Anyone have experience working with IBM MainFrames?

[LeonarD26]

They are still used quite a bit at my place of employment. They don't have a good testing setup and I'd like to learn some basics. Any good resources??

 

[SagaLore]

Get a book on AS/400 Command Language Programming. The language syntax is basically compounded 3 letter representations for a function. It's rather tedious to type considering it's a free form page and a Shift-A has a different EBCDIC representation than a CAPS-A. But the AI helps out with that and basically formats the lines of code for you.

 

[LeonarD26]

Thanks for the heads up. Is there something different for general administration and not programming??

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: LeonarD26
Thanks for the heads up. Is there something different for general administration and not programming??

No idea. All I know is that CLP is the primary language (but you can do others like RPG and COBOL) and that the AS/400 runs off of batch jobs created in CLP (there are like 10,000+ possible commands). Our company used to have an AS/400 for a single applicaton, but everything I know is from classes at college.

 

[Garion]

What kind of machines do you have? Technically, most AS/400 machines are not mainframes, they are considered midrange machines (by IBM) or mincomputers by much of the rest of the industry. Real mainframes (like the IBM zSeries) usually run a special mainframe OS like OS/390, but they can run other OSes.

- G

 

[jinduy]

i work in the mainframe environment... drives ya nuts!

 

[AmigaMan]

I interface to the mainframe using CICS transaction gateway from my web apps. Mainframes are the bomb when it comes to uptime. I don't remember the last time we had an emergency IPL. Plus they're fast, and when your application is architected right and using the mainframe in the places it does the best, you can't beat it. Just don't buy into IBM's claims of running Linux on them. The IFL is a joke, unless you have more money than you know what to do with. If you did, then you'd should just go out and buy a Linux blade center.