Course Code: 914
Length: 5 Days

This course presents the components, structures and mechanisms of the OpenVMS Alpha operating system. It is intended for those students requiring an extensive understanding of these areas.

This course features:

• Flow descriptions and pictorial representations of the data structures and code that form OpenVMS
• Use of the System Dump Analyzer and privileged code to illustrate the concepts presented

Who Should Attend
OpenVMS System Programmers

Prerequisites
Before taking this course, students should be able to:

• Complete the OpenVMS Alpha Programming Features I and II courses
• Read and ideally write code, in VAX macro.
• Ability to program in DEC C.

Benefits of Attending this Class
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Describe and differentiate between system context and process context.
• Describe process creation and supporting process related data structures.
• Describe the implementation of selected interrupt service routines including AST delivery, scheduling, hardware clock and software timer routines.
• Describe the processing and roles of interrupts and exceptions on OpenVMS.
• Describe the roles of the following synchronization techniques: IPL, spinlocks, mutexes, and locks.
• Describe the data structures that constitute a process and examine them using SDA.

Course Contents

• General Operating System Concepts
• Alpha Architecture
• Introduction To SDA
• The Process
• Operating System Mechanisms: Interrupts And Exceptions
• Operating System Mechanisms: Programming And Synchronization
• Operating System Mechanisms: Process Context Synchronization