HP DECnet-Plus for OpenVMS Alpha and OpenVMS I64, Version 8.3
HP DECnet-Plus for OpenVMS Alpha and OpenVMS I64, Version 8.3 SPD 50.45.19
Appendix A: File Transfer, Access, and
Management (FTAM)
FTAM software provides communications for the follow-
ing file operations between open systems:
• Copying files between local and remote systems
• Appending, deleting, or renaming files
• Displaying information about files
An open system is a computer system that implements
the standards for each of the seven layers of the Open
Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model for
communications as defined by the International Orga-
nization for Standardization. An FTAM system is any
open system containing an FTAM implementation that
conforms to the FTAM standard and includes the imple-
mentations of the necessary underlying OSI services.
FTAM implements several standards that define the fol-
lowing components of these layers of the OSI Basic
Reference Model: the FTAM service element and the
Association Control Service Element (ACSE) of the Ap-
plication layer, the Presentation layer, and the Session
layer.
Supported Standards
FTAM conforms to the following OSI standards:
• ISO 8571 — File Transfer, Access, and Management
service and protocol
• ISO 8650 — ACSE protocol
• ISO 8823 — Presentation protocol
• ISO 8327 — Session protocol
Table 1 compares the supported implementation profiles
for different standards bodies and their relationship to
each other.
Table 1
Standards and Implementation
International Stan-
dardized Profiles
(ISP) ISO 10607 NIST
CEN/CENELEC
and EWOS
Part 1: Specification
of ACSE, Presentation
and Session protocols
for use by FTAM
——
Part 2: Definition
of document types,
constraint sets, and
syntaxes
——
Part 3: AFT11 —
Simple File Transfer
Service (Unstructured)
T1 — Simple
File Transfer
A/111 —
iENV 41 204
Part 4: AFT12 (DISP)
1
— Positional File
Transfer Service (Flat)
2
T2 — Po-
sitional File
Transfer
A/112 —
ENV 41 206
Part 5: AFT3 (DISP)
1
— File Management
Service
M1 — Man-
agement
A/13 —
ENV 41 205
1
Draft ISP
2
AFT12 is not supported by DECnet-Plus
FTAM Component Software
The component software includes the user facilities (ini-
tiators), responders, management tools, and problem
determination tools.
FTAM User Facilities
Users access the FTAM user facilities by entering the
following OpenVMS operating system commands: AP-
PEND, COPY, DIRECTORY, RENAME, and DELETE.
These commands operate on files stored on any FTAM
system whose implementations are compatible with
FTAM. You cannot use these commands to manipulate
files directly on your local system.
Support for Any File-Naming Convention
A file designation is system-specific information that
identifies a file to its storage system. FTAM software
lets users specify files using the naming conventions of
the systems where the files reside. FTAM supports the
OpenVMS operating system RMS format for file specifi-
cations and a comparable style of file-specification for-
mat that accommodates non-RMS file designations.
Support for Several File Types
FTAM software can access and transfer files containing
both binary and ASCII data. FTAM-1, FTAM-2, FTAM-3,
and NBS-9 document types are supported.
FTAM-1 files are unstructured text files, FTAM-2 files are
sequential text files, and FTAM-3 files are unstructured
binary files. Table 2 shows the parameters supported
by FTAM-1, FTAM-2, and FTAM-3 document types.
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