Alan McKinnon wrote:
On Wednesday 16 December 2009 01:34:33 Dale wrote:
A real world scenario would be a bank server doing transactions. Those
big irons do never ever get shut down.
(But they also don't ever get really updated ;)
Did you know, that they still use cobol-code from decades ago. The code
has to interact with newer systems, but the existing code is not allowed
to be altered, they just run it inside hugh java application servers on
their main frames :D
Bye,
Daniel
Well, I wish someone would tell my bank that. They are down pretty
regular "upgrading" something. I use the term upgrading lightly here.
It usually makes things worse but anyway. They run windoze on their rig
so they most likely can't help that. ;-)
They upgrade the *front*ends*, not the real stuff at the back.
Switching a mainframe off is not a supported activity :-)
Along those lines I could tell you some funny stories about monumental cockups
banks do to their front ends (my S.O. does banking data warehousing), but I'm
not actually supposed to know some of that stuff so I won't :-)
I'm not sure about back end or front end but they sure make a mess of it
at times.
Hearing they use old code is not to surprising actually. Look at air
traffic control. Every time they try to upgrade, it crashes. I guess
the cheapest bidder is not always the best. o_O
Every such crash after an upgrade I know of is trying to run the thing on
Windows...
Yep, I read the same thing. Why not use a real OS? I'm thinking BSD or
something. Linux would be good but I think BSD is even better suited
for basically 100% uptime.
Dale
:-) :-)
