  JAVA is the development 
language of choice for almost all new IBM/Tivoli work that I've seen.)

2) Most Tivoli Framework support is BASH on NT and Korn Shell on Unix. 
It's easier when working with NetView for both NT and Unix to settle on 
one language which will work on both platforms. Most things I do these 
days are in BASH/KSH.

My "native" language after twenty plus years of using it is the old IBM 
Mainframe and OS/2 standby REXX.  It also runs on AIX and NT (using the 
Regina interpreter) but I haven't located an open source Solaris version 
so I only use in in extremis; i.e. I can't get something to work in 
BATCH or BASH. It's a nice language too.

To be honest, TCL appears to be a nice language and so does PERL. The 
use of TCL in NetView is quite minor.  There are 57 class LIBRARIES and 
well over 500 classes for Java in NetView and only 40 TCL scripts.  It 
makes me wonder why they bothered with the overhead of shipping and 
maintaining TCL regardless of how nice it is. It also puts a wet blanket 
on any enthusiasm I might work up for learning to write TCL or PERL.


Oliver Bruchhaeuser wrote:

> Why not using "tcl" !
> 
> It's a really nice scripting language.
> And the interpreter is NetView NT "on board" because NetView is using it
> itself.
> 


-- 
Bill Evans  --  Consultant in Enterprise Systems Management
reply-to: wvevans AT prodigy DOT net  (or Bill_Evans AT sra DOT com)
Phone: 919-696-7513