I am happy to see CMS Pipelines discussed here again. I will not try to top Hobart's post in length or quality, but some remarks:
- With z/VM 6.4 we renewed the indoor plumbing, replacing the level that was 20 years old. We more than doubled the number of built-in programs and options (and broke very few pipes in the process). - One part of the BatchPipes product is BatchPipeWorks - the level of CMS Pipelines from 20 years ago. The other part is a set of pipeline stages that let two concurrent jobs transfer data with so the consumer can already start processing the first part of the output while the producer is still producing more output. - Until 2010 there was a service offering available for CMS/TSO Pipelines on z/OS which includes functionality specifically for z/OS and not available when running on CMS. Just like some stages only apply to CMS and are not available on z/OS. In theory we could have a version on z/OS that is very close to what we have with z/VM 6.4 today. I would imagine we'd want to merge in the BatchPipes function in some way. - The NetView Pipes is based on the CMS Pipelines level from the 90's and continued to evolve. From what I observe, it has become a rather different dialect and it would be a non-trivial effort to merge those paths again and have NetView exploit the new function. The synergy with REXX is in two aspects: - using PIPE commands in the REXX program to massage data, issue host commands and process the output of those commands - write pipeline subroutines in REXX to create re-usable pieces of code breaking up big programming tasks into several small ones Because pipeline subroutines separate the business logic from the environment, it is easy to share code between CMS and TSO. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMS_Pipelines for the key aspects that distinguish CMS Pipelines from UNIX pipes. When I search the RFE site for "z/OS" it seems that RFE 47699 with 161 votes is the "hottest" one by far (next is 40 votes). I recall seeing another RFE with two dozen votes for sorting in REXX - the plumbers among us know you'd get that for free with CMS Pipelines. Development of new function in CMS Pipelines continues. Without a good reason, those enhancements are not developed with z/OS in mind, not tested on z/OS, etc. The one-time effort to get CMS Pipelines to z/OS will increase. Sir Rob the Plumber ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
