-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of john gilmore Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 10:05 AM To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: Fatuities (was 'Another BIG mainframe . . . ')
>More interesting than this loss have been the reactions to it. >They have included the usual chestnuts: floating-point arithmetic yields rounded values that are unusable in business >environments; UNIX has an unusably low MTBF and z/OS MVS a commendably high one; the care and feeding of 10,000 chickens >is likely to be more costly than that of 10 cows; etc., etc. >There are cointexts in which all but the first of these notions has merit, but what has gone without discussion is that >the great technical strengths of the mainframe are little exploited, even actively rejected in most mainframe COBOL >shops. >This old-COBOL subculture has a synchronous, move-orient[at]ed, compile-time bound world view that judges the >asynchronous, list- and pointer-orient[at]ed, execution-time bound technology of z/OS irrelevant to its needs. Dynamic calls are standard procedure for COBOL. >In the upshot radical change---outsourcing, conversions to UNIX or LINUX, whatever---is sometimes seen to be and used as >a verhicle for dispensing with/destroying an old, dysfunctional IT organization that is heroically >obstructive/reactionary and risk-aversive. When you are running a busines risk aversion is usually an asset NOT a liability. There is a reason that z/OS is as stable as it is. Ie. We don't have every user creating his own shell aka UNIX bash, csh, sh, ksh, ad nauseum and authorized code is protected. >Mainframes and z/OS thus suffer not because of their own proper deficiencies but because of their historical association >with an obsolete episteme. They must be dispensed with in order to dispose of their caretakers. Mainframe sysprogs mostly suffer from bad press for doing their jobs very well. Users want to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want to. This may seem like goodness to one end user, but in the real business world it is death. A few users feel that they are burdened by things like protecting the system from unauthorized updates, and making sure that the code that gets executed is the code that the vendor sent us. It is not a pleasant job being the gatekeeper and not usually appreciated (aka your comments) but is is necessary and in the long run extremely important. Jon Veilleux ----------------------------------------- This e-mail may contain confidential or privileged information. If you think you have received this e-mail in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail and then delete this e-mail immediately. Thank you. Aetna ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
