Sorry to be so late in chiming in, but some health issues have limited
my online-time, and I'm playing catch-up.
The reference to the Secret Service's mainframe "60-percent uptime"
reminded me of an issue from 30-some years ago. I was called on the
carpet because the supervisor of our remote data-entry facility
claimed that the IMS system I supported was "down 70 percent of the
time". After a quick plane trip and some careful observation, I
determined that some of the staff were using a response-mode
transaction involving a full-file scan. This meant that the terminal
involved was locked (the old 3270 "input inhibited" light was on for
the duration of the scan). The supervisor standing behind the clerks
was starting her stop-watch any time she saw the "input inhibited"
light come on. It took a lot of persuasion to get it through the
lady's head that all the other terminals were continuing to work and
that we had explicitly instructed her in the past to not let her staff
use that transaction in the way they were using it.
Even as far back in the stone age as that, I doubt that any management
I worked for would ever have tolerated a 60-percent up time. Of
course, I have seen some very poor availability tolerated on the unix/
windoze side of the data centers.
Dale Miller
dalelmil...@comcast.net
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