Way back in the late '60s and '70s, it was recognized that JCL was a
very difficult language to learn and use, and needed extra facilities
such as PreProcessor Variable testing and arithmetic statements, the
ability to generate Control Cards with Symbolic Variable replacement,
easy to create full screen Panels, and primarily, an easy to use,
English like language using commands such as Copy, Print and so on.
Additionally, a really good macro language that would allow the language
to be expanded infinitely would be extremely useful.
The language was called Jol. Job Organisation Language.
Datamation ran a small article on it, and received 1000's of enquiries -
much more than they had received for any other product. In the early
'80s, IBM was about to sign a deal to market Jol - however a situation
developed much like Steve Jobs had in his company and so the deal was
not completed although Fujitsu and Amdahl supplied it with their machines
Decades have now now passed, and while IBM has introduced some of the
features Jol had 40 years ago, many are still to come, such as an easy
to use English style language, full arithmetic expressions, the ability
to run the same scripts under TSO or Batch, and much, much more.
And so today, Jol is now under the Open Source banner. You are
encouraged use it for free, and the source code (which was examined and
approved by IBM in the '80s) is available with the proviso and
restriction that if it is turned into a commercial product, royalties
must be paid.
There are three or so versions of Jol.
1. The 370 Assembler Z/OS Mainframe version.
2. The Windows, Linux and OS/2 "C" versions that either generate code
that runs on the mainframe, or alternatively executes native
applications on their own platforms. The Linux version is in Beta mode.
3. A Beta version of a compatible IBM VSE version.
You can download Jol from the www.Oscar-Jol.com site which also has all
the documentation and many examples.
Now, there is no reason why you cannot move to the next generation JCL
language.
Clem Clarke
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
