Can IMS Connect to the Outside World?
April 21, 2022
Information Management System (IMS) was developed by IBM, with Rockwell and Caterpillar Inc., starting in 1966 as a bill of materials system for the Apollo space program. It went live in 1968, making it over 50 years old. Like everything else on the mainframe, it has been updated and extended since that time. As you […]
PodcastsSeeing the World Via the Mainframe
April 4, 2022
Reg Harbeck: Hi, I'm Reg Harbeck, and today I'm here with my colleague and co-author Karl-Erik Stenfors, who has been in the mainframe space for a very good long time. Well Karl-Erik, let's start by telling us about how did you end up on the mainframe? Karl-Erik Stenfors: Well, a bit of a point. […]
PodcastsCharles Mills on His Mainframe Journey and the Future of IBM Z
November 8, 2021
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I’m here with my friend and colleague Charles Mills who has written all kinds of applications both on the mainframe and talking to the mainframe and just been really involved in the whole journey of the mainframe. Well before telling you all about him myself, Charles why […]
ArticlesEvil Mainframe Brings Ethical Hacking to the Forefront
August 26, 2021
When it comes to hacking, there are courses that can teach you to break past the security of almost anything. However, learning how to hack a mainframe usually isn’t one of them. That’s why Chad Rikansrud and Phil Young created Evil Mainframe, the first mainframe penetration testing class. “The IT world at large has benefited […]
ArticlesCICS Security, TLS Enhancement, Updated CICS Documentation and More
August 23, 2021
The Virtual CICS user group is an online user group that has been meeting for over 10 years. It meets every other month, which works out at six meetings each year. And, at each meeting, there’s a presentation. At the July meeting, Colin Penfold, technical leader for IBM CICS Transaction Server Security, spoke about recent […]
Of Stacks, Binding and Other Ambiguous Computer Jargon
July 5, 2021
One of the strangest things about the mainframe is our jargon, sometimes shared with other parts of IT, and based, somewhat oddly, not in Latin, Greek, or even German or French, but in that messiest of common languages: English. Yes, despite valiant efforts by other languages to inhabit computer hardware, software and programming languages (for […]
ArticlesMainframe Connectivity: What’s Missing?
June 21, 2021
We can, perhaps, all remember a time when a simple 3270 terminal emulator was all we needed to access the mainframe without needing a directly-connected terminal. And we were really pleased that we could work from anywhere using this simple solution to our communication problem. It worked and our expectations were not very high. Next, […]
ArticlesValuable Application and Integration Middleware
August 30, 2020
WebSphere Application Server has grown and changed over the years. In this IT Trendz post, Joseph Gulla explores IBM Websphere software.
ArticlesWhat Makes CICS, a Mixed Language Application Server, So Special?
August 10, 2020
CICS® has been around since 1969 and still continues to flourish as a mixed language application server today. Primarily running on mainframes, also known as an IBM Z®, CICS does run in limited forms on other platforms, as well. As an application server, it is used to host applications that can be written in several […]
ArticlesEzriel Gross on the Importance of CICS
May 1, 2020
Reg Harbeck talks with Ezriel Gross about his history with CICS and its continued importance in the mainframe community