> -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sam Siegel > Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 1:58 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Cool Things You Can Do in z/OS > > On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Rick Fochtman > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > ---------------------------------------<snip>----------------- > ---------------- > > ... Maybe people want distributed-style application RAS;..... > > > -----------------------------------<unsnip>------------------- > -------------- > > Excuse me, but "distributed-style RAS" seems to be, in my > experience, a > > rather glaring contradiction in terms. :-) > > Please consider the RAS on the US domestic phone switching network. > It is a distributed system that (to my knowledge) does not use z/OS or > zSeries hardware. You also have service providers like Google, the > global DNS servers, etc. The list can be easily extended to > demonstrate extremely good RAS overall on a distributed system where > high RAS is deemed important. >
On this forum "distributed" is usually a synonym for "Windows on Intel". Server class Intel hardware is fairly good. Linux is fairly good. IMO, Windows is not as good as Linux, although in "server mode" as opposed to "desktop mode", it is not as bad as it used to be. Where Windows fares poorly is when you run non-MS software on it. Windows doesn't protect itself as well as z/OS or Linux or UNIX. It is simply too easy to "lie" to Windows, have it do something stupid, then roll over and die. Example: one process can send a message to another process. The second process has no way of telling who actually sent the message. It's like a bank cashing a hand written check with no signature. I don't know what hardware the phone switches run on. But, from what I've been told, the software is usually written in Erlang. I have been reading up and trying to learn about Erlang (and Haskell). It is a "functional programming" language. It is far, far more difficult to write code in a functional programming language which does things like buffer overflow or gets "bad data". Erlang, likeunto Java, runs in a virtual instruction environment. I.e. it doesn't run on the bare hardware, but an instruction interpreter. And "variables" don't vary! "Variables" are actually "symbolic names" which are WORM. Once assigned a value, you can't change it! So a routine __cannot__ have any "side effects" on "global variables", as is done in C or even COBOL. It is a very interesting language. And is designed for parallel processing, so it very efficient in its multitasking and so is very good for a "multi-core" architecture. Well, enough off-topic from me. -- John McKown Systems Engineer IV IT Administrative Services Group HealthMarkets® 9151 Boulevard 26 . N. Richland Hills . TX 76010 (817) 255-3225 phone . [email protected] . www.HealthMarkets.com Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message may contain confidential or proprietary information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. HealthMarkets® is the brand name for products underwritten and issued by the insurance subsidiaries of HealthMarkets, Inc. -The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company®, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of TennesseeSM and The MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company.SM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
