  Reducing RMS locking activity? 
 The Question is:
 
Is there any way to minimize rms locking, besides opening files for
exclusive and/or read only access?  We have some multiprocessor sites that
are seeing very high mp sync times (250% of 6 cpus) at times.  We were able
to make some files read only and tha
t helped but these companies run tons of reports on transaction files and
its kills the systems.  These are 8400's with 625mz cpus.
 
By the way the question about the product RXAXP is Raxco's Performance
monitoring suite (PerfectCache and PerfectDisk)  Their license is not a
traditional VMS license.  You can list their licenses by running licifno.com
in the rx_v*: directory.  Show log
rx* to see the exact directory.
 
Thanks in advance for your time.
 
 
 The Answer is:
 
  There is presently no way to specifically minimize locking, save for
  those techniques you are already aware of.
 
  OpenVMS Engineering has begun investigation of an enhancement that
  would allow "readers" to override any record locking in accessing an
  indexed file that is opened for shared write access.
 
  Presently, for the purposes of generating "tons of reports" -- and
  assuming the reports can lag behind the current transactions by a few
  hours -- a read-only (temporary) copy of the database could be created
  for reporting purposes.  The copy could obviously be duplicate the
  indexed structure of the existing file should keyed access be required
  for the reports, or it could be a converted sequential file should that
  format be sufficient for the purpose.
 
  Various RMS global buffer enhancements were introduced in OpenVMS
  V7.2 that improve performance on shared write files, and these have
  been backported and will be available on OpenVMS V7.1 (VAX and Alpha).
  These enhancements provide:
 
    o   A new algorithm for global buffer management that dramatically
        improves scalability.  The performance associated with the
        previous algorithm effectively limited the maximum number of
        global buffers permitted on large, shared files.  With this
        change, the number of global buffers can be increased to the
        full limit of 32,767, to exploit large memory systems.
 
    o   New synchronization to the global section used to implement
        RMS global buffers.  This synchronization uses inline atomic
        instruction sequences, rather than distributive locking.
        This change permits increased concurrent access to the RMS
        data in the section, particularly on symmetric multiprocessing
        machines (SMP).
 
  The first enhancement benefits thoses who wish to use very large
  RMS global buffer counts.  The second helps any application using
  RMS global buffers where contention on the global section data is
  the bottleneck.
 
