On Jan 10, 2008, at 11:16 AM, Hal Merritt wrote:
My guess is that many shops are implementing PC to PC transfers and
buying some really expensive software to facilitate the process.
That is
host>pc>network>pc>host.
So far, we have been somewhat successful in insisting on a fully
automated, z/os based solution on our side. Our most compelling
argument
is that we are not supposed to move sensitive data in the open over
any
network, nor is the data supposed to reside in the open on any server,
even in a buffer. As much as the PC folks don't like to admit it, they
simply cannot meet that requirement. They can come close, but there
seems to always be a point where the data can be intercepted.
Hal,
Even though my bosses boss was big on PC's he also knew that PC file
transfer was well lets say less than perfect. He was the person who
pushed SNA and made the budget available to convert to SNA and the
hardware associated with it. He lobbied for the money because he knew
that pc file transfer in the financial community was less than good.
We in the financial community put data integrity on a pedestal that
tested everything every step of the way. A long time ago they had an
OEM (name withheld) vendor and there was no data integrity checking
all they cared about was being cheap. We were racked over the coals
all the time as we were essentially sending out good data but the
data along the line was being corrupted somewhere along the line.
Usually it was a some important field that needed to have to have the
entire file retransmitted. more than a few times a broker could not
trade any X because data from our company was less than lets say
accurate due to transmission and or equipment. Our side sent it out
OK but somewhere along the line after it left something got
corrupted. After we ditched the OEM vendor and we went to SNA we
never had one piece of data go bad. We had cases where there was a
tape issue on the receiving (data check or broken tape etc) that
required a retransmission but not one in several million file
transfers a day every was caused by "us". PC file transfer sucks
PERIOD. I download on my MAC several hundred files a day and at least
once a day some file is corrupted.
Ed
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