programmers quotes

September 6, 2010

Staying up-to-date with IMS

Filed under: z/OS & OS390 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Trevor Eddolls @ 11:54 am

IMS – Information Management System – has been around for quite some time. In fact it’ll be 42 in August. Isn’t 42 the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything? Anyway, IMS runs on IBM mainframes and provides an incredibly fast hierarchical database system and an excellent transaction processing system. And in the intervening 41 years and 10 months there have been enormous improvements not only to the way it works, but also to the thinking behind what can be done with it.

Anyone working with IMS will be able to explain to you the different types of database that exist. They’ll talk at length about Full-function databases, Fast-path databases, and High-availability fast path databases. In addition to this database side of IMS, they will also be able to explain how the transaction management system works – how end users can access information and how messages are queued to make this possible. This is great, but what IMS professionals also need is some way of ensuring they keep up-to-date with what else IMS can do. What IMS will be able to do next year when it’s 43 and work towards that.

One easy way is for IMS professionals to join the Virtual IMS Connection user group at www.virtualims.com. This user group has virtual meetings every other month, so that members can watch presentations without needing to leave their office – all they need is an Internet-enabled PC and a telephone. Most of these Webinars take place at 10:30 Central Time and last around an hour.

As well as seeing a presentation by another IMS professional and the ability to ask as many technical questions as they want, they are also kept up-to-date with the latest product announcements (new products or new versions or releases of existing products) and latest IMS-related articles appearing in the press. On the Web site they can find jobs or people looking for jobs and (added quite recently) they can find consultants available for work.

The next meeting of the Virtual IMS Connection user group will be on the 8th June, and the meeting includes a presentation by Patrick Fournier of SysperTec Communications, who will be discussing “Improving the performance, efficiency, and TCO of SOA integration for IMS applications”.

The presentation will look at:

  • Web-enabling IMS and other 3270 applications.
  • Providing a way to serve IMS application screens on thin-client Web browsers.
  • Developing Web 2.0 user interfaces that combine IMS 3270 data flows with AJAX functionality and JavaScript widgets.
  • Creating interactive bi-directional connections between IMS and Web applications, eg Web applications that consume IMS transaction.

In a constantly changing industry, the only way to stay up-to-date and to keep your skills honed is join these regular Webinars. And being a virtual meeting, you don’t have to convince your company to fund your user group experience.

If you’re an IMS professional, it makes sense to join the user group and take part in a free Webinar.

June 13, 2010

Change is the only constant!

Filed under: z/OS & OS390 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Trevor Eddolls @ 3:09 pm

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” So said Arnold Bennett the novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist, who lived from 1867 to 1931. Winston Churchill’s take on the subject was: “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction”. And Harold Wilson, who was also a British Prime Minister said: “He who rejects change is the architect of decay.”

This week I want to talk a little bit about change – or, more particularly, change management. We’re all so use to change these days we perhaps forget that there are ways of carrying out change in an organization that work – and, of course, ways of performing change that lead simply to chaos! There’s hardly a new leader, whether in government or within an organization that doesn’t feel making a few changes will stamp his or her mark on that organization (or country or whatever).

So what is change management? Well, Wikipedia informs us that: “change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Change management (or change control) is the process during which the changes to a system are implemented in a controlled manner by following a pre-defined framework/model with, to some extent, reasonable modifications.”

In terms of mainframes, you might be looking at products such as the CA Endevor or ChangeMan. The CA Web site tells us: “CA Endevor Software Change Manager automates your entire development process, adapting to specific business requirements while ensuring consistency and complete control, protecting your software assets, and maintaining application integrity”. Integration with IBM Rational Developer for System z improves productivity, accelerates time-to-delivery, and ensures the auditability of all programmer activities. Serena’s Web site says: “Serena ChangeMan ZMF, Change Management for Mainframe Systems, protects your corporate assets – and in the process, lets your programmers get more done in less time. Serena ChangeMan ZMF controls every code change in your mainframe environment. It guarantees source-to-load integrity and ensures that only successfully tested programs make it into production. ChangeMan ZMF reduces maintenance costs and regression errors by moving code through an automated mainframe life-cycle with strict accountability and quality assurance at every step. It can support developer communication and perform regression analyses as part of the most thorough concurrent development available. With ChangeMan ZMF, application code is easier to find, modify, and deploy.”

Many of the change management products that Google can find claim to adopt ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) models. ITIL, as I’m sure you know, provides a source of best practice for a range of IT tasks. It claims on its Web site to be: “the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT Service Management. Used by thousands of organizations around the world, a whole ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books and the supporting professional qualification scheme.”

But suppose you’re looking for a Software Change Management (SCM) product, a version and release management tool for the enterprise, and an application deployment tool not just for the mainframe but also for your distributed platforms. The choice is usually to buy three pieces of software. Interestingly, ISPW – the organization, www.ispw.com – has a product called ISPW that does just that.

On their Web site, they inform us that: “ISPW is a DB2-based all-in-one SCM solution that manages z/OS and distributed applications in one seamless solution. It has a z/OS based server and three thin-client interfaces:

  • A traditional 3270 interface for mainframe developers
  • A browser for supervisors and approvers
  • An Eclipse-based client for mainframe and distributed users.

User friendliness and productivity are ISPW strengths, along with a unique tools integration capability.”

I also discovered at the beginning of the month that ISPW has partnered with RSM to market and support the product in the UK. The press release also says about ISPW (the product that is): “ISPW allows programmers to work from their platform of choice and eliminate many common sources of error in the process. Advantages for complex IT installations include:

  • Exposing ALL change components to standard audit and approval processes
  • Expedited traceable implementation and roll-back procedures
  • Automatic inclusion in corporate disaster recovery processes
  • Improved project management through early conflict resolution and comprehensive visibility
  • Reduced cost, via time and effort savings, without the need to retrain or modify procedures.”

Which all seems to make ISPW an interesting product, and well worth a second look.