On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:48:25 -0500, Ed Gould wrote: >I am not going to say you are right (or wrong). I would like to >interject here though a thought that should be in everyones mind is >"support". I won't go into the long list of issue with IBM's support >in the area of MF UNIX, other than to chide IBM in the maintenance >for UNIX apps and their less than "good" documentation for unix apps. >IMO IBM has really deserted the end users in this area. Some Messages >that are undocumented and if they are documented they are *NOT* self >explanatory and when you try and apar them (or doc err) you get >laughed at. IBM started out doing this in the UNIX side and now its >carrying over to the MVS side. The cobol compiler is one such example >the (cobol people in IBM) state that a messages and codes manual is >not needed as the messages are self documenting, some are but most >aren't. When you call up to the support center and level 2 calls you >back they practically laugh at you for asking. This is a disturbing >trend at IBM and I would wonder if this is a wave of the future for >the rest of IBM. I for one would never buy an IBM product that goes >under the UNIX umbrella. You, for one, have been out of the game for 5 years now and are extraordinarily unlikely to buy an IBM product (except perhaps for personal use) anyway. True, IBM's z/OS UNIX support may not always be what we might hope it could be - compared only with some other select portions of z/OS components. HOWEVER, IBM's z/OS UNIT support is LIGHT-YEARS, maybe parsecs, farther ahead than any other Unix vendor's support (including, unfortunately, other IBM brands such as AIX). If you want to see poor product support, try calling in a Sev 1 issue for any Unix OTHER THAN z/OS UNIX -- from any vendor. Good luck getting a patch (of any kind) in under 4-6 weeks. My customer experience with z/OS support for any major component in a Sev 1 situation is usually closer to 1- 5 days. Huge difference and my management has ALWAYS understood what they were paying for and what they were getting. IBM's committment to mainframe service certainly seems to extend through the product line, at least as far as I have ever personally seen as a customer. (I'm a current customer, by the way.) The COBOL example does not extend beyond those compiler writers as far as I have seen. And I, for one, would not paint the entire COBOL team with that broad brush. Tom Ross (although I think he's moved on to other things) was a strong customer advocate - still is (although I have forgotten where he's hiding these days).
Besides, how many COBOL application programmers read the manuals anyway? I cannot tell you the LARGE number of times I have had to read the documentation to them over the phone (or in person) because they were too lazy to read and understand the material. If the compiler writers were simply trying to overcome customer organizational documentation blockades by allowing the apps person the ability to produce a listing instead of trying to order a (one-time pricey) manual then I say more power to IBM for seeing where the customer problems were and being creative at circumventing them. -- Tom Schmidt Madison, WI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
