Chris Craddock writes:
We as a community have to get over the idea that the mainframe is the only,
or even the best way of delivering high availability. There are lots of
other systems that do it quite mundanely every day. Mainframes have some
wonderful features and still have some technical advantages, but those are
rapidly diminishing. Chest thumping is out of place at this point. It is
the ninth inning > and we're behind.
This recurrent theme in his posts, that self-satisfied noises are at nest
fatuouis, is one with which I entirely agree. That said, it is also worth
saying that the alternatives to z/OS MVS are still radically immature ones.
Used knowledgeably, MVS can provide much better reliability and availability
than UNIX, LINUX, et al. (It can also provide much better CONCURRENT
high-volume I/O, but that is another topic.)
The chief problems associated with legacy systems stem from the fact that
they seldom employ this technology.
Few---I had almost written non---of the legacy systems that I examine make
any explicit use of technololgy that was not available 30 years ago. These
systems, the ones I see anyway, are move-orient[at]ed, compile-time bound,
and synchronous. They seldom exhibit much explicit design. Like Topsy,
they have just grow'd.
Arguments for their in situ modernization and/or replacement are rejected as
uneconomic in the usual crackpot-realist terms.
Etc., etc. Thiks litany could unfortunately be continued ad infinitum et
nauseam; and the at best obsolescent technology that continues to be used to
maintain MVS applications is digging the mainframe's grave. Not the
mainframe burt the people who willfully omit to use the facilities it makes
available are the problem.
Morerover, and this is particularly melanchoily, there is much anecdotal and
some systematic evidence thast many applications that are 'successfully'
moved to other platforms take their disabilities with them.
John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721
USA
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