Paul Gilmartin wrote: > "could". But would it happen? Is z/OS at any price a preferred > instructional platform? How relevant to mainstream computer > science is teaching students to code DD statements for CKD DASD > when the view of many sophisticated readers of this list is > that CKD should be superseded by FBA? > In our case, it would have helped tremendously. A few years ago, our Computer Science (CS) chair and the chair of the College of Business Administration's Management Information Systems (CBA/MIS) departments both wanted to incorporate a few classes dealing with mainframes into their curricula.
The CS chair wanted to do a systems programming and OS series that would give his students hands-on experience installing, configuring, and running multiple operating systems while teaching a lot about the underlying algorithms where they could compare and contrast them. He basically wanted some LPARs or (if we could get VM) some virtual machines on our mainframe (one for each project team). The Windows and UNIX portions of the course would be done on the students' own PCs running Windows and BSD. But they couldn't afford a mainframe so came to us to see if they could get time on our 9672. The CBA/MIS chair wanted to incorporate CICS/COBOL/DB2 programming into their curriculum to complement the stuff they do with Windows and UNIX. Our CIO turned them away because he was in the middle of a project to downsize our 9672 (our z890 is about half the capacity of our old 9672) so didn't have the spare capacity to offer ... part of our 5-year plan to phase out the mainframe ... that we started in 1990 ... but that's another story. Anyway, if an inexpensive way of giving our students access to their own z/OS environments were available, the University of Hawaii would be offering mainframe-oriented classes in two separate curricula today. Something like z/OS on Hercules on a Linux laptop would have fit the bill perfectly for us. Unfortunately, the opportunity was missed. The current chairs from those departments are not at all interested in offering mainframe components in their curricula -- they believe, as does our CIO, that mainframes are irrelevant. BTW: this year is supposed to be the last year for our mainframe (but somehow, I'm not convinced). > Twenty years ago, I got a Macintosh SE, in large part so my > girlfriend could write her doctoral dissertation in music. > Would I have taken an s/370 (XA?) at the time for personal > use?. Not if it were free; not if it were in a package I > could carry. How many of us today, given a z/OS system that > weighed 5 pounds and cost $1000 would make that our only > computer and OS? Wouldn't we each still need another computer, > or at least a partition on the same one, for Email, Web > browsing, document preparation, access to IBMLink, etc.? > *snip* > If IBM can't make z/OS the only OS people need, and the first > choice for many, too many customers will find it expedient to > seek to use the computer and OS they already need and own to > host the additional applications they come to need. Is it > even plausible that enterprises seeking to simplify their > IT structures by reducing the number of OSes they support would > consider eliminating Windows, Linux, OS X, or Solaris and > moving all its applications to z/OS? > I think that's an extreme view. I don't think anybody is thinking of replacing Windows or MacOS or Linux on the desktop with z/OS. But why not z/OS as a back-end server? Even our CIO acknowledges that, while he would prefer that we only had Solaris/SPARC servers in our data center, it often does make sense to run other server operating systems. He believes that "more than one but not more than 4" different server OSes is reasonable. And what I'd be interested in is running z/OS in a virtual machine under Linux on my laptop (I run Windows in a virtual machine on my laptop now just so that I can run the officially sanctioned applications that my organization requires us to run) so I can do development without worrying about hurting any of our LPARs on our z890. I think it would be great if students could get the ability to run z/OS on their laptops to learn about it. Anyway ... Happy New Year! -- Stephen ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
