CICS 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 […]
ArticlesOf 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 […]
Ezriel 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
ArticlesThe Many Faces of Application Creation: Part 2
March 16, 2020
This is a continuation of last month’s article, which chronicled application tools and options in context of development projects I’ve worked in and programming alternatives used, including design, coding, and validation. I’ve used various programming facilities, along with their strengths and weaknesses. My experiences start in the early 1970s, and the evolution I’ve experienced spans […]
ArticlesThe Many Faces of Application Creation: Part 1
February 20, 2020
While my career has mostly been consulting, marketing, systems programming and management, I’ve also had numerous engagements in application programming and design. A class in COBOL was my first IT experience, and in my MBA program, I learned Fortran and General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS) in Operations Research classes. In 1975, I rewrote a broken […]
PodcastsDusty Rivers on IMS, CICS, Db2 and IBM Z
December 5, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Dusty Rivers, an experienced IBM mainframe expert, an IMS person who has been working all across the mainframe ecosystem especially in areas that has gotten enough attention that he has been able to be an IBM Champion for the past 10 years as […]
ArticlesRay Mullins on Assembler, COBOL and PL/1
October 1, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Ray Mullins who is a friend of mine and fellow mainframer who I've known from SHARE and various other parts of the mainframe ecosystem for quite some time. It turns out we have a lot of common interests, including languages and of course […]