Radoslaw Skorupka got some good answers to his questions, but I can fill in some gaps:
2. While z/TPF can certainly run as a z/VM guest, that's at least not common for production instances. 3.1. There's a base z/TPF license plus some popular options such as the z/TPF High Performance Option (HPO) and z/TPF Database Facility (z/TPFDF). There are some other software products that are popular add-ons to the z/TPF -- some no additional charge, some not. 3.2. As many have mentioned, z/TPF tends to be extremely efficient in its real world implementations. Pricing only partially reflects its efficiency, i.e. most of its efficiency accrues to the benefit of its users. 4. I'm not aware of any particularly special LPAR definitions other than what has already been mentioned. 5. z/TPF can have speciality engines, but they're not zIIPs. As Parwez mentioned, in the unlikely event you ever need more SAPs than the standard system-provided default number, z/TPF is the most likely candidate to drive such a requirement (although even with z/TPF it's not a given). There's also the interesting concept of "specialty CPs" -- CPs that are technically CPs but that are priced and licensed for specific workloads. However, z/TPF isn't unique in this respect. 7. There's an active z/TPF users group called TPFUG: http://www.tpfug.com They're holding their next conference next month (April, 2021). 8. The most common industries using z/TPF are "T&T" (travel and transportation, including hospitality) and financial services (particularly in payments). Regarding an earlier comment about programming languages, yes, the "big three-ish" programming languages for z/TPF are Assembler, C and C++, and Java. However, in principle any programming language that can run on the Java Virtual Machine is also available. Examples include Clojure, Kotlin, Jython, jRuby, NetRexx, Groovy, Scala, and Nashorn (JavaScript). Also, z/TPF can host the MySQL database. Thus SQL is a programming language for/on z/TPF. Also, while it's popular for many reasons to pair z/TPF with z/OS, it's not strictly required. - - - - - - - - - - Timothy Sipples I.T. Architect Executive Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions IBM Z & LinuxONE - - - - - - - - - - E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
