I have to agree with Ed, why would anyone want to run COBOL under an SRB? First of all, I don't see how using an SRB solves anything having to do with program sharing. Secondly, the risks. An SRB gets control in key zero and supervisor state and, unless you wrap the COBOL in an assembler layer to change them to problem state and back to key 8, you are asking for trouble.
Thirdly, debugging. Error recovery is more difficult as is debugging. Fourthly, performance. Either you are queuing work to the SRB or you are running it synchronously or semi-synchronously. Fifthly, if they are talking about trying to get COBOL to run on a z/IIP, they better have really, really good lawyers. Finally, you can't do any I/O under an SRB. Well, not any normal COBOL I/O. We could get into the whole STARTIO and MEDIA MANAGER discussion, but let's not. So, given the above, I see no upside to the proposal and a lot of pitfalls. Chris Blaicher Principal Software Engineer, Software Development Syncsort Incorporated 50 Tice Boulevard, Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677 P: 201-930-8260 | M: 512-627-3803 E: [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Jaffe Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 3:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: COBOL IN SRB Mode (Was Un-authorized caller) On 12/1/2013 2:20 PM, [email protected] wrote: > I recently had a dispute with Management reagrding the uses of sceduling > COBOL BATCH under an SRB. > Thats Right a Batch COBOL Prpogram runing Under an SRB, moreover under > CICS Transaction Server. A Software Vendor believes they can solve a > program sharing issue by using SRBS to execute a Batch Cobol Progam. > > In a nut shell the user enters a basic CICS transaction code and a PC call is > issued to a Server Address Spaces whose only responsibility is to SCHEDULE an > SRB Back to the specific CICS Region. The SRB then executes a Batch COBOL > program. Why would *anyone* want to run traditional CICS COBOL in the restricted environment of an SRB? The TCB environment is so much more robust! If the SRB is an Enclave SRB enabled for redirection to zIIP, then IMHO such use of the "zIIP enablement API" is in violation of the License Agreement between ISVs and IBM -- assuming (<== DISCLAIMER!) other ISVs all use the same agreement we do. Of course, it's always possible that IBM, for a substantial licensing fee, has different T&Cs with select ISVs. If so, I am not privy to those agreements. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
