Month / September 2018

by mainframeblogger

z/OS Requirements

Most of IBM and certainly z/OS as a product use a requirements system on the internet called RFE – Request For Enhancements.  The RFE web site is here:

 www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe 

If you navigate to the RFE website you can see some of the information without having any identification at all.  But to submit an RFE you will need a developer works ID.  This is similar to or identical to your IBM ID (for those not working for IBM).  z/OS RFE’s are under Servers and System Software, then under z Software, and then under z/OS.  Within the z/OS category are most of the shipped components of z/OS.  Occasionally there are components that are shared with other operating systems which are elevated to a peer of z/OS under system software.

You can search through the RFE’s and ‘vote’ on ones you ‘like’ or you can add them to your personal watchlist (which allows you to track these requirements more closely).  If you open an RFE you have 24 hours to edit it before it is officially submitted.  Within a month or two you will get an initial response.  Occasionally the requirement is missed and then you can contact someone like me to chase it down.

Many requirements end up in a code of  ‘uncommitted candidate’, unfortunately there is no state like long range consideration.  As developers of z/OS we have a product over 50 years old and frequently requirements are valid but they just aren’t in an area where we will be doing work for the next several years.  Again here if a requirement is very critical you are encouraged to get a hold of someone like me to help determine if we can implement that function in the time you really need it.

The RFE system is also connected to SHARE’s requirement system.  If you are a SHARE member you may find that the weight of more customers will help your requirement along.  When a SHARE requirement is submitted to IBM it comes into the RFE system and is viewed with a little more focus than a non-SHARE requirement.

Each release of z/OS we strive to implement as many customer requirements as we can but the number we receive far exceeds our ability to deliver them.  The more customer feedback we have though helps us to understand the pain points that are out there and helps us to focus on the requirements that will bring the most bang for the buck.

I would encourage you to open requirements in RFE you might be surprised at your ability to influence the direction of the operating system and the platform.

by mainframeblogger

The Journey Begins

My name is Gary Puchkoff and I am a mainframeaholic.  Yes, I am addicted to information about large systems computing.  Some people would also call this information technology – IT.  I have been working in this part of the computing world for over 35 years. Before you draw too many false conclusions… I have programmed and researched in many areas of software and hardware.  I wrote assembler code on z80 processors, VAX processors, S/370 processors… I have written code in COBOL, PL/I, Pascal, LISP, Prolog, SmallTalk, SNOBOL, APL, Forth, Java, Basic, Javascript, REXX, CLIST… and JCL.  I have a particular fondness for JCL as you will see.

I was a developer of z/OS, and tools to build z/OS.  I was a principal developer of WebSphere Application Server, I co-invented the zAAP (a Java price performance tool).   I am the principal designer of z/OSMF bringing a browser based management user interface to z/OS.  Most recently I was a heavy contributor to z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) a facility that allows Linux on z software run in a z/OS address space.

I will point out that I am not much of a believer in Blogs… so if you like this blog I guess that would be nice… but if you don’t like this blog… then you are probably more like me.  My view is that most blogs are written by people who are not experts in what they are talking about and their opinion is probably not worth much.  I don’t do much blog reading and I find it a little hard to believe that people would read my blog.  But people around me like my marketing lead tell me it would be ‘great if you wrote a blog’.  So we are going to try this out.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton