To further the revitalization of the mainframe
market, I believe we need to make it more interesting
and relevant to work on the mainframe these days
(not necessarily simpler, ('though that can't be bad),
just interesting).
What seems to be most relevant, fun, and interesting
these days is all the technologies / capabilities of
the Internet and the Web. By a stroke of luck, the
z/OS folks have been working to allow this by setting
up z/OS UNIX (current name, after several iterations)
and providing a free HTTP server. A little tweaking
of parameters, a little modification of the system
start-up process and, lo and behold, you have a
capable, easy to use, and _free_ web server running
right there on your mainframe.
Now, the ability to run UNIX on the mainframe melds a
lot of strengths: flexibility (run classic mainframe
apps and UNIX apps on the same box), scalability,
reduced footprint, economies of scale to the UNIX
side of the house, access to batch, TSO, ISPF, CICS,
and a UNIX shell all at the same time, on the same
box. Utilize the legendary strengths of the mainframe
with the rich capabalities of UNIX, and you have a
hard-to-beat combination of economic power, business
strength, and appeal to new / young employees (not to
mention re-energizing current staff because they can
learn how to use the new facilities and leverage their
knowledge of the business).
Many of you know my feelings that IBM has done a terrible
job of telling the mainframe story. I'm still waiting for
the tales of shops switching to z/OS from UNIX, Linux,
or Windows server machines. I'm still waiting for my
colleagues to say they would encourage their kids to go
for a career in mainframes. I'm still waiting for prospects
we call on to stop saying either "We're getting off the
mainframe" or "We don't have a mainframe" [when we know
they do]. When those things start happening I'll know
that IBM has started to get the mainframe story right.
Doing our part, we are pleased to announce the availability
of our latest course, "You and z/OS and the World Wide Web".
This five-day course is designed to provide a rich, deep,
hands-on introduction to creating and maintaining a
corporate website hosted on your z/OS mainframe using
only the _free_ IBM supplied HTTP server!
The basic topics are:
Introduction to the Web
Introduction to markup languages
(SGML, HTML, XHTML)
Markup elements supported by both the
HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 standards
Links and anchors
Style and stylesheets (CSS - Cascading
Style Sheets)
Lists
Images and maps
Client-side maps
Embedding Objects (Applets, multimedia)
Introduction to client-side scripting
DOM - the Document Object Model
Forms and controls
Cookies
Tables
Framesets
More detail at:
http://www.trainersfriend.com/UNIX_and_Web_courses/u518descr.htm
The course includes 20 challenging hands-on labs, designed
to be solved using your z/OS server for coding and serving
and your workstation browser for testing and checking.
This extends our curriculum aimed at teaching how to build
and sustain Internet work running from the mainframe.
The student should have some background in z/OS UNIX before
taking this course, such as might be gained from our
three-day course "Introduction to z/OS UNIX"
(see http://www.trainersfriend.com/UNIX_and_Web_courses/u510descr.htm )
Although not absolutely necessary, it would be beneficial
for the student to have also taken our three-day course
"Shell Script Programming in z/OS UNIX"
(see http://www.trainersfriend.com/UNIX_and_Web_courses/u515descr.htm )
Now that's fun!
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
800-993-8716
303-393-8716
http://www.trainersfriend.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
