ways to practice COBOL, JCL, VSAM, DB2 & CICS in any emulator for free?

[Sumit Mehra]

HI,

What are the ways to practice COBOL, JCL, VSAM, DB2 & CICS in any emulator for free?

I have even tried to participate in IBM ZXPLORE but in vain, I was unable to practice CICS COBOL along with DB2 there. Suggest me few ways to try all these for free!

[zum13]

Hello.

IBM did put out a version of the ZD&T package called the "ZD&T Learner's Edition" for a while. It was basically IBM's emulator along with the ADCD distribution of z/OS for which they were charging 120USD a year. The trouble is, it was only available in the US, and they have since withdrawn it. The website says that it is "being updated". I was told this was supposed to be happening this year and would be released more widely, but we're fast running out of year!

ZD&T website: https://www.ibm.com/products/z-developm ... nvironment

There is also something called "Wazi as a Service" which is a cloud-based offering. It allows you to create a customisable remote z/OS instance with options for CICS and DB2, however, there is a charging model associated with it which means that you'd be paying something like 5USD an hour for it while it's running (there may also be charges for the disk storage).

Wasi as a Service website: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/wazi-as-a-service
Youtube demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QAEd1cBkWs

The only other emulator out there is Hercules but IBM aren't about to license anything to you to run on that which means that there is nothing legal you can run on it besides the old pre-1980s operating systems and zLinux. You can run an old version of the COBOL compiler under MVS 3.8j and have VSAM support, but there's no DB2 or CICS on offer.

[Sumit Mehra]

Thank you zum13. I've tried all the options and as such not much success.

[zum13]

It has occurred to me to suggest non-mainframe versions of some of these products.

IBM did produce a version of CICS for OS/2 along with a version of DB2 and the VisualAge COBOL compiler. All have long since falled out of production and support. Now this is of questionable legality, but those products along with OS/2 itself have found their way onto various abandonware sites so it would be possible to create a COBOL/CICS/DB2 setup under OS/2 in a virtual machine. This particular version of CICS would have been around in the late 1990s; it's quite old and isn't 100% compatible on the BMS mapping side of things.

Also, DB2 is available from IBM as a community edition to run under Windows and Linux. From a programming perspective, this should be compatible with the mainframe product. There are a number of PC-based compilers around including the GNU COBOL compiler which is open source. It doesn't give you access to CICS, VSAM or JCL, but it would at least let you work with the DB2/COBOL side of things.

[Robert Sample]

GnuCOBOL is a free COBOL compiler for the PC. I have used it in the past and it gets close to Enterprise COBOL so it's a good way to learn COBOL.

[Sumit Mehra]

Thank you zum13 and Robert.

How easy it for someone to install Hercules? If one has never done it before.

[Akshya Chopra]

I think ZD&T is a paid service, not free.

[zum13]

How easy it for someone to install Hercules? If one has never done it before.

Probably the easiest way to install it is through what are called the "Turnkey" systems. These consist of the emulator software and a pre-installed copy of MVS 3.8j so it should just be a matter of copying the relevant files and firing it up. The main Hercules websites are here:

http://www.hercules-390.eu/
http://hercules-390.github.io/html/

You'll find links there to the turnkey systems as well as to some sites with useful information about installing and running the various systems. There's also a chat group available if you need help:

https://hercules-390.groups.io/g/group

It's quite well supported and known about so there is help around if you get stuck. You can even find scans of some of the original manuals floating around on places like bitsavers.org and archive.org.

[zum13]

I think ZD&T is a paid service, not free.

I knew someone would point that out! Yes, I did list services that require payment. The ZD&T Learner's edition, if it were available right now, would be the cheapest option if it maintained its previous pricing of 120USD, but other than IBM's Zxplore program (which has restrictions), there are no options which are legal and free which would allow access to current versions of IBM's operating systems. IBM's mainframes tend to be expensive to buy, expensive to run, expensive to maintain, and expensive to license. They also tend to be running critical workloads. You're unlikely to find someone willing to open up their system without having to pay for it.

[Akshya Chopra]

Thanks for your thoughts zum13. There should have been easier ways, I wish.