John, I also worked with Europeans, while living in Europe, also Mexico, including the Swiss. In my old age, 62 in August, I have concluded that the new IT world order, that's what my boss alls it, the solution to testing , is call the vendor. We get ton of calls, usually because ppl don't read the manuals. Many of them i feel haven't had the fortune of learning z/OS from the early days. I learned CICS many moons ago with the source assemblies and PLMs. Unfortunately, the have shall we say disappeared.
Scott ford www.identityforge.com On Jul 2, 2012, at 7:43 PM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > 'Sysprog' is unfortunately an ambiguous term. There are those who > build software for ISVs or, of course, IBM; and there are those who > keep a z/OS shop running. > > As a part of an attempt to help in the selection of a new manager for > a systems programming group in a European insurance company I recently > spent 3 half days, one of them with each of three of the latter. They > installed things; did maintenance using SMP/E, etc., etc. They did > damn little testing, escept in the sense that the systematic > correction of errors in their own work is testing. > > Moreover, it became clear that none of them knew or could know enough > about all of the components they were working with to test them > independently. (They were competent people, but they were not > polymaths.) This melancholy conclusion led me to the notion that IVPs > and MVPs, most of them necessarily supplied by vendors, needed to be > widely available. > > These people have other needs too. They seem, for example, to have > very little sense of the ways in which notionally very different kinds > of IBM systems are almost all much alike in some ways. They cannot > make plausible, often (but not of course always) confirmed inferences > about how things work using this kind of knowledge. Moreover, I am > not sure I know how to communicate/teach these skills outside of > essentially one-on-one, apprenticeship situations. > > John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA > > On 7/2/12, Scott Ford <[email protected]> wrote: >> John, >> >> I don't know what sysprogs you have been around, but I can tell you i test, >> test, test , test...always have and always will. Part of the problem are the >> times and education and experience.... >> But I also think its how you were initially trained. >> >> Scott ford >> www.identityforge.com >> >> On Jul 2, 2012, at 5:33 PM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> John Reid has reminded us all of a generic weakness in the way we do >>> things. Sysprogs install new systems and maintain them, but they do >>> not usually test them. They may indeed have only the vaguest notions >>> of what some of them do. >>> >>> Comprehensive IVPs have all but disappeared; but it it time, I think, >>> to reintroduce them. Moreover, there is a need for MVPs (Maintenance >>> Verification Procedures) too. >>> >>> If they were always available sysprogs could properly be given the >>> responsibility for using them and exami ng their outputs. >>> >>> John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA >>> >>> On 7/2/12, John Blythe Reid <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> From what I've read, and it sounds quite as you would expect, the >>>> systems >>>> programmers who applied the maintenance to CA-7 were based in the main >>>> Edinburgh data centre whereas the team responsible for job scheduling >>>> using >>>> CA-7 were based in Hyderabad. As we all know, when a critical job abends >>>> during the middle of the night with a tight batch window, things become >>>> quite stressful. And that rising stress level can lead to someone >>>> pressing >>>> the wrong key. Normally the consequences are not as disastrous as this >>>> one's been. >>>> >>>> John. >>>> >>>> On 2 July 2012 14:54, Mark Zelden <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Sun, 1 Jul 2012 09:33:05 -0500, Ed Gould <[email protected]> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Shmuel: >>>>>> >>>>>> Well if it was outsourced I wouldn't be surprised to much. >>>>>> I suspect that these people sell themselves as experts in everything >>>>>> CA-7 or MVS you name it. I have interviewed two foreign speaking >>>>>> individuals and it turns out they read the manual and do not have a >>>>>> clue beyond that. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Talk about a blanket generalization! Ed, when was the last time you >>>>> did any real work in MVS or worked with or in a company that >>>>> off shored any of their work? >>>>> >>>>> And I don't know the specifics of this incident and haven't been >>>>> following >>>>> it closely, but based on the CA-7 PTFs I saw released right afterwards >>>>> I would say the problem was related to the attempted upgrade (highly >>>>> doubtful that it was operators that attempted it) and backout coupled >>>>> with a CA-7 software issue that RBS couldn't have foreseen. >>>>> >>>>> Mark >>>>> -- >>>>> Mark Zelden - Zelden Consulting Services - z/OS, OS/390 and MVS >>>>> mailto:[email protected] >>>>> Mark's MVS Utilities: http://www.mzelden.com/mvsutil.html >>>>> Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/ >>>>> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >>>>> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> John Blythe Reid, >>>> Técnico de Sistemas de z/OS y de Sistemas Transaccionales, >>>> Barcelona, >>>> España. >>>> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >>>> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >>>> >>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >>> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
