On Dec 27, 2007, at 12:24 PM, McKown, John wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Comstock
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007 12:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Controlling COBOL DDs named SYSOUT
<snip>
Huh? What have you got against judicious use of DISPLAY
so that you want to call the programmer an idiot?
Judicious use is, barely, tolerable to me (see below). About all
that I
consider to be judicious is the writing of "statistics" such as
"records
read", "records deleted", "records updated", "new records written",
although I've never noticed anybody actually using that information
for
anything.
-----------SNIP-----------
John,
Sigh agreed but none the less I have seen it done in a *REAL*
production program. I called the manager of the area that was
responsible and he sighed. It was put in before the standards were
put in place (the company was maybe 10 years old at the time). He
said it was on the long list of items to be worked on but he couldn't
promise when it would be fixed. While I was sympathetic to him, I
slipped the information to the auditor and presto it got corrected in
less than a month. Just don't do this all over the place use it
wisely and you can get the stuff done.
Ed
I guess after the 30th time that some nit-wit of a programmer (granted
that they are few in number) used up 35% of my SPOOL, I got just a bit
"down" on use of the DISPLAY verb. Especially when it was putting out
"debugging" information about entering and exitting paragraphs, while
reading a 30 million record master file. Anything that can be done
with
the DISPLAY can be done using the "normal" COBOL I/O verbs. So far
as I
am concerned, if it is a report, then use an FD! It's just that
DISPLAY
is so simple that, in my experience, it can be greatly abused. And
if it
is a report, I unsure which is more CPU efficient: an FD with a
WRITE or
a DISPLAY ... UPON SYSOUT. CPU costs hard dollars in my z/OS world. We
are looking at a CPU upgrade which I will bet could be delayed if our
application code was more efficient. Perhaps Strobe will help. If
anybody will use it. We had Strobe in the past, but programmers only
used it during a contest where they got bonuses for finding and fixing
CPU hogs. Another reason why management wants off of the "z".
Windows or
Linux on Intel is basically licensed by processor, regardless of the
"power" of that processor. System z and I think System i and System p
also is licensed by "power".
I have a number of "surly sysprog" buttons. Basically anything that
wakes me up at 2 am about a "problem" that is not mine and that I
cannot
fix. These are the same people who direct their "reports" to our JCL
archiver instead of our report distribution system because it is
just so
much easier. That is, they don't have to put in a report archive
defination request.
--
John McKown
Senior Systems Programmer
HealthMarkets
Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage
Administrative Services Group
Information Technology
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