Ok, generally available with this other, obscure product (I remember that being discussed at the time)--that's not *freely* available. How is &sysprog going to justify buying some product just so they can use one feature for unspecified purposes? They aren't, and they didn't.
-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, September 8, 2025 7:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Pipelines = you don't understand z/OS Phil, I agree with what you say, but pipes was generally available in a product called IBM SmartBatch for OS/390 - I am looking at its manual, BatchPipeWorks User’s Guide, GC28-1651-00, which I saved from when we had the product at my first employer. It would have been popular when it had been bundled with TSO as it was in VM. It was at the top of user requests to IBM to do exactly that; to be struck off purportedly for the reason that IBM has one person to maintain it. The Pipes for NetRexx version, by the way, runs on z/OS. Not wanting to restart the whole discussion about how close it is to Pipelines (pretty close in my view); or about the JVM on z/OS, I just want to say that it gives me great joy (and also to some of my friends and colleagues), integrates with NetRexx, and runs just as well on macOS, Linux and Windows. I see Pipes for TSO a bit like Object Rexx for z/OS: great opportunities missed because of really dumb and success-limiting moves of a company with a strange attitude towards its greatest products (OS/2, anyone?) But go ahead and port more PHP, Swift, Python and Groovy to your platform, sure… René. > On 9 Sep 2025, at 00:39, Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote: > > Sorry, but I don't think the evidence exists to support your assertion. TSO > Pipes were never generally available, so people didn't get to use them much. > That means we don't know whether they would have, but the huge uptake on CMS > -- where the kinds of things that one tends to do with a Pipe are generally > easier to do than in TSO anyway -- suggests (does NOT prove) otherwise. > > You saying "TSO PIPEs aren't useful" suggests to me that you haven't really > seen the power of Pipes. Many of us have written products that comprised > mostly Pipes, or condensed hundreds of lines of Rexx code down to a > dozen-stage pipeline that ran orders of magnitude faster. > > Yes, COBOL might (sometimes!) be faster to run -- but is (generally) slower > to develop, debug, maintain. People's time is expensive... > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Jon Perryman > Sent: Monday, September 8, 2025 5:05 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Pipelines = you don't understand z/OS > >> On Sun, 7 Sep 2025 18:24:29 -0500, Hobart Spitz <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Why haven't customers jumped on Pipes (CMS/TSO Pipelines), like they >> should? Here are some possible answers: > > Native TSO PIPEs existed but customers refused to buy it. z/OS Unix pipes has > nothing to do with TSO PIPEs. If today, you absolutely needed pipes in TSO, > then use z/OS Unix pipes despite it's downside. > > I repeat, TSO PIPEs aren't useful otherwise it would still exist. It appears > no one noticed it's demise. There are better ways to solve problems that > people perceive CMS PIPEs is supposed to address. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
