There are LOTS of other potential options here. In no particular order, conceptually at least:
1. CICS TS's containers probably provide what you need, conveniently, though you might have to "chunk" the data into containers of 2GB (or smaller) so that 31-bit COBOL can "see" them (and all of them). But you can have as many chunks as you wish, subject to whatever you've configured for MEMLIMIT. CICS TS Version 3.2 is most likely the minimum release for these purposes, though CICS TS 5.1 or higher would be desirable. CICS TS would manage the 64-bit storage for you, with lots of containers, while also providing 31-bit pointers to those individual containers as long as they're not too big. But the point (ahem) is that it's all in memory, so if you've got the real memory (and MEMLIMIT set accordingly) the containers will all live there. 2. WebSphere MQ for z/OS could also be your "chunker," as another option. 3. Or you can "pipe" between programs, for example with BatchPipes. 4. DB2 could be the intermediary. That'd work particularly well if you rely on DB2 to perform part of the work, for example some type of format conversion. "Chunking" or "piping" assume the data can be passed somewhat stream-like. If you're passing a single scanned image file -- maybe a picture of some part of the cosmos -- that's, say, 3GB in size, that's probably not something that's easily "chunkable." But many things are. As always, if you think IBM ought to introduce a new feature or function, let IBM know: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
