Hello, Collin.
Colin Allinson wrote:
Hello,
We are implementing a additional VM processor footprint (that makes a
change!!).
That's good to hear.....:-)
This machine will act purely as a backend server and will have a minimum
subset of products installed. We will have no RSCS on this machine.
It would be very useful to be able to send commands and/or messages
to/from this machine in similar way to the RSCS functionality.
My thought would be to have a TCPIP based server on each side talking to
each other and providing this functionality.
Does anyone know of a tool already in existence or will I have to develop
something from scratch.
btw: I have thought about REXEC and I might yet end up using that but this
is not exactly what I was looking for.
For a task such as this, I would look into using the RSK package that
comes with z/VM now. It provides, in a ready to use fashion, all of the
basic functions you need to build a TCP/IP server, including handling of
all of the low level communications protocol, multitasking support
(useful in your case if users submit long running commands to the remote
system....multiple commands could be run in parallel, instead of have to
wait for one command to finish before the next can start....), and user
authentication. It can drastically reduce the amount of time and effort
needed to construct a robust and reliable server. Look for the "z/VM
V5R2.0 Reusable Server Kernel Programmer's Guide and Reference" manual
on the z/VM library page for more details.
If your processor supports it, you could very easily incorporate data
encryption into the server, sending only encrypted data over the wire.
The new KM and KMC instructions support DES, Triple-DES and AES
encryption algorithms.
While the RSK "plug-in" interfaces are designed to be used by S/390
assembler language code, there are ways of using Rexx routines with it
as well. This cuts down on the development and testing time even more.
Contact me off-list if you'd like more details of how to use the RSK or
how to use Rexx with it.
Have a good one.
DJ
Regards
Colin Allinson
