Burroughs 5500 MCS (and possibly later, I didn't get to see those) had WFL, Work Flow Language, which was nearly the full Burroughs Algol language, minus the I/O facilities.
Very powerful and flexible. Your "JCL" was an actual program, and IIRC it was compiled for execution. Fun stuff. Shell scripts are all well and good for those who understand them I suppose, but they have their quirks and deficiencies too. I can read and write them myself, but many application programmers cannot yet do so, and are stuck with JCL. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2017 11:31 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AW: Re: job output into dataset <Snipped> IMO, IBM needs to _replace_ JCL with "something else". But, honestly, I'm not knowledgeable enough to design the "something else". And, even then, you'd need to allow both the old JCL and the new WCL (Workload Control Language, just to give it a name) to be "submitted". But, also quite honestly, I'd really prefer that IBM use its time and money for better things. If you don't like JCL (and I don't really), then just run UNIX scripts via JCL using Dovetailed Technologies' Co:Z Launcher. It has the nice property of being able to allow the reading and writing of physical sequential data sets defined in DDs using their "fromdsn" and "todsn" UNIX commands. -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
