back on mainframe: what did you miss/what do you miss

[Truusvlugindewind]

Having done some clients with micro focus cobol and AcuCobol I'm back on the mainframe.
There are some things I am glad to have again and some things I miss on the mainframe.

I did miss
- DB2/embedded SQL
- TSO/ISPF editor
- QSAM/VSAM file's
- "clear" usage when you use COMP-3/COMP-4

I do miss
- 78 levels for constant values
- cobol & comment on same line "move zero to T *> bla bla"
- screen section/dialog system/panels etc ... back to 3270 CICS/IMS screens is primitive

Shall we make this a poll? Tell us what you like about cobol on PC/Unix and cobol on mainframe/AS400.

 

[Glenn9999]

Doesn't matter one way or the other to me. I'd be pleased to do either.

 

[webrabbit]

ISPF was a vast improvement over the original TSO editor, but many PC based text editors are much better. I use PE3. It is a fantastic DOS based editor. I have a copy of PE32, which is a similar Windows based editor, but have not yet learned it.

I also have a tiny editor called SLED which has the additional ablity to edit Record Sequential files.

Indexed and Record Sequential files are exact equivalents of VSAM and QSAM files. Line Sequential files are more flexible, and I understand they are now available on the mainframe also.

What do you mean by "clear" usage?

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

clear" usage to me:

mainframe uses EBCDIC and a known instruction-set. when you do calculations the COMP-3 notation is very efficient because one knows that the CPU has instructions to calculate with that format (no conversions). When you subscript everybody knows the S9(4) comp is best suited.

On a PC forget that at once! COMP-3 is a "no-go-area". You must use comp-4 or comp-5. Oh wait, using big-endian or not? That are the kind of things I mean.

I was at a client where programming standards forbid the use of COMP fields (don't ask me why). I saw programs defining "usage index" fields for calculations.... The compiler swalloed that junk and came with the right results... and everybody repected the standards... that does not leave you with a nice taste in you mouth

 

[Glenn9999]

Not entirely "unclear". Two different platforms, it's to be expected that they will work differently.

Mainframe: Big-endian, EBCDIC, COMP-3 for calculations, COMP for index.
PC: little-endian, ASCII, COMP-4 for calculations, COMP-4 for index.

On both platforms, conversion will happen for unknown formats. On PC platforms, conversion to COMP-3 is especially costly...

It's all completely known and clear. If anything, consider it a learning experience.

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

Wait a minute, I'm not complaning and cobol is a very good language to build apps. for all platforms. But back on the mainframe feels a bit like "coming home".

 

[webrabbit]

I started on mainframes in '68. When I switched to PCs in the 80's, it was like 'comming home' to me, but better. I learned on an IBM 1620, writing machine language directly on the console, assembly and Fortran on punched cards.

 

[Crox]

@webrabbit

I like to invite you to give one example of doing anything better/faster with your tool than the ISPF editor.

On the PC I use SPF/SE from command technology corporation, which has many things extra and some things less. (

http://www.commandtechnology.com/main.asp?pg=home)

Sometimes I use the old SPFPC editor combined with Borlands Superkey because some things can be done faster that way.

Very powerful with SPF is generating lots of source that is sometimes used on several places in a block of code that is repeated for every variable. Thousands of lines of code generated with a few commands.

With SPFSE you can for example select multiple sources on multiple diskdrives together, make a subset of files that are containing things - you can repeat that and narrow your search - and than change only those files with some commands.... very powerful, doing maintenance on 1000 sources at once.

I have a lot of collegues, telling about how good C is and Linux and their utilities and so on. They always lose any competition (find the download of COBVSC for example), also with editors, so, make my day....

Greetings,

Crox

 

[webrabbit]

1. Define a rectangular block of data/text and do the following:
a. Shift it up, down, left or right within the block, losing data if desired.
b. Move, copy or delete the entire block.
c. Overlay the block onto another area (unlike SPF's overlay, it treates spaces the same as other data, and is usually better.
d. Shift data to the right of the block left or right, again losing data if desired.
BTW, most text editors on the PC, unlike SPF, don't even know what a rectangular block is.
2. Programatically or manually "on the fly" redefine almost any key. Key definitions can reference other key definitions.
3. (The biggie, as far as I'm concerned) keys work when you press them; you don't have to wait for the screen to go to the processer for processing.
4. Support for any size screen supported by the hardware or o/s.
5. Many of the advantages you specify are add-ons, not a property of the editor itself.

I agree with you in a way. Most text editors are not good code editors and are inferior to SPF. In the early 80s, I used WordStar as the only editor availble to write COBOL programs on the PC. When SPF/PC became available, I switched to that. The only complaint I had was it's lack or responsiveness, due to its too close emulation of mainframe terminals.

I switched to Brief, which is no longer availble to the public. It was an extreamly powerful editor, but had two fatal problems. one was that it considered the null character (binary zero) to be an error, and "corrected" it to a space. This caused it to be banned in some data centers. The other problem, and far worse, was that, if you forgot to save for a while, it would crash and butn. The final straw was when it not only lost my current work but destroyed the original file and the backup!

Then I switched to SLED, a tiny editor with surprizing powers. I still use it as it can edit non-text files with the same ease as text files. The one thing I primarily use it for now is to delete the final CR/LF in .BAT files. Of course, with CMD.EXE replacing COMMAND.COM, that is no longer a problem.

After that, I used PE from IBM. It uses many of the same keystokes as SLED, but is programmable.

PE3, which I currently use, is someone's (I think the original author's) upgrade and improvement.

I have a copy of PE32, which is Windows based and supposedly even more powerfull, supporting OEL, but I haven't learned it yet.

As in any other area in life, there are advantages and disadvantages on either side of any reasonable alternatives. Nothing is perfect.

 

[webrabbit]

On further reflection, I realized that we are not talking about the same thing. You are taking about SPF, I am talking about SPF's Editor. Your comparison of SPF to any pc-based editor is invalid, they are not the same thing. It's not apples to oranges, it's like comparing a farm to an orange. SPF is a user interface, which should be compared to another user interface, not a utility. At least compare it to COMMAND.COM, CMD.EXE, 4DOS or Windows gui.

Not only is SPF a user interface, many of the things you mentiioned are powerfull utilities IBM introduced with SPF along with its Editor, or have introduced later as companions.