Back in 1999, I wrote a course about inter-language communication in OS/390 and asked the ibm-main folks to suggest a title that was lively and attention getting. Someone (and I can't find my notes on who) suggested "Hot Catholic High School Girls in Bondage" - my all time favorite title for a technical training course.
Of course, I ended up with the more sedate title of "Inter-Language Communication in OS/390" - what can you do? Now comes the z/OS version, actually titled "Secrets of Inter-Language Communication in z/OS". I used "Secrets" simply because a lot of the techniques discussed in this course seem to be unknown to a large number of programmers. Although the course focuses on calling and being called across language boundaries, it could be taken just for learning the techniques in any one of the languages we cover in the class: Assembler, COBOL, PL/I, and C. Major topics: * Declaring data items (elementary, structures, arrays) in all four languages * working with null-terminated strings and halfword prefixed strings in all these languages * calling statically from programs written in all of the discussed languages * passing arguments in the call / invocation - by reference, by value - variable numbers of arguments - all types of arguments (elements, structures, arrays) - omitted arguments * receiving paramters in the subroutine / subfunction - by reference, by value - variable numbers of parameters - all types of parameters (elements, structures, arrays) - omitted parameters * how to "catch" values returned from a function * how to set values to return as if from a function * formats of object decks (OBJ, XOBJ, GOFF) * how the program binder works * sharing external data items * load modules vs program objects * calling dynamically from all languages * creating DLLs in all four languages * invoking DLL functions from all four languages * accessing and changing values in DLL variables in all four languages The student handout consists of 538 exciting, thrill-packed pages of notes, examples, and explanations. Ten labs let you get your hands on and actually accomplish all this kind of work yourself. The previous version was only offered once. But judging by several of the recent threads on ibm-main, the time may be just right for this course. Take a look at the details at: http://www.trainersfriend.com/Language_Environment_courses/m520descr.htm Kind regards, -Steve Comstock The Trainer's Friend, Inc. http://www.trainersfriend.com P.S. I seem to be incorrigible. I just love this stuff (z/OS, programming, teaching) so I guess I'll just keep plugging away at it as long as it is so much fun. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html