This is typical of OO and Java fanatics, new to transaction processing. While they may frown and make faces at languages and technologies such as COBOL and CICS -- they (wrongly) think they are embarking on fundamental innovation in transaction processing and application servers. Transaction processing is a very rich and deep field, which will be extremely poor but for some of the leading research and products by IBM during 70s and 80s (and also by all other major database vendors and other R&D institutions). This includes distributed transction processing in the relational domain. A fair bit of research into OO vs. relational and homogeneous and heterogeneous distributed databases has occurred between mid-80s and mid-90s. What we are witnessing NEW today is increased scenarios where DISTRIBUTED TRANSACTION PROCESSING may be actually adopted -- purely because of a more mature network technology. Body of knowledge of distributed transaction processing has existed for well over 15 years. There have been a number of interesting papers (in Communications of the ACM, another one from Sun Labs) questioning the real value added by OO to the complexity of distributed computing. I value the value (!) added by OO to software engineering, but let us be aware that transaction processing in NOT a software engineering problem -- it is a pure engineering problem. What I hear Ian continuously doing is positioning the new feature of CICS which will make it an application server at par with any of the new born application/transaction servers. May be better because its engineering features have been matured and tested over time. Application/transaction servers that have only been born yesterday may have the latest bells and whistles, the engineering features of any product take time to settle down. OTOH, products like CICS -- even after they may implement all that is necessary to be a Java/EJB application server -- still need to fight the perception of their being a legacy product. BTW, I have no relationship with IBM! Rajeev "Kenneth D. Litwak" wrote: > > Ian, > > With all due respect, I haven't read doc on CICS in years, BUT I did used to > program in it. I used CICS to read and write records to DAM files (Not een > VSAM) at TRW INformation Systems in Orange, CA> Their entire system for credit > information was premised on CICS. Furthermore, I've read a description > (undefiend) of CICS a stransaction manager or TP monitor. An application > server, unless y9ou wish to define this so broad as to be meaningless usually > provides support for running other applications like logging, transaction > management, database connectivity, and the like. CICS didn't do that kind of > stuff for me that I could tell. Maybe it did logging but I'm not sure. ANd ofr > your informatoin, I was a kernel engineer in IBM for five years in DB2/MVS and > no one there ever referred to CICS the way you are. I'm not necessarily saying > you don't know what you are talking about, but I am saying that you are perhaps > stretching the meaning of app server and not looking at CICS from a developer > point of view. Please note that this is private. When we are done, perhaps we > shold publish the results of this conversaton to the list. I don't claim to be > Mr. CICS, but I've used it enough to stand by much of what I said. Now this > might not represent CICS today, but I would claim that it does represent CICS as > of 1984. What say ye? > > Ken > > =========================================================================== > To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body > of the message "signoff EJB-INTEREST". For general help, send email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
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