5 more ways to start a war on a mainframe forum

1. Say something positive about Windows.
2. Declare that the 'frame is dead and squatty boxen rule.  Don't forget the "boxen" part.
3. Opine that RAS is overrated; the future belongs to Wintel because it's cheaper.
4. Brag about how long you've been in the computer business.  Even if you worked on ENIAC someone will claim to have worked with Ada and Babbage.
5. Mention Hercules. 

5 ways to start a war on a mainframe forum

The mainframe strikes back

I attended an interesting IBM presentation today on the topic of zIIPs, zAAPs and IFLs.

These specialty z processors are designed to support "new" workloads that were formerly the domain of Java, Linux, and *ix.  After spending the past two decades losing workloads to the other platforms, the mainframe is finally* winning some of it back.


*Actually these processors have been around for the past decade or so, so it's not that recent a development.

5 ways to start a war on a mainframe forum

1. Use the acronym "USS" to refer to z/OS Unix features.
2. Propose the elimination of the 100 byte limit on PARM length in JCL.
3. Complain about the limitations on the use of System Symbols in JCL.
4. In a COBOL forum, declare that coding is Paragraphs is better than coding in Sections.   Or vice-versa.
5. Praise Oracle on a DB2 forum.
   

5 more ways to start a war on a mainframe forum

Whose default is it? (sorry)

The LE run time parameter CBLQDA can bite the unwary.  It doesn't help that IBM has changed the default value over the years.  I was just recently able to convince our local sysprogs to change it to OFF.  Their first reaction was that there had been no change, that the system had always behaved that way, and OFF was the default. 

The story I heard was that IBM originally delivered CBLQDA(ON) as the default, with a recommendation to turn it OFF.  This was to comply with some ANSI COBOL standard.  Our local sysprogs accepted IBM's recommendation and set it to OFF.  A few years later, IBM changed the default to 'OFF'.  The local sysprogs knew that in the past they didn't use the default value, so, by reflex, they switched it to 'ON'.  And for a long time no one complained.

(For those not intimately familiar with IBM's Language Environment, the CBLQDA setting controls the behaviour of COBOL programs that fail to assign a dd name to an output file.  CBLQDA(OFF) means that an error is thrown, CBLQDA(ON) means that the problem is ignored.)

I was remined of this when I was approached by a desperate colleague who had been banging his head against the wall for two days, trying to figure out why, no matter what he did, his output file remained empty.  He could see the EXCP counts, so he knew data was being written somewhere.  It turned out he had a misspelled ddname, and because CBLQDA(ON) was in effect, z/OS was writing to output to an uncataloged temporary file instead of the one that was intended.

Ouch.

IPT vs ISPF

I find this link interesting because IBM appears to be rubbishing ISPF in order to promote IPT

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/...Comparison.pdf

Straw men walking!