[TriLUG] MVS mainframes

[Andrew Ball]

MVS has been updated a good bit in the past decade or so.  It has been
renamed z/OS, runs on 64-bit hardware, etc.  Also, people can interact with
it with Eclipse using Websphere Developer for z/Series (used to be Rational
Application Developer for z/Series, before that it was Websphere Studio
Enterprise Developer) instead of using ISPF and a 3270 terminal emulator.
That's where my experience comes from -- I was a tester for the Eclipse
product.

I got the same impression about things being "invented" over and over again.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:13 PM, David Black <dave at jamsoft.com> wrote:

> In the late 80s I spent a couple years in a large COBOL shop in the
> insurance industry, finished up school, then joined Amdahl on the hardware
> side of things.  Both involved MVS though in much different capacities.
>
> First off, unless a user is part of the operations or systems programming
> staff, they're typically not doing much, if anything, with the MVS console
> or JCL/REXX.  What they do have are app(s) served up typically via a "3270"
> terminal (named after the IBM hardware model) - software emulators these
> days and the user is presented with a custom app menu/login screen.  Even
> now you'll see office workers or clerks with a pared-down Linux or Windows
> box sitting in front of them, often with a window open that looks curiously
> like an old green CRT.  That's the 3270 emulator, talking to a corporate
> mainframe either with a hardwired connection on the PC or telnet through IP.
>
> Application programmers work within an editor (I used ROSCOE) and from
> within the editor submit compile and run jobs into a queue for batch apps,
> or compile and deploy interactive apps into a framework like CICS.   Today's
> deploying an app into a web framework like JBoss or Glassfish reminds me
> very much of that.  In general there's a lot of stuff happening today that
> was invented and implemented decades ago on mainframes, just now re-emerging
> in a lower cost, more user-centric environment.  For instance, MVS could be
> IPLed (booted) on bare metal, or run atop a hypervisor called VM, aside
> other instances of MVS or other mainframe OSes.   Sound familiar?
>
> There's a whole lot I've forgotten, of course, but the feel of the
> mainframe environment is much more locked down, structured, and application
> centric.  Using UNIX was very liberating to me.  The terminology is very
> different from UNIX/Linux too, although a lot of the pieces are functionally
> the same.
>
> Dave
>
> ----- "Andrew Gray" <andrew.james.gray at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have experience with MVS mainframes who might be able to
> > shed some light on how they work from a users point of view?  I am
> > still
> > looking for work and was contacted about a position that entails
> > working
> > with one of these mainframes.  I have looked at the wikipedia entry
> > and
> > am unsure how much different it would be from using unix or linux.  I
> >
> > took a year of Red Hat in college and had played with FreeBSD and a
> > couple distros for some time before that.  So basically I am more than
> >
> > comfortable with linux and run it full time and am wondering how
> > difficult it would be to pick up and how different it would be.
> >
> > -Thanks for any help
> >  Andrew Gray
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-- 
=======================
Andrew D. Ball
勃安
deus caritas est
http://www.ibiblio.org/adball/blog/
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