There are too things that JCL handles well; overrides and parallel allocation. I don't see the need for either going away.
That said, there is certainly an argument to be made for scripts using tools like file tailoring to construct JCL instead of always doing it manually. And there is certainly a place for glue using, e.g., Java, PL/I, Python, REXX. My hammer makes a poor screwdriver and my screwdriver makes a poor hammer. I'll keep both, TYVM. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of René Jansen [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 11:57 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ... Re: Top 8 Reasons for using Python instead of REXX for z/OS JCL is an interesting problem. While being disavowed very publicly by Fred Brooks (“the worst language ever, and it happened under my watch”) - I did the same thing as you in the same timeframe - and faced a revolt/uprising of the operations staff. It turned out they liked it very much and hated more evolved control structures. It is the original copy-and-paste language, predating stack exchange by decennia. I am not sure if you saw that article that put JCL pieces, broken apart, in Python? With friends like that, the language does not need enemies. Then of course, there is the layer of the system that is still based on the JCL interpreter - good luck with hiding that. And indeed, I think witholding PL/X from customers was a very odd move, guided by who-knows-which motives; which did not do PL/I a lot of good, unfortunately. > On 6 Jan 2022, at 12:28, Jeremy Nicoll <[email protected]> wrote: > > But what's a decent alternative to JCL? > > I know (because 20+ years ago I did so) one can replace job steps with > JCL-controlled allocation by rexx steps which dynamically allocate datasets > and invoke the program that would otherwise have been the job-step pgm, > but it was only useful in limited situations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
