How COBOL REDEFINES the Way You Think About Business Programming
February 1, 2021
“I got it started. It should build itself now.” So a local builder advised a cousin-in-law of mine in rural Poland who was building a house, and had requested assistance with putting the roof in place. Being more of an academic than a builder, my cousin was baffled—all he saw was a mostly unfinished roof […]
ArticlesOpen Mainframe Summit Celebrates Successful First Annual Event
October 26, 2020
On Sept. 16 and 17, 2020, the Open Mainframe Project held the first inaugural Open Mainframe Summit, which brought together several members of the IBM Z® community, including students, educators and industry professionals, to share their insights on the mainframe. The virtual event gave mainframers a chance to connect online to share best practices, discuss […]
ArticlesCOBOL Training Course Aims to Educate New Mainframers
June 9, 2020
In response to the technical challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Open Mainframe Project announced a COBOL Training Course that offers introductory-level COBOL programming materials with VS Code. COBOL helps run some of the most mission-critical applications within mainframe systems in large companies across the world, and is a necessity to maintaining the performance of […]
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
ArticlesCOBOL Isn’t Slowing Anything Down
April 28, 2020
There are several misperceptions and assumptions with respect to COBOL and the latest difficulties several government entities have been experiencing due to COVID-19. COBOL and the IBM Z® platform were leading-edge technologies 40 years ago and they both still are today. They’re increasingly innovative with each release. Both are quite modern and expertly designed tools. […]
Modernization Carries Varied Meanings for Different People
March 23, 2020
When the IBM z15 was announced I couldn’t wait to read the information about the advancements and changes that we would all see. I quickly read about System Recovery Boost, integrated zEDC compression, standard rack space frame, double cache density on each chip, etc. The modern mainframe; the fastest, most resilient and high availability, commercially-available […]
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 […]
Articlesz15 Reflects That IBM Is Working Even Closer With Customers
February 2, 2020
As IBM is working even closer with clients, new functions are being released often with a powerful amalgamation of hardware and software working in deep collaboration.
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 […]