6 ms·

Migrating a suite of programs written w/ COBOL, CICS, DB2 from z/OS to Linux is fairly straightforward. MicroFocus COBOL compiles IBM COBOL, DB2 runs on Linux o

by ibiza 3y ago

Migrating a suite of programs written w/ COBOL, CICS, DB2 from z/OS to Linux is fairly straightforward. MicroFocus COBOL compiles IBM COBOL, DB2 runs on Linux or you can swap out another RDBMS. The CICS part requires a simple runtime easily implemented in C plus a new scanner to replace the calls in your programs. I was part of a 4 person team that knocked this out in under a year. 1,000's of mainframe programs running w/o change (at the time) on Unix. This was in the 90s.

stcroixx 3y ago
What replaces JCL?
- redandblack 3y ago
  perl scripts. sorry
- ibiza 3y ago
  The env I helped set up was online only, no batch jobs. JCL is essentially a declarative shell language, so it's not that hard to map to Bourne shell et. al.
hermitdev 3y ago
> DB2 runs on Linux The DBA's I interned with would yell at you for this claim. They'd say UDB runs on Linux, but DB2 only runs on z/OS. I worked with both DB2 & UDB during my internship 2 decades ago, and while largely compatible with core SQL functionality, that changed quickly after you got off the "normal" path. UDB was released at a much faster cadence, and if you developed to the latest features of UDB, you'd often find yourself unable to deploy against DB2. A few of my last projects as an intern: 1) storing BLOB objects in DB2 from a .Net app and 2) porting an "interactive" batch-processed COBOL app to ASP.Net form 3) getting DB2 Connect clustering on windows working (I never did get this working despite spending an entire summer on the phone with IBM support). I've some fond memories of working with the mainframe. Like the time I managed to crash the entire development LPAR with a specific SQL query that broke the DB2 query optimizer... The phone call from the NOC was immediate and went something along the lines of "I don't know what you did, but don't do it again, you just took down all of development". Development was something like +10k users...
- ibiza 3y ago
  Re DB2 vs UDB, thank you, it's been too long. Well done breaking DB2! We actually targeted Oracle on Unix. Fortunately, the app developers never got too deep into DB2-isms, so it worked out fine.
  - radiator 3y ago
    From z/OS to Oracle. Good Lord!
- rvba 3y ago
  What company had 10k developers on a mainframe?
  - hermitdev 3y ago
    It'd probably be more accurate to say users than developers on the LPAR. I won't name names, though. It was at a Fortune 500, though. Manufacturing sector, not finance.
tracker1 3y ago
Worth noting, in the 90's general computing was still increasing at a very rapid pace, where you could replace a late 80's mainframe with an early 90's x86 or PPC server. You won't have the built in layers of redundancy, but that isn't always necessary for any given environment. The cases of many mainframes still in use today are on much faster/newer systems where that critical uptime is much more important. I'm not really a fan of mainframes, only pointing out that the companies still on them are generally on them as a direct replacement to general purpose servers isn't purpose fit, and conversion is excessively costly, even compared to IBM mainframe contracts.

by ibiza 3y ago

stcroixx 3y ago

What replaces JCL?

redandblack 3y ago
perl scripts. sorry
ibiza 3y ago
The env I helped set up was online only, no batch jobs. JCL is essentially a declarative shell language, so it's not that hard to map to Bourne shell et. al.

hermitdev 3y ago

> DB2 runs on Linux The DBA's I interned with would yell at you for this claim. They'd say UDB runs on Linux, but DB2 only runs on z/OS. I worked with both DB2 & UDB during my internship 2 decades ago, and while largely compatible with core SQL functionality, that changed quickly after you got off the "normal" path. UDB was released at a much faster cadence, and if you developed to the latest features of UDB, you'd often find yourself unable to deploy against DB2. A few of my last projects as an intern: 1) storing BLOB objects in DB2 from a .Net app and 2) porting an "interactive" batch-processed COBOL app to ASP.Net form 3) getting DB2 Connect clustering on windows working (I never did get this working despite spending an entire summer on the phone with IBM support). I've some fond memories of working with the mainframe. Like the time I managed to crash the entire development LPAR with a specific SQL query that broke the DB2 query optimizer... The phone call from the NOC was immediate and went something along the lines of "I don't know what you did, but don't do it again, you just took down all of development". Development was something like +10k users...

ibiza 3y ago
Re DB2 vs UDB, thank you, it's been too long. Well done breaking DB2! We actually targeted Oracle on Unix. Fortunately, the app developers never got too deep into DB2-isms, so it worked out fine.
- radiator 3y ago
  From z/OS to Oracle. Good Lord!
rvba 3y ago
What company had 10k developers on a mainframe?
- hermitdev 3y ago
  It'd probably be more accurate to say users than developers on the LPAR. I won't name names, though. It was at a Fortune 500, though. Manufacturing sector, not finance.

tracker1 3y ago

Worth noting, in the 90's general computing was still increasing at a very rapid pace, where you could replace a late 80's mainframe with an early 90's x86 or PPC server. You won't have the built in layers of redundancy, but that isn't always necessary for any given environment. The cases of many mainframes still in use today are on much faster/newer systems where that critical uptime is much more important. I'm not really a fan of mainframes, only pointing out that the companies still on them are generally on them as a direct replacement to general purpose servers isn't purpose fit, and conversion is excessively costly, even compared to IBM mainframe contracts.