On 9/07/2018 10:46 PM, Hobart Spitz wrote:
Basically, JCL is so far from real a programming language, that I can't
describe it.
That's because JCL isn't a programming language. There are plenty of
other languages that also suck as programming languages e.g. HTML, XML,
JSON, but that's not what they are supposed to be.
JCL is really a kind of definition language. In programming language
terms it is more like a set of classes in OOP than a language in itself:
you have a job, which has steps, steps have DDs etc. The syntax is old
fashioned, but the concepts are very much OOP. It would be relatively
simple to create a set of classes in your OOP language of choice to hide
the syntax - just create a Job object, add Step objects, add
DataDefinition objects etc. and have a Submit method emit JCL.
If I want to write a program, I will choose a programming language. If I
want to define a unit of work to the system, JCL does a pretty good job.
I definitely prefer JCL to long command lines with multiple switches and
options defining input and output files, which is the non-z/OS equivalent.
Andrew Rowley
Black Hill Software
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